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With birth everyone should receive a piece of land the size of global land area divided by global population and upon death you return it. And this is of course

With birth everyone should receive a piece of land the size of global land area divided by global population and upon death you return it. And this is of course extremely simplified, we probably still want some public land, and the population changes, and not all land is created equal, ... but you get the idea.

f154hfds 3y ago
In ancient Israel it was a law that land had to be re-pooled back into its original tribal allocation every 49 years, it was called 'the year of jubilee'. Not sure there's evidence this law was really kept, though it's an interesting idea. Sometimes I wonder how property value (and housing markets) would behave if everyone in the US eventually went back to some 'tribal' allotment every 50 years.
euroderf 3y ago
Seems impractical. As an alternative, I'd suggest that land can not ever be "owned". Instead one gets a lease of 99 years - enough for multiple generations of a family, but with a distinct endpoint.
- danbruc 3y ago
  In which way would this be different? Seems to me more like a technicality, whether it should be called ownership even if it does not come with all the rights we usually associate with ownership. When I said returned upon death, you could of course also just pass it to one of your children. What I wrote was purely conceptual, an actual implementation could look very different. The idea is just that everyone gets to own or lease or whatever you want to call it some land and does not have to buy it from others who have accumulated it over the generations and keept it for themselves. If you want more land than your share, you can get it from someone who doesn't want their entire share, but only until their death when they lose control over that land and therefore can also no longer lease it to you. At which point you have to return it or find someone else who will lease the same amount of land to you. I guess you could say that my idea is that you get control over a certain area of land during your lifetime but it does not have to be a specific piece of land and you can freely exchange and transfer this control as you like, but not past your lifetime.

f154hfds 3y ago

In ancient Israel it was a law that land had to be re-pooled back into its original tribal allocation every 49 years, it was called 'the year of jubilee'. Not sure there's evidence this law was really kept, though it's an interesting idea. Sometimes I wonder how property value (and housing markets) would behave if everyone in the US eventually went back to some 'tribal' allotment every 50 years.

euroderf 3y ago

Seems impractical. As an alternative, I'd suggest that land can not ever be "owned". Instead one gets a lease of 99 years - enough for multiple generations of a family, but with a distinct endpoint.

danbruc 3y ago
In which way would this be different? Seems to me more like a technicality, whether it should be called ownership even if it does not come with all the rights we usually associate with ownership. When I said returned upon death, you could of course also just pass it to one of your children. What I wrote was purely conceptual, an actual implementation could look very different. The idea is just that everyone gets to own or lease or whatever you want to call it some land and does not have to buy it from others who have accumulated it over the generations and keept it for themselves. If you want more land than your share, you can get it from someone who doesn't want their entire share, but only until their death when they lose control over that land and therefore can also no longer lease it to you. At which point you have to return it or find someone else who will lease the same amount of land to you. I guess you could say that my idea is that you get control over a certain area of land during your lifetime but it does not have to be a specific piece of land and you can freely exchange and transfer this control as you like, but not past your lifetime.