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If you are a tenant farmer, you aren't being "oppressed" by not someone not selling you land. If you offer me £20 for my house, are you being "oppressed" if I d

If you are a tenant farmer, you aren't being "oppressed" by not someone not selling you land. If you offer me £20 for my house, are you being "oppressed" if I don't sell it to you? The Church of England, Anders Povlsen, and others have all acquired huge amounts of land recently (that is why there is so much complaining about landowners from England who only come up to shoot). There is tons of forestry to bid on, and if you offer the right price then you will find willing sellers...if you offer the right price.

jacobolus 7y ago
If some aristocrat’s great-great-...-grandpa was a thug soldier in a conquering army or the screwup third son of some foreign noble who the king owed a favor to or possibly a merchant who made a fortune in the slave trade and then married into a noble family (or whatever, pick your favorite backstory), and the aristocrat’s tenant farmers’ ancestors were the local people pressed into involuntary labor who then literally built everything nearby with their own hands over the subsequent few centuries, why should the family whose main claim to fame is aggressive use of force sometime in the distant past continue to own everything, while the ones doing all the work own nothing?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Why should they continue to own it? So that some other account can't write a four-line paragraph and tell us to take what you own. We protect other peoples' property rights in order to secure our own.
  - ericd 7y ago
    I agree, but I guess maybe the issue is that too many people have started to feel like they have nothing to lose regardless.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Large inheritances are inherently unjust. Citizens should not be accumulating dynastic aristocratic fortunes. Small groups of people should not – based on accidents of history – end up inheriting the accumulated wealth of the whole society. This is not about opposition to private property. I’m fine if people own a house, or a family farm, or a small business, or even a controlling stake in a large business they built from nothing. (Though it would be great if at that point the public had transparency into their self-serving political activities.) But passing billions (and the derived political power) down to descendants several generations removed who did nothing themselves to deserve it is ultimately a recipe for a deeply broken society. It creates perverse incentives away from long-term thinking towards large-scale fraud and abuse, and entrenches the political influence of an aristocratic class whose primary goal is to maintain their fortunes rather than contribute to the society.
    - onetimeusename 7y ago
      Why are they unjust? I don't see how wealth transferring from one person to another is the same as "inheriting the accumulated wealth of the whole society". Did the heirs also steal everyone else's things when the wealth was passed on? How does that happen?
      - codyb 7y ago
        If inequality is very high (say 1% own 40% of the resources), and a child inherits almost a percentage of the _entire society’s wealth_ just by birth then that select group of inheritances is receiving incredible portions of the accumulated wealth of society by birth becomes an aristocracy. Thats how I read GP.
        FakeComments 7y ago
        Yes, but that’s not being realistic. 1% of 1 million people is 10,000 people, who will be roughly half kids and young adults — the heirs. So you’re talking 0.00008% of the wealth being passed down, roughly. That’s still pretty unequal in a society with a lot of people, but I’m also not sure smashing any granule of accumulated wealth leads to a vibrant society — the inter generational transfer of structures is essential for culture. Capitalism is fundamentally just highly mobile aristocracy, though — and that may be the best we can do.
        robocat 7y ago
        > So you’re talking 0.00008% The ownership is probably a power law. If you did a simple "averaging" division, that makes no sense.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        onetimeusename 7y ago
        Yes that's true, but the actual percentage of ownership hasn't changed, it stays the same. But the bigger issue is that the economy is not really a finite thing. Owning a certain amount of land, maybe by inheritance is not the same as owning a never changing percentage of all the resources. A good counter example might be something like inheriting shares of Google, or Amazon. Those people might never have owned any significant percentage of land but that did not stop them from owning something else that is more valuable than the land. So the resources change over time and I don't really see why land ownership is being used as a proxy for everything. Now, also, you may have not been making that point yourself but just clarifying. I just want to talk people down from the land confiscation movement because it seems destructive and pointless.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    > We protect other peoples' property rights in order to secure our own. And from there follows a simple equation - when the distribution of benefit from recognizing existing property rights is too skewed in favor of the few, the gains to be had by the rest from refusing to recognize those rights anymore exceed the risks of not being able to secure your own. When elites forget about this equation for too long, revolutions happen.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Oh, I agree. And the rich should remember it, and start acting accordingly.
