[travisathougies]

Actually, zoning laws are not part of your property rights. Zoning restriction dictate what you can build on your property, but ownership interest in your property does not entitle you to 'buy' zoning laws. This is easily seen as you cannot sell zoning laws.

Zoning laws ultimately restrict your property rights as you lose the right to do what you wish with your property. They ought to be abolished to protect property rights.

Most societies did just fine without zoning laws for the entirety of human history.

Note, that I don't approach this from the YIMBY or woke side of things. Rather, as a pretty staunch free market advocate, it is painfully obvious to me that we should not restrict people's rights to do with their property as they see fit.

As an example, I was recently going to buy land to develop into a business. However, zoning laws in this area of the county (in the middle of nowhere mind you) meant I would have to jump through endless permit and red tape. Any so-called supporter of property rights should be livid that this goes on in this country. Buying the land should be enough to give me rights to do what I wish with it. Environmental laws should deal with actual human health hazards, not how much shadow I'm spilling onto a neighboring property or how much view I'm blocking.

A lot of the issues with zoning is people attempting to own that which they don't. You don't own your neighbor's property.

[jaywalk]

Nobody is talking about buying or selling zoning laws. However, the value of property and the taxes paid on it are very much impacted by zoning laws. So people absolutely do make decisions on buying property based on zoning laws.

The value of my house would be decimated if there were a pawn shop next door to it. I wouldn't have bought my house if that were even a remote possibility.

[everforward]

Zoning laws are meant to protect ownership interest in your property (not that they're always perfect).

A totally free-market approach allows one party to reduce the use or value of another party's property. E.g. in the above, the high-rise blocks the sunlight, which will could kill any plants on the property and preclude a backyard. That combined with the lack of sunlight could dramatically diminish the value of the property. Meanwhile, the highrise increases in value because they got X extra floors that get sun.

There is absolutely utility in the sun; in the most obvious form, it can be used with solar panels to generate electricity which can be sold for cash. My neighbor shouldn't be able to build a solar array that blocks all the light that would hit my property.

Zoning laws, to me, are just a shortcut to avoid having to enumerate and manage those rights individually, per property. There's a lot of things that can contribute to the value of a property, and it would be a mess to manage them individually.