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> When I think about such scenarios I can't help thinking that there might not be any social constructs left to enforce ownership of land :/. I can only hope s

> When I think about such scenarios I can't help thinking that there might not be any social constructs left to enforce ownership of land :/. I can only hope so.

skohan 6y ago
How do you imagine that working in practice? I mean I'm not saying the current structure is perfect, but if everyone had equal claim to land it seems like land usage disputes would just end up being resolved through violence
- afandian 6y ago
  This is the current model. In many places the violence may be out of living memory, but it's generally all very recent.
  - catawbasam 6y ago
    If it is out of living memory it isn't current.
    - afandian 6y ago
      If the model establishes a system where the people who are prepared to use the most violence end up with the land, and a couple of generations their descendants still have the land, then IMHO the model is still in play. You could also argue that as the ownership is codified in laws and the state monopoly on violence keeps the oppressed in check, that threat of violence continues.
      - fsloth 6y ago
        "If the model establishes a system where the people who are prepared to use the most violence end up with the land, and a couple of generations their descendants still have the land, then IMHO the model is still in play." This is not about land ownership. Alone. You are talking about exclusive political and economic systems. In an exclusive system it's not just the ownership of land that is broken - you will find all economic activity is rigged against some segment of the society. Most well to do states are have inclusive political and and economic systems. In these societies land ownership is based on land registration and enforceable contract law - not entitlement of birth and violence. I warmly recommend Daron Acemoglu's "Why nations fail" as it explains this topic far better than I ever could in a few sentences.
        afandian 6y ago
        Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look that up.
  - skohan 6y ago
    Maybe technically there’s a threat of government violence in the background, but that’s pretty far from most people’s consciousness in developed countries. Can you propose a different model for property ownership which doesn’t require the individual to invest more resources in physical security?
    - afandian 6y ago
      I'm not sure about "most developed countries" but there is still very strong memory of past violence in Great Britain. Some of the tail end of it still bubbling. On another tack, there are plenty of homeless people in the UK. Can you imagine what would happen to them if they broke into expensive uninhabited properties in London? There would be violence. I have no idea of alternatives, I was just pointing out the origin of a lot of current land ownership.
    - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
      Pay the non-owners enough rent to make it their economic interest to respect and protect the ownership
  - primroot 6y ago
    Just a few years ago, the weekend before May Day, a lawyer was stopped by the police here in Panama. The police searched through their database and found the lawyer had been accused of "economic terrorism." The lawyer was immediately put in jail. He worked pro bono defending the rights of informal settlers who have lived for years in vast areas of land owned by a very rich family. Given the amount of time these people have lived there, some argue they should at least be allowed to pay water and electricity. Instead, the government sends riot police to pull them out of their homes. The lawyer was released a few days later. This is only the most recent case that comes to my mind here in my country. I don't think it is that different in the rest of the world. Ownership of land is tied to violence.
    - primroot 6y ago
      Actually I just remembered a more recent case. After a very rich old lady showed up in TV last year explaining to people how access to drinking water is not a human right, videos came out on social media showing bulldozers destroying orchards in one of the Pearl Islands. They've been doing it since at least 2012. The rich lady's family wants to build some nice hotels there.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    The problem in this case is not land ownership but exclusive political and / or economic system which rigs the game against a certain percentage of a population on all fronts.
fsloth 6y ago
State enforced private land ownership is one of the key economic fundamentals of a prosperous society. Historically societies with private land ownership have been wealthier and more inclusive than without (the alternative has been state ownership of all land). Do you have any grounds why you would want it abolished?
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > Historically societies with private land ownership have been wealthier and more inclusive than without (the alternative has been state ownership of all land). Am I correct to assume you include communist and feudal regimes ?
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Well, in Feudal system you don't really own the land. You can tax the peasants farming it in exchange for military services for the state. But for example you can't parcel it to small farms and sell those for their owners to keep, or anything like that. You can't use the land as your own capital, with all the financial potential of an asset. I'd love to hear counterexamples, but that's the general gist of it in the large scale I think. Land ownership is not a silver bullet but in general smart parcelling policies have made nations wealthier. So basically, most wealthy states today at some point in their history have issued a parcelling policy that has distributed land ownership among farms. This has made the economic basis more vibrant and more durable. And, probably also affected the evolution of their political institutions to be more inclusive. For example, see the parcelling in my country Finland (which was Sweden at the time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Partition_(Sweden) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Partition_(Sweden) and earlier in British enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

