[dub]

"It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.... Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right"

- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire

Full letter: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...

[benj111]

So when people talk about the founding fathers and what they had in mind when they wrote the constitution, typically in relation to gun laws, it should also be pointed out that the constitution should have run out after 19 years?

I actually quite like this. The US constitution has been elevated to some quasi religious document where everyone interprets it how they want to interpret it. A bi decadal debate on what it should actually say would be useful. Although it would take politicians longer than that to actually agree.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I feel you are commingling negative rights with regulations .

The constitution provided "negative" rights to the people and individual states. Negative rights are rights that exist unless someone acts to negate them. This means the constitution affirms that people and states get to keep all priviledges, unless specifically enumerated as priviledges of the federal government.

So, if the Federal government starts with nothing, the right end state for the for the government to end with nothing.

This is quite different from the inertia you see today in Federal government regulatory growth.

Going back to the current discussion, negative rights dont lapse since they define the starting point. It is only regulations (I.e. anything that comes outside of the constitution) which is subject to reset.

[benj111]

Negative rights, are rights to be free from something. Eg cruel and unusual punishment.

Also the quote started "It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution"

So I don't see what's wrong talking about the constitution.

[harshreality]

Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default.

By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized.

Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.

[galangalalgol]

In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".

[tekknik]

How is the second amendment ambiguous? It’s one of the more clear written rights we have.

[jjk166]

What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so?

The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.

[jfengel]

It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error.

Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require).

As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.

[tekknik]

Militia has a legal definition, as does arms. Bearing them seems clear to me, ability to use them.

Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights.

If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right? It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.

[baryphonic]

Keep in mind that Thomas Jefferson had no part in writing the Constitution (he was in France) and was a significant opponent of it. People like Alexander Hamilton thought that not only should the Constitution be permanent, but that it should also provide for an elected king.

[hasbot]

Some interesting discussion here: https://www.quora.com/What-did-Thomas-Jefferson-oppose-about...

[ballenf]

As a sibling explains, it's important to understand the ground state. The ground state assumption is that citizens have all these rights (speech, arms, religion, etc). Narrowing or abrogating these rights is where laws come in.

The opposition at the time to the Bill of Rights was that it would confuse people into thinking the rights came out of the constitution instead of from nature.

[bena]

Jefferson was certainly of the mind that documents like the Constitution needed to be overhauled about once or twice a generation.

People like to talk about "the founding fathers" as if they were of a singular mind about things. But they were very much not. They were so much not that the Vice President of the United States literally shot the former Secretary of Treasury over various disagreements.

So, you know, they weren't exactly 100% with each other.

[tekknik]

Why does this control discussion lead to guns more often than not? Why can the anti-gunners not accept that guns are not going anywhere anytime soon?

You will not get 2/3’s of the states to listen to you inferring gun owners are criminals.

[kashunstva]

> inferring gun owners are criminals.

The comment to which you’re responding made no such inference.

[tekknik]

Oh sure they did. If the assumption that gun owners weren’t doing something wrong then the subject wouldn’t come up.

[ChuckNorris89]

>"It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.... Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire

IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time. How can we say with a straight face that granting people, institutions or corporate entities rights to own a piece of the Planet Earth in perpetuity, forever, is fair or a good thing that is sustainable? It might have sounded good 300-500 years ago when new land was constantly discovered (cough conquered/taken cough) but what happens when the land pie runs out? Do we just say "tough shit mate, you should have been born 50 years ago when land was still available and affordable for everyone, or you should have been born in a family with inherited land ownership"?

It's a hot take but I think land should be only leased for a limited time, like the max lifespan of a person, ~100 years or so, and then expire, never owned in perpetuity by any individual or corporation.

[PM_me_your_math]

What you're saying, however, is that the government owns the land in perpetuity, and only lets you live there. That sounds familiar and oddly like serfdom.

The USA has 1.9 billion acres. Developed urban areas account for only 3.5% of this area. If you count other, non-urban areas with more than 30 people per square mile, then the occupation of habitable land constitutes less than 6%.

