5 ms·

Of all the things that a person can own, land seems the least justified to me. There is a finite amount of it, you did not create it, you cannot destroy it, and

Of all the things that a person can own, land seems the least justified to me. There is a finite amount of it, you did not create it, you cannot destroy it, and essentially all ownership derives from conquest, in recent or ancient history.

daqhris 4y ago
Land is where you can build a shelter. My current experience as a refugee made me realize the importance of shelter and food. The rest comes afterwards. Basically, all land on Earth has an owner. Be it individuals, corporations or governments. It's finite, so highly valuable. I'm currently unable to return safely to my homeland because the current land owners marked me as an adversary. I wish it wasn't the case but societal rules have been this way since ever. It's thousand times easier to me to build something, by using software, in the metaverse/on internet. In the real world, I now have no place to call home, except refugee camps and squats in abandonned buildings.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
Land seems like one of the oldest and most "natural" forms of ownership -- Many animals, plants, bacteria, fungi will establish territory and defend it against conspecfics and competitors
- tpush 4y ago
  Natural doesn't imply good.
- asdff 4y ago
  They aren't defending land though, they are really defending access to resources contained in that land. If you drop a plant on empty land with no relevant resources for it, the plant will die. It will not become a landowner. Land ownership is a very recent concept in our history. Most of human history on this planet happened with no concept of owning land.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Cue Georgism
dylan604 4y ago
>you cannot destroy it, is this really true? you can definitely do things to it that would make it uninhabitable, no longer "fertile", or any other terms that essentially come to the same conclusion of the land being essentially destroyed. at least as far as the context of desirability to be owned
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  I mean, China is pretty good at creating land.
  - tromp 4y ago
    The Dutch excel at creating land where before there was sea...
- libria 4y ago
  > > you cannot destroy it, > is this really true? Practically speaking, yes. The value of a parcel is largely from its location/proximity to metro areas. I've never heard of someone destroying residential property directly through chemicals or radioactivity, though value can be greatly diminished by local antagonistic developments or rezoning it unfavorably.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    > I've never heard of someone destroying residential property directly through chemicals or radioactivity Are you kidding me? Look up Superfund sites, and tell me they didn’t affect property values around them.
cek 4y ago
There's actually a near-infinite amount of land. We just haven't yet gotten to the point where we can access any of the land not on this planet.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Of course, but that has no practical implications in the near or perhaps even distant future. Even using the ocean as a fresh water source — which is right here on earth — is a challenge with significant hurdles to overcome. Even with near infinite land it will presumably be a long, long time before common people can set out into this new frontier and carve out anything like a familiar, safe, let alone comfortable life.
charcircuit 4y ago
Everything physical you can buy is made up of things that are of a finite amount and were not created by humans. All ownership works like that.
- michaelt 4y ago
  When I buy a wooden table it's true that the tree grew from the ground - but I'm also paying for the efforts of the foresters, the sawmill workers, the truck drivers, the table designers, the machine operators, the assemblers, the store salespeople, and the delivery drivers. I buy a plot of land, on the other hand? The lazy sellers won't even deliver it to my home :)
drowsspa 4y ago
Owning land makes a lot of sense, I'd say. What doesn't make much sense to me is subjecting it to so much speculation
- asdff 4y ago
  It makes poor sense because landowners are often selfish, and choose use cases with their property that maximize personal benefit and if there is a collective benefit to these decisions it is a happy accident. I'm including local species into the collective in this case. Often a landowner will put up barriers (e.g. a fence around a sprawling ranch or a beltway of roads around a suburban development) for species or will introduce invasive species or otherwise lower the biodiversity of a place through disruptive development.
ryan93 4y ago
Its a practical not a philosophical discussion. Try driving through the western united states and see if a lack of land is a real issue.
crazygringo 4y ago
Well, you absolutely need a system to organize who can invest building on land and can reap the benefits. It can't just be a free-for-all with anybody allowed to build anywhere there's space, even if it's currently somebody's backyard. So once you agree that permission to build needs to be organized, you need to figure out how to allocate that permission, which in situations of scarcity is going to be to the highest bidder. But people aren't going to invest in building structures that will last for decades unless they know they'll continue to hold permission to occupy those structures for decades. So either you hand out things like 100-year leases or you hand out ownership outright. In the end, most of the world has settled on ownership because 100-year leases tend to cause massive headaches once you hit the 100-year mark, for a whole host of reasons. So land ownership is just what works from a practical perspective. (That being said, I am personally intrigued by a system where the government would lease all land yearly according to market rates, but where higher rates for longer [e.g. 15- or 30-year] terms could be locked in with private banks, much like fixed rate mortgages. The classic problem, of course, is how a government is going to reliably determine "market rates" for land that changes hands only very infrequently. Property taxes already attempt that, but they also often result in value that are obviously not "market". It's much the same problem with assessing non-liquid wealth for wealth taxes.)

