Keeping the fruit of one’s labor, that is property, is one of our natural rights. It is being taken by those who would steal that fruit for themselves.

Land is property, the fruit of one’s labor. It can only be held through constant labor, in fact, that will pay the taxes and maintain its economic value. Like all property, personal or otherwise, it is one of the natural rights of humans willing to put the labor into making it productive. If we cannot keep the fruits of such labor, we are merely slaves to others or, as Edmund Burke put it, no more than the ants of summer. Today, though, our natural rights in land and property are threatened at every turn by those who would simply steal those fruits for themselves. They are, invariably, those who could afford to pay but would rather not.

The threats are everywhere and they are reflected in bizarre acts and stories that may not seem related but are all reflections of the same erosion of natural rights. A recent story in Wall Street Journal provides an example. It’s about movie mogul Barry Diller’s attempt to convert a rotting old pier in the Hudson River into a small island park on pilings connected to land by pedestrian bridges. It had the support of all the politicians. It didn’t involve tearing down anything anyone wanted to keep. He proposed to use his own money to do it on his own leased property. He was stopped by men in black who imagine their judicial seats are thrones, a suffocating regulatory system and two well-financed opponents who alleged eels and views would be threatened.

The now abandoned park. How is that it would have obscured the view of the river for kayakers? Yet, that was enough to stop everything.

The faux concern over eels, of course, like so many such NIMBY tactics was probably resolvable somewhere along the line based on science, but the view was another matter. The protestants apparently asserted the project would “obscure the view of the water” for kayakers on the water and cyclists on the shore. Incredible as it may sound, a cyclist’s or kayaker’s view apparently now trumps property rights, government policy and everything else.

Read more:

http://naturalgasnow.org/land-natural-rights-taken/