      - snidane 7y ago
        It's not the 'rich'. It is the rentiers. Rich can be rich because of great societal or technological improvements as well as somebody stealing legally or illegally from others. Rentiers can be both very rich or not so much, but always at the expense of other people.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Property rights beyond "what you can defend is yours" are a purely human invention; there's nothing innate to the world that says that the property rights regime that exists now is the right one. There are other ways you could approach it that would distribute ownership and political power in a more egalitarian way, and as ownership (and political power) become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, more and more people will realize that "we protect others' property rights to secure our own" is not meaningful. There's nothing of our own to secure, and never will be in a significant way. This sort of refiguring of property rights can happen incrementally and peacefully (through tweaking taxes, etc), or suddenly (revolution). We've seen both lots of times in history. Where we go next is the question; but ending the discussion the way you wanted to isn't all that practical or interesting.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Look, if you want an inheritance tax, I don't object, even if it's 50%. (I might at 90%, though. And if you're going to rely on an inheritance tax, you also probably have to tax trusts...) I just object to the "they have to much, so we should take it from them" rhetoric, on the principle that, once they're done taking what the rich have, then they're going to decide that those who have the most at that time are now the rich, and the process will continue. And it won't stop until they decide that I'm the rich, and they should take what I have. In the process, they'll destroy the economy of the country. I really would prefer that that particular genie stays in the bottle...
      - toomanyrichies 7y ago
        > ...once they're done taking what the rich have, then they're going to decide that those who have the most at that time are now the rich, and the process will continue. And it won't stop until they decide that I'm the rich... Isn’t this just the slippery slope fallacy?
        sosborn 7y ago
        That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html
- danans 7y ago
  I saw an interesting documentary recently about the British Royal art collection, and it included the interesting quote: "At the root of every great fortune is a crime".
  - sgt101 7y ago
    The original British Royal art collection was confiscated in 1649 by Cromwell and it's putative owner was put to death! Almost all of it was sold off, with some parts later returned after the restoration and then glorious revolution (which was more or less a coup). The subsequent collection was built up significantly by the Hanoverian's. I expect that the crime being referred to was the execution of Charles 1st?
    - danans 7y ago
      In the documentary they were examining a famous piece from the collection depicting Ceasar's conquest of Gaul (France), which, according to the documentary, was effectively a genocide.
  - sls 7y ago
    A quote attributed to Honoré de Balzac, but when I went to use it a few years ago I wanted a citation and found that his actual words were neither so pithy nor so broadly implicative: "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait." The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a forgotten crime, because it was properly/cleanly done," is my fairly literal translation, but I am not really fluent enough to capture subtleties.
- subjectHarold 7y ago
  Ignoring the fact that a lot of the land has changed hands since then (the issue is concentration not identity of owners...a dangerous conflation): are you saying that a morality test should be applied to the family tree of all property purchasers? I am sure this is attractive to you because you are a member of the "virtuous class" no doubt, but have you checked your family tree? How far back? What genetic crimes prohibit property ownership? Class traitor? Rightist? Capitalist Roader? Perhaps religion? And why do these people still own land? Presumably you aren't personally being pressed into involuntary labour, so why do you as someone who is doing "all the work" still have nothing? These inbred landowners are presumably so feckless they would take anything (certainly, lots of these estates go for sale every year).
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    If you go far enough back in my family tree of European peasants, I’m sure there are plenty of bastard children of feudal lords in there. Not to mention thieves, killers, psychopaths, abusers, and so on. Likewise, I’m sure there are plenty of aristocrats (both historically and today) who are lovely people who treat their servants pleasantly and pay them above market wages, and so on. That’s not the point. The point is that a small group today shouldn’t be the inheritors of the entire society’s wealth. We shouldn’t be judging people today based on the actions of distant ancestors. And the way to avoid that judgement is for the majority of absurdly wealthy people’s property to devolve to the state when they die.
    - subjectHarold 7y ago
      Okay, that isn't the point...but that is what you said: "why should the family whose main claim to fame is aggressive use of force"...how else is this supposed to be interpreted? Because of someone's ancestors, this group shouldn't own property. If you want to make a different point, then make it. And it isn't random. You can acquire this property if you want. But be aware, you seem to be expecting to acquire the "entire society's wealth"...most of this land isn't that valuable and that land that is requires work (which is why it is valuable). Again, I don't understand what your point is here beyond anger that someone else has something you want? EDIT: Are you actually familiar with the population distribution and density in Scotland? A good chunk of this land is just agriculture and rough grass that has few economic uses. This isn't land that anyone wants to live on. The main concern of the govt, as I understand it, is to encourage forestry (which will mean more large owners, not less).
- hedora 7y ago
  This is exactly why the US [used to] have a meaningful inheritance tax. Without such a tax, compound earnings on investments implies that over time, a very small fraction of the population will control the vast majority of all economic resources.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    At the Federal level there is a progressive estate tax up to 40%. I don’t believe the rates have changed much, but the base amount which is excluded has increase to ~$5.5million per person, $11m per married couple. Why do you say “used to”? This is not nearly so much of an exclusion amount as to approach an effect where “a very small fraction of the population will control the vast majority of all economic resources.”

