
In Racine County, houses are being designated ‘blighted’ to make way for Foxconn - johnny313
http://beltmag.com/blighted-by-foxconn/
======
mabbo
A large corporation arriving in a foreign country, manipulating the local
government into forcing people out of their homes so that the corporation can
take the land for their own purposes. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I'm not saying it's right or good, but I am saying that America's success in
the 20th century was in part due to these exact tactics used on other
countries around the world. And based on history, I would say you need to
stand up and fight this sort of thing because it only gets worse.

~~~
rayiner
Doesn’t sound familiar what are you talking about?

~~~
oblib
Well, for an easy start you might look into our military bases in foreign
nations.

From there you can look for US based corporations that have mines, factories,
etc, in foreign nations.

------
brooklynrob
This happened where I live in Brooklyn to make way for the Barclays Center.
New condos, without so much as the paint dry, as well as townhouses and
commercial buildings, were labeled as blight to rationalize the crooked
eminent domain process. Check out the movie "Battle For Brooklyn" for more on
the story.

~~~
ada1981
I'll check it out. I live in Park Slope. What a joke. How about if you want to
buy land, you make offers people can't refuse - that's suppose to be how
capitalism works.

~~~
perl4ever
Eminent domain often seems unfair, but in any situation where everyone must
agree to a plan, being the last holdout gives a person power that they really
didn't do anything to deserve either. I'm not sure anybody believes that
getting everybody to agree on something should always be required to make
progress.

Something that comes to mind are the bondholder holdouts that objected to
Venezuela's debt restructuring. You may side with the people being bullied by
the rich and powerful in any circumstance, but that doesn't uniformly lead to
defending holdouts.

My point is, no, paying any price is not how things work in capitalist
societies or anywhere, because it's not practical, regardless of how unfair
this particular instance is.

Edit: Wow, fastest downvote ever. Wonder if it is automated somehow. I don't
think the ability (and prevalence) of downvoting opinions you disagree with
contributes to the professed goals of HN. I appreciate strict moderation for
civility, but given the ability to downvote rather than engage with (or
ignore) a polite comment, people tend to abuse it.

~~~
figgis
These are peoples homes, land, and likely history. Demolishing that without
the blessing of the owners is ridiculous.

I just can't see how that is comparable to bondholder holdouts.

~~~
perl4ever
It's not _morally_ comparable, which is an essential part of my point. I think
perhaps my comment is inspiring kneejerk reactions as though I was defending
this instance of eminent domain, but it was a response to the direct parent,
which was attacking something much broader than this instance.

Coordination problems preventing people from making collective progress are
real, and mechanisms for eminent domain exist to deal with those real
problems, is all I'm saying.

That is independent of whether some holdouts are righteous or not in
particular circumstances.

To repeat, please interpret my comments in the context of what I am responding
to, not just the article link.

~~~
ada1981
I think the issue is that people think they actually "own" property, when in
fact they merely rent it from the state.

It's dressed up with fancy words and paperwork, but when the State has a
better use for it than you having it, they will find a way.

------
fenwick67
This whole thing is just a huge sham, very reminiscent of building a sports
stadium.

But instead of a sports team, it's a manufacturing company that had to build
nets around its buildings to catch people attempting suicide.

------
bb88
I actually wonder about this a bit. Wisconsin gave huge tax breaks to get that
company in. So now in order to buy the land, they have to evict the land
owners by marking the property as "blighted", because apparently they can't
afford the actual market price of the land.

~~~
ams6110
Has anyone said they aren't making fair market value offers to property
owners?

~~~
kelnos
The article mentions that many (all?) of the landowners, except for some
owners of farmland that has already been purchased, haven't received any
offers from the county, despite the fact that the assessment process has been
completed for some time. It's... fishy, to put it mildly.

------
kirykl
“And the Creuziger family, with 420 acres the largest landowner in the Foxconn
area, has turned down the village’s $50,000 an acre offer for open land.”

[https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2018/02/20/emi...](https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2018/02/20/eminent-
domain-may-used-acquire-land-foxconn-holdouts/355213002/)

~~~
kelnos
That seems like a pretty generous offer. For comparison, that comes out to
around $1150 per square foot, which is what a lot of (developed) real estate
is going for in SF right now.

Still, though, I think it's disgusting to use eminent domain in order to turn
land over to a private company.

~~~
susjjzjz
That can’t be right... there are 43560 sqft in an acre.

~~~
411mrc
Right, it is a pretty fair offer, but it's not SF real estate generous. That
would work out to $16 billion or so.

------
xab9
I probably miss something here, but why are American citizens kicked off from
their land for a Chinese firm on American soil? Is this how you make your
country great again? By selling yourself to the highest bidder?

