Is land ownership wrong?

[United for Communism]

Outright ownership of land by decree is, perhaps, the greatest injustice that can be perpetrated against the working class. This is especially true of third world countries, where workers work hard day in and day out, only to pay rent to a foreign owner, who neither works the land, and who often has never visited it; yet, he is entitled, somehow, to the productive labor of the workers.

In the US, we still haven't escaped land ownership by decree, where individuals purchase large parcels of land that they have not worked. Land ownership by homesteading is one thing (and even then, there are problems regarding length or term of ownership), but land ownership by title? That is feudalism, and is very oppressive towards the working classes who cannot have their own land.

Who is entitled to own the land, when nobody has labored to create it? If anything must be, land must be that which is common property to all men.

[superstring01]

No. Owning land is okay. Identifying faults with how land ownership has been handled doesn't mean that owning land is wrong.

~String

[United for Communism]

No. Owning land is okay. Identifying faults with how land ownership has been handled doesn't mean that owning land is wrong.

~String

But do you at least agree that land ownership by decree is wrong? Do you agree that it is wrong that foreign owners of the land of third world countries are paid rent when they have done nothing to improve the land, or have even visited it? Or that it is wrong that they somehow own the natural resource product of a country despite the same truth?

[Me-Ki-Gal]

Outright ownership of land by decree is, perhaps, the greatest injustice that can be perpetrated against the working class. This is especially true of third world countries, where workers work hard day in and day out, only to pay rent to a foreign owner, who neither works the land, and who often has never visited it; yet, he is entitled, somehow, to the productive labor of the workers.

In the US, we still haven't escaped land ownership by decree, where individuals purchase large parcels of land that they have not worked. Land ownership by homesteading is one thing (and even then, there are problems regarding length or term of ownership), but land ownership by title? That is feudalism, and is very oppressive towards the working classes who cannot have their own land.

Working class people get to buy land too. Your assumptions are wrong. I own land . Quite a bit . I worked my ass off 60 to 80 hours a week for 40 years to get it . It is my reward for busting my back with not much support from a public that sees my old industry as a blight on society . What would you have Me give it up and bust my ass for another 40 years just for the fun of it . O.K. what are you going to give up and what hard work are you going to dedicate your life too. Tell Me and Maybe we can work it out . Your behind the times . Banks are scraping lots and given them to the Government as we speak . Long range plans are already happening with out you . Your here talking about it while others are doing it lazy butt. In-gauge in life . Go to a city council meeting and speak your peace . That is the front line for you .

[United for Communism]

Me-Ki-Ga, you labored to buy your own land, and yet there are those who own massive parcels of land (in Brazil, 2/3 of the land is owned by 3% of the population), absolutely massive parcels, and in completely foreign countries, who have not labored, but are rather remnants of a feudal age. That is wrong.

[Me-Ki-Gal]

actually in America you don't really own the land . It is an illusion really . It is more like a license to drive. You follow the rules of the road but do you own the road . I know some of you drunks think you do , Bicyclist too! You don't and the proof for Me is the taxes I pay for the usage of the land . The other thing is a little law called "Emanate Domain" stating if the greater usage is for the benefit of the public then it can be taken from you . Course you are suppose to be giving fair market value for your real property. Funny how it is devalued largely at this juncture in time . Look at all those up side down properties . Makes you wonder if some peoples conspired .

This is what I hear the most over the years from supposed Real Property owners. It is my land !!! What do you mean I can't do that with my own property . You dummies out there that think like that ? You getting the picture of reality and the ownership of Real Property. Personal Property falls into a whole nother category all together . It is more like true ownership . Like you pants or your shirt . You own the shirt on your back so to speak

[United for Communism]

That completely ignores my starting point: that some people have right over land (whatever you want to call it) which entitles them to rent, compensation, despite the fact that they have not provided a service or good, that they have not improved the land.

[Me-Ki-Gal]

That completely ignores my starting point: that some people have right over land (whatever you want to call it) which entitles them to rent, compensation, despite the fact that they have not provided a service or good, that they have not improved the land.