Accounting for mountains and bodies of water, Earth has 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres (43%) of habitable land. Humanity is only 1/100th of the total biomass on this planet.

Less than 15% of earth is either an urban area or occupied for agricultural use. And 95% of the world’s population is concentrated in just 10% of the land.

Land is generally affordable. Land in areas not yet fully developed is actually quite inexpensive. You can pick up 40 acres of land in Montana for $20,000 USD, and they'll even throw in some livestock and feed.

Property in developed population centers increase in price because of scarcity and market conditions. That's the product of living in an area that has recursive development, amenities, limited supply, and practically unlimited demand.

This leads to an inevitable conclusion. We have plenty of land and plenty of resources. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell something. With this in mind, you could double the population of the planet and still not use a third of the habitable land. As it turns out, Earth is really, really big.

[idiotsecant]

I'd like to see this 40 acres with free cattle for 20k. Your argument is fine, no need to embellish.

[PM_me_your_math]

Thanks. It is not an embellishment, however. There are programs that create incentives for moving to rural or sparsely populated areas.

[tekknik]

I’ve seen some properties like this. What they didn’t tell you is there is no road access, you’re surrounded by gov land (and they want your plot to finish the set), and you generally won’t be able to access the land without an easement. That’s why the cattle are still there, they can’t get a truck in there to move them.

[NavinF]

That sounds great until you spend 5 minutes thinking about it...

What do you do with the $500k home sitting on the $80k land that just got repossessed?

Why would anyone take care of their 98 year old land if they know it's gonna disappear in a few years? Are you gonna fine every person that goes right up against the line (regarding environmental laws for example) without crossing the line? By the time you get to the expired land, it will be a defacto landfill.

Can people choose to lease a specific plot of land and if so does the term reset to 100? Why not pass property around the family back and forth forever?

Who sets the price of a lease? Use gov't prices and the deadweight loss kills your economy. Use market prices and every lease will cost about the same as buying land in our existing system.

[mcv]

All of this has already been thought about. In Amsterdam, for example, you don't own the ground that your home is on; you lease it from the city. Extending that lease is automatic, but technically, eventually everything reverts back to the city. And if you still need it, you lease it from the city again, for whatever the city now thinks the land is worth. That way the city continues to benefit from private development of the city.

[red_admiral]

Is this basically Georgism? Or is there some important distinction I'm missing?

[mcv]

I don't know. I'm not familiar with Georgism. It's called "erfpacht" in Dutch, and it's an old practice. Amsterdam is the only city I'm aware of that does it on this scale, but it's not unheard of elsewhere.

[andyjohnson0]

Google translation of the Dutch wikipedia page for "erfpacht" [1] translates it as "Ground lease" and suggests it is used in various countries including the Netherlands, about which there's a large section. I don't know how well the translation is w/r/t technical terms, but it reads ok to me.

[1] https://nl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Erfpacht?_x_t...

[quickthrower2]

Is this like ground rent in the UK for leasehold property? This is a thing but usually a fairly insignificant cost as long as you keep renewing it with decades to spare.

[vidarh]

The UK has leaseholds, which do run out. Typically it means the value of a property drops as a lease gets short, and so you're incentivised to pay to extend the lease to remove the uncertainty.

This is not a new invention.

[tekknik]

Singapore has them as well.

[ChuckNorris89]

> That sounds great until you spend 5 minutes thinking about it...

You and I don't have to think about this for five minutes as that's too little time and we're not qualified, but I'm sure if we round up all the top economists and university graduates of the G20 countries and put them together in a luxury resort in the alps to brain storm for a few months, I'm sure they'll be able to come up with a better economic land lease model than the system we have now which only encourages multi generational, winner-takes-all, land hoarding scheme for rent seeking purposes, where the earliest who got in the market got a great deal which they can use as leverage to acquire more land over time, and the ones getting into the market now are completely priced out and screwed as the pie is fixed in size and has already been called dibs on.

Basically, we need a system that resets the monopoly board from time to time as currently you're entering the game from square one while others inherited a better starting position with more assets to boot.

