Dimon's Little Pink Houses

Jamie Dimon, billionaire CEO of JPMorgan Chase, graduate of NYC's exclusive Browning School, Tufts University and Harvard Business School, and four-time honoree as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, qualifies by any reasonable measure as one of the Best-and-Brightest.

Regular readers know I use that phrase derisively, because those Best-and-Brightest are not only spectacularly wrong too often, they also tend to be broadly disinterested in the individual rights and liberties of the peons masses that sit beneath them on the socioeconomic ladder. The Best-and-Brightest narrative stands athwart the libertarian ethic of leaving people alone, because those Best-and-Brightest suffer a noblesse-oblige "calling" to manage the world on behalf of those peons masses, whether we want them to or not.

Thus, my annoyance at one of Dimon's recent comments:

[P]ermitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.

Assuming he's right, he's not wrong (I apologize - inside joke).

Assuming that man-made global warming is a real, imminent, and severe threat and assuming that brute-force conversion to wind and solar is the proper response the current pace is too slow. Assuming the "landscape," pun intended, re the building of giant solar and wind power farms is a giant morass of NIMBYs and other self-interested people bollixing up the works.

There are massive problems with assuming he's right, however.

First, global warming has not been as dire as we've been told. The number of predictions that fell short or failed to materialize must be in the hundreds, and that's only tallying those of the experts, i.e. members of the Best-and-Brightest. So, more "hurry hurry hurry" exhortations deserve skepticism, at the least. I share my views on the state of global warming here.

Second, there is the hard reality that our own decarbonization will amount to a hill of nothing given that China, India, Brazil, Russia, most of Africa and Latin America, and South Asia are not playing along. Whatever carbon reductions we impose - at massive cost to Americans' wallets and living standards - will be mooted by all those other nations' increases. They’re all too happy to encourage the West’s suicide-by-green, because it benefits them in countless ways.

Third, the technology simply isn't there to accomplish this mass decarbonization via Wind and Solar and Batteries (WASABI).

I've blogged ad nauseam about these realities, so in this iteration I will move on to the offense du jour:

Eminent Domain.

The compensated taking of private property by the government for a "public good" purpose. A principle of law in many nations across hundreds of years that's codified in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, it serves to keep individuals from "holding hostage" in such things as road construction. If a new highway is thwarted by one property owner's refusal to sell a square inch of land in the planned path, the government has recourse to coercively purchase that land (for fair value), for “public use.”

It's a tool in the government toolbox, with a legitimate-but-limited purpose. Unfortunately, government is notorious for abusing the tools it has been given, and eminent domain abuse is a long-running and widespread phenomenon. Abuse, as in stretching of the Fifth Amendment's "public use" beyond recognition. As in taking someone's property because someone else covets it, with "public use" redefined as necessary. This culminated with the 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. City of New London.

Pharma giant Pfizer built a plant next to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London, and the city's leaders decided that a stretch of residential land next to that plant would better serve the city (i.e. its tax coffers) if it were redeveloped. As Hedley Lamar lamented, "there [was] one thing standing between [them] and that property: the rightful owners."

Most property owners sold (reportedly under duress), but a few, including Susette Kelo, did not.

Whereas Lamarr sought to chase the residents of Rock Ridge away with violence and lawlessness, New London turned to an even more powerful agent: government itself.

The dispute landed in court, and worked its way up to the Supremes. The Supremes let Susette and her neighbors down, ruling that "economic development" is sufficient justification to exercise eminent domain takings. That Anthony Kennedy sought, in his opinion, to limit the massive expansion of this power with a 'scrutiny regime' was of little comfort to Kelo and the 110 years of family history in her little pink house. Nor is it likely to be much of an impediment to shady politicians and their clever lawyers. The message was delivered: the government can seize private property if it enriches coffers or advances policy, not just for ‘public use.’

Wind and solar power will require large tracts of land be converted from their present state and use. Transmission lines from those farms will also have to travel new paths. Out west, where the government already owns vast swathes of land this won't be much of a headache. But in the rest of the country, where public land ownership is low, power and transmission companies will almost certainly need the government's assistance to acquire the needed acreage. Furthermore, a good bit of that public land is owned for natural preservation purposes (public parks and the like), and there will be many who object to its use for a massive national transformation to WASABI.

Some of those objectors have been heard by state and local legislatures, which are responding to their constituents' desires by restricting wind and solar developments. Given the vast sums of federal money available, the big green developers are battling those state and local laws, as well as fighting private landowners in court. Mixing into that roiling stew are various other interested parties, including environmentalists who object to the destruction of green spaces, farm coalitions, and more.

Thus, Dimon's message about "permitting reforms." Most readers are at least somewhat aware of the reality that any major development has to jump through a series of hoops and fend off numerous lawsuits from countless directions. To accelerate the WASABI agenda would require that the Feds drastically shorten permitting and drastically curtail the power to file suit against WASABI projects. And, of course, take lots of private and state owned land.

In short, the Feds, if they are to continue this utterly Quixotic drive toward solar panels and wind farms, will have to ride roughshod over Americans and their property rights. All for the grand purpose of making our lives more expensive and less comfortable. Such is the hubris of our Best-and-Brightest that they cannot fathom that the rest of the world will not play this game of energy suicide.

That they could achieve the same goals with far less need for eminent domain abuses and other chaos (not to mention far greater reliability, far less dependence on hostile nations for raw materials, and far better benefit to the global political stage) by taking us down the nuclear path is of no consequence.

Why?

Because green is now a contest of wills more than anything else. It's the Best-and-Brightest having their way over everyone else' opposition, no matter the pointlessness of the whole endeavor. They want to win the fight rather than get it right. Though they'll never admit it - even to themselves - true satisfaction is getting us to bend the knee, not in making our lives better.

In a sad twist of reality, Pfizer abandoned the New London development five years after the Kelo decision. That its departure coincided with the expiration of some massive tax breaks it got at the start of all this ado is pure coincidence, I'm sure. The land where the Kelo house stood since 1895 is now a neglected vacant lot.

The Kelo ruling, which by the way broke down along ideological lines, with then-swing-vote Anthony Kennedy tipping the scales to 5-4, remains in effect. It's a stain on the Court's history and a violation of citizens' rights, one that makes our Best-and-Brightest all too happy. It has and will continue to be used to nefarious purpose, and it'll come into play as long as the Biden administration continues force-marching us down the road to green hell.