What is hilarious about your argument is that it takes far more land to build and maintain a highway, and yet we somehow never had any problems with forcing land sales with eminent domain clauses doing that.

It's almost as if the government is owned by a series of interests that are not actually interested in investing and maintaining efficient consumption minimum and economical modes of transportation, and instead focused on making a system that is efficient at creating profit for it's ownership class. It's almost as if, instead of a focus on the money to commodity cycle, there is a perverse incentive for a money to commodity to money cycle that means there is no real incentive to ever substantially invest to improve your commodity production.

Weird.

Oh I'll just tell the poor Americans I know whose homes were bulldozed for transportation infrastructure that it didn't happen because they could have fought it in court. Dumbass.

Damn, it feels like your hypothetical system is designed to protect the interests of the rich and screw over the poor masses, and over time, increase the power the rich already have and further screw over the poor. I have some notes.

Like can you imagine if such a system existed in the real world. If, say, they wanted to violate the "right" of land ownership for poor people to segregate cities by, idk, skin colour. They could separate them with massive, uncrossavle highways. The people that make cars and people who own oil fields will love that! The issue is that there may or may not be some poor people that live there. But even the ones that own land, well, they can be removed because of the system of eminent domain. Theoretically it'd also apply to the wealthy, so it looks like a fair system to the layman. But the rich can afford to take time off work and better lawyers. So on paper it sounds fair, but in practice, it favours those who are already wealthy!

And it would feedback into even more advantages for the wealthy. All those highways will require cars, which is good, but cars need fuel. The fuel will need to be moved vast distances, your need a line of pipes from the oil fields! But that would once again require you to build a... "Line of pipes" across vast distances. But there are natives living along where those lines would go! And they theoretically benefit from the right to own land as well! And they're disadvantaged due to being survivors of a genocide. Treaties or no, the lines will get out through their land, they can fight back but obviously they're unlikely to win.

This doesn't seem like a well thought out system. The only other thing the rich would have to do is to own media and education. Then they can pump out articles and curriculum one after the other saying this system is the only system that works! They can even tell people, over multiple generations, that this the only way, that the right to land is a human right (not food or water though, that would cut into the profits of some other rich people, obviously). And make it legal for the rich to have a stranglehold on the government, call it something other than corruption, make it sound less harmful. Eventually you can erode the political structure to consist only of 2 groups of people who both agree with your "right" to land ownership, so even if the masses wanted to (which they don't, thanks to media and education ;)), they literally can never change it

Yeah imagine if this system existed irl. It's a dystopia disguised as a normal country. And basically everyone in it would believe theres no other way, since any alternative has been demonized since before their grandparents were born.

Genius, and evil

Doesn’t work that way in the US, as witnessed by the myriad times that the government can never approve the budget before it’s due.

"Our government is slow and inefficient can't take decisions in a timely manner (especially if it's decisions that benefit everyone at the expence of a fingernail of the bottomline of some rich dickhead for some reason ), that's how you know it's truely democratic"

America: bulldozes entire neighborhoods to build highways, displacing everyone with minimal compensation.

China: Nail house.

There's this thing called tribal sovereignty, which is a right. Doubt they have that in the US; if your tribe is in the way of a planned settlement... it won't be soon.

So...it's a good thing when someone can torpedo a massive infrastructure project that will benefit millions just because they don't feel like selling "their" land? Because they have a slip of paper that says they own a bunch of land, they can personally decide whether or not millions of people have access to public transport? Is that the argument you're making? That capitalism is a superior system because someone who is rich and powerful enough can inconvenience or even destroy the lives of millions just cause they can?

Doubt they have that in China

hey genious, what's a nail house?

no investigation, no right to speak

Doubt they have that in China, if your home is in the way of a planned development…it won’t be soon.

[citation needed]

In fact there are many exemples of the opposite happening, China having to build around something because the person(s) refused to move and China didn't force them to.

Yeah you can't get in the way of public development in China. If they want to run a rail through your house they'll give you a fat stack of cash and move you into a nice new apartment. The system works.