I'm sure such a system could be designed if desired but that's not what's desired as the elites and people in power with entrenched wealth don't want to lose their position on the board.

[scatters]

This has already been solved. The solution is a land value tax.

[ChuckNorris89]

Maybe the land value taxes are (intentionally) too low for the super rich who own lots of land?

Maybe we need a differential land tax system that's very low taxes for small areas intended for personal living(shelter), and taxes that go up progressively the more land you own, especially if you use it to rent-seek. It should discourage land hoarding and feudalistic rent seeking.

@benj111 That was just an example off the top of my head. Obviously more qualified people than me can come with a sensible model that accounts for farms and other land used by businesses who need it. My main idea was to discourage rent seeking not farms and other businesses who contribute to society.

[tekknik]

What is the definition of too much land? If I save up for my entire life making $100k a year across the family and buy 100acres should the gov be able to tax me off that land?

[benj111]

How would farms fit in this model?

[llampx]

Where has this been solved and a land value tax implemented?

[scatters]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Implementation

[avar]

People have spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it. There's a 2018 book called Radical Markets[1] that explores alternative models for various entranced economic systems, such as property ownership, voting etc. There's a free podcast interview with the author online[2].

The tl;dr is that you'd decide what your $500k home is worth. You could choose to say it's worth $80k, $500k etc. You'd then pay property tax as a function of what you decided it's worth.

The catch is that you'd be obligated to sell it at the price you selected if a buyer showed up.

In economics lingo one thing you can optimize for is "investment efficiency", or "allocation efficiency". Traditional land ownership is the canonical example of the former, someone else might be able to make better use of your land ("allocation efficiency"), but they don't own it, so tough luck.

Turning all "land ownership" into what's basically a mandatory bidding system is a way of maximizing allocation efficiency, you'd optimize for (re)allocating land to someone who can most efficiently use it.

The authors spend a lot of time discussing the various edge cases, and in particular the normal knee-jerk responses someone might have.

In particular you can set a system like this up in such a way that a "mandatory buyout" would be a fantastic deal for a given homeowner, e.g. the equivalent of having someone offer you $1 million for your $500k house.

1. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...

2. https://www.econtalk.org/glen-weyl-on-radical-markets/

[anshorei]

To me my house is worth a lot more than it is to the market because to me it has an emotional value. A mandatory buyout assumes that people do not have emotional bonds with their homes. Do you suggest one adjusts their estimate of the value twice, or thrice as high to prevent a mandatory buyout? How is that fair to those people?

[Jiro]

You also end up taxing actual value that can only be used by one person. If your house is close to your job or your parents, or if your children or if your children have gone to school the previous 5 years in the neighborhood and don't want to leave their friends, you'd be willing to pay more to keep it. Now, you actually have to pay more to keep it.

We shouldn't be taxing people on the fact that their house is near their job. And if they don't raise the price of their house, someone will eventually buy it at the market value of the house, and the value will simply have been destroyed.

[webstrand]

It also sounds like a great way to harass people. Don't like your new black neighbor? Just force him out by buying his house for the tax price. Ideally he'll have a little more money than he started with, but I could see other social institutions, like trouble obtaining another loan, preventing the re-homing of "undesirables".

[avar]

You're just focusing on the downside without considering the upside.

Maybe you want to go see a movie you've been dying to see tomorrow, and you've got your $100 tickets in hand.

But there's someone else in the same situation, but they'd really like to see it. If a market exists they could offer you $1000, and you'd both be happier, as you can now afford something you'd prefer more than the $100 activity.

The same goes for real estate, it's just a less liquid market currently.

[avar]

You're assuming that emotional value cleanly maps to current real estate ownership. What if you'd like to re-purchase a house your family lost in the last recession, but which your family had been living in for generations?

The status quo effectively leaves you without a recourse if the current owner isn't willing to sell, the system noted upthread assumes that emotional bonds to real estate can be priced.

[benj111]

Or you could do the opposite. Declare a value of $1 and keep selling it between 2 people.

House purchases aren't quick so you'd only need to do a few a year.

[LadyCailin]

Surely each offer round becomes a bidding round, rather than a simple purchase.