daqhris 4y ago

Land is where you can build a shelter. My current experience as a refugee made me realize the importance of shelter and food. The rest comes afterwards. Basically, all land on Earth has an owner. Be it individuals, corporations or governments. It's finite, so highly valuable. I'm currently unable to return safely to my homeland because the current land owners marked me as an adversary. I wish it wasn't the case but societal rules have been this way since ever. It's thousand times easier to me to build something, by using software, in the metaverse/on internet. In the real world, I now have no place to call home, except refugee camps and squats in abandonned buildings.

xkcd-sucks 4y ago

Land seems like one of the oldest and most "natural" forms of ownership -- Many animals, plants, bacteria, fungi will establish territory and defend it against conspecfics and competitors

tpush 4y ago
Natural doesn't imply good.
asdff 4y ago
They aren't defending land though, they are really defending access to resources contained in that land. If you drop a plant on empty land with no relevant resources for it, the plant will die. It will not become a landowner. Land ownership is a very recent concept in our history. Most of human history on this planet happened with no concept of owning land.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

Cue Georgism

dylan604 4y ago

>you cannot destroy it, is this really true? you can definitely do things to it that would make it uninhabitable, no longer "fertile", or any other terms that essentially come to the same conclusion of the land being essentially destroyed. at least as far as the context of desirability to be owned

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
I mean, China is pretty good at creating land.
- tromp 4y ago
  The Dutch excel at creating land where before there was sea...
libria 4y ago
> > you cannot destroy it, > is this really true? Practically speaking, yes. The value of a parcel is largely from its location/proximity to metro areas. I've never heard of someone destroying residential property directly through chemicals or radioactivity, though value can be greatly diminished by local antagonistic developments or rezoning it unfavorably.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > I've never heard of someone destroying residential property directly through chemicals or radioactivity Are you kidding me? Look up Superfund sites, and tell me they didn’t affect property values around them.

cek 4y ago

There's actually a near-infinite amount of land. We just haven't yet gotten to the point where we can access any of the land not on this planet.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
Of course, but that has no practical implications in the near or perhaps even distant future. Even using the ocean as a fresh water source — which is right here on earth — is a challenge with significant hurdles to overcome. Even with near infinite land it will presumably be a long, long time before common people can set out into this new frontier and carve out anything like a familiar, safe, let alone comfortable life.

charcircuit 4y ago

Everything physical you can buy is made up of things that are of a finite amount and were not created by humans. All ownership works like that.

michaelt 4y ago
When I buy a wooden table it's true that the tree grew from the ground - but I'm also paying for the efforts of the foresters, the sawmill workers, the truck drivers, the table designers, the machine operators, the assemblers, the store salespeople, and the delivery drivers. I buy a plot of land, on the other hand? The lazy sellers won't even deliver it to my home :)

drowsspa 4y ago

Owning land makes a lot of sense, I'd say. What doesn't make much sense to me is subjecting it to so much speculation

asdff 4y ago
It makes poor sense because landowners are often selfish, and choose use cases with their property that maximize personal benefit and if there is a collective benefit to these decisions it is a happy accident. I'm including local species into the collective in this case. Often a landowner will put up barriers (e.g. a fence around a sprawling ranch or a beltway of roads around a suburban development) for species or will introduce invasive species or otherwise lower the biodiversity of a place through disruptive development.

ryan93 4y ago

Its a practical not a philosophical discussion. Try driving through the western united states and see if a lack of land is a real issue.

crazygringo 4y ago

Well, you absolutely need a system to organize who can invest building on land and can reap the benefits. It can't just be a free-for-all with anybody allowed to build anywhere there's space, even if it's currently somebody's backyard. So once you agree that permission to build needs to be organized, you need to figure out how to allocate that permission, which in situations of scarcity is going to be to the highest bidder. But people aren't going to invest in building structures that will last for decades unless they know they'll continue to hold permission to occupy those structures for decades. So either you hand out things like 100-year leases or you hand out ownership outright. In the end, most of the world has settled on ownership because 100-year leases tend to cause massive headaches once you hit the 100-year mark, for a whole host of reasons. So land ownership is just what works from a practical perspective. (That being said, I am personally intrigued by a system where the government would lease all land yearly according to market rates, but where higher rates for longer [e.g. 15- or 30-year] terms could be locked in with private banks, much like fixed rate mortgages. The classic problem, of course, is how a government is going to reliably determine "market rates" for land that changes hands only very infrequently. Property taxes already attempt that, but they also often result in value that are obviously not "market". It's much the same problem with assessing non-liquid wealth for wealth taxes.)