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This city council finds preserving individual property rights to be of the utmost importance.
People are forbidden by the zoning laws to do any extensive alteration (such as remodeling) to their property?
Which one of the following provides a resolution to the apparent inconsistency described by the council member?
Property owners are sometimes allowed
Because "sometimes" just means "at least once time", it doesn't do much to bridge the divide between "Our #1 goal is preserving individual property rights" and "Our zoning laws prohibit you making any extensive alternations to your property".
7% picked this
It is in the best
Although this offers a reason why homeowners could be at peace with the current zoning laws, it doesn't offer any reason why the city council would cite "individual property rights" as their #1 priority but then still have zoning laws that severely limit what individuals can do to their property.
11% picked this
The city council places less
Even if the city council places less importance on property rights, it still remains that property rights are the #1 concern of the city council, so our paradox remains.
3% picked this
An individual’s property rights may
Why this is right
This explains how the restrictive zoning laws we're trying to explain our actually a result of the city council's #1 priority of protecting individual property owners' rights. They're not at odds with that priority; they're a function of that priority. If the city let me build my rooftop waterslide, I may become a tragicomic spectacle in the local news and that may lower the property values of my neighbor's property. Also the runoff from my rooftop slide might spill into my neighbor's yard. So the zoning laws forbid my right to build a rooftop waterslide in order to protect my neighbor's rights to maintain the value of their property.
Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this
Zoning laws ensure that property
It sounded in the first sentence like the city council wants property rights to be extensive (preserving them is the #1 goal). So if zoning laws are made to rein in property rights, then that sounds at odds with the first sentence, i.e. that's still our unexplained Paradox. If we interpret this answer to mean, "Yes, they want to protect property rights as a #1 goal, but they don't want them to become overly extensive, so they have zoning laws", that would work if the paradox had just been, "Given that #1 goal is property rights, why are the rights limited by zoning laws?" But the paradox is ... why are the rights almost nonexistent with current zoning laws? This answer is saying, "Well we need zoning laws so that there's not anarchy", but we need a way to explain why the zoning laws feel more like a North Korean autocracy.
11% picked this
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