In 1980, General Motors executives faced a dilemma regarding the construction of a new plant in Detroit, Michigan. GM intended to close two of its aging plants and rebuild new assembly plants at a different site, although still in the Detroit metropolitan area. The only site that met the construction specifications was a settlement called Poletown, Michigan. This town was home to more than 3,500 residents, all of whom would have had to be relocated if construction had been approved. What follows is an analysis of this dilemma according to the four quadrants of the executive compass: Freedom, Equality, Community and Efficiency. FreedomFreedom, as defined by JS Mill, “is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, provided that we do not seek to deprive others of theirs, nor to hinder their efforts to obtain it” (p. 38-39). GM, without careful deliberation, risks violating political and economic freedoms by exercising eminent domain powers in the 1980 Poletown, Michigan case. Expropriation, the government-granted power to allow the seizure of private property for public use, it has been the source of political debate for centuries. Legal cases ruling on various aspects of the issue date back more than 167 years. The most recent case to report is Kole v. The City of New London, which was just decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2005. Although the court sided in favor of granting eminent domain, Justice O'Connor cited the following in his dissent: “Law which takes property away from A and gives it to B: it is against all reason and justice for a people to entrust a legislative body with such powers." The concept that government power should exceed individual rights is a cruel violation of political freedom. As stated in The Executive's Compass, “making him subservient to the will of the state degrades the dignity of the individual” (p.39). If GM chose to remove Poletown's approximately 3,500 occupants from their homes, it would be a brutal violation of those residents' individual independence. Economic freedom is an ideal begun in the late eighteenth century by the philosopher Adam Smith (p.40). This area of ​​freedom concerns the freedom of the market. It was Smith who asserted in The Wealth of Nations that “the consumer is king,” further urging “that the government, by interfering in the market by granting mercantilist monopolies, has furthered this injustice” (p..