Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to bout four of six. Tonight we ask whether a man’s farm may be taken for a power line that serves a private customer. I am Samuel Johnson, and for once I am entirely comfortable.
Niccolo Machiavelli: The Doctor is comfortable because one of tonight’s men is an English lawyer and the other is a Prussian.
Samuel Johnson: Sir, in the near corner stands Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries taught the law of England to half the world. He holds that the law will not permit the least violation of private property, not even for the general good. Somebody fetch Boswell, for I intend to agree with a lawyer on the record.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And in the far corner stands my man, Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany with iron and blood and then bought up the railways. I have already written to him about a position.
Samuel Johnson: You wrote to the Medici about a position too, and dedicated an entire book to them.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And none of them read it, Doctor, which is why I am still available.
Samuel Johnson: Consider the stakes. In Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania, utilities are taking or threatening to take land for new power lines. By their own figures, most of the new capacity serves data centers. In Maryland the landowners call their state an extension cord for Virginia.
Niccolo Machiavelli: In The Prince I warned that men forget the death of their father sooner than the loss of their patrimony. Take a man’s land, my friends, and he will remember it at your funeral.
Samuel Johnson: That is the first wise thing you have ever said, and I resent it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: It is chapter seventeen, Doctor, and it has never once been wrong.
Samuel Johnson: Sir William Blackstone, Prince Otto von Bismarck, the floor is yours, gentlemen. Do not take any more of it than you need.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Prince Bismarck, take all of it, and send the Doctor the bill.
William Blackstone: Thank you, Doctor Johnson. I say the law will not take a man’s field for the convenience of his neighbor’s machine.
Otto von Bismarck: Thank you, Signor Machiavelli, I received your letter and I am still laughing. I say a nation that cannot run a wire across a cow pasture will not keep its lights on.
William Blackstone: The Prince believes a farmer’s deed is a suggestion written in pencil.
Otto von Bismarck: Sir William believes the law is perfect because he is the one who wrote it down.
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William Blackstone: I am Sir William Blackstone, author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. I described property as that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And I wrote that the regard of the law for private property is so great that it will not authorize the least violation of it, no, not even for the general good of the whole community. I said it in four volumes, and I meant every page.
Otto von Bismarck: And I am Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of the German Empire. I told my parliament that the great questions of the day are not decided by speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood. When the private railways of Prussia served their shareholders better than they served the state, I bought them. I have read Sir William’s four volumes. They are very beautiful. I used two of them to level a table.
William Blackstone: Then let me read the Prince something shorter. In at least five American states, utilities are using or threatening compulsory purchase to build new high voltage lines. By the utilities’ own figures, seventy to eighty percent of the new capacity will serve data centers. In Georgia a utility proposes a thousand miles of new lines, and a woman says her childhood home is being taken. The utility declines to name the customers. In Maryland a company sued landowners merely to survey their fields for a line meant chiefly to serve the technology corridor in Virginia. That is not a public road, sir. That is a private driveway with a public permit.
Otto von Bismarck: The Georgia utility says it uses compulsion in fewer than one transaction in a hundred. The rest of the farmers sell. And the law you are weeping over, Sir William, is your own law. Every American state lets a utility take an easement for a public line, with compensation. The courts usually allow it. You should be proud. Your grandchildren have learned the lesson perfectly.
William Blackstone: Usually, Prince, but not always, and not forever. After the American Supreme Court allowed a city to take homes for a private development in 2005, forty five states passed laws to narrow the power. A line built chiefly for one private customer is the very case those laws were written against. And a farmer who sells with a court order in the next room has not sold. He has surrendered politely.
Otto von Bismarck: Now I will state Sir William’s case, which I do only so that I may bury it with full honors. He says property is a wall, not a fence with a gate. He says the man inside it owes his neighbor nothing he has not agreed to give. He says that once the state may take for one good cause, it will soon discover a great many good causes. It is a noble argument, and it is printed on very good paper.
William Blackstone: That was handsomely put, and quite nearly accurate, Prince.
Otto von Bismarck: And here is the burial. Sir William wrote one more sentence that he does not like to read aloud. He said the legislature may compel a man to sell his land, not by stripping him in an arbitrary manner, but by giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for the injury. So the great defender of property allowed the taking all along. He only argued about the price. Sir William, you are not a wall. You are a cashier.
William Blackstone: That passage is mine, and I will not disown it. But it carries three conditions, and the Prince has read none of them. It must be the legislature that compels, not a private company carrying a franchise in its pocket. It must be a full equivalent, not the price of a pasture before the wire arrived. And it must be for the public. A wire to one unnamed customer is not the public.
Otto von Bismarck: Now you have me, and I admit it with pleasure, because I would have said the same. When I wanted the railways, I did not lend a private company the sword of the state. I bought the railways for the state. If a line is truly public, let the public own it. If it serves one company, let the company buy the land like any other customer, at whatever the farmer asks. And I would want the customer’s name. A minister who signs a taking without knowing who it is for is a clerk, not a statesman.
William Blackstone: Then we agree on the case before us, which alarms me considerably.
Otto von Bismarck: Do not worry, Sir William. We shall disagree again within the minute.
