6 ms·

> Land shouldn't be owned by anyone. Rather, it should be able to be used freely. How would this work? Honest question. I agree that the concept of land owner

> Land shouldn't be owned by anyone. Rather, it should be able to be used freely. How would this work? Honest question. I agree that the concept of land ownership is a little weird - it's one of the most limited, exclusive resources we have. Hypothetically, I would love to be able to use this land that Z is "buying" under the current land ownership paradigm. But that free use, to me, would look like pouring a concrete foundation and building a structure with a bunk room, kitchen, bathroom, common area, with storage for a Hobie Cat, some surfboards, and SCUBA gear, and a patio overlooking the ocean. I'd want the rest of the land to be nicely forested. I would come out for a week every couple months. Would I have freedom to do this in a non-land-ownership system? What would prevent others from building in front of me, or using my structure when I wanted to be there?

tabeth 10y ago
I won't pretend like I'm an expert. However, I will say that in our supposedly democratic land, a useful heuristic would be just to vote. If the land was not owned by anyone and this could be magically enforced, then the people would simply vote for its use, right? As things come up people would just revote. Since no one owns the land there wouldn't be any conflict of interest. You may point out that those who originally voted may be conflicted, but I disagree: any proposition that would benefit the majority would clearly win. Any proposition that doesn't would necessarily be struck down. This kind of system has its own problems, though. Long term sustainability is one, requisites for voting is another. But these problems I think are separate.
- PJDK 10y ago
  But how do you decide who gets a vote? Presumably there is some kind of rules based around locality, but then people are where they are due to the current land ownership rules!
- madgar 10y ago
  You forgot about protecting minorities. What do you do when the majority of the people in a jurisdiction like (eg.) Mississippi consistently vote down land use by black people? Just accept that the people have spoken and that black people are unwelcome in that jurisdiction? This is not a theoretical exercise. This happens everyday in America in co-op boards, HOAs, etc and it doesn't require anybody saying out loud why an individual is being rejected. The current US president got caught doing this in the 1960s. If you want to redesign land use rights wholesale I would hope you wouldn't make this kind of discrimination more common... maybe that's just me.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >You forgot about protecting minorities. What do you do when the majority of the people in a jurisdiction like (eg.) Mississippi consistently vote down land use by black people? Just accept that the people have spoken and that black people are unwelcome in that jurisdiction? Well, yes. That's how democracy works: there's a vote and the majority wins. Are you opposed to democracy? Yeah, it sucks if you're a minority, but what can you do? This is a fundamental flaw in democracy. We attempt to mitigate it by having constitutions and laws and representatives who are voted on in multi-year cycles, which in engineering terms has the effect of creating a long feedback loop so that the populace's short term emotions don't create too much instability and chaos, but it only works to a point. The alternative is a non-democratic system like what they do in China. And they don't seem to be too keen on protecting the rights of minorities either.
    - RUG3Y 10y ago
      The alternative is a republic, which is supposed to protect the inalienable rights of the minority from the whims of the majority.
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        Are you one of those people who thinks a modern democratic republic somehow isn't democratic? Did you miss my whole line about constitutions and laws? Those are fundamentals of a modern democratic republic. Why is it that every time someone mentions a democracy, someone like you pops up and claims that a modern democracy isn't a democracy? Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic Line 1: "A democratic republic is both a republic and a democracy." Furthermore, not all republics are democratic. North Korea and China are both republics, as is Iran. I already mentioned China in my previous post. Do you really think North Korea protects anyone's inalienable rights? Or Iran?
        RUG3Y 10y ago
        Maybe if someone always pops up to correct your vision of democracy, you're not communicating very well.
- loafa 10y ago
  It seems to me that if a group of people did come across some new land and decide to vote on what to do with it, they'd immediately vote to subdivide it amongst themselves. Leave some bits as public land for roads and parks and other stuff, and subdivide the rest equally so that families can build their own houses and grow their own crops or whatever with confidence. Of course within a few generations of inheritances and sales that equitable distribution of land will no longer look like that at all.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    Hah. Obviously something like that wouldn't be allowed, since it would violate the rule of no land ownership to begin with.
ferbivore 10y ago
The way it works is called communism: you put a small cabal of people in charge of deciding what you can and can't do. Everyone gets whatever amount of land the ruling cabal says they get, rather than being able to get an amount proportional to their wealth. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when you put groups of self-interested humans in charge of a society, and I don't think any group of completely altruistic ones is going to take over the world any time soon. Also, the only successful communist country currently in existence is actually a hardcore capitalist dystopia. I'm not sure there is any other "common ownership of land" scheme that isn't just communism with window dressing or superintelligent AI thrown in. If there is, please do enlighten me.
