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How Free Markets Will Beat Climate Change: Q&A with UCLA's Matthew Kahn

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:00:00 EDT

"My unsexy bumper sticker for adapting to climate change," says UCLA Professor of Economics, the Environment, and Public Affairs Matthew Kahn, "is 'Give free markets a chance!'"

Kahn, the author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future , argues that "well-meaning government actions" designed to combat the effects of global warming need to be scrutinized more than they have been. Despite the hostility to markets and economic development shared by many green activists, Kahn says that "free-market capitalism" provides the most flexible - and most progressive - solution to environmental issues. Climate change is coming, he avers, and raising the urban poor's standard of living and generating new technological innovations will do far more to improve things than top-down attempts to control energy use and consumption patterns.

About 7 minutes. Produced by Sharif Matar.

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Zoning vs. Eminent Domain: How Ventura County Shut Down The Pine Mountain Inn

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:00:00 EDT

In the northernmost reaches of California's Ventura County, a two-lane rural road called Highway 33 runs into the rugged and mostly undeveloped Transverse Mountain Range. Though it's mostly raw wilderness, a few businesses catering to adventurous explorers have long existed there, some for more than a century.

But now the local government is shutting those businesses down, one by one, using arcane zoning and building-code laws to get the job done.

"If there isn't someone complaining, and there isn't really a serious public health and safety issue, why do they spend so much of their time pursuing these kinds of cases?" asks Lynne Jensen, executive director of the Ventura County Coalition of Labor and Business (COLAB).

Tom Wolf owns the Pine Mountain Inn, a restaurant that's been serving biker groups and local community organizations since the 1930s. Wolf temporarily had to shut the doors when he suffered a heart attack in 2002, and he was never able to reopen when the county informed him that his property had been rezoned as an "Open Space" back in the 1980s without his knowledge.

"[The county] wanted everybody out of here," says Wolf. "And they wanted a complete open space with nothing but deer and frogs... and no people."

No matter how hard Wolf tried to comply with the ever-changing codes, the county just wouldn't relent, at one time even ordering him to remove a chicken coop that had never actually existed on the property.

Wolf isn't alone, says Jensen. Several other small businesses along Highway 33 have been hit by multiple county agencies for no apparent reason.

"They had every department hit us with violations to make sure that they shut us down," says April Hope, who, along with her husband Bob, owns a bed and breakfast called The Wheel, which has existed in the area since the 1890s.

Since the Hopes purchased The Wheel in early 2000, they've never been able to open it to the public. While officials from the county supervisor's office and the planning department refused to speak with ReasonTV for this story, Jensen says that the county is using code enforcement to drive these businesses off the land without compensation.

"This rezoning is really a way to get around eminent domain, because eminent domain means you give up your entire property. And here, you only give up part of your rights," says Jensen.

Invoking eminent domain to seize private property would not only require the county to compensate landowners, but also to demonstrate that the taking served a "public use."

"They have been very successful in taking people's property in a number of different ways without compensation as long as they don't take ownership of it," says Jensen.

About 5.30 minutes.

Written and Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Alex Manning, Tracy Oppenheimer, and Weissmueller.

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3 Supreme Court Decisions to Watch

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:00:00 EST

The Supreme Court is back in session with major decisions coming on the legality of Obamacare, Arizona's anti-immigration law, and the right of property owners to due process.

How's the court expected rule in these cases and what are the likely implications of its decisions?

Reason Senior Editor Damon Root sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie to talk about the 3 decisions to watch in the Supreme Court's current session.

Shot by Joshua Swain and Meredith Bragg; edited by Jim Epstein.

Approximately 4.30.

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Will The Supreme Court End New York's Rent Control Laws?

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:00:00 EST

"If you wanted to destroy a city’s housing - short of bombing - the best way to do it is rent control,” says Cato legal associate Trevor Burrus.

While most cities in America long ago got rid of rent control, New York remains a bastion of government-mandated limits on what landlords can charge renters. About 50 percent of New York’s rental market is affected by rent control or rent stabilization, policies that keep rents artificially low and produce housing shortages, higher overall housing costs, and all sorts of corruption.

