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By Matt Zwolinski
Book Review of: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman, and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
Vera Coking and the Cost of Progress
In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband purchased a home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They paid $20,000 for the modest three-story house, or about $215,000 in 2025 dollars. Coking was looking for a summertime home, not an investment. But if she had been looking to make money, she would have been hard pressed to do better. Twenty years later, Coking received an offer of one million dollars from Bob Guccione of Penthouse who wanted the land for a casino he was developing. She turned it down. Then, in 1993, another casino developer tried to buy the land to use as a limousine parking lot. Once again, Coking refused the offer.
This time, however, the developer refused to take “no” for an answer. Since a voluntary exchange wasn’t going to work, the developer went to the state instead. Specifically, he turned to the state’s Casino Redevelopment Agency, which sought to use the power of eminent domain to kick Coking out of her house against her will. A new parking lot, the developer argued, would better serve the public interest than an old, single-family home. And if it happened to serve the developer’s private financial interest along the way, well, that was just a one of those happy accidents along the road to progress.
Luckily for Coking, her case attracted the attention of the public interest law firm, The Institute for Justice. With their help, Coking was able to secure a modest victory in court. She kept her house, not because the court rejected the principle of eminent domain altogether, but because in this particular case, the state’s plan put “no limits” on what the developer could do with the land, in the words of Superior Court Judge Richard Williams. The developer, one Donald J. Trump, would have to park his customers’ limousines somewhere else.
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I haven't read Abundance or Dunkelman's book, but somehow I seem to have read a number of reviews of each. The criticisms in this review are the most reasonable I've read to date. It's pretty good if you can get past the kind of stuffy academic "but if they were familiar with the work of Parcheesi and McCoogan on this matter they doubtless would have drawn more from the extensive work in the field by Duffy..."
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I tried reading Abundance but could only get through a few chapters.
It really does give off the New York Times feel of eloquent but only semi-intelligent. Like the focus is more on evoking a response in a single direction, rather than on a serious deep analysis of all the factors at play. Guess they're trained more in the skills of a propagandist than a serious analyst.
Sorry to be harsh about it, but that's just the vibe I got while reading it.
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