"Yes, I would let a property owner stand in the way of building
anything. It's his property. He sets the price, or doesn't sell at all
if he does not want to. Everyone has a price, though. If the project is

that important the price will be met. If it's not, then work around
that
person. "

Any reasonable person realizes how silly this is and how no projects
like public highways or mass transit would ever get built. A real
example that is quite common is not one junk motel, but the example I
cited, where a highway needs to be widened. Without eminent domain, if
50 property owners would have to give 20 feet of land to widen a
highway, almost no one would take any reasonable offer because they
know they could just block the whole damn thing and hold out for $1mil
for something that's only worth $25k. They could hold almost any public
works project hostage and drive the cost through the roof. Then there
are some irrational guys, like you, who would say I'll never sell! Put
a few of those guys in the way of a simple highway expansion and your
solution is to reroute the whole thing at a potential cost of hundreds
of millions or billions of dollars, assuming it's even possible at all?
Face it, eminent domain has been here for a long time, it's
constitutional and it's generally been a good thing that has benefitted
us all.