4 ms·

This would be a wonderful thesis if it didn't ignore the fact that in the world (and the US in particular) there's a lot of land. So much land that you could fi

This would be a wonderful thesis if it didn't ignore the fact that in the world (and the US in particular) there's a lot of land. So much land that you could fit the entire world's population twice into Texas alone assuming major city densities (assuming 67k /mi^2 and 268000 mi^2 per cursory googling gives some 18B).

maxerickson 9y ago
Roughly none of that land is freely available. It's also pretty clear that some sort of resource footprint is more interesting than apparent living density. Just food requires more than a few hundred square feet per person and we consume a lot more than food.
- coryfklein 9y ago
  > Roughly none of that land is freely available. You'll have to qualify that statement a little. Here is 5 acres of land in Texas for $1500 [1], found it in about 60 seconds. [1] https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/TX/land_type/2091095382_zpid/54_rid/0-10000_price/0-39_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/32.586164,-98.868713,29.274421,-102.823792_rect/7_zm/0_mmm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/TX/land_type/209109538...
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I actually said roughly, I didn't go back and edit that in or anything. If you want to do brass tacks or whatever, buy it and scrape out a living to prove that cheap scrub desert makes a point about land being available.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
      What if automation and robotics made homesteading much easier, and more likely to succeed on land that was previously considered useless? Obviously water and other resources are going to be an issue, but as a labour multiplier, AI and robotics have huge potential.
      - CodeCube 9y ago
        Unfortunately, AI and robotics are only available to those with great capital and knowledge on how to apply those technologies; and I don't really see that changing any time soon.
      - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
        West of the 100th Meridian, water gets scarce. Land out here has value pretty much in proportion to how much water it has available, because you can't grow anything on it without water. And you can't fix lack of water by availability of robots.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > What if automation and robotics made homesteading much easier, and more likely to succeed on land that was previously considered useless? Then that land (if not already privately owned and actually available for homesteading) will be homesteaded, privatized, enter the land market, and not be rent-free land that is available. Just like the land that was attractive for homesteading in the past has been. Sure, its a one-time land-rush just like the initial homestead act, but after that the same forces of centralization of property that always work in a capitalist economy will work on it.
  - OtterCoder 9y ago
    And the cost of plumbing and electrifying that land would be astronomical. Public works have a network effect.
nwah1 9y ago
As maxerickson said, that land is not free. And the question is not the amount of land, but the amount of valuable land. Land that is near jobs, near markets, near ports, or near decent hospitals or schools. Sure there's loads of terrible land in West Texas, which could possibly provide for a lifestyle of subsistence farming, but the US standard of living is such that it would be wiser to live on welfare in a city. But in theory, if someone could covertly farm some crops on one of the numerous vacant sites in Manhattan, and not have to pay any rent, then that same amount of subsistence labor could provide for a potentially decent lifestyle. Same amount of effort would bring in a much greater return, just through the better location. My point about farming was to ask why we can't all share in the fruits of rising productivity. Why can't we just keep doing what we had been doing, and still take advantage of fancy new gizmos? And the answer is that progress causes land values to rise, but the valuable land is generally owned by a subset of the populace who demand a greater and greater rent just because they can. So really the question is: how can we all share the value of land, without it just funneling back to higher rents? My suggestion is to look at land value taxation.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  Your suggestion would be wrong because your analysis is faulty. The land is useless without skilled people to operate it. What the skilled people have done is divide the labour which has created machines that farmers can use. The trouble is they can produce enough for themselves and their machine makers by the end of Tuesday. The challenge for the rest of us is to provide something of value to the farmer so they will work the rest of the week and create an exchange surplus. Rentiers are just the current solution that forces farmers to work til Friday. The problem is that trickle down doesn't work. Land value tax just makes everybody rentiers and racks off the farmers because they get nothing of exchange value in return for their week of labour.
  - nwah1 9y ago
    Labor is the active force, and land is the passive force. Production cannot happen without both. As for everyone being rentiers, I'm not sure I see the problem. Everyone being rentiers ensures a minimum standard of living, allowing us all to share in the progress of civilization. But really, land value taxation itself raises the "margin of production" even without any kind of redistribution. The mention of trickle-down seems like a non sequitur.

