Stein and Sanders are Absolutely Clueless on Dakota Access Eminent Domain

When talking policy, it is easy to act as if only our desired results will occur and we are fully in control. Jill Stein believes government should have the power to take your house away if it's in their way for a freeway, park, wind farm, or some other "public" project approved by a state government. But she doesn't like it when a project she doesn't approve of makes it through the process. What can she do?

The problem for socialist-inclined people like Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders is that the powers they want government to have only work if they're in charge. Keynes said the same thing. If government is actually a minimally-controllable process or someone else got into power, you can have real problems like property being stolen for obviously private purposes.

Who should decide whether government gets to take your house or farmland away? In the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Iowa Utilities Board determined that "the public benefits of the project outweigh the private and public costs with the terms and conditions imposed by the Board." Therefore, the Pipeline will be built over other people's property no matter how much they kick and scream.

You can agree with the Iowa Utility Board legal arguments and clearly know the Pipeline is a private project by recognizing how the Keynesian social-engineering mindset has poisoned the milleui. When you believe that the government's job is to promote economic prosperity you can absolutely, reasonably agree that "the jobs and other [$787 million] economic benefits" are part of the government's role to 'stimulate the economy' (which Jill and Bernie obviously agree). When you believe in reliance on government for "public goods" infrastructure, the fact that they would allow stealing for a pipeline built by a private company is much easier to swallow. When you believe that government should regulate everything into safety and soundness, you can totally believe that "the proposed pipeline will promote the public convenience and necessity ... subject to the terms of conditions the Board has adopted in this order."

No one, including Jill Stein, should really be surprised that the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved as a "public" project. She loves to talk about all the jobs she will create with her environmental Goldie-Locks projects (i.e. just the right kind of production). Her "Green New Deal" even brags about replacing unemployment insurance with government employment offices - whatever that means. Although few remember, the style of argument where government does something or allows something to create 'X' thousands of jobs really did not exist until the 1950's. These Keynesian-style benefit calculations have been used to measure everything from pipelines to renewable energy to defense contracts. Sports stadiums are a classic example. My own grandfather, Joe Hernandez, hated the Dodgers and made us an Angels family because they stole the entire Chavez Ravine area from the Hispanic community.

If we simply respected property rights and could stop being duped for 5 minutes by demagogues promising a designed society, eminent domain would be out of the question. Both the Dakota Access Pipeline and the atrocity of Dodger stadium would have been stopped.