Quoting eganist from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15683853:

  Sounds like the regulatory environment was an investment risk that wasn't taken
  into account.
  
  Persistence in regulations isn't some sort of right. Laws change all the time.
  Any investment made without considering the risk of the anti-NIMBY movement is
  no different from any other un-diligenced investment -- foolish.
  
  Holding an asset and concerned about the risk of diminishing property values in
  the face of shifting regulations? Unload. You'd do the same if you're seeing a
  company where you're Long run into potentially difficult headwinds.

Yeah that's totally true, but I feel strangely about it, like treating the YIMBY's as a force of nature takes the morality out of it. If I owned anything else, like a bike, then it's mine because the law says you can't take it. You can't say it's ok to take it because I foolishly didn't account for you changing the law and then taking it. You aren't a force of nature, you're changing something someone else bought.

I'm all for affordable housing and mostly side with YIMBY's, but there's something weird about changing the rules and saying "sucks for you, shoulda seen it coming."

Sometimes laws change in a way that makes something you own illegal. In those cases, sometimes you need to turn it in. Its rare, but it's something that needs to be taken into account as a risk when you buy something.

There is a case for owners getting some sort of compensation if such a thing happens. People do get damanges by a chance in laws, and generally the State should respond to those damages.

If you wanna go that route, the value created or destroyed by a change in laws never belonged to the owner in the first place, and any increase in value created due to zoning should have been recuperated via a land tax.

> , the value created or destroyed by a change in laws never belonged to the owner in the first place

That's not really true. The state can't pass a law saying your house was actually never yours and you are now trespassing get out.

Zoning is a rulebook the state invented, it has to be held accountable to some degree for it. I wouldn't call it reasonable for the state to turn the houses around you into garbage landfills and telling you 'tough luck'

The primary reason why some land is more valuable than other land is due to the government. When the government builds roads, pipelines, sewer systems, transit systems, schools, emergency services, etc., land values go up. In our system, the landowner profits from this, not the government. So if the government happens to do something that makes land values go down, why shouldn’t the landowner take the loss too? Privatize profits and socialize losses is an unsustainable modus operandi of government.

You get what is on the deed, no more, no less. When you buy land, you assume risks. Just like stocks, there are no guarantees of resale value. The government can’t revoke your ownership (outside of criminal use of property), but the government is free to do any number of things that inevitably alter what some people will pay for it. If you want to counter that risk, go buy some insurance, an easement, or all of the adjacent property. The government doesn’t owe you a dime for allowing property owners to do something with their own property that you or potential buyers of your property happen to not like.

> In our system, the landowner profits from this, not the government.

This however misses one important point. They build it using taxpayers' money. So, if I give you money and tell you "please build me a shed" and then benefit from the shed, of course I keep all the benefits - after all, this shed was built for me with my own money!

> The primary reason why some land is more valuable than other land is due to the government.

This is probably not true either. The primary reason why some land is valuable, usually, is location, location, location. It can be close to natural things or to things built by people (e.g. a house within 10min drive of Google campus is probably more valuable than a similar one which has 2hr commute to the closest source of employment). Government-built infrastructure is important too, but usually secondary - nobody would build schools or transit systems in place where nobody wants to live, and people rarely move somewhere just because of sewer and transit system.

> This however misses one important point. They build it using taxpayers' money. So, if I give you money and tell you "please build me a shed" and then benefit from the shed, of course I keep all the benefits - after all, this shed was built for me with my own money!

If we used land taxes like the georgists proposed, this would be an apt analogy. As it stands though, the property owner is paying, but so are non property owners as well as property owners that aren't benefiting from improvements. It isn't much different from a lottery: the benefits are concentrated, but the costs are diffused. Did the lottery winner pay for his payout? Sure, but so did all of the lottery losers that didn't get anything.

> This is probably not true either. The primary reason why some land is valuable, usually, is location, location, location. It can be close to natural things or to things built by people (e.g. a house within 10min drive of Google campus is probably more valuable than a similar one which has 2hr commute to the closest source of employment). Government-built infrastructure is important too, but usually secondary - nobody would build schools or transit systems in place where nobody wants to live, and people rarely move somewhere just because of sewer and transit system.

There a billions of miles of beautiful coastline in the world, but people generally build coastal homes where there are roads, and don't where there are not. There are billions of locations where google could have built their campus, but they chose a place with plentiful government funded infrastructure. They even payed more for the privilege. Why would anybody choose to live or build a business in a place where there are no roads, potable pipelined water, electrical grids, schools, sewers, emergency services. Government isn't a secondary determinant of land value, it is primary and foundational. The private markets may build upon the land values that the government created in the first place, but take the government away and everything else will go with it.

Well, if the state does not compensate me as an owner for damaging things it will do around my property, i will lobby and vote against it and thus nothing will happen.

How is that a win.

And that is exactly what has happened here in the western US, right up until the point where it caused housing prices to shoot through the roof, displacing or inflating away the earnings of millions of people who also have the right to vote.

A buy out is a way out of the problem. Thats precisely the point of compensation, reducing the animosity against it.

Privatizing profits and socializing losses always reduces animosity. It’s also a perverse incentive, and should never ever be done.

> The state can't pass a law saying your house was actually never yours

Depends on context. A state can decide to nationalize private property.

And has to compensate you for it.

In theory, in practice might be a pittance + we won't send you to jail.

So if we wanted to e.g. raise property tax, existing owners would be able to get damages for the difference?

Taxes are uncompensated damage by definition. Some people even call it..what is it?