maxerickson 9y ago

Roughly none of that land is freely available. It's also pretty clear that some sort of resource footprint is more interesting than apparent living density. Just food requires more than a few hundred square feet per person and we consume a lot more than food.

coryfklein 9y ago
> Roughly none of that land is freely available. You'll have to qualify that statement a little. Here is 5 acres of land in Texas for $1500 [1], found it in about 60 seconds. [1] https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/TX/land_type/2091095382_zpid/54_rid/0-10000_price/0-39_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/32.586164,-98.868713,29.274421,-102.823792_rect/7_zm/0_mmm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/TX/land_type/209109538...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I actually said roughly, I didn't go back and edit that in or anything. If you want to do brass tacks or whatever, buy it and scrape out a living to prove that cheap scrub desert makes a point about land being available.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    What if automation and robotics made homesteading much easier, and more likely to succeed on land that was previously considered useless? Obviously water and other resources are going to be an issue, but as a labour multiplier, AI and robotics have huge potential.
    - CodeCube 9y ago
      Unfortunately, AI and robotics are only available to those with great capital and knowledge on how to apply those technologies; and I don't really see that changing any time soon.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      West of the 100th Meridian, water gets scarce. Land out here has value pretty much in proportion to how much water it has available, because you can't grow anything on it without water. And you can't fix lack of water by availability of robots.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > What if automation and robotics made homesteading much easier, and more likely to succeed on land that was previously considered useless? Then that land (if not already privately owned and actually available for homesteading) will be homesteaded, privatized, enter the land market, and not be rent-free land that is available. Just like the land that was attractive for homesteading in the past has been. Sure, its a one-time land-rush just like the initial homestead act, but after that the same forces of centralization of property that always work in a capitalist economy will work on it.
- OtterCoder 9y ago
  And the cost of plumbing and electrifying that land would be astronomical. Public works have a network effect.

nwah1 9y ago

As maxerickson said, that land is not free. And the question is not the amount of land, but the amount of valuable land. Land that is near jobs, near markets, near ports, or near decent hospitals or schools. Sure there's loads of terrible land in West Texas, which could possibly provide for a lifestyle of subsistence farming, but the US standard of living is such that it would be wiser to live on welfare in a city. But in theory, if someone could covertly farm some crops on one of the numerous vacant sites in Manhattan, and not have to pay any rent, then that same amount of subsistence labor could provide for a potentially decent lifestyle. Same amount of effort would bring in a much greater return, just through the better location. My point about farming was to ask why we can't all share in the fruits of rising productivity. Why can't we just keep doing what we had been doing, and still take advantage of fancy new gizmos? And the answer is that progress causes land values to rise, but the valuable land is generally owned by a subset of the populace who demand a greater and greater rent just because they can. So really the question is: how can we all share the value of land, without it just funneling back to higher rents? My suggestion is to look at land value taxation.

neilwilson 9y ago
Your suggestion would be wrong because your analysis is faulty. The land is useless without skilled people to operate it. What the skilled people have done is divide the labour which has created machines that farmers can use. The trouble is they can produce enough for themselves and their machine makers by the end of Tuesday. The challenge for the rest of us is to provide something of value to the farmer so they will work the rest of the week and create an exchange surplus. Rentiers are just the current solution that forces farmers to work til Friday. The problem is that trickle down doesn't work. Land value tax just makes everybody rentiers and racks off the farmers because they get nothing of exchange value in return for their week of labour.
- nwah1 9y ago
  Labor is the active force, and land is the passive force. Production cannot happen without both. As for everyone being rentiers, I'm not sure I see the problem. Everyone being rentiers ensures a minimum standard of living, allowing us all to share in the progress of civilization. But really, land value taxation itself raises the "margin of production" even without any kind of redistribution. The mention of trickle-down seems like a non sequitur.