Flatter: To deceive by complementary but insincere speech.
This definition just about sums up what has happened to rural landowners, particularly farmers, when they’ve relinquished control of their land. Those who were out to seize political power inflated farmers’ egos by telling them that without them the world would surely starve. We could all avoid this if the farmers would just surrender control of their land to government land-use planners.
While this is going on, the political machine is extracting taxes from most everyone to pay farmers not to use that land for the very use the government says it wants to protect. The truth is that what is really scarce is land on which to build houses, factories, retail outlets and other places where people can live and/or work.
It takes pretty good farmland to get $4,000 per acre and takes an ever better farmer to make enough off of it in 10 or 20 years to pay for it. Lots of rural land sells for $10,000 to $20,000 per acre to build houses on and upward of $50,000 to $100,000 an acre for factories and malls. So why don’t farmers sell their land for big bucks and quit farming?
The answer in most cases is simple: They can’t. They have been flattered into thinking they are so important as farmers that they are an elite class the world can’t get along without. If farmers believe this, then why isn’t their land selling for $20,000 to $100,000 an acre for agricultural purposes?
The answer is simple — they have lost control of how they can use their land. They still retain the responsibilities of ownership, mainly taxation and maintenance, but must give deference to those who determine how their land will be used. It’s called county zoning.
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