- snerbles 10y ago
  The counter-argument would be that "real" communism involves everyone deciding for the collective good. In practice it winds up as you describe, with strongmen at the top.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Community works pretty well at the small scale. I know plenty of people who jointly own and use land and it works out as fine as any other social thing. E.g., cohousing, shared vacation property, areas owned by extended families, condo buildings with common areas. It has always failed scaling it up, but maybe that's just a sign we shouldn't try to scale it up.
    - zardo 10y ago
      It seems obvious that it would fail. Community cohesion works by each person having a high level of connection with each other person. I'd say on the order of (n*n) connections. Of course, this has implications for large democracies, as well as large communes.
wpietri 10y ago
Historical examples include the European commons system and the Mexican ejido system. I'm not an expert, but generally common resources are seen as owned by the community as a whole and there's some mechanism for jointly deciding how to use them. As a familiar example, one could look at state and national parks. A state park is owned by the people and maintained by the government; use by individuals is controlled and negotiated. You want to camp? Great, book a spot. You want to do some logging? Maybe, but you'll need a permit. You want to clear cut and build a strip mall? Nope. Your example of an exclusive vacation home doesn't fit well with that approach in that you're not part of the Hawaiian community. You want to control the land even when you're not there, which is ownership. Giving up ownership for vacation property would be something more like Die Naturfreunde. My understanding is that they maintain a set of communally owned and operated guest houses around the world. There's one just north of San Francisco, a lovely hostel and beer garden in Muir Woods. If you want to be a member there, you have to consistently contribute labor to maintaining it.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Community ownership only works if humans are identical robots. We disagree very often so how would you decide usage of land based on communities? Look at housing societies in India; they enforce rules like no single women or no Muslims. It's convenient when you're in the majority but inconvenient when you're in the minority. How would you decide between so many different wants? I can not decide between say whether this land should be used for a mall or a factory. In fact, in the real world if I knew, I could earn good money by building whichever is better. Information is money. This system is also poor as people who value land less end up with excess land and people who do value land more end up with a lack of land. How do you measure this "value"? Money. > There's one just north of San Francisco, a lovely hostel and beer garden in Muir Woods. If you want to be a member there, you have to consistently contribute labor to maintaining it. This ignores specialization, i.e. I could be doing something that I'm good at (like programming) and the labor can be done by someone else (who doesn't have any better option) with the money I earn. EDIT: replaced LTV criticism with specialization argument
  - wpietri 10y ago
bufordsharkley 10y ago
The way this works is a Land Value Tax (LVT)[0]. The land is still held by individuals, but they pay a use fee based upon the market value of the unimproved land. It's compatible with markets, capitalism, and in fact economists call it the most efficient tax possible. It's also very environmentally friendly, insofar as it encourages efficient use of land, which would spur more infill instead of pushing the margin of land lower and lower, encouraging sprawl. Why don't we use this tax, then? Mostly because it creates losers in the form of landowners, who tend to be extremely powerful, politically. "This arouses furious opposition from landowners, in most countries a potent lobby, see it as highly unfair. They have got used to enjoying their rents and object to their sudden socialisation."[1] If there's an upside, it's that it's been shown to be one of the only effective methods in implementing modern urban design and finance in a sustainable fashion. Just today, London expressed interest in seeing how LVT could remedy its housing crisis.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val... [2] https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/mayor-positive-about-a-land-value-tax-trial https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/mayor-posi...
HillaryBriss 10y ago
One concept to contrast with the American system of private property ownership and rights is the "freedom to roam" concept which exists in some Scandinavian countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam In addition, I think, even in the US system as it exists currently, property ownership rights are not 100% absolute. I mean, even Zuckerberg couldn't declare his new 700 acre holding to be, say, a toxic waste dump, or a launch pad for outer space rockets. He'd need a whole lot of government approvals to use the land in those ways, and he most likely would never get the approvals. Land rights and usages are not absolute, even for the title bearer.
- hydrogen18 10y ago
  Additionally, he only owns it as long as he can pay whatever property taxes are levied upon it.