[girvo]

I wonder if under that system the culture that leads to emotional connection to some particular spot of land and home on top of it would decline?

It’s not universal worldwide to have the emotional connect we do to our homes

[tekknik]

How would it? The emotional connection comes from the memories made in that home. You’re still raising kids, still growing up in these homes. So my guess is no.

[PhasmaFelis]

> The catch is that you'd be obligated to sell it at the price you selected if a buyer showed up.

Forcing people to sell their home and get out, any time some rich guy comes along and decides he likes the neighborhood, seems like a terrible idea.

[yourapostasy]

> The catch is that you'd be obligated to sell it at the price you selected if a buyer showed up.

A modification to that I read somewhere which I like is the buyer has to put in a cash over the barrel offer. Completely unencumbered cash for a period too long for any leveraged investor to tolerate. And enforcing that "cash"'ness is the courts will not enforce claims upon the property based upon pledging it as collateral for say, 2X median population lifespan years.

I'd also want to see a natural person exception and a bounty. If you are a natural person (non-corporate entity, real human), then your home is exempted from the bidding system. But if someone figures out a natural person individual claimed two or more properties under the exemption for some period (say a year and a day) or longer, then that someone gets their choice of properties illegally claimed under the exemption, with instant eviction enforced by the state immediately after the court-supported decision.

The intent of the modification is to disallow hacking the bidding system by tapping credit markets far beyond the reach of median homeowners and systematically outbidding them.

[avar]

If your nightmare scenario is that credit markets are going to offer you your arbitrary asking price for your house I'd like to live in your nightmares :)

[Dylan16807]

Huh? All the nightmares are around forced moves, not offers.

[ayende]

In Israel, for example, a lot of land is not "sold", but leased by the state to people. In practical terms, there is no real difference.

Technically speaking, the lease terms are 49 / 98 years. The problem is that when you reach the end of the lease, there is no real possibility of _not_ extending the lease. And the lease is for the _land_, not anything on top of that.

So it "sounds" nice, but in practical terms, it just adds another body that you have to go through.

From economic perspective, there is very little difference between the two. A bank will give you a mortgage to buy a house whose "land lease" expire next year, for example. Because there is no possibility of that not being extended.

There is _slight_ advantage to buying houses not leased, but mostly because that means somewhat less paperwork to go through.

[ChuckNorris89]

That lease system just sounds like land ownership with extra steps.

[Retric]

It requires active renewal which has implications. For example abandoned property is acquired by the state.

[code_duck]

That’s essentially how things work in the US with property tax. If a landowner fails to pay property tax for some extended period, eventually the government will seize the property and auction it off to fulfill the tax debt.

[ejb999]

that also happens in the USA already. There are tax auctions all the time.

[Tangurena2]

Some states allow the person/org who failed to pay the taxes on time to "redeem" the debt (pay it off). So this means that for several years after you acquire the property, there is a risk that it will revert to the previous owner.

Some tax auctions are only for the right to collect the tax. In those states, you never can acquire ownership. You just get a lien.

And some tax auctions are for worthless strips of land. I've seen some that were essentially the strip of grass between a parking lot and the street. The shopping mall had a permanent easement to put a driveway through that grass (if they wanted) and there was no possible way to make ownership of that 10 foot wide (and several hundred feet long) strip of lawn to be useful. Plus, you get to pay property taxes for something you can't live on.

Tax auctions are a wild west of buyer beware.

[lelanthran]

> IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time.

Why limit ownership restrictions to land ownership only?

Private ownership of property (not limited to land) is foundational for functioning democracies; some would even go as far as saying it's foundational for society.

Those societies that went your route of "from each according to his abilities to each according to his need" turned out very badly.

[arethuza]

Where I live we have a "right to roam" over other peoples land as long as we behave sensibly and follow some simple restrictions - seems to work perfectly well.

[jonasdegendt]

If I'm understanding correctly you're implying that we can have the concept of individual land ownership, whilst not restricting general access of said land, yes?