> When I think about such scenarios I can't help thinking that there might not be any social constructs left to enforce ownership of land :/. I can only hope so.

skohan 6y ago

How do you imagine that working in practice? I mean I'm not saying the current structure is perfect, but if everyone had equal claim to land it seems like land usage disputes would just end up being resolved through violence

afandian 6y ago
This is the current model. In many places the violence may be out of living memory, but it's generally all very recent.
- catawbasam 6y ago
  If it is out of living memory it isn't current.
  - afandian 6y ago
    If the model establishes a system where the people who are prepared to use the most violence end up with the land, and a couple of generations their descendants still have the land, then IMHO the model is still in play. You could also argue that as the ownership is codified in laws and the state monopoly on violence keeps the oppressed in check, that threat of violence continues.
    - fsloth 6y ago
      "If the model establishes a system where the people who are prepared to use the most violence end up with the land, and a couple of generations their descendants still have the land, then IMHO the model is still in play." This is not about land ownership. Alone. You are talking about exclusive political and economic systems. In an exclusive system it's not just the ownership of land that is broken - you will find all economic activity is rigged against some segment of the society. Most well to do states are have inclusive political and and economic systems. In these societies land ownership is based on land registration and enforceable contract law - not entitlement of birth and violence. I warmly recommend Daron Acemoglu's "Why nations fail" as it explains this topic far better than I ever could in a few sentences.
      - afandian 6y ago
        Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look that up.
- skohan 6y ago
  Maybe technically there’s a threat of government violence in the background, but that’s pretty far from most people’s consciousness in developed countries. Can you propose a different model for property ownership which doesn’t require the individual to invest more resources in physical security?
  - afandian 6y ago
    I'm not sure about "most developed countries" but there is still very strong memory of past violence in Great Britain. Some of the tail end of it still bubbling. On another tack, there are plenty of homeless people in the UK. Can you imagine what would happen to them if they broke into expensive uninhabited properties in London? There would be violence. I have no idea of alternatives, I was just pointing out the origin of a lot of current land ownership.
  - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
    Pay the non-owners enough rent to make it their economic interest to respect and protect the ownership
- primroot 6y ago
  Just a few years ago, the weekend before May Day, a lawyer was stopped by the police here in Panama. The police searched through their database and found the lawyer had been accused of "economic terrorism." The lawyer was immediately put in jail. He worked pro bono defending the rights of informal settlers who have lived for years in vast areas of land owned by a very rich family. Given the amount of time these people have lived there, some argue they should at least be allowed to pay water and electricity. Instead, the government sends riot police to pull them out of their homes. The lawyer was released a few days later. This is only the most recent case that comes to my mind here in my country. I don't think it is that different in the rest of the world. Ownership of land is tied to violence.
  - primroot 6y ago
    Actually I just remembered a more recent case. After a very rich old lady showed up in TV last year explaining to people how access to drinking water is not a human right, videos came out on social media showing bulldozers destroying orchards in one of the Pearl Islands. They've been doing it since at least 2012. The rich lady's family wants to build some nice hotels there.
- fsloth 6y ago
  The problem in this case is not land ownership but exclusive political and / or economic system which rigs the game against a certain percentage of a population on all fronts.

fsloth 6y ago

State enforced private land ownership is one of the key economic fundamentals of a prosperous society. Historically societies with private land ownership have been wealthier and more inclusive than without (the alternative has been state ownership of all land). Do you have any grounds why you would want it abolished?

johnchristopher 6y ago
> Historically societies with private land ownership have been wealthier and more inclusive than without (the alternative has been state ownership of all land). Am I correct to assume you include communist and feudal regimes ?
- fsloth 6y ago
  Well, in Feudal system you don't really own the land. You can tax the peasants farming it in exchange for military services for the state. But for example you can't parcel it to small farms and sell those for their owners to keep, or anything like that. You can't use the land as your own capital, with all the financial potential of an asset. I'd love to hear counterexamples, but that's the general gist of it in the large scale I think. Land ownership is not a silver bullet but in general smart parcelling policies have made nations wealthier. So basically, most wealthy states today at some point in their history have issued a parcelling policy that has distributed land ownership among farms. This has made the economic basis more vibrant and more durable. And, probably also affected the evolution of their political institutions to be more inclusive. For example, see the parcelling in my country Finland (which was Sweden at the time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Partition_(Sweden) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Partition_(Sweden) and earlier in British enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure