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> the wealthy and elite have dis-proportionally been landowners I'd put that the other way around, saying the land owners have disproportionately ended up as t

> the wealthy and elite have dis-proportionally been landowners I'd put that the other way around, saying the land owners have disproportionately ended up as the wealthy and powerful. The ownership of land and the huge unearned income derived from renting it to the masses looks more like cause than effect to me.

chrisseaton 9y ago
If you think people are wealthy and elite because they have got land, how do you explain how they got the land? I think either they bought it from the Crown, because they were wealthy, or they were granted it from the Crown, because they were part of the elite and did something for the Crown. Since you think it was the other way around, how do you explain how they got the land?
- gknoy 9y ago
  Swords.
  - chrisseaton 9y ago
    I think you're still making this argument in circles. Where do you get the men and weapons to take land by force if you aren't wealthy or part of the elite?
    - falsedan 9y ago
      I'll take transitional government techniques for 1000 karma thanks Paul. What is an armed revolt?
      - chrisseaton 9y ago
        Which major English land owner do you think got their land this way? If you look at how major English land owners got started it all goes back to elites being granted land by the Crown for service.
        falsedan 9y ago
        > Which major English land owner do you think got their land this way? Is this a trick? The Crown got all their land by conquest: the Roundheads, Normans, the Danes, the Romans, &c.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        You said revolt and now you're saying conquest which aren't the same thing. Of course the Crown got it by conquest. But nobody got land by armed revolt did they? Can you name any major land owning families in England that didn't start off by patronage? I can't think of any.
        falsedan 9y ago
        The Crown. You think the exchange of property has been politely arranged through the Land Registry since the first Brython clonked his annoying boss man on the head?
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        Mate you can't describe the Norman invasion as an 'armed revolt'. That's just not what what the word 'revolt' means. I'm talking about people except the Crown. 1066 and all that reset everything. Otherwise who's patronage would I be referring to?
        falsedan 9y ago
        If you exclude all fourced transfers of ownership and only allow peaceful patronage, of course you will not see any counter-examples to your claim. You are right (in this extremely narrow claim), and you learned nothing, and wasted time defending it.
        falsedan 9y ago
        Turns out, it was a trick.
      - pjc50 9y ago
        Great Britain is unusual in having had only one successful armed revolution in the past thousand years, and the resulting theocratic dictatorship was so bad it resulted in people demanding the monarchy back. (The "glorious revolution" of 1688 contained no fighting, although it did involve foreign troops. There was a successful armed revolution in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but this was more of a decolonisation than a class-based revolution.)
- mattgibson 9y ago
  In the England at least, the system was roughly that the crown owned all the land through conquest (1066), then gave chunks of it to trusted nobles as a quid pro quo for fighting in the war that they just won. The nobles used the rent from these lands to maintain private armies which kept the peasants in check and the rent flowing, provided they raised an army on demand for the king as and when required. There was no necessity to be wealthy first (although as you point out, this was often the case). Trouble is, if they were wealthy to start with, how did this happen? It just pushes the same question a bit further back. I suspect that in most cases, there are smaller conquests of local areas by a local family who gradually expand their reach, then lend military support to the king in exchange for being left alone. Also, without the constant income the rents provide, you would not stay wealthy for long even if you had cash to start with, which is why land is so important. Getting money via trade and industry means you have to both be good at what you do and accept a profit margin which may vary depending on market conditions. Renting out land requires no skill and is impervious to competition. Constant cash flow forever with no effort. In order to accumulate serious wealth in the age before industrialisation, there was no better way.
  - Bakary 9y ago
    This interesting passage from Wikipedia: In Marxist economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour . Karl Marx rejected this explanation as "childishness," instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation". This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism. I don't endorse this theory but I thought it was relevant.
    - plafl 9y ago
- ue_ 9y ago
  >If you think people are wealthy and elite because they have got land, how do you explain how they got the land? By being given it by a state (which you have already said, in turn used force) or by forcefully taking it. It's primitive accumulation in the second instance and favouritism in the first. However both methods involve the creation of the concept of this type of property and further to take it, which requires as Proudhon put it, barbarism.