This is all fine and very nice when it comes to your ability to take a leisurely stroll in the countryside, but it is only such a small facet of the actual issue at hand: Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility. This is one of the reasons why a city like San Francisco has thousands of homeless people and almost no high density housing.

[vidarh]

You need both. Freedom to roam in Scandinavia goes much further than the right to a stroll, and includes e.g. foraging and camping, but you're right it doesn't solve the issue of ownership.

To me the freedom to roam is more valuable as an example of how property rights the way they are elsewhere is a huge infringement on liberty in that it massively restricts the general public to the benefit of individual owners.

Once you've experienced it, it is hard not to feel walled in and unfree when you move somewhere without that right.

As such, it is reasonable to discuss which other aspects of property rights ought to be curtailed if one wants to maximise liberty for all.

[arethuza]

"Once you've experienced it, it is hard not to feel walled in and unfree when you move somewhere without that right."

I completely agree, I was referring to Scotland where the Right to Roam was introduced relatively recently - I suspect to counterbalance the existing historical land ownership position which is very complex and opaque.

[robertlagrant]

> Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility. This is why a city like San Francisco has thousands of homeless people and almost no high density housing.

I think you'd need to cite why this is the sole explanation for the scale of SF's homeless population.

[jonasdegendt]

Valid remark, I rephrased for my claim to be a bit less absolute.

[prottog]

> Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility

Land value taxes (in the Georgist/Geoist manner) will ensure that a very valuable parcel of land, such as the one in the middle of San Francisco, will not have a low-value improvement such as a parking lot or a single-story dwelling on top of it.

Too bad that the actual policy we have instead is stuff like Prop 13 and rent control, which all but assures that such higher-value development will not happen.

[scatters]

Land is different from other forms of property and capital. Its supply is almost completely inelastic, and it derives the largest proportion of its value from the efforts of others.

[robertlagrant]

The same could be said for a business that rents out classic cars.

[scatters]

Where do you think classic cars come from? Classic cars are constantly being created as existing cars age into that bracket.

[robertlagrant]

Sure, and people buy them up, just as they buy land. They're a finite resource.

[prottog]

> it derives the largest proportion of its value from the efforts of others

We already know how to solve for this, via land value taxes. No need to remove private ownership to fix that.

[scatters]

Yes, I should have mentioned land value taxes. Depending on the level, they reduce or eliminate the property interest in the rental value of the land itself, while preserving the usufruct and stewardship aspects, crucially allowing the owner to take full property ownership of and benefit from the improvements they make to the land.

[pbhjpbhj]

Which societies have tried your quoted route? The only communist countries I know about never made it to communist but were very early in the process taken over by dictators who very much took more than their need and certainly inhibited the sharing of abilities.

You're right though, inheritance taxes on all assets help to iron out such issues; but in general the ruling classes avoid most taxes (and often laws in general) and aren't keen to enforce their application.

[lelanthran]

> Which societies have tried your quoted route? The only communist countries I know about never made it to communist but were very early in the process taken over by dictators who very much took more than their need and certainly inhibited the sharing of abilities.

That's just a different way of saying that it isn't practical. Consider Communism as a goal. Communism is a goal that is often attempted but is never achieved.

When no one can implement something in practice, it's the something that's the problem, not the people.

> You're right though, inheritance taxes on all assets help to iron out such issues; but in general the ruling classes avoid most taxes (and often laws in general) and aren't keen to enforce their application.

Firstly, it's ridiculously easy to dodge inheritance taxes if you're rich.

Secondly, going down the path of "if you, personally, didn't earn something, we will confiscate it from you" historically never worked out well.

[Dylan16807]

> Secondly, going down the path of "if you, personally, didn't earn something, we will confiscate it from you" historically never worked out well.

Never? Not even for a medium percentage?

Also this isn't confiscation. An inheritance is not something you already own. The tax steps in during the transfer process.

[ChuckNorris89]

You misunderstood, I wasn't advocating for communism but our current system is definitely flawed and unsustainable long term.

