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Land Ownership Makes No Sense

wired.com

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Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#21

Post by maxlamb »

debacle wrote: post #9

> In New York City, 46 percent of a typical home’s value is just the cost of the land it’s built on. In San Francisco its 52 percent; in Los Angeles, 61 percent. In my neighborhood, it's > Similarly, on planet Earth at least, occupying space necessarily implies occupying land. > The problem with the right to land is that it’s all been taken. > Economists call this “rent seeking,” and most of us call it “immoral.” Thi…

| This feels like it was written by a passionate 11th grader.

So it’s not possible for a passionate 11th grader to be correct even once?

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#23

Post by xbar »

mwint wrote: post #6

It makes no sense in a world where collectives of people can make sane decisions in a timely manner. We don't live in that world - for anything to get done, there must be a very small group of people with authority to decide what color to paint the bike shed. Land ownership is important exactly because it gives responsibility over what happens in a geographic area to a single entity, and excludes most people from pro…

Collectives make a lot of decisions in a timely manner. Why not, specifically, about land use? When did the collectives all "run out of time" to decide who gets to manage land, as a specific resource? 1980? 4000 BC?

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#24

Post by seventytwo »

engineer_22 wrote: post #5
PM_me_your_math wrote: post #2

Another quality wired article that makes no sense. Someone is going to own land. Either you or the government. So it is immoral for the private citizen to own land, but moral for the historically corrupt, ruthless, and often-times tyrannical government to own it? This circle doesn't square. I often ask myself where wired writers get their weed. If I had to guess, it is from a private grower who owns his own land.

[flagged]

Marxism is just a model of society where emphasis is put on the differences between the commoner and the elites.

That’s all it is.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#25

Post by engineer_22 »

garrisonj wrote: post #14

I grew up in Oregon, where all the beaches are public. Later I discovered that some people in different places owned beaches, which blew my mind. How can you own a beach? I then wondered why I felt that way about beaches, but not about other lands.

The history of it would be interesting to learn

Edit: someone found a loophole and it got grandfathered.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/history-oregon-tom-mccall-p...

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#26

Post by seventytwo »

engineer_22 wrote: post #3

The alternative is assignment of space by government appointment. We all know the government is corrupt and the best spaces will go to the best connected people. Purchasing the rights to the land in a free market is imperfect, but it's certainly an efficient and tamper resistant mechanism.

We’ve done the free market system before. It’s called feudalism.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#27

Post by chmod775 »

debacle wrote: post #9

> In New York City, 46 percent of a typical home’s value is just the cost of the land it’s built on. In San Francisco its 52 percent; in Los Angeles, 61 percent. In my neighborhood, it's > Similarly, on planet Earth at least, occupying space necessarily implies occupying land. > The problem with the right to land is that it’s all been taken. > Economists call this “rent seeking,” and most of us call it “immoral.” Thi…

> This feels like it was written by a passionate 11th grader.

Open-eyed, honest, idealistic, and yet to be corrupted by reality?

I'll take an idealist with strong morals over most things.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#28

Post by karaterobot »

> Yet by 1797, US founding father Thomas Paine was arguing that “the earth, in its natural uncultivated state” would always be “the common property of the human race," and so landowners owed non-landowners compensation “for the loss of his or her natural inheritance.”

Paine also wrote a pamphlet about how the U.S. government actually owned all the territorial land the British thought they still owned after the revolutionary war. So, he did believe in owning property as it turns out.

And do we really want to adjudicate this issue by tallying the number of U.S. founding fathers who believed in property rights? It's a meaningless metric, and I don't think the results would fall in the author's favor anyway.

Also, owning land is not a modern concept. Stone age humans fought over territory: night raids, throat slashing. It's a human constant. The modern idea of property ownership is a less violent method of staking a claim, backed by the threat of force by the government. Generally an improvement.

I think this article is making a bad suggestion in a dumb way.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#29

Post by nunuvit »

mwint wrote: post #6

It makes no sense in a world where collectives of people can make sane decisions in a timely manner. We don't live in that world - for anything to get done, there must be a very small group of people with authority to decide what color to paint the bike shed. Land ownership is important exactly because it gives responsibility over what happens in a geographic area to a single entity, and excludes most people from pro…

You'll get more out of the article if you read it as more of a philosophical exploration than a literal policy proposal. You can share similar values without reaching the same conclusion.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

garrisonj wrote: post #14

I grew up in Oregon, where all the beaches are public. Later I discovered that some people in different places owned beaches, which blew my mind. How can you own a beach? I then wondered why I felt that way about beaches, but not about other lands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
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