tabeth 10y ago

I won't pretend like I'm an expert. However, I will say that in our supposedly democratic land, a useful heuristic would be just to vote. If the land was not owned by anyone and this could be magically enforced, then the people would simply vote for its use, right? As things come up people would just revote. Since no one owns the land there wouldn't be any conflict of interest. You may point out that those who originally voted may be conflicted, but I disagree: any proposition that would benefit the majority would clearly win. Any proposition that doesn't would necessarily be struck down. This kind of system has its own problems, though. Long term sustainability is one, requisites for voting is another. But these problems I think are separate.

PJDK 10y ago
But how do you decide who gets a vote? Presumably there is some kind of rules based around locality, but then people are where they are due to the current land ownership rules!
madgar 10y ago
You forgot about protecting minorities. What do you do when the majority of the people in a jurisdiction like (eg.) Mississippi consistently vote down land use by black people? Just accept that the people have spoken and that black people are unwelcome in that jurisdiction? This is not a theoretical exercise. This happens everyday in America in co-op boards, HOAs, etc and it doesn't require anybody saying out loud why an individual is being rejected. The current US president got caught doing this in the 1960s. If you want to redesign land use rights wholesale I would hope you wouldn't make this kind of discrimination more common... maybe that's just me.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >You forgot about protecting minorities. What do you do when the majority of the people in a jurisdiction like (eg.) Mississippi consistently vote down land use by black people? Just accept that the people have spoken and that black people are unwelcome in that jurisdiction? Well, yes. That's how democracy works: there's a vote and the majority wins. Are you opposed to democracy? Yeah, it sucks if you're a minority, but what can you do? This is a fundamental flaw in democracy. We attempt to mitigate it by having constitutions and laws and representatives who are voted on in multi-year cycles, which in engineering terms has the effect of creating a long feedback loop so that the populace's short term emotions don't create too much instability and chaos, but it only works to a point. The alternative is a non-democratic system like what they do in China. And they don't seem to be too keen on protecting the rights of minorities either.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    The alternative is a republic, which is supposed to protect the inalienable rights of the minority from the whims of the majority.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Are you one of those people who thinks a modern democratic republic somehow isn't democratic? Did you miss my whole line about constitutions and laws? Those are fundamentals of a modern democratic republic. Why is it that every time someone mentions a democracy, someone like you pops up and claims that a modern democracy isn't a democracy? Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic Line 1: "A democratic republic is both a republic and a democracy." Furthermore, not all republics are democratic. North Korea and China are both republics, as is Iran. I already mentioned China in my previous post. Do you really think North Korea protects anyone's inalienable rights? Or Iran?
      - RUG3Y 10y ago
        Maybe if someone always pops up to correct your vision of democracy, you're not communicating very well.
loafa 10y ago
It seems to me that if a group of people did come across some new land and decide to vote on what to do with it, they'd immediately vote to subdivide it amongst themselves. Leave some bits as public land for roads and parks and other stuff, and subdivide the rest equally so that families can build their own houses and grow their own crops or whatever with confidence. Of course within a few generations of inheritances and sales that equitable distribution of land will no longer look like that at all.
- tabeth 10y ago
  Hah. Obviously something like that wouldn't be allowed, since it would violate the rule of no land ownership to begin with.

ferbivore 10y ago

The way it works is called communism: you put a small cabal of people in charge of deciding what you can and can't do. Everyone gets whatever amount of land the ruling cabal says they get, rather than being able to get an amount proportional to their wealth. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when you put groups of self-interested humans in charge of a society, and I don't think any group of completely altruistic ones is going to take over the world any time soon. Also, the only successful communist country currently in existence is actually a hardcore capitalist dystopia. I'm not sure there is any other "common ownership of land" scheme that isn't just communism with window dressing or superintelligent AI thrown in. If there is, please do enlighten me.