I collect rent . I took bare land and developed it . 4 plexes and duplexes mainly . I used my own money to do it . Me equity is high because of Me sweat I put into it . I did it so some day I could retire from busting Me ass for a life time . Find a little rest from Me slave position in life . I don't think you have a realistic impression of a carpenters life . Asses and elbows is the expression of a carpenter and not until you get drummed out or make the grade do you really understand the meaning . So am I entitled to Me compensation for Me hard labors . What is life anyway? Salt mines and then die. Oh what joy that would be. So now we abolish entitlements and displace the contributors to life ? Is that fair to the slave class that dare to rise above there lowly status in life ?

I guess if land ownership was abolished you could say I get my just rewards for making the choice to develop and own land in the first place . What was I thinking ? Course I am about my fathers business . That is a natural order of events by being the son of a developer.

[Telemachus Rex]

Outright ownership of land by decree is, perhaps, the greatest injustice that can be perpetrated against the working class. This is especially true of third world countries, where workers work hard day in and day out, only to pay rent to a foreign owner, who neither works the land, and who often has never visited it; yet, he is entitled, somehow, to the productive labor of the workers.

In the US, we still haven't escaped land ownership by decree, where individuals purchase large parcels of land that they have not worked. Land ownership by homesteading is one thing (and even then, there are problems regarding length or term of ownership), but land ownership by title? That is feudalism, and is very oppressive towards the working classes who cannot have their own land.

Who is entitled to own the land, when nobody has labored to create it? If anything must be, land must be that which is common property to all men.

I think you don't understand real feudalism...in most feudal situations, land was inalienable. You could never sell it (unless one held "allodial" title, which virtually no one did save the sovereign and top tier of the nobility...and even they did not hold allodial title to all the land they controlled).

The beauty of land ownership is that land can be expensive. Expecting everyone to homestead is bullshit. Please find a place to homestead in Manhattan. Even if you abolish legal title, you'd find that there is only about a square foot per person living on that land, so you'll have lots of competition.

Sure, homesteading works if you have open and unoccupied land that few people really want, and so you're just happy *someone* is working it. We you have a nimiety of possible homesteaders and a only limited space on which they can homestead you run into problems and need to allocate the resource on a better basis than "first come, first served".

Taking Manhattan, I like living in a high rise apartment, with a doorman. Problem: I can't afford the literally millions of dollars it would take to build a high-rise, even if you give me the land for free. Luckily someone has done it for me, and they make their money by charging me monthly rent.

The same goes if I want a house in a district with great schools, but can't afford the house itself. Some nice person comes along and builds a house, then rents it to me.

That's not serfdom, that's me getting what I want out of life, even though I lack the resources to achieve the goal myself from scratch. I must make monthly payments, and in the end pay a bit more than I might have if I owned the property from the get go, but I willingly trade the rights of ownership and the obligation to pay rent to get the things that I want now.

Better if I want that house, and my friend Jim wants that same house, then we compete for it. In the end, our competition shows which of us wanted it more, and that person is (more than likely) the one who actually gets it. In the homesteader model, the first person to build the house wins all that land. Suppose I like the neighborhood, but think that a neighborhood 3 miles away is 99% as good. Jim on the other hand is OCD and this is the only place he can imagine living, and he'll be miserable anywhere else.

Too bad, Jim, I got here first, and the communists won't let you pay me to move off the land so you can take it.

Why do you hate "gains from trade"? It seems mysterious to me. I suspect (but you tell me), that you either (i) think people are stupid, and are constantly making voluntary trades where they are being cheated and losing, or (ii) are always comparing the choices people make to an "ideal world" that we do not live in. To explain the latter point better, here's an example (or both). Let's say a young woman has the ability to get work in a sweatshop, where they will pay him $1 per day to make sneakers or he can not take that job, and make $0 per day, but farm his own land and either starve in the process or just barely manage to survive. If you at that scenario and think that she should be able to farm the land, and earn a profit greater than $1 per day and never starve, then you are ignoring the hypothetical, and imposing an "ideal" solution extraneously.

