In the previous installment, I made clear the unbelievable amount of arrogance it takes to think that the production of a single pencil could be centrally planned, much less the land use policy of an entire state.
However I also made the more controversial claim, that Gov. O’Malley doesn’t deserve all the blame for implementing such a foolish plan, that we all need to take ownership of this folly.
To understand why, look back to our friend the pencil. Remember how complex the process of his manufacture is? And think about how much more complex it is therefore to make something much more complex, like a house or a community.
Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek had many great insights, but his greatest insight was with regards to the astounding complexity of our economy, the ways in which it spontaneously ordered itself, and the folly of trying to centrally plan that economy.
Simply put, Hayek’s great insight was that the economy, and even small sectors of it, are too complex to be centrally planned. The myriad needs and desires of all the individuals who make up the economy simply present too many variables to be accounted for by any person or board.
As a result, when such central planning is attempted, it will inevitably fail. Planners will allocate too little in one area, too much in another, ignore people’s desires and instead force their own preferences. And when the planning fails, how do the planners respond?
Once in a blue moon, they recognize their mistake and roll back their initial planning, allowing the spontaneous ordering of the market to address the issue. More often though, they insist the failure was not theirs, that all that is needed to fix the problem is yet more planning.
In this way, planning begets yet more planning, and what started as relatively minor and benign escalates into massive assaults on individual liberty.
The situation is no different here in Maryland. PlanMaryland did not emerge out of whole cloth from the ether. It is the product of a natural evolution that began the day Marylanders accepted government planning of land use policy via zoning laws and other ordinances controlling land use policy.
Had we protested earlier, refused to accept the lesser invasion of private property rights, then we would never be facing the much larger assault that is PlanMaryland. But it’s not too late, we can fight off PlanMaryland, but we can’t stop there, we need to continue to push forward and rollback zoning ordinances, comprehensive plans, and all the other intrusions on the free exercise of private property rights in Maryland.
Now, that’s all a little bit dense and dry, so if you’d prefer a way to hear the arguments I’ve made in Parts I and II of this series with more style, I highly recommend checking out this video:
The song is about central planning in general, but the points are equally valid when applied to the specific example that is central planning in land use policy.
The video also conveniently highlights some key points I want to address in Part III about how relying on market processes will not only work but in fact lead to better results.
Nick Stoer says
Rational public policy strategies for prudent land use should not be confused with or discredited by failed attempts to centrally manage national economies as Waterman attempts to do. It is unfortunate that Waterman’s piece rises to the level of a “column” in the Spy without a disclaimer that he is vested in the real estate development community of Queen Anne’s County.
Plan Maryland is a well considered state framework for local and county planning in Maryland. Citizens can find a wealth of information on the website of the Maryland Department of Planning (www.mdp.state.md.us). The Eastern Shore is carefully discussed. The Secretary of the MDP, Richard Hall, grew up in Wicomico County and has a nationally recognized reputation in the field of planning. Plan Maryland is not a casual or quickly written strategy. Before reacting to arm waving and screams from young Mr. Waterman readers should take the time to do some homework.
Ken Noble says
You have some good points about the burdens of more central planning on property owners, I must admit. Why goodness…. we had to pay Kent County $50 to put a shed back where there always WAS one…my my was that a burden. I can relate.
Trouble is, we are not all property owners and we all don’t own the SAME property. Land use law was not born with a desire to minimize any individual’s use of their property, but to minimize nuisances placed on property owners by other, adjacent, property owners. (Hayek would not have known that…he was a foreigner and this all started in Euclid, Ohio…read THAT Supreme Court case….). Granted, it has gotten a bit complex, and I agree that PlanMaryland does not smooth out a lot of the complexity.
Good luck trying to apply Hayek’s response to Soviet and NAZI style “central planning” to a desire to throw out all land use law. Land use lawyers come in all political stripes and I am afraid that even the MOST right wing of that species will have trouble throwing out Article 66B, the Critical Area laws, the Forestry Conservation Act, Section 404 of the Clean Waters Act….etc. etc. Without those laws how else would they get enough dough to smoke cigars, buy good bourbon, listen to Rush and promote Hayek? Hayek was way peeved that the CENTRALLY planned British government would not give him a job fighting Hitler, so he fought back against CENTRAL PLANNING…he was peeved. It does make for interesting reading, but I really think that….like the centrally planned pencil analogy, their is very little correlation there. (Now if you go back and take this argument against the BRAC realignment…I am all over it with you there, bud…..it is a better analogy to pre-WWII Britain.)
By the way, I could NOT watch the YouTube video, because although I live 1.85 miles from the CENTRALLY PLANNED fiber optic line on Rt. 213…VERIZON..one of your paragons of capitalist provision has yet to find a market in this farm house to go that ” last mile” and connect us…..expecting Verizon to pick up the slack was….ahhhh poor central planning. You agrea?
Keep up the good work, but I would like to see specific examples of what that PlanMaryland document contains vis a vis Hayek’s concerns, with full bibliographic references to each. All am hearing is, “Hey, there was a guy named Hayek and he said this would happen.” Well what did he say and what has happened? I mean specifically..not it a YouTube or pencil analolgy, you know, guy?
DLaMotte says
Hayek? Maybe if you want to attack soviet central planning, fine. Beyond that? No way. Hayek’s top-down theories never yielded the desired results, and still don’t. As with today, the rich funded Hayek because
Their ideas would be promoted. As someone said: “Hayek is to economics as Rand is to literature as
Gingrich is to history as Fox is to news…”
We need a statewide approach to land planning. Just look around…the hap-hazard way of planning
is not working. If a county does not want to play, fine. They will not receive our tax dollars.
Keith Thompson says
DLaMotte writes…”If a county does not want to play, fine. They will not receive our tax dollars.”
Only if the county has the option of not sending their share of the tax money to Annapolis first.
Steve Payne says
“Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question, or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation.”
“To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances, or to require special precautions in their use, to limit working hours or to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. The only question here is whether in the particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs which they impose.”
Friedrich Hayek from The Road To Serfdom
Hayek was an economic free market advocate but in order to preserve such a market he realized a role for Gov . He was a liberal in many areas.
Michael Troup says
I gotta say this took a turn that I wasn’t expecting. Awaits part three…
Kevin Waterman says
Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but it seems there’s been some misinterpretation of the point I was making in this column.
Maybe it would help to clarify the intended target audience for my argument. This piece was never intended to convince supporters of PlanMaryland to turn against it. This is piece was really written with people who oppose PlanMaryland but are ok with the status quo in mind.
That’s why my intent was never to suggest that Hayek was opposed to zoning laws or that zoning laws are a slippery slope to a new Soviet Union. My point was much more modest and in my mind uncontroversial – small planning almost inevitably leads to bigger planning.
And to some degree I think even comments like DLaMotte’s reinforce this point. I don’t think any of us here would disagree that land use planners, at least at the state level but probably on more local levels too, have a vision of how we should be utilizing land in this state and that the current planning methods aren’t achieving that vision. What’s the response been – to increase the size and scope of the planning.
I’m just not seeing anything that I think most people would disagree with in that much of the analysis and I certainly don’t see any points where I suggested moral equivalence with Communist or Fascist central planning, only the same ratcheting effect at work escalating zoning laws into PlanMaryland.
DLaMotte says
It is not so much small planning vs big planning but coordinated planning for our state that, apparently,
will see quite an increase in growth. We live on a bay that cannot survive with more of the same suburbanization
of farms. Period.
Steve Payne says
It’s also not necessarily true that this is bigger and broader planning. The State has had input on planning for years and this is just way of formalizing what is already done. There is no zoning law changed or proposed by Plan Md.
My only complaint with it is the definition of tax incentives for following it is vague.
Gren Whitman says
I became lost between Parts I and II … disappointed, too, ’cause Part I made sense.