Yup. And it's a lousy system. A few people own property. A private company wants to obtain their property so that they can develop it for profit. So rather than respecting the right of a person to possess their own property and having to make that person an offer that they will feel is acceptable for that property or even having to look for other property to purchase, it's decided that relatively more people will make relatively more money if the property owner is forced off his property and given a below-market value payment for the seized property. Oh, and if the present owner should take the case to court, which is his legal right, and lose, you might as well throw in charging him rent on his own property for the time that it took to receive the judgement, say five years or so.
Ok, now we have precident. Private developers can hook up with a town council and seize private property by eminent domain not to develop a road or something vital to the needs of the community, but to put up a strip mall, and pretty much tell you how much they're willing to pay for your property, as opposed to having to pay what the owner wants for his land or having to locate their mall where people are willing to sell.
So if Standard oil wants to seize a forest privately owned by a conservation group and set up a refinery, that's no longer wrong. They can make bunches more money than a lousy bunch of tree huggers who just happen to own that land. Heck, by the time the owners legally contest the seizure, they might end up owing the land grabber more than they were offered for the property in the first place. It's OK, because it's expedient, and it's been done before.
Or is it?
That's a problem I see when you toss abosolutes out. Because I am someone who bases my morality upon biblical standards, I perceive that it is absolutely wrong for one private party to seize another private party's property just because they possess greater economic and political influence.
)etc.