You can do that hypothetically, but the real world it doesn't work. People take sweatshop jobs, for example, because they are really better than the alternatives available. It's fine to say that we wish these people had better alternatives...but you can't simply close the sweatshop and hope they appear. More troubling, you can't simply legislate better alternatives into existence either. You can vote everyone a subsidy, but the cost of the subsidy has effects that are undesirable.

Command economies don't work. Would that they did.

In fact, if you want to make communism a reality, I'd suggest you stop pushing for communism now, and instead get a degree in computer engineering and devote yourself to making better AI. The way in which a command economy might work is if you have a widely distributed, fully integrated, and sufficiently intelligent AI who gave all the commands. (Even then, it's hard to say since some of the problem i sin judging our own subjective preferences, and it is likely there is no one optimal solution.) It might be debasing for humans to base their economic lives around the will of an AI, but a good enough AI with an ability to gather local data (including data on each individual's preferences), and national data, and international data, *might* have a shot at laming communism work, so long as we turned our control to it. I don't know that an AI could be any better, but I suppose it's possible.

Humans are simply too poor at information processing to direct the economic lives of any other human. Given our long list of cognitive biases, we aren't even good at efficiently directing our own economic lives, individually...we're just better at it than anybody else would be.

This is true of land allocation as much as anything else. Price competition and commerce are a way of signaling the value we each place on a thing in a way that we ourselves cannot cheat with. Heartfelt expressions of how much I want my apartment are not enough, since we'll lie and pretend things are important to us, even if they are not. Less than heartfelt outlays of cold hard cash are something we only are prepared to give if we really do value a thing highly.

[Captain Kremmen]

I don't agree with people being born millionaires because their 14th Century ancestors were better murderers than their neighbours.

[billvon]

This is especially true of third world countries, where workers work hard day in and day out, only to pay rent to a foreign owner, who neither works the land, and who often has never visited it; yet, he is entitled, somehow, to the productive labor of the workers.

Yes. And if you own a house, you have the right to hire cleaners to clean it; they do not then get the right to live there just because they work there. If you own a house and rent it out to someone else, they do not get the right to own it simply because they live there.

but land ownership by title? That is feudalism, and is very oppressive towards the working classes who cannot have their own land.

Of course working classes can have their own land. Very, very few people in the US are so poor that they cannot afford to purchase land.

Who is entitled to own the land, when nobody has labored to create it?

Anyone who labors to pay for it.

If anything must be, land must be that which is common property to all men.

The tragedy of the commons would soon prevail, and the land would be destroyed, resulting in starvation, homelessness etc.

[kx000]

No. Owning land is okay. Identifying faults with how land ownership has been handled doesn't mean that owning land is wrong.

~String

How can you own something that has been here for 100's of 1000's of years? What made it belong to someone in the first place? ..claiming it. Well, im going to go start claiming shit.. oh wait thats how wars start. How about one more great war to go out with a bang?

[cosmictraveler]

Let us remember Cuba when the Communists lead by Fidel Castro took control. Before there was private land ownership and all of those who owned land were told that under Fidel's government it would all be confiscated and owned by the state. No one was given anything for the land they bought through the years and passed down from generation to generation. Even though they paid taxes on that property up until Communism took over. Was that the right thing to do, take property that was legally bought and taxes paid for? so Communism doesn't help anyone but those taking control because they end up owning all of it without paying anything for it. People today in Cuba must pay the state in order to keep what property they have, which is the same as taxing them as a Democratic government would do but lets the people own their own property and maintain it.

[John99]

Look at how wealthy Fidel is.

hmmmm...

someone been takin you for a loooong ride - Tony Montana

[kx000]

Let us remember Cuba when the Communists lead by Fidel Castro took control. Before there was private land ownership and all of those who owned land were told that under Fidel's government it would all be confiscated and owned by the state. No one was given anything for the land they bought through the years and passed down from generation to generation. Even though they paid taxes on that property up until Communism took over. Was that the right thing to do, take property that was legally bought and taxes paid for? so Communism doesn't help anyone but those taking control because they end up owning all of it without paying anything for it. People today in Cuba must pay the state in order to keep what property they have, which is the same as taxing them as a Democratic government would do but lets the people own their own property and maintain it.

Well if people own the government, and the government owns the land..