snerbles 10y ago
The counter-argument would be that "real" communism involves everyone deciding for the collective good. In practice it winds up as you describe, with strongmen at the top.
- wpietri 10y ago
  Community works pretty well at the small scale. I know plenty of people who jointly own and use land and it works out as fine as any other social thing. E.g., cohousing, shared vacation property, areas owned by extended families, condo buildings with common areas. It has always failed scaling it up, but maybe that's just a sign we shouldn't try to scale it up.
  - zardo 10y ago
    It seems obvious that it would fail. Community cohesion works by each person having a high level of connection with each other person. I'd say on the order of (n*n) connections. Of course, this has implications for large democracies, as well as large communes.

wpietri 10y ago

Historical examples include the European commons system and the Mexican ejido system. I'm not an expert, but generally common resources are seen as owned by the community as a whole and there's some mechanism for jointly deciding how to use them. As a familiar example, one could look at state and national parks. A state park is owned by the people and maintained by the government; use by individuals is controlled and negotiated. You want to camp? Great, book a spot. You want to do some logging? Maybe, but you'll need a permit. You want to clear cut and build a strip mall? Nope. Your example of an exclusive vacation home doesn't fit well with that approach in that you're not part of the Hawaiian community. You want to control the land even when you're not there, which is ownership. Giving up ownership for vacation property would be something more like Die Naturfreunde. My understanding is that they maintain a set of communally owned and operated guest houses around the world. There's one just north of San Francisco, a lovely hostel and beer garden in Muir Woods. If you want to be a member there, you have to consistently contribute labor to maintaining it.

witty_username 10y ago
Community ownership only works if humans are identical robots. We disagree very often so how would you decide usage of land based on communities? Look at housing societies in India; they enforce rules like no single women or no Muslims. It's convenient when you're in the majority but inconvenient when you're in the minority. How would you decide between so many different wants? I can not decide between say whether this land should be used for a mall or a factory. In fact, in the real world if I knew, I could earn good money by building whichever is better. Information is money. This system is also poor as people who value land less end up with excess land and people who do value land more end up with a lack of land. How do you measure this "value"? Money. > There's one just north of San Francisco, a lovely hostel and beer garden in Muir Woods. If you want to be a member there, you have to consistently contribute labor to maintaining it. This ignores specialization, i.e. I could be doing something that I'm good at (like programming) and the labor can be done by someone else (who doesn't have any better option) with the money I earn. EDIT: replaced LTV criticism with specialization argument
- wpietri 10y ago

bufordsharkley 10y ago

The way this works is a Land Value Tax (LVT)[0]. The land is still held by individuals, but they pay a use fee based upon the market value of the unimproved land. It's compatible with markets, capitalism, and in fact economists call it the most efficient tax possible. It's also very environmentally friendly, insofar as it encourages efficient use of land, which would spur more infill instead of pushing the margin of land lower and lower, encouraging sprawl. Why don't we use this tax, then? Mostly because it creates losers in the form of landowners, who tend to be extremely powerful, politically. "This arouses furious opposition from landowners, in most countries a potent lobby, see it as highly unfair. They have got used to enjoying their rents and object to their sudden socialisation."[1] If there's an upside, it's that it's been shown to be one of the only effective methods in implementing modern urban design and finance in a sustainable fashion. Just today, London expressed interest in seeing how LVT could remedy its housing crisis.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val... [2] https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/mayor-positive-about-a-land-value-tax-trial https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/mayor-posi...

HillaryBriss 10y ago

One concept to contrast with the American system of private property ownership and rights is the "freedom to roam" concept which exists in some Scandinavian countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam In addition, I think, even in the US system as it exists currently, property ownership rights are not 100% absolute. I mean, even Zuckerberg couldn't declare his new 700 acre holding to be, say, a toxic waste dump, or a launch pad for outer space rockets. He'd need a whole lot of government approvals to use the land in those ways, and he most likely would never get the approvals. Land rights and usages are not absolute, even for the title bearer.

hydrogen18 10y ago
Additionally, he only owns it as long as he can pay whatever property taxes are levied upon it.