Of course – for the sake of discussion I recognise that you abstracted away from this issue, so would could discuss the more central conceptual issues 🙂

Indeed 🙂

Indeed – and in that case they could compensate landowners right.

But if they offer compensation that equals what they expect social benefit is – and people still say they value staying on the land more – then would it be fair to assume the policy isn’t socially optimal, I think so.

I have met civil servants that say that is rubbish – and that the land owners are too stupid to realise that it is in their interest. It just isn’t how policy makers should justify pushing residents around.

After all civil servants are supposed to “serve” the people’s express will – not tell them what their will is

If the loss for a person can’t be compensated by offering them the social benefit it doesn’t sound like an optimal policy.

I guess fundamentally my real concern lies with the attitude of some policy makers – that they need to look after us because we are stupid. If they merely thought about how they felt if things were the other way around they might change their minds.

We want policy makers that do what is socially optimal – not what rubs their ego.

But this digresses from the original post. Clearly there are rules which are for our own good (minimum age for purchasing alcohol?). Is there an objective way of measuring when the social loss of inaction is sufficiently large that regulation is required? Perhaps in special circumstances but I doubt there is a universally applicable answer.