3 ms·

On a non-geologic time scale, "they're not making any more of it." But that's the same with all other production. You're rearranging matter.

tripzilch 11y ago
No. Land is also a piece of surface area of the Earth. It is also a piece of the finite geometry of our living space, a sphere with a strong gravitational force directed inwards. While it's not legally exactly the case that when you own a piece of land, you actually own the entire projected cone of matter inwards to the centre of the Earth. No, but ownership of the land (surface area) is intrinsically tied to the geometric volume of that cone (it's just at a certain depth politics steps in, and even further down, physics). Outwards it's the same, up to a certain height it's yours, then politics, and finally physics. Good thing there's this gravity well preventing us from projecting our deeds into the universe. You can actually rearrange the matter, scrape off the top soil, sell it to someone else, and you still own the exact same piece of land. That soil changed ownership, maybe it had something valuable in it, then so did that. But the piece of land you own, is still the same, it didn't even shrink. (not even a little bit if you define its size to be the angular area). It's not even made of matter in a sense, it's more like a piece of space. To the extend that you gain certain rights over the stuff and matter that somehow ends up in that space, even if it wasn't there before. It's also got to do with energy, eventually all the energy here came from the sun, right. That conical slice of the Earth that you symbolically bought, also gives you the rights to the solar radiation energy that beams into it. In a very real sense, it's like you own a fixed percentage of the Earth's yearly energy budget. Similarly, that other thing, Time, I suppose you'll agree that you can't quite trade time in the very same way as you can trade physical goods. You certainly can't trade someone's time by "rearranging matter" :) Also a particular slice of time only happens once, you can't make more of it. And even if you somehow "buy" someone's time, you don't really get it, your life doesn't extend, your day doesn't gain extra hours. What you really bought are the services that person will perform within their slice of time. At least you can sell land :) But seriously, while the above is a bit of philosophical dressing, land really is special. Maybe it makes more intuitive sense, living in a country that is packed tight, every square metre planned (even the "trimmings" and leftover bits between roads and such are registered and classified as "rest space"), compared to the USA where there's so much empty space between everywhere. Although, maybe not, obviously in a densely populated city like (say) NYC, space is at a similar premium. There's some parallels with goods that humans came up with ourselves, such as domain names or IPv4 space, and probably some even better examples I can't think of right now. There's a limited amount of those. But the limit is artificial. We did make more IP addresses with IPv6 and we did make more domains with the new gTLDs. Or maybe with limited-edition collectibles. You can't make new ones because they'd be forgeries, but really only because we say so. The thing with land is, this is the amount we have, and we know it, and all we can do is symbolically cut it up in parts and symbolically assign those parts to ownership.

tripzilch 11y ago

No. Land is also a piece of surface area of the Earth. It is also a piece of the finite geometry of our living space, a sphere with a strong gravitational force directed inwards. While it's not legally exactly the case that when you own a piece of land, you actually own the entire projected cone of matter inwards to the centre of the Earth. No, but ownership of the land (surface area) is intrinsically tied to the geometric volume of that cone (it's just at a certain depth politics steps in, and even further down, physics). Outwards it's the same, up to a certain height it's yours, then politics, and finally physics. Good thing there's this gravity well preventing us from projecting our deeds into the universe. You can actually rearrange the matter, scrape off the top soil, sell it to someone else, and you still own the exact same piece of land. That soil changed ownership, maybe it had something valuable in it, then so did that. But the piece of land you own, is still the same, it didn't even shrink. (not even a little bit if you define its size to be the angular area). It's not even made of matter in a sense, it's more like a piece of space. To the extend that you gain certain rights over the stuff and matter that somehow ends up in that space, even if it wasn't there before. It's also got to do with energy, eventually all the energy here came from the sun, right. That conical slice of the Earth that you symbolically bought, also gives you the rights to the solar radiation energy that beams into it. In a very real sense, it's like you own a fixed percentage of the Earth's yearly energy budget. Similarly, that other thing, Time, I suppose you'll agree that you can't quite trade time in the very same way as you can trade physical goods. You certainly can't trade someone's time by "rearranging matter" :) Also a particular slice of time only happens once, you can't make more of it. And even if you somehow "buy" someone's time, you don't really get it, your life doesn't extend, your day doesn't gain extra hours. What you really bought are the services that person will perform within their slice of time. At least you can sell land :) But seriously, while the above is a bit of philosophical dressing, land really is special. Maybe it makes more intuitive sense, living in a country that is packed tight, every square metre planned (even the "trimmings" and leftover bits between roads and such are registered and classified as "rest space"), compared to the USA where there's so much empty space between everywhere. Although, maybe not, obviously in a densely populated city like (say) NYC, space is at a similar premium. There's some parallels with goods that humans came up with ourselves, such as domain names or IPv4 space, and probably some even better examples I can't think of right now. There's a limited amount of those. But the limit is artificial. We did make more IP addresses with IPv6 and we did make more domains with the new gTLDs. Or maybe with limited-edition collectibles. You can't make new ones because they'd be forgeries, but really only because we say so. The thing with land is, this is the amount we have, and we know it, and all we can do is symbolically cut it up in parts and symbolically assign those parts to ownership.