In the country I live in the ruling party is actively destroying high level
education so that we may give even cheaper work force in the future to the
foreign (mostly Chinese) companies (along with huge tax cuts) - we also have a
program where we decrease unemployment by forced governmental employment (for
something much much lower than the minimum wage), but the system is abused in
a way that people are fired and then taken back to their original workplace
for the lowest possible wage.

And my friends don't understand why I feel totally disgusted by politics and
why I think politicians are worse than criminals.

~~~
Hasz
I believe the apathy you express is more dangerous than words can describe.

What we see in the article is the most healthy, highest functioning form of
government -- disparate interests working through the system to resolve their
interests. If the pervasive and infectious apathy your posts contains were
more widespread, the whole system would break down, as one party dominates an
apathetic counterpart. This is why they must fight, if not to promote the
highest form of government, then to protect their homes.

That being said, not sure where ya live, so maybe it's different around there.

~~~
xab9
Probably you're right - I think they _must_ fight, it's just a shame that it
had to come to fighting that this cold hearted exploitation can happen in the
21st century.

I live in one country of the Visegrad Four and our whole region is shifting to
right wing populism with an unstoppable acceleration; if you mix this
political climate with the resurgence of "wild capitalism" the end result is
either hatred and fear or apathy on a massive scale.

I'm not sure if Trump is making America great - to me it seems that he's
unchaining a capitalist machine and kicking Iustitia to the curb in the
process, feigning stupidity and ignorance.

------
ada1981
This is terrible. I did my grad work at Madison in Urban Planning no less.

~~~
stevenwoo
Do the owners have any recourse that may work? If the state can do this here,
why can't cities do something similar when they want to have higher density
housing?

~~~
mkempe
If only Jefferson had kept the right to property in the Declaration of
Independence, maybe the Bill of Rights would have had it too, "eminent domain"
would be an archaic device reminiscent of royal tyranny, and we would all be a
lot freer and wealthier. The future belongs to us, so we could get rid of such
tyrannical power, ourselves.

~~~
kelnos
Eh, I'm not sure I agree. I think eminent domain is useful, if not essential,
in cases where land is needed for public infrastructure projects. But allowing
its use in order to give land to a private company is going too far.

~~~
mkempe
Eminent domain is a despotic power; to grant any legitimacy to the taking of
property for "public use" is the abhorrent tip of a wedge, even with
supposedly "just compensation." This should have become clear to all after the
2005 Kelo decision. [1]

Recommended reading: Property Rights and Eminent Domain by Ellen Frankel Paul
[2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Property-Rights-Eminent-Domain-
Franke...](https://www.amazon.com/Property-Rights-Eminent-Domain-
Frankel/dp/1412808677)

------
s2g
> “I’m a tax-paying citizen and I deserve better than this, to just be kicked
> to the curb and thrown out of my residence.”

oh but you don't understand. The jobs will be so plentiful. We sacrifice you
at the altar of our corporate overlords and the jobs will just rain down from
the heavens and fix everything.

------
marze
Blighted? Give me a break.

They should buy nearby land and relocate the actual houses if families want to
keep their house.

------
pontifier
I've completely lost faith in our judicial system.

Judges do whatever they want, and even when things are blatantly corrupt
nobody seems to care. Laws are twisted to suit their purposes and a Judges
decision can't be questioned.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Isn’t that what the appeals process is for?

------
saudioger
I put a lot of work into my house, they'll have to bulldoze me in it

~~~
icebraining
They'll just arrest you:
[https://www.apnews.com/525a1ba9c9234ce0843cdd88146a517e](https://www.apnews.com/525a1ba9c9234ce0843cdd88146a517e)

------
awakeasleep
This is the libertarian dream of freedom. The freedom of the strong to do as
they please with the weak.

~~~
misja111
No, the Libertarian dream would not contain much of a government, let alone
one that was reposessing houses.

~~~
s2g
Right, the libertarian version would be Foxconn coming in and strong-arming
people into doing what they want while the government does nothing.

~~~
misja111
Depends which Libertarian you talk to, there are left wingers who are opposed
to private property altogether and on the other side there are the ones that
think the right of private property is one of the greatest goods.

Since there would be no government to enforce this right, the latter category
is strongly in favor of the right to bear arms.

~~~
PeterisP
The right to bear arms alone isn't sufficient to maintain the right of private
property, since it means that anyone who's weaker than the locally strongest
group of armed men de facto doesn't have any rights at all.

I can't possibly imagine how the right to bear arms could prevent Foxconn from
taking their land, as Foxconn could definitely afford to violently remove
anyone resisting, no matter how much arms they could realistically have; and
it would be the cost-efficient (and thus preferrable) way to solve this issue
- e.g. as an alternative of offering $50000/acre for 420 acres, you can hire a
_lot_ of mercenaries with heavy hardware for half that amount and simply take
the land for free.

