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Land Ownership Makes No Sense

wired.com

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Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#41

Post by now__what »

karaterobot wrote: post #28

> 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 revolu…

Did you actually read the article?

The statement about Paine is brief, and the author immediately moves on. In the full context of the article, it functions more to establish context than to bolster an argument. I have no horse in this race, but it's very weird that you've decided to cherry-pick this one statement so strongly.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#42

Post by legitster »

now__what wrote: post #41
karaterobot wrote: post #28

> 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 revolu…

Did you actually read the article? The statement about Paine is brief, and the author immediately moves on. In the full context of the article, it functions more to establish context than to bolster an argument. I have no horse in this race, but it's very weird that you've decided to cherry-pick this one statement so strongly.

The author is also heavily misquoting Henry George out of context to make their point.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#43

Post by bryanlarsen »

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out on the moon. The Outer Space Treaty along with the Artemis Accords makes moon ownership illegal, but it also makes interference illegal.

So in other words you can't own the land, but if you're doing something with or on the land nobody can interfere with that. And if you're doing science than you can plausibly claim an exclusion zone around your experiment.

We used to think there was lots of unused land on the moon so that conflicts would be easy to avoid, but the areas of interest are the polar regions and those are relatively small.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#44

Post by bryanlarsen »

hersko wrote: post #40
206lol wrote: post #4

Wired coming out swinging with an actual socialist/leftist/communist article? Color me impressed. In the states, the Democrats are often mislabeled as a lefty party, or mislabeled as socialists. People will call CNN Marxist. They really, really aren't. It's fascinating to see a major publisher going out on a limb to publish something like this.

I'm old enough to remember when Wired wrote interesting tech articles. I don't think we need another left-wing rag.

Interesting tech articles were always a very small part of Wired magazine. They've always been about techno-utopian visions of the future. IOW, they've always had philosophical articles.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#45

Post by nabergh »

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…

The article proposes taxing the unimproved value of land at 100% which I think gets around that problem totally.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#46

Post by legitster »

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.

I love public coasts. Land in the US West in general was also divvied out much more as public in general.

It helps though that beaches are of only limited developmental value.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#47

Post by mindslight »

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…

I agree with your sentiment, but it's not really relevant here. Georgism doesn't say much about restricting the right to use a piece of land. Rather it's about what it costs to maintain that right (and isn't actually a huge departure from the current state of things where that cost is generally nonzero except in the rare cases of allodial title).

For example, homeowners associations are a significant source of tyranny, that often literally regulate what color you can paint your shed. It's probable that under Georgism the lack of desire to keep one's abstract property value high would lead to a lot fewer of them, and homeowners would actually end up more free.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#48

Post by soco »

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.

In Switzerland all lake shores are public land. And most of them (most of the usable parts at least) are fenced out by local prominent people owning villas nearby, and nobody moves a finger about it because as I said they are prominent (politicians, TV stars, Tina Turner...). And when I mean nobody I really mean nobody - there aren't even teenagers rebelling, it looks like an societary accepted evil.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#49

Post by nabergh »

karaterobot wrote: post #28

> 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 revolu…

The fact that humans have always owned land is a meaningless argument. We can all decide to use a better system for anything if we agree on it.

Re: Land Ownership Makes No Sense

#50

Post by peteradio »

the_only_law wrote: post #35
peteradio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't they already? Land ownership makes sense to beasts and man. Someone is going to take advantage of a plot of land and historically use it to reproduce or otherwise propagate their living will. Even electrons can't occupy the same space at the same time.

> Land ownership makes sense to beasts and man. Yeah that’s why I’ve never seen a dog, cat, mole, mouse, squirrel, etc. on my personally owned property.

You've never seen two cougars fight over territory or a squirrel gnawing another for entering its leafy abode? That is absolutely how humans behaved before civilized law. Now we fight and erect barriers via law.
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