It's like I said, I intend to buy the property next to Greg Nickels and other such people and build 100-story residential towers. The city can pay me not to build them.

I'm also buying the water plats on the city grid to build giant shrimp farms, and will be mining for gold and diamonds around the Gates mansion area.

I expect this might come as a shock to some, but that's what it means. So long as I file a claim, they either have to permit it or pay me.

Gonna be fun looking for diamonds while Melinda tries to clean up behind me.

It could still work. They just need to also reimburse cab drivers and truckers for the profits they missed out on by driving the speed limit and stopping for traffic lights.

Then we reimburse everyone who ever thought about growing pot for their missed profits too. If your enlistment was involuntarily extened and you had to do another tour in Iraq, you should get a check for all the money you could have made if you hadn't gone. Or gone as a mercenary instead of a soldier.

As long as everybody gets every dime that's coming to them for every single law they obey, they should be able to afford paying the taxes we'd have to raise to cover the cost.

I know it sounds like a load of bookkeeping, but a utopia of perfect fairness is within our grasp, and is any price too high for perfection?

Ooh, good idea. Indoor farming! That sounds like something to apply for a permit for next to city hall ...

Wait...
Ok so lemme get this straight.

This bill removes the right of governance from the government.
aaaand by some judicial miracle, that is legal.

And the legislature can't just pass a bill, known as the 'I-933 officially nullified bill'? or the 'actually after the government pays people to follow the law, they have to pay it back in asshole tax bill' ?

Any of the above possibilities utterly boggles my mind.

How much is this law going to cost us - something like $50 BILLION. I can't find the exact number, but it's some mind-blowing amount that makes the tunnel look like chump change...

The current estimate is $7 to $9 billion. See the link to Sarah Mirk's post.

So, if the estimate is $7 to $9 billion, that means $20 billion in actual costs. They always misunderestimate these things.

This is nonsense and you know it. It only applies if you once had the right and it was subsequently removed.

If you buy property next to Greag and it doesn't come with the right to build a hundred stories, you will have no claim. If it comes with the right to build 100 stories and you paid a price that reflects those rights, then you have a claim.

The question came to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 in the case of a South Carolina builder. David Lucas had paid almost a million dollars for two waterfront lots. The lots were zoned for beach houses, many of which were there already. Shortly afterward, however, the state said it needed to protect the sand dunes, and forbade any more beach houses.

Had the state taken Lucas' property? He thought so. State officials thought not; they had only regulated him. He still had his lots. He could pitch a tent on them or spread out a blanket and have a picnic on them. The court, however, ruled that the thing for which he had paid a million dollars — the right to put up a house — had been taken, and that the state had to pay for what it took.