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Public control of land use is indispensible

Redistribute population in accord with available resources;

Control land use through zoning and land-use planning;

Excessive profits from land use must be recaptured by government;

Public ownership of land should be used to exercise urban and rural land reform;

Owner rights should be separated from development rights, which should be held by a public authority.

All of these, and many more recommendations from this conference, are now completely incorporated into local ordinances and state laws.

Urban Boundary Zones is an idea that prohibits public utilities outside the UBZ. This policy destroys the value of property outside the zone, and artificially inflates property values inside the zone. Inflated property values increase tax revenues, and, since this increase in value is the result of government policy, rather than because of owner improvements, profits from the sale of this property are being confiscated by governments who apply an "unjust enrichment tax."

Governments, and government-funded non-government organizations, are aggressively separating owner rights from development rights through conservation easements and the outright purchase of development rights.

It has taken more than 30 years for these policies to evolve from the United Nations, through the sustainable development process, and into local ordinances in the remote counties of Alabama and all the other states. Nowhere in the process, did the Congress ever debate or approve the concept of sustainable development. Sustainable development is social engineering, imposed and enforced by government.

This is what happened to freedom.

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Henry Lamb is the Chairman of Sovereignty International , and founder of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO).

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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