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Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

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Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but capitalism isn't exactly fair either, with wealth ending up at a small percentage of people who clearly didn't work as much or took as much risk as all the other people combined. So if you go with that argument, then a much bigger reform should happen, not just the annihilation of these taxes.

Parent doesn't question just taxes, they question property rights aka ownership. That is the much bigger reform you talk about.

Well, they said:

> I find these property rights that go back centuries a bit dubious

So not all property rights.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#162
post #5

In the UK, during the purchase of our house we had to take a "chancel liability insurance", because our freehold once belonced to a rectory, so to protect ourselves from repair liability towards a chapel that has been here for centuries, we had to pay a one-off insurance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancel_repair_liability Leftover laws are weird things. EDIT: PS: sadly, the legendary, obligatory archery practice…

Yeah there are a lot of very obscure legal rules that most people aren't aware of or haven't been enforced in many years. Not from as far back but my house was built in the early 1980's and my house deeds include the stipulation that I must maintain a garage attached to the property (so I can't convert it to extra living space) because the local government retain the right to convert the space into a decontamination…

The wild thing is we still have thousands of nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear-armed states has grown since then. We just perceive a lower risk now-a-days, which I hope holds up.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#163
post #117

Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law. In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be…

Isn't there any law saying that "if no one claims it for N years, the state takes it" / "if someone else uses a place for N years and no one else claims it, that person can claim it?" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption

It would be a bit nasty to make a such law considering that the "state"(usually the communist state) stole the property and the rightful owners were persecuted.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Old English word for spear was "gar". One vegetable was related to the leek, but they described the clove as spear-shaped: the gar-leek. https://www.etymonline.com/word/garlic

And interestingly enough, the Swedish word for the fish which is called "pike" in English is "gär". Lots of Nordic words in old English.

Also interesting is we (US, at least) have a fish called a 'gar' that looks similar to a pike, but isn't technically. Pike are family Esocidae and gar are family Lepisosteidae.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#165
post #117

Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law. In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be…

This is only slightly worse than Slovakia's official online Cadastral (property ownership) map, which still requires using Internet Explorer and downloading an ActiveX Plugin. https://mapa.katasterportal.sk/kapor2/index.asp I'm still trying to find a way to access it from Linux without going through a VM.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#166
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that the Hungarian inheritance rules - properties were divided evenly between the heirs, so I can now own a 13/6240 of an agricultural field. The farm still pays me a small yearly dividend and offers to buy my share, but that's really everything what can be done with it.

Are wills not respected? Usually wills try to leave (different) things in one owner.

Historically, divisible estates were the norm in most of Europe in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the time the High Middle Ages rolls around, England and France switch to a system of primogeniture, granting all the lands to the oldest son. However, in Germany, divisibility remained the norm. This resulted in a tendency of lands in the Holy Roman Empire to proliferate as compared to France or England.

I don't know any specifics about Hungary, but I presume that the general norm is as in Germany rather than England/France.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there any law saying that "if no one claims it for N years, the state takes it" / "if someone else uses a place for N years and no one else claims it, that person can claim it?" [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usucaption

It would be a bit nasty to make a such law considering that the "state"(usually the communist state) stole the property and the rightful owners were persecuted.

There is a way - if you can prove you used the land for decades as if you owned it and noone turns up to challenge it, you can obtain ownership.

But this too was already fraudulently abused. Generally, a poor rule of law complicates everything.

(just as aside, communist land "reforms" are most visible but there were others, based on nationality - taken from Jews, Hungarians, Germans)

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that none of the European countries to the eastern side of the Iron Curtain retained feudal law, or much of the "legacy" law in general. That, I guess, is one of the few potential upsides of any revolution: an opportunity arises to just throw away a lot of pre-existing arrangements and re-draw them anew in (hopefully) more sensible way. Of course, the quality of the new design and/or its implementation is n…

> I suspect that none of the European countries to the eastern side of the Iron Curtain retained feudal law, or much of the "legacy" law in general. Rather make that "no country other than the US and UK+Commonwealth countries". These two countries are probably the only ones in the world that haven't suffered any kind of comprehensive revolution in the last 100 years, and it shows. Not just in the absurd amount of pre…

> nowadays it serves as a very effective tool to disenfranchise poor people from voting

Which is one reason that your entire premise is largely false today. Early voting and mail-in voting is a thing pretty much everywhere now, going on the last day of voting to vote in person is an option, but not required.

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#169

I wonder what obligations the Swiss lords have been neglecting. Perhaps the townsfolk could bill for absent services? They are not peasants, as such things likely don't exist in modern Italy. So how can they owe anything? The Swiss baron's descendants - are they still barons? Can they still hold a fief? Perhaps the Swiss baron's lord can be convinced to levy a similar tax on them, and return the money to the town. It…

Why do you assume taxes are a payment for services? In most cases there is no written contract with rights and obligations of each party and there is no implied right or obligation of any sort.

If these descendants are trying to claim an old form of payment, why, in concept, can't the residents invoke a similarly old form of responsibility like Noblesse Oblige?

Re: Italian seaside residents hit with bygone feudal tax

#170
post #117

Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law. In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be…

This is only slightly worse than Slovakia's official online Cadastral (property ownership) map, which still requires using Internet Explorer and downloading an ActiveX Plugin. https://mapa.katasterportal.sk/kapor2/index.asp I'm still trying to find a way to access it from Linux without going through a VM.

There's now an alternative: https://zbgis.skgeodesy.sk/mkzbgis/sk/kataster?bm=zbgis&z=8&...
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