A draft of my chapter on “Land Use Regulation” for the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on Classical Liberalism (edited by Richard Epstein, Liya Palagashvili, and Mario Rizzo) is now available on SSRN. Right here is the summary:
Land use regulation is a serious perform of each authorities on the planet. It raises many points for classical liberalism. This chapter offers an summary of three of a very powerful areas of land-use coverage: using eminent area to forcibly take property for government-approved initiatives, laws that limit property homeowners’ use of their land, and the connection between property rights in land and migration restrictions.
Half I covers using eminent area to take personal property, and arguments for its limitation to genuinely “public” initiatives, versus coerced transfers between personal homeowners. Advocates of the latter argue they’re wanted to beat “holdout” issues. However unconstrained use of eminent area is a severe menace to property rights and hampers financial growth.
Half II considers regulatory restrictions on land use that don’t contain bodily occupation of property. There’s a longstanding debate in regards to the worth of such restrictions and whether or not the federal government ought to pay homeowners compensation. Probably the most important regulatory restrictions of this kind in many countries are zoning guidelines proscribing housing development.
Lastly, Half III offers a crucial overview of property-rights rationales for proscribing mobility, significantly within the type of worldwide migration. Such theories justify severely constraining the freedom and property rights of each migrants and natives.
Along with contributing to this quantity on classical liberalism, I’m additionally a contributor to Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism, edited by Jason Brennan, Bas van der Vossen, and David Schmidtz, and the Cambridge Handbook of Classical Liberal Thought, edited by M. Todd Henderson. But, I am removed from clear on what differentiates libertarianism and classical liberalism, or even when there actually is a significant distinction between the 2. I explored that query in additional element in a earlier put up.