chrisseaton 9y ago

If you think people are wealthy and elite because they have got land, how do you explain how they got the land? I think either they bought it from the Crown, because they were wealthy, or they were granted it from the Crown, because they were part of the elite and did something for the Crown. Since you think it was the other way around, how do you explain how they got the land?

gknoy 9y ago
Swords.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  I think you're still making this argument in circles. Where do you get the men and weapons to take land by force if you aren't wealthy or part of the elite?
  - falsedan 9y ago
    I'll take transitional government techniques for 1000 karma thanks Paul. What is an armed revolt?
    - chrisseaton 9y ago
      Which major English land owner do you think got their land this way? If you look at how major English land owners got started it all goes back to elites being granted land by the Crown for service.
      - falsedan 9y ago
        > Which major English land owner do you think got their land this way? Is this a trick? The Crown got all their land by conquest: the Roundheads, Normans, the Danes, the Romans, &c.
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        You said revolt and now you're saying conquest which aren't the same thing. Of course the Crown got it by conquest. But nobody got land by armed revolt did they? Can you name any major land owning families in England that didn't start off by patronage? I can't think of any.
        falsedan 9y ago
        The Crown. You think the exchange of property has been politely arranged through the Land Registry since the first Brython clonked his annoying boss man on the head?
        chrisseaton 9y ago
        Mate you can't describe the Norman invasion as an 'armed revolt'. That's just not what what the word 'revolt' means. I'm talking about people except the Crown. 1066 and all that reset everything. Otherwise who's patronage would I be referring to?
        falsedan 9y ago
        If you exclude all fourced transfers of ownership and only allow peaceful patronage, of course you will not see any counter-examples to your claim. You are right (in this extremely narrow claim), and you learned nothing, and wasted time defending it.
        falsedan 9y ago
        Turns out, it was a trick.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Great Britain is unusual in having had only one successful armed revolution in the past thousand years, and the resulting theocratic dictatorship was so bad it resulted in people demanding the monarchy back. (The "glorious revolution" of 1688 contained no fighting, although it did involve foreign troops. There was a successful armed revolution in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but this was more of a decolonisation than a class-based revolution.)
mattgibson 9y ago
In the England at least, the system was roughly that the crown owned all the land through conquest (1066), then gave chunks of it to trusted nobles as a quid pro quo for fighting in the war that they just won. The nobles used the rent from these lands to maintain private armies which kept the peasants in check and the rent flowing, provided they raised an army on demand for the king as and when required. There was no necessity to be wealthy first (although as you point out, this was often the case). Trouble is, if they were wealthy to start with, how did this happen? It just pushes the same question a bit further back. I suspect that in most cases, there are smaller conquests of local areas by a local family who gradually expand their reach, then lend military support to the king in exchange for being left alone. Also, without the constant income the rents provide, you would not stay wealthy for long even if you had cash to start with, which is why land is so important. Getting money via trade and industry means you have to both be good at what you do and accept a profit margin which may vary depending on market conditions. Renting out land requires no skill and is impervious to competition. Constant cash flow forever with no effort. In order to accumulate serious wealth in the age before industrialisation, there was no better way.
- Bakary 9y ago
  This interesting passage from Wikipedia: In Marxist economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour . Karl Marx rejected this explanation as "childishness," instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation". This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism. I don't endorse this theory but I thought it was relevant.
  - plafl 9y ago
ue_ 9y ago
>If you think people are wealthy and elite because they have got land, how do you explain how they got the land? By being given it by a state (which you have already said, in turn used force) or by forcefully taking it. It's primitive accumulation in the second instance and favouritism in the first. However both methods involve the creation of the concept of this type of property and further to take it, which requires as Proudhon put it, barbarism.