"There they go again."

Reason (July, 2002) pretends shock, yes shock! that rich liberals in Hollywood prefer Their Own Private Malibu to opening up the beach to public access.

It's a disingenuous ploy.

Rich liberals are RICH and they got that way by having chosen parents who gave them money, luck or smarts. And they like being RICH. So they also enjoy benefits of wealth such as space and privacy. Of course they will defend their turf. They are RICH before they are liberal.

To attack liberalism because rich liberals act like rich people is flimsy cant.

Moreover, Reason also gets Nollan wrong. That Supreme Court decision did not prohibit governmental exactions; quite the contrary it endorsed them by drawing a line. It explains that the exaction is only valid if it is related, if there is a nexus, between it and the property-owner's proposed improvements.

...the condition would be constitutional even if it consisted of the requirement that the Nollans provide a viewing spot on their property for passersby with whose sighting of the ocean their new house would interfere. Although such a requirement, constituting a permanent grant of continuous access to the property, would have to be considered a taking if it were not attached to a development permit, the Commission's assumed power to forbid construction of the house in order to protect the public's view of the beach must surely include the power to condition construction upon some concession by the owner, even a concession of property rights, that serves the same end.

The evident constitutional propriety disappears, however, if the condition substituted for the prohibition utterly fails to further the end advanced as the justification for the prohibition.

In other words, and these were Justice Scalia's words, even a very harsh permit exaction is legitimate if it solves a problem created directly by the proposal. There has to be a connection. Government is not supposed to be a free-booting engine of social progress demanding concessions when it sees a convenient target-of-opportunity. You should only get nicked to solve specific problems created by your own actions.