jacobolus 7y ago

If some aristocrat’s great-great-...-grandpa was a thug soldier in a conquering army or the screwup third son of some foreign noble who the king owed a favor to or possibly a merchant who made a fortune in the slave trade and then married into a noble family (or whatever, pick your favorite backstory), and the aristocrat’s tenant farmers’ ancestors were the local people pressed into involuntary labor who then literally built everything nearby with their own hands over the subsequent few centuries, why should the family whose main claim to fame is aggressive use of force sometime in the distant past continue to own everything, while the ones doing all the work own nothing?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Why should they continue to own it? So that some other account can't write a four-line paragraph and tell us to take what you own. We protect other peoples' property rights in order to secure our own.
- ericd 7y ago
  I agree, but I guess maybe the issue is that too many people have started to feel like they have nothing to lose regardless.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Large inheritances are inherently unjust. Citizens should not be accumulating dynastic aristocratic fortunes. Small groups of people should not – based on accidents of history – end up inheriting the accumulated wealth of the whole society. This is not about opposition to private property. I’m fine if people own a house, or a family farm, or a small business, or even a controlling stake in a large business they built from nothing. (Though it would be great if at that point the public had transparency into their self-serving political activities.) But passing billions (and the derived political power) down to descendants several generations removed who did nothing themselves to deserve it is ultimately a recipe for a deeply broken society. It creates perverse incentives away from long-term thinking towards large-scale fraud and abuse, and entrenches the political influence of an aristocratic class whose primary goal is to maintain their fortunes rather than contribute to the society.
  - onetimeusename 7y ago
    Why are they unjust? I don't see how wealth transferring from one person to another is the same as "inheriting the accumulated wealth of the whole society". Did the heirs also steal everyone else's things when the wealth was passed on? How does that happen?
    - codyb 7y ago
      If inequality is very high (say 1% own 40% of the resources), and a child inherits almost a percentage of the _entire society’s wealth_ just by birth then that select group of inheritances is receiving incredible portions of the accumulated wealth of society by birth becomes an aristocracy. Thats how I read GP.
      - FakeComments 7y ago
        Yes, but that’s not being realistic. 1% of 1 million people is 10,000 people, who will be roughly half kids and young adults — the heirs. So you’re talking 0.00008% of the wealth being passed down, roughly. That’s still pretty unequal in a society with a lot of people, but I’m also not sure smashing any granule of accumulated wealth leads to a vibrant society — the inter generational transfer of structures is essential for culture. Capitalism is fundamentally just highly mobile aristocracy, though — and that may be the best we can do.
        robocat 7y ago
        > So you’re talking 0.00008% The ownership is probably a power law. If you did a simple "averaging" division, that makes no sense.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - onetimeusename 7y ago
        Yes that's true, but the actual percentage of ownership hasn't changed, it stays the same. But the bigger issue is that the economy is not really a finite thing. Owning a certain amount of land, maybe by inheritance is not the same as owning a never changing percentage of all the resources. A good counter example might be something like inheriting shares of Google, or Amazon. Those people might never have owned any significant percentage of land but that did not stop them from owning something else that is more valuable than the land. So the resources change over time and I don't really see why land ownership is being used as a proxy for everything. Now, also, you may have not been making that point yourself but just clarifying. I just want to talk people down from the land confiscation movement because it seems destructive and pointless.
- int_19h 7y ago
  > We protect other peoples' property rights in order to secure our own. And from there follows a simple equation - when the distribution of benefit from recognizing existing property rights is too skewed in favor of the few, the gains to be had by the rest from refusing to recognize those rights anymore exceed the risks of not being able to secure your own. When elites forget about this equation for too long, revolutions happen.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Oh, I agree. And the rich should remember it, and start acting accordingly.
    - snidane 7y ago
      It's not the 'rich'. It is the rentiers. Rich can be rich because of great societal or technological improvements as well as somebody stealing legally or illegally from others. Rentiers can be both very rich or not so much, but always at the expense of other people.