The court case Harmon v. Kimmel may finally bring an end to rent control laws that have been on the books in one form or another since the 1940s. James D. Harmon owns a building in Manhattan where the tenants are paying rents that are about 60 percent below the going market rate. After losing various legal battles at lower levels, Harmon has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his argument that rent stabilization is a form of takings that should be prohibited under the Constitution. The Court has not yet announced whether it will hear the case but has asked the state and city of New York to respond to Harmon's argument.

Cato's Burrus wrote a friend of the court brief on the case and explains why rent control and rent stabilization are bad at promoting affordable housing and abridgments of economic freedom.

About 2.34 minutes. Shot and edited by Joshua Swain.

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Post-Punk Icon Joe Jackson on The Nanny State, Smoking Bans, & His Next Musical Adventure

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:30:00 EST

"A smoking ban in bars is saying that adult citizens are not allowed to use a legal substance even though they're very highly taxed for doing so in a place that is private property," explains Joe Jackson, the hitmeister behind indelible tunes such as "Look Sharp!," "Is She Really Going Out With Him?," and, yes, "(Everything Gives You) Cancer."

Jackson's not a smoker himself but he insists that smoking bans and other for-your-own-good restrictions infantalize us all and challenge basic concepts of freedom. "You're throwing out the window the property right of the owner of that establishment, freedom of choice, a lot of things, compared to a health risk [from second- and third-hand smoke] that is really unproven."

Jackson's antipathy for the creeping nanny state in his native England and his longtime home of New York City led him to write a meticulously researched essay called "Smoking, Lies and The Nanny State." It also led him to finally flee New York and London, setting up residence in Berlin because there he at least feels like he is relatively "free" and "treated like an adult."

Jackson sat down with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie and talked about his frustrations as an anti-smoking ban activist, the "gathering storm of prohibitionism," and the bold and risky evolutions of his signature musical style over the years.

Runs about 7.30 minutes.

Shot by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein and Anthony L. Fisher. Edited by Anthony L. Fisher.

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Adrian Moore Talks Occupy Oakland Violence on Freedom Watch

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Vice President of Research Adrian Moore appeared on Freedom Watch to discuss how Occupy Oakland is getting out of hand, as the self-proclaimed peaceful protesters are now violating property rights. Air date: November 3, 2011.

Approximately 3 minutes.

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Smoking Bans Are No Match for New Yorkers

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:01:00 EDT

Smoking in bars and restaurants has been banned in New York City since 2003 but Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently added beaches, parks, and pedestrian plazas to the long and growing list of places where smoking is verboten in the Big Apple. "Sin taxes" on cigarettes have driven the average price of a pack to more than $11.

Yet in a city renowned for its innovation and drive, smokers have found ways to work around government attempts at social engineering. These include the booming "loosie" trade, where street entreprenuers risk arrest to sell loose cigarettes for a dollar each on the streets of Manhattan; tobacco crops blooming in Brooklyn; and a thriving Soho bar/restaurant that survived the smoking ban thanks to an obscure grandfather clause.

With so much tax revenue being lost to the black market, and even the green market, perhaps it's time for a mayor who made billions in the free market to consider allowing business owners to set their own policies, and let the marketplace sort out the demand for smoking and smoke-free establishments.

About 4 minutes.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher.

For more Reason.tv on smoking and tobacco, go here.

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Matt Welch Talks About Subsidized Homeowner Insurance on Freedom Watch

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EDT

Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch appeared on Freedom Watch to discuss why the government actually subsidized many risky homes by giving cheaper insurance to beachfront houses. Airdate: August 30, 2011.

Approximately 5 minutes

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Battle for the California Desert: Why is the Government Driving Folks off Their Land?

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EDT

The Antelope Valley is a vast patch of desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a segment of the few rugged individualists who live out there increasingly are finding themselves the targets of armed raids from local code enforcement agents, who've assembled into task forces called Nuisance Abatement Teams (NATs).

The plight of the Valley's desert dwellers made regional headlines when county officials ordered the destruction of Phonehenge: a towering, colorful castle constructed out of telephone poles by retired phone technician Kim Fahey. Fahey was imprisoned and charged with several misdemeanors.

But Fahey is just one of many who've been targeted by the NATs, which were assembled at the request of County Supervisor Mike Antonovich in 2006. LA Weekly reporter Mars Melnicoff wrote an in-depth article in which she exposed the county's tactic of badgering residents with minor, but costly, code violations until they face little choice but to vacate the land altogether.

