related: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/03/hampton-fl.html

From the link (which you should check out):

> Hampton[, Florida] has existed, for whatever reason, since about 1925. Home to fewer than 500 people, it is located east of Highway 301 in north-central Florida. Some would say, actually, that it is located on Highway 301, as a result of an amendment to the town's borders in the mid-1990s. See if you can spot the amendment on the map below:

I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation". What we have here is a town of <500 people who voted themselves the power to levy taxes on unrelated drivers passing not even through, but nearby. The drivers, obviously, were not consulted. Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place?

> I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation".

Any restriction will be worked around.

In general, these rackets allow municipalities to avoid raising taxes, or even bothering to ask, and it allows politicians to crow about not raising taxes, yet still have the revenue that honestly and openly enacted taxes would bring.

But I'm not trying to focus on the fact that they're raising revenue by calling their new taxes "traffic fines". That's true, and it's bad, but what's really "special" here is that they've legally enacted the holy grail, a tax on foreigners living abroad. Why would the town residents care even if this were actually called a tax? Conversely, why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents?

> why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents?

The argument would be the same for all speed trap/tax collection stations. It's not for revenue, it's for public safety. They would be irresponsible to not enforce speed limits.

In the case of the town in the article, it would be dangerous for drivers to not suddenly slow down from 65 mph to 55 mph for the 0.2 miles that the road passes through the town.

In general, it may help to keep in mind that you and I are nothing but resources for corporations, governments, law enforcement, spy agencies and other criminal organizations. The United States is a consumer paradise, in the same way that Argentina is a beef paradise. The land of the free range citizen.

Cities in the United states have no authority not granted to them by the state. If the people of Florida felt strongly about it and organized, they could have the speeding zone removed.

Well, I asked

> Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place?

not "why does the town have this power in the first place?" The scenario you describe is ludicrous; Hampton received state attention when it ticketed a representative, not because there was a grassroots movement in the other 99.99% of Florida. Some perspective:

- They annexed a 0.2 mile stretch of highway. Imagine trying to keep track of all the roads in your state in 1000-foot increments.

- Hampton appears to be, by eyeball, somewhere between 1 and 4 square miles (eyeballing this isn't totally ludicrous because, with the exception of the since-abolished freeway patch, it's a square). Call it 4 square miles. Florida is 70,000 square miles.

So the level of scrutiny required here does not and cannot exist. Why does a tiny hamlet that happens to be located near a freeway get the right to unilaterally declare that the freeway is now part of town and start hitting up everyone who passes by for cash? There's no sane reason for them to have this power.

The idea that people (collectively) have all sorts of rights to "their" land is pretty fundamental. If you're going to go after this there are bigger issues e.g. why does a country like Brunei with a tiny number of residents "own" the vast nearby oil reserves?

National borders are a military question. If you looked at the link, or just skimmed the quote I selected from it, you must have noticed that the town didn't decide to tax its own area; it annexed a nearby portion of a freeway and taxed that (seriously, go look at the picture). How do you think Malaysia would respond if Brunei suddenly claimed ownership of nearby Malaysian territory?

It's not a freeway, it's a highway. I went to school in Gainesville, FL and that road is on the way to Jacksonville, FL and it was a huge pain in the ass.

There was only a mile or two of road that the city "owned" and there were ALWAYS cops out. The speed limit went from 65 down to 40 a mile before the one stop light and then a mile after the stop light, back to 65.

Florida actually enacted a law saying that a city may derive no more than 25% of its revenue from fines specifically because of this city. I'm sure they immediately broke the law and just cooked the books for years until recently there was a big scandal and the city nearly had its charter revoked. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/us/hampton-florida-corruption-...

My apologies; to me there is no difference between a freeway and a highway.

No worries! The reason I make the distinction is that here in the US typically a freeway is something that has controlled access (on and off ramps) and no traffic controls like stop lights, stop signs, etc. Highways are much more up to interpretation but typically have higher speeds (hence highways) but may well have lights, much less controlled access, etc.

Brunei did suddenly claim ownership of a bunch of sea that had previously been unclaimed, as have many nations in the past. That town didn't claim that piece of highway "off" another town (and I can imagine there would be arguments if they did).