So you're telling me that we should allow people to own pieces of the planet earth forever? Sorry, but how is that sustainable? How is it fair the someone gets to own large swaths of the planet and use it as leverage to buy even more of it, just because his great granddad came to an empty country and got land basically for free which now make his grandchildren millionaire landlords even though they didn't contribute to society in any way to earn what they have and if they were to buy their property at current market rate they wouldn't be able to afford even 10% of it.

This may have been the foundation of societies, thousands or hundreds of years ago, but what was the population of the earth back then and what is it now? This system is not sustainable, and just like laws, it should be updated to account for current conditions.

Our current system is flawed as it just comes around full circle to creating a society of a few landlords owning most of the property and assets and the peasantry which can't afford to own anything. And looking back on history we know how that usually ends. We need a new system that resets the monopoly board fairly instead of waiting for social uprisings to boil due to increased wealth inequality.

[lelanthran]

> So you're telling me that we should allow people to own pieces of the planet earth forever?

Which country allows this? All "land-owners" pay land taxes, and if you stop paying "your" land will be confiscated.

> just because his great granddad came to an empty country and got land basically for free which now make his grandchildren millionaire landlords even though they didn't contribute to society in any way to earn what they have

And now we're back to the argument "to each according to his need". Until/unless you are willing to ruthlessly enforce that nobody gets anything unless they, personally, earn it, there will be large numbers of people who will have stuff that they did not earn.

Arguments along the lines of "to each according to his need" are broken, almost by design.

> We need a new system that resets the monopoly board fairly instead of waiting for social uprisings to boil due to increased wealth inequality.

IIRC, the last time I checked, the countries with the least wealth inequality were those with the strongest private ownership laws.

If it's wealth inequality you're targetting, then strong economies help. Countries with restrictions on ownership mostly, with some outliers, fare poorly on wealth inequality.

[robertlagrant]

> How is it fair the someone gets to own large swaths of the planet

No person owns large swathes of our planet.

> I wasn't advocating for communism

Hard to know where else commenters are going if they're saying the government should be allowed to seize property from people it defines as "people who deserve to have their property seized".

> This system is not sustainable, and just like laws, it should be updated to account for current conditions.

A large factor in current conditions is the constriction of supply by regulation. Trying to socially engineer cities has vote-winning, short term positive consequences (rent control means your rent doesn't change! Hooray!) and predictable but overlooked non-short term enormous negative consequences (it's not worth landlords' time to upkeep properties! It's only worth building luxury apartments!)

Before we say "the government should just come in and take property in the name of redistribution, the way they did in the USSR", perhaps we should consider some alternatives. Saying "there's a problem; here's a solution; if you disagree with my solution than you are saying there's no problem" is a syllogism as old as time.

[ChuckNorris89]

I never said the people should have their property seized like in comunism and that the government should redistribute it. But i can't endorse the current system either. Surely a better system can be designed if we put smart people up to it, no?

What's your solution? All you did was call me and everyone who thinks the current system is wrong, a commie.

>A large factor in current conditions is the constriction of supply by regulation.

Yes, which is why we're in this mess. It's a rigged system masquerading as the free market. Those who own property have vested interest in increasing the value of what they own and use it as leverage to buy more, at the expense of those who don't own and wish to buy in.

[robertlagrant]

> What's your solution? All you did was call me and everyone who thinks the current system is wrong, a commie.

No. I didn't do that, and I didn't only do that.

> It's a rigged system masquerading as the free market. Those who own property have vested interest in increasing the value of what they own and use it as leverage to buy more, at the expense of those who don't own and wish to buy in.

It is nowhere near a free market, and I don't believe it pretends to be.

> What's your solution?

My personal solution is to do the following:

Realise that most people have property because their parents or grandparents worked hard and sacrificed for years or decades or their whole lives to give a transformationally different life to their descendents.

This can't happen overnight or via regulation.

Take a hard look at the long term effects of policies that are short-term vote winners. The state intervening more in housing should be the last resort, not the first.

Undermine envy by remembering that most families with wealth lose it within 3 generations, and that many people move into the top 1% of earners during their lifetimes, if only for while.

I don't know if that would work for anyone else, though.

[pbhjpbhