{"id":1908,"date":"2023-01-31T19:21:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-31T19:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2023-01-31T19:39:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T19:39:42","slug":"the-habit-of-turning-the-world-upside-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/the-habit-of-turning-the-world-upside-down\/","title":{"rendered":"The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down"},"content":{"rendered":"
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[For a more involved examination of this book check out the discussion with the author on the Infrastructure Junkies podcast<\/a>.]<\/div>\n
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One of the things that makes this nation such a wonderful place to live is our fabulous infrastructure system.\u00a0 We have reliable electricity, running water, sewage, cable TV, safe and reliable airlines, rails and roads to take us anywhere that we want to go. If we find ourselves mired in too much traffic, then we will expand the highway or build an entire new road to make travel easier.<\/p>\n

In my career as an eminent domain attorney and a right of way professional, I have taken pride in the very small role that I have played in maintaining and improving our existing infrastructure system. I firmly believe that the right of way industry is a key component to what makes America great. \u00a0Our system of acquiring real estate for infrastructure is fair, equitable, and is based on the concept of paying \u201cjust compensation\u201d for the property rights that we acquire.<\/p>\n

What we as right of way professionals do not realize, however, is that every single project comes with a hidden price to humanity. Despite the benefits to greater society, our projects take an often unseen toll on individual human beings.\u00a0 And even though we might know that intellectually, do we really grasp the human impact of our actions on our fellow citizens?<\/p>\n

Back in 2019, my good friend Robert Thomas of the Pacific Legal Foundation (and editor of Inverse Condemnation<\/a>) was teaching a property class at my alma mater, William and Mary Law School.\u00a0\u00a0 He posted on LinkedIn that one of his upcoming classes would feature a special guest: a gentleman who wrote a rather unconventional book about property rights in the United States. I believe that there was also an open invitation to attend and hear the lecture from that special guest. I was unable to make it up to Williamsburg for that lecture, but I did investigate the book that was being discussed. It looked pretty interesting. I bought it immediately and along with most other books that I purchase, promptly placed it on a shelf unopened.<\/p>\n

Fast forward three and a half years when I was looking for something interesting to read and discovered\u00a0 this little book on my shelf. \u00a0It is called The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down<\/u>. The author was Howard Mansfield<\/a>\u2014the gentleman who visited Robert Thomas\u2019 law class in 2019. At that moment I could not remember why I purchased this book, where I got it from, or even how long it had been on my shelf. That did not last long. I took it down and began reading and it completely changed my perspective on my work.<\/p>\n

You see, Howard Mansfield\u2018s book is about the unique relationship that American society has had with real property over the centuries. I had no idea how different we were from other countries and how outright perverse our perspective on real property could be.\u00a0 The book features a series of little known historic stories, none of which I had ever heard.\u00a0 I finished the book very quickly and determined that my perspective as an eminent domain attorney and a right of way professional would be forever changed.\u00a0 The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down<\/u> is now required reading for anybody who wants to come join our team.<\/p>\n

We had an amazing interview with Howard Mansfield on the Infrastructure Junkies podcast<\/a>.\u00a0 Check out the episode here<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Subscribe<\/span><\/a>
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[For a more involved examination of this book check out the discussion with the author on the Infrastructure Junkies podcast.] One of the things that makes this nation such a wonderful place to live is our fabulous infrastructure system.\u00a0 We have reliable electricity, running water, sewage, cable TV, safe and reliable airlines, rails and roads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,56,4,5,41],"tags":[47,64,63,48,58],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1916,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/1916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightofway.law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}