William Blackstone: Then consider what the farmer is paid. In Pennsylvania, farm advocates say landowners in the path of a data center line ought to be compensated more fully than they are. The court pays him the market value of a pasture. It does not pay him for the forty years he meant to farm it, or the house his grandfather built, or the view he must now share with a steel tower.
Otto von Bismarck: Then pay him more, and I will not object. I am happy to pay a farmer handsomely. I object to one stubborn farmer holding a whole province hostage for the price of a lighthouse. Somewhere between the price of a pasture and a ransom there is a fair number, and a competent state can find it.
William Blackstone: A competent state, Prince, is the rarest creature in your entire argument.
Otto von Bismarck: I built one, Sir William, and I am told it was very competent indeed.
William Blackstone: Here is where your rule leads, Prince. Under the warehouse rule there is no great line to build. The data center makes its own power on its own land, and my farmer keeps his field.
Otto von Bismarck: And your farmer gets a gas turbine over his fence instead, and very likely a gas pipeline across his field. Pipelines take easements too, Sir William. You have not abolished the taking. You have moved it fifty yards and changed the smell.
William Blackstone: Then let the turbine owner buy his pipeline route like an honest man. I once wrote that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. I say tonight it is better that ten data centers go unbuilt than that one farmer be wrongly dispossessed.
Otto von Bismarck: That is a fine sentence, and nations that live by it import their electricity. A state builds ahead of need, or it falls behind its neighbors. I built railways before Germany knew it wanted them, and the trains filled.
William Blackstone: And when the private railways failed their purpose, you took them over. So tell me this. If the forecast load never comes, who takes over an empty power line? The utility will not name the customer, the contracts are sealed, and nobody in this room knows whether the demand is real. The farmer will have given his field for a rumor.
Otto von Bismarck: I concede I cannot see the future. Nobody can, which is why statesmen are paid. But I can see a grid that is short of power today, and I know that a minister who waits for certainty waits forever.
William Blackstone: Then let the minister pay for his own certainty, and leave my farmer out of it!
Otto von Bismarck: YOUR FARMER WILL WANT ELECTRICITY TOO!
William Blackstone: THEN LET HIM BUY IT, NOT SURRENDER FOR IT!
Otto von Bismarck: FOUR VOLUMES OF EXCUSES!
William Blackstone: IRON AND BLOOD AND EASEMENTS!
Otto von Bismarck: CASHIER!
William Blackstone: CONFISCATOR!
Otto von Bismarck: PEDANT!
William Blackstone: PRUSSIAN!
Otto von Bismarck: THANK YOU!
William Blackstone: If you have profited from this evening, kindly like and subscribe. It costs nothing, and nobody will take your land for doing it. The Prince told his parliament that great questions are settled by iron and blood. He neglected to mention that it would be other people’s blood and the state’s iron. He then built an alliance system so clever that nobody but he could work it, which is a fine thing in a clock and a dreadful thing in a continent.
Otto von Bismarck: Yes, like and subscribe. And consider that Sir William began as a poet and wrote a farewell to his muse so that he could devote himself to the law. Having read his four volumes, I can report that the muse made the correct decision. He describes the law of England so lovingly that you would think he had invented it, and so completely that you would think it could never change. It changed the moment he died, and nobody asked him.
William Blackstone: Doctor Johnson, I return the floor to you, in good order and fully compensated.
Otto von Bismarck: Signor Machiavelli, back to the booth, and the answer to your letter is still no.
Samuel Johnson: Thank you, Sir William. I score this bout for Blackstone, sir, without the slightest reluctance, which is a novelty in this booth. He held the line on the farm, and he held it in good English.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Thank you, Prince, and I accept your answer as a negotiating position. I score it for Bismarck. He found the hole in four volumes with a single passage.
Samuel Johnson: A hole, sir? Sir William allowed that the legislature may compel a sale with full compensation. That is not a hole. That is a door with a very good lock on it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Every door with a lock has a locksmith, Doctor. In Georgia the locksmith is the power company, and it will not give its name.
Samuel Johnson: My Dictionary is perfectly clear on the meaning of property, sir.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Your Dictionary once defined a pastern as the knee of a horse. When a lady asked you why, you said ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.
Samuel Johnson: That was a candid admission, sir, and candor is more than you have ever offered anybody.
Niccolo Machiavelli: I offered it to the Medici, Doctor, in a whole book, and they never answered either.
Samuel Johnson: I will say this for your Prussian. He conceded that a line for one private customer should be bought and not taken. Somebody fetch Boswell, for I am praising a German.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And I will say this for your lawyer. He said it is better that ten data centers go unbuilt than one farmer be wrongly dispossessed. Cesare Borgia would have built all ten and kept the farm.
Samuel Johnson: That is precisely why nobody remembers Cesare Borgia fondly.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Doctor, everybody remembers him. That was the entire point.
Samuel Johnson: Next time, the rematch. William Graham Sumner returns to face Henry George on what the remedy should be.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Two men who hate the subsidy, and hate each other rather more. I shall back whoever fights dirtier.
Samuel Johnson: Until then, I remain your impartial servant.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And I remain available for employment, but do come back.
