[GlobalFrog]

Contrarily to the common claim of capitalism, this wouldn’t be an optimal solution. Let’s say there are ten shepherds sharing the fields. You privatize it and in a short amount of time, there will be one shepherd left, ultra rich, and nine unemployed shepherds. So capitalism is a good system to optimize the value of the field, not its value for society.

[qPM9l3XJrF]

If that actually happens, it will be because one of the shepherds is substantially better at flock management than the others, and their financial success allows them to buy fields from the other shepherds. The other shepherds will only sell their field if the good-flock-manager shepherd makes them an attractive offer (probably enough money such that they can live off the interest for the rest of their life). Not to mention, they very well might get a job working for the good-at-flock-management shepherd, possibly even at a raise since superior profits means there's more wealth to share. (Realistically there will probably be at least 2 sheep conglomerates competing on wages to hire the best shepherds. I'm not an ideologue, I'm cool with the government intervening in the economy a little bit to break up monopolies.)

[CRConrad]

> If that actually happens, it will be because one of the shepherds is substantially better at flock management than the others, and their financial success allows them to buy fields from the other shepherds.

IFF all the other shepherds even got a cut in the privatisation, then perhaps.

But there's no guarantee of that. That's certainly not how things went down in the last major privatisation the world has seen, that of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s.