Reforming the state’s eminent domain laws has attracted a lot of attention from Texas legislators and interest groups during this year’s legislative session. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion over what property rights are. For example, Billy Howe of the Texas Farm Bureau was recently quoted:
The legislature gave them [entities with eminent domain powers] the authority to take people’s property. So it’s the legislature’s responsibility to make sure that that authority is used in a manner that is consistent with people’s private property rights, and your private property right is the right to get just compensation for your property.
In truth, the right to property has nothing to do with “just compensation.” The right to property means the freedom to create, attain, use, keep, trade and dispose of material values. This means the freedom to sell or not sell one’s property as one deems best. Yet, eminent domain forces an owner to sell his property regardless of his own desires. Receiving “just compensation” doesn’t change the fact that the owner is forced to act contrary to his own judgment.
Certainly, if one is forced to sell his property he would like to maximize his compensation. But if he is forced to sell, then he doesn’t want to sell, and he may not regard any amount of money as just.
The only proper way to protect property rights is to protect the freedom of owners to sell only when they voluntarily choose to do so. And that means abolishing eminent domain.