- Frondo 7y ago
  Property rights beyond "what you can defend is yours" are a purely human invention; there's nothing innate to the world that says that the property rights regime that exists now is the right one. There are other ways you could approach it that would distribute ownership and political power in a more egalitarian way, and as ownership (and political power) become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, more and more people will realize that "we protect others' property rights to secure our own" is not meaningful. There's nothing of our own to secure, and never will be in a significant way. This sort of refiguring of property rights can happen incrementally and peacefully (through tweaking taxes, etc), or suddenly (revolution). We've seen both lots of times in history. Where we go next is the question; but ending the discussion the way you wanted to isn't all that practical or interesting.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Look, if you want an inheritance tax, I don't object, even if it's 50%. (I might at 90%, though. And if you're going to rely on an inheritance tax, you also probably have to tax trusts...) I just object to the "they have to much, so we should take it from them" rhetoric, on the principle that, once they're done taking what the rich have, then they're going to decide that those who have the most at that time are now the rich, and the process will continue. And it won't stop until they decide that I'm the rich, and they should take what I have. In the process, they'll destroy the economy of the country. I really would prefer that that particular genie stays in the bottle...
    - toomanyrichies 7y ago
      > ...once they're done taking what the rich have, then they're going to decide that those who have the most at that time are now the rich, and the process will continue. And it won't stop until they decide that I'm the rich... Isn’t this just the slippery slope fallacy?
      - sosborn 7y ago
        That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/slipslop.html
danans 7y ago
I saw an interesting documentary recently about the British Royal art collection, and it included the interesting quote: "At the root of every great fortune is a crime".
- sgt101 7y ago
  The original British Royal art collection was confiscated in 1649 by Cromwell and it's putative owner was put to death! Almost all of it was sold off, with some parts later returned after the restoration and then glorious revolution (which was more or less a coup). The subsequent collection was built up significantly by the Hanoverian's. I expect that the crime being referred to was the execution of Charles 1st?
  - danans 7y ago
    In the documentary they were examining a famous piece from the collection depicting Ceasar's conquest of Gaul (France), which, according to the documentary, was effectively a genocide.
- sls 7y ago
  A quote attributed to Honoré de Balzac, but when I went to use it a few years ago I wanted a citation and found that his actual words were neither so pithy nor so broadly implicative: "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait." The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a forgotten crime, because it was properly/cleanly done," is my fairly literal translation, but I am not really fluent enough to capture subtleties.
subjectHarold 7y ago
Ignoring the fact that a lot of the land has changed hands since then (the issue is concentration not identity of owners...a dangerous conflation): are you saying that a morality test should be applied to the family tree of all property purchasers? I am sure this is attractive to you because you are a member of the "virtuous class" no doubt, but have you checked your family tree? How far back? What genetic crimes prohibit property ownership? Class traitor? Rightist? Capitalist Roader? Perhaps religion? And why do these people still own land? Presumably you aren't personally being pressed into involuntary labour, so why do you as someone who is doing "all the work" still have nothing? These inbred landowners are presumably so feckless they would take anything (certainly, lots of these estates go for sale every year).
- jacobolus 7y ago
  If you go far enough back in my family tree of European peasants, I’m sure there are plenty of bastard children of feudal lords in there. Not to mention thieves, killers, psychopaths, abusers, and so on. Likewise, I’m sure there are plenty of aristocrats (both historically and today) who are lovely people who treat their servants pleasantly and pay them above market wages, and so on. That’s not the point. The point is that a small group today shouldn’t be the inheritors of the entire society’s wealth. We shouldn’t be judging people today based on the actions of distant ancestors. And the way to avoid that judgement is for the majority of absurdly wealthy people’s property to devolve to the state when they die.
  - subjectHarold 7y ago
    Okay, that isn't the point...but that is what you said: "why should the family whose main claim to fame is aggressive use of force"...how else is this supposed to be interpreted? Because of someone's ancestors, this group shouldn't own property. If you want to make a different point, then make it. And it isn't random. You can acquire this property if you want. But be aware, you seem to be expecting to acquire the "entire society's wealth"...most of this land isn't that valuable and that land that is requires work (which is why it is valuable). Again, I don't understand what your point is here beyond anger that someone else has something you want? EDIT: Are you actually familiar with the population distribution and density in Scotland? A good chunk of this land is just agriculture and rough grass that has few economic uses. This isn't land that anyone wants to live on. The main concern of the govt, as I understand it, is to encourage forestry (which will mean more large owners, not less).
hedora 7y ago
This is exactly why the US [used to] have a meaningful inheritance tax. Without such a tax, compound earnings on investments implies that over time, a very small fraction of the population will control the vast majority of all economic resources.
- zaroth 7y ago
  At the Federal level there is a progressive estate tax up to 40%. I don’t believe the rates have changed much, but the base amount which is excluded has increase to ~$5.5million per person, $11m per married couple. Why do you say “used to”? This is not nearly so much of an exclusion amount as to approach an effect where “a very small fraction of the population will control the vast majority of all economic resources.”