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1. I agree that people need to be housed. 2. But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners. 3. I also don’t think we could keep on i

1. I agree that people need to be housed. 2. But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners. 3. I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity. They are all different issues and points. Not necessarily related. You don’t need separate a person’s property from him just because a few million people are homeless. You don’t need to keep on breeding homo sapiens to out breed all other species and destroying habits and environment to support the extra billions of human beings. Because the apex predator can wipe out every eco system to support itself. And at a faster rate if it outbreeds the rest of the species. Half the planet needs to be uninhabitated and rewilded for species and habitat preservation, conservation and restoration. As apex predators, if we don’t protect habitat and other species below us, it is like sawing off the main trunk of a tree below us while perching on the top most branch. We will become extinct as a species. One day, I am going to be able to buy thousands and thousands of acres and let nature take it back. There is a better chance that we will survive as a species if we reduce our population rather than keep on increasing it exponentially. Because we are guaranteed to outbreed every other species upon whom we rely on for our survival. The planet survives because of a delicate balance between the ocean’s temperature and carbon levels in our atmosphere. We really don’t understand it fully yet. It’s premature to assume that we can keep on breeding to perpetuate our species. It’s the most unscientific, irrational and illogical way to solve a problem. It certainly is a sure way to erase ourselves from the universe as we know it.

yellowapple 6y ago
> But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners. Nobody's calling for any snatching of property rights. What's being called for is for landowners to internalize the opportunity costs they've externalized on the rest of society (and, indeed, the planet). > I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity. As much as I agree, unfortunately humans happen to enjoy making more humans (and indeed, arguably have a biological drive to do so), so barring either the ability to move humans off Earth or some Malthusian catastrophe, global population will continue to increase whether we like it or not. > Half the planet needs to be uninhabitated and rewilded for species and habitat preservation, conservation and restoration. Which is a lot easier when people are penalized for contributing to suburban and rural sprawl.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  When you start instructing landowners what to do with their property, that’s infringing upon property rights especially if failure to do so results in penalizing them. Your argument states that empty land would be better served if it’s used for other human beings. The same argument if applied to a time scale rather than upon land resources, it is rational to conclude that our planet is better off if people had 1/2 surviving child per person until we hit carrying capacity. If land owners should be taxed for owning land they don’t use, we should also have a child tax for future exponential growth of a certain set of genes who will monopolize the world’s population by over breeding. Humans can continue to enjoy baby making(it’s not unlike some human beings enjoy owning vast tracts of land they dont put to use) but left to their own devices and without encouragement, if they are allowed to bear the full cost of raising the fruits of their loins, I think the numbers will go down dramatically. If goods cost as much as it takes to make them..especially food which is grown at tremendous costs(not just monetary), we will realize that the abundance is a myth and scarcity is our reality. Re: Your final point..people who own property don’t contribute to suburbs and rural sprawl. It is those who can’t make proper decisions personally and financially who make choices FOR themselves. Things like where to live, what job to do and what to study are easy choices. Inheriting illness, disabilities are choices we didn’t make, but was made by nature for us. We take care of vulnerable people who had no control over their deficiencies because we share as a species DNA with them. That obligation and duty towards our collective humanity is entirely different than feeling responsible for personal decision making. Sometimes people make terrible decisions for themselves because they are unable to make best decisions for themselves. In those cases, we have to make decisions for them if we feel responsible for them. These kind of things never end well as history as shown and is best avoided if possible. An example would be the mentally ill. Many refuse to take medications and their circumstances cause them to suffer. Those are tough decisions. But even then there is no need to penalize private property owners. None of these issues are connected to each other. I doubt if anyone cares about urban sprawl. An easy target is private property owners and that comes from what I can only term as jealousy in simplistic terms. In today’s world, we have managed to conquer crippling poverty even though there is much work to do. GINI co-eff fueled inequality makes villains out of the property owners. That is a dangerous path to take..once again, as history has shown us.

yellowapple 6y ago

> But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners. Nobody's calling for any snatching of property rights. What's being called for is for landowners to internalize the opportunity costs they've externalized on the rest of society (and, indeed, the planet). > I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity. As much as I agree, unfortunately humans happen to enjoy making more humans (and indeed, arguably have a biological drive to do so), so barring either the ability to move humans off Earth or some Malthusian catastrophe, global population will continue to increase whether we like it or not. > Half the planet needs to be uninhabitated and rewilded for species and habitat preservation, conservation and restoration. Which is a lot easier when people are penalized for contributing to suburban and rural sprawl.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
When you start instructing landowners what to do with their property, that’s infringing upon property rights especially if failure to do so results in penalizing them. Your argument states that empty land would be better served if it’s used for other human beings. The same argument if applied to a time scale rather than upon land resources, it is rational to conclude that our planet is better off if people had 1/2 surviving child per person until we hit carrying capacity. If land owners should be taxed for owning land they don’t use, we should also have a child tax for future exponential growth of a certain set of genes who will monopolize the world’s population by over breeding. Humans can continue to enjoy baby making(it’s not unlike some human beings enjoy owning vast tracts of land they dont put to use) but left to their own devices and without encouragement, if they are allowed to bear the full cost of raising the fruits of their loins, I think the numbers will go down dramatically. If goods cost as much as it takes to make them..especially food which is grown at tremendous costs(not just monetary), we will realize that the abundance is a myth and scarcity is our reality. Re: Your final point..people who own property don’t contribute to suburbs and rural sprawl. It is those who can’t make proper decisions personally and financially who make choices FOR themselves. Things like where to live, what job to do and what to study are easy choices. Inheriting illness, disabilities are choices we didn’t make, but was made by nature for us. We take care of vulnerable people who had no control over their deficiencies because we share as a species DNA with them. That obligation and duty towards our collective humanity is entirely different than feeling responsible for personal decision making. Sometimes people make terrible decisions for themselves because they are unable to make best decisions for themselves. In those cases, we have to make decisions for them if we feel responsible for them. These kind of things never end well as history as shown and is best avoided if possible. An example would be the mentally ill. Many refuse to take medications and their circumstances cause them to suffer. Those are tough decisions. But even then there is no need to penalize private property owners. None of these issues are connected to each other. I doubt if anyone cares about urban sprawl. An easy target is private property owners and that comes from what I can only term as jealousy in simplistic terms. In today’s world, we have managed to conquer crippling poverty even though there is much work to do. GINI co-eff fueled inequality makes villains out of the property owners. That is a dangerous path to take..once again, as history has shown us.