GordonUnleashed

One man’s blight is another’s bread and butter

July 22nd, 2007 by Steve

I live in a nice house in a pleasant neighborhood. Today, I finished repairing and repainting the post lantern in front of our house, as well as pulling some weeds in the front flower garden. In other words, I’m someone who appreciates clean and attractive property and work hard to ensure that mine stays that way.

However, the Decatur Daily is strongly insinuating that government should get involved to eliminate what most of us would call eyesores.

Callers have especially complained about the scrap yard south of Alabama 20 because some of the metal has been there for years.

People are uninformed and don’t know what the hell they are looking at,” Denbo said. “That’s salvage material. In our business, you don’t move items like inventory at Wal-Mart, but it has extreme value.”

Let’s look at another business they’d like to shut down:

Blight at some businesses on Alabama 24 is also unappealing to readers.

“I’ll clean up when they make everybody else clean up,” said Roger McGregor, owner of Bama Appliance Sales and Service.

McGregor has more than 100 used washers, dryers and refrigerators on his property.

“This is my living and the city needs to worry about other things like roads,” he said.

Let’s keep a few common sense details in mind. The first, which was raised in the article, is that sometimes people move out to the county so they don’t have to abide by all of the rules which apply the city.

The second is that people who don’t want their houses in such areas are perfectly free to buy a home in a gated community somewhere.

People who don’t wish for their business to be in such an area have plenty of options about where they can locate their business.

Another point is that some people have businesses with unsightly products. These people have a right to those businesses. If government is going to call their businesses blighted, to where will they be able to move? Even if they find a place, who’s going to pay the moving expenses?

A final point (despite Alabama’s improved set of eminent domain laws) is that I get a scary feeling whenever I hear any government official talking about blight. And you know the reason why.

Posted in It's a Southern Thang, Alabama Politics

2 Responses to “One man’s blight is another’s bread and butter”

Derrick wrote on 07/23/07 at 12:28 am :

I gotta disagree with the sentiment that neighbors should be free to be as nasty as they wanna be wrt the upkeep of their property. The way to deal with this stuff is through voluntary deed restrictions. Maybe that’s what you were trying to say in the part about gated communities.

In fact, I think there is a lot of room for such voluntary, market-based alternatives to government institutions and services. I think it would help if libertarians could offer comprehensive proposals for them, instead of just saying “the market will sort it out” as I so often hear.
Steve wrote on 07/23/07 at 12:40 am :

Derrick,

I agree, in general — and try never to be nasty. To clarify, I’ve lived way out in the country as well as a private country club gated-community in Georgia.

For me, it’s a balancing act. I don’t like all the rules in the gated communities (such as not being able to have my friend with a $500,O00 RV or even $200,000,000 boat park in front while he visits) and I don’t want to have visitors have to drive by 30 year old rusting metal to come to my place.

I’m a pretty clean and neat person — the local paper did a pictorial article about the classical southerness of my front porch.

This said, there has to be balance for people who live out on country roads and sell junk metal or rebuilt washing machines to poor people for a living.

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One man’s blight is another’s bread and butter

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