24. Eminent Domain

A. The right to own and make use of one’s property is among the most fundamental rights enjoyed by all citizens. Government should therefore not have the right to force any citizen to sell his or her land if the citizen does not wish to do so. This right to refuse transfer of one’s land should be absolute in the case of the government asking a citizen to sell his land to a private developer who claims his development project will benefit the broader community. This right to refuse is not absolute if the government needs to obtain the private land for its own public purposes (for instance, to build public infrastructure). However, this should only be allowed if the public purpose being served is deemed by a court of law to be vital, and if the land owner is compensated by the state at a rate that is considerably higher than “fair market value.”

B. Government is not in the habit of confiscating (or buying) private people’s land for no reason. When the rare opportunity presents itself and a big land development project requires congruous parcels of land, a person who is offered fair market value for his land should not be able to be a “holdout” and block the entire project from going forward. Such big development projects have the potential to revitalize entire neighborhoods and communities and can also create jobs for many local residents. In the case of government eminent domain, the courts have already ruled that government cannot take the land of a private citizen unless the use intended for the land is for the public good. There is no reason to require the government to pay the citizen considerably more than fair market value in such cases—after all, the money paid is public money.

25. Torture

A. Torture is what barbaric people used to do quite regularly to those they considered enemies. In the 21st century, torture is not something that should be sanctioned under any circumstance. If we behave as our worst enemies do, we are no better than them. If we start a torture “program,” we are liable to expand its use beyond rare cases—why not get lots of valuable intelligence by torturing lots of people? And how can we always be sure the person we claim has life-saving information actually has it? Even though we know that a person being tortured will likely admit to anything and therefore provide unreliable information, there are still those who advocate its use. Only a country that abhors torture and refrains from it is in a moral position to ask its enemies not to engage in it.

B. If war—with its potential for countless dead and wounded—is sometimes moral, then torture—with its potential for a few individuals suffering lasting psychological or physical wounds—must certainly be moral under certain circumstances. Torture is only moral when done for purposes of obtaining life-saving information from a suspected terrorist who is known to have such information, and when the terrorist does not cooperate with investigators, and when every minute is of the essence. So while rare, such circumstances do exist. Most people would agree that under these very narrow circumstances (for example, imagine your own loved one is facing imminent death at the hands of a ruthless terrorist who refuses to provide the life-saving information) applying enhanced physical and psychological pressure is not only a natural instinct but also the moral one. The leader of a nation should be given the authority in rare and specified circumstances to approve the use of such enhanced interrogation techniques when the safety and well-being of the population is under imminent threat.

26. Bureaucracy and Regulations

A. While not all bureaucratic regulations are useful, most are. Regulations are necessary in order to apply broad policy choices to real life situations, resulting at times in lengthy and detailed regulations. Regulations create order and predictability, and give people more confidence that the products, services, and institutions they are dealing with have met certain standards. The harm caused by an unregulated banking industry is just one example of how it is better to err on the side of more regulation rather than less. The damage done not only to people but also to the environment is substantial in the case of lax regulations for the oil industry, automobile industry, and many other industries that greatly affect our lives.

B. Government bureaucracy and its vast scope of regulations stifle people’s ability to participate more freely and fully in the economic marketplace. Bureaucratic regulations also tend to encroach on people’s other fundamental freedoms to conduct their lives in a way they deem best for themselves. Unless kept in check, governments tend to hire more and more bureaucrats to draft and enforce more regulations, growing the bureaucratic apparatus of the state to a point whereby it affects every aspect of a citizen’s life. Under the guise of protecting the public, government regulations end up taking increasingly more responsibility away from adults in the belief that most adults are unable to use good judgment to manage their own affairs. From prohibiting the sale of soft drinks over a certain size and disallowing the use of certain common fats in restaurants, to requiring licenses, reports, and permits of more and more businesses and professions (including from children’s lemonade stands), the vast increase in the number and types of regulations is slowly but surely eroding our freedoms and dampening our entrepreneurial spirit.