"They're picking on the the people who are the most defenseless and have the least resources," says Melnicoff.

Reason.tv collaborated with Melnicoff to talk with some of the NAT's targets, such as retired veteran Joey Gallo, who might face homelessness if he's forced to leave his house, and local pastor Oscar Castaneda, who says he's already given up the fight and is in the process of moving off the land he and his wife have lived on for 22 years. And, while Antonovich declined an interview, we did catch up with him at a public meeting in order to ask the big question at the center of all this: Why the sudden enforcement of these codes against people living in the middle of the desert, who seemingly are affecting no one?

Writer-Producers: Zach Weissmueller and Tim Cavanaugh. Associate Producer: Mars Melnicoff. Camera: Alex Manning and Weissmueller; edited by Weissmueller.

Approximately 9:48.

Music by Audionautix.com.

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Billionaires vs. Brooklyn's Best Bar

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST

Freddy's in Brooklyn is a happening place that has been named one of the city's best bars by the Village Voice, Esquire, and The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Freddy's—and the surrounding neighborhood—is smack-dab in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project, a multi-million-dollar, 22-acre development that is intended to create "an urban utopia" in the language of developer Bruce Ratner, and a new, publicly subsidized home to Ratner's Nets, who currently play NBA basketball (if you can call it that) in New Jersey.

But don't mistake Atlantic Yards as one more instance of the market-driven transformations for which New York is rightly famous. It's actually the latest case of eminent domain abuse, where private property is seized by the state on dubious grounds and then immediately handed over to private interests for private gain.

In this case, the Empire State Development Corporation has designated the thriving area as blighted to facilitate the taking of privately owned houses and businesses without having to pay full market value. Ratner, whose partners in the venture include rapper Jay Z and the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, stands to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal, all thanks to the brute force of the state.

This week, a Brooklyn Supreme Court ruling tossed out the eminent domain objections of residents and property owners who had held out for six years and Ratner plans to break ground on the site on March 11, if not before.

The workers and patrons of Freddy's, however, are not going gentle into that good night. They've pledged to engage in civil disobedience and chain themselves to the bar when the bulldozers and wrecking balls come for their favorite haunt. A state sentator has even declared that she'll lay down in front of the demolition machinery. The awful 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo, which held that governments can seize property to increase potential tax revenues, may have paved the way for Atlantic Yards, but Freddy's is the next last stand in an ongoing battle against eminent domain abuse.

Produced by Dan Hayes, who conceived, shot, and edited the video; Damon Root, who researched the legal issues and did logistics; and Nick Gillespie, who co-wrote the piece and hosts.

Approximately 5 minutes.

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Read Reason's archive on eminent domain.

Redevelopment

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST

Reason.tv host Drew Carey revisits the problem of eminent domain abuse following up on his earlier video, National City: Eminent Domain Gone Wild.

The City of Los Angeles used eminent domain to take a popular Hollywood bar and numerous other small businesses so that the city could hand the land over to private developers planning to build a W hotel and million-dollar condos. Fortunately, there's a better way to revitalize neighborhoods. In contrast to Hollywood, Mayor Curt Pringle of nearby Anaheim has found a way to encourage redevelopment by working cooperatively with property owners, without using the power of eminent domain.

Watch the previous Drew Carey Project videos here.

National City

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:02:00 EST

Reason.tv host Drew Carey visits National City, California, where the local government is taking eminent domain abuse to new lows.

Eminent domain is the constitutionally sanctioned practice of taking land for legitimate public uses. Traditionally, that's meant things like roads and schools. Over the past several decades, however, governments have gone hog wild with eminent domain, routinely condemning property and turning it over to well-connected private developers as a way of subsidizing economic development and increasing tax revenues (never mind that it doesn't always work out that way).

Officials in National City, a predominantly Hispanic community near San Diego, have pushed to bulldoze a popular athletic center for struggling kids to pave the way for private developers to build new luxury condos.

As tragic and absurd as this may sound, such outrageous affronts to property rights are an almost daily occurrence. Episode 3 of The Drew Carey Project chronicles the devastating impact of eminent domain abuse on the lives of people whose property the government can threaten to take, not for public use, but for the benefit of wealthy developers.

More of Reason.tv's Drew Carey Project:

Gridlock: Hell on Wheels (Episode 1)
Medical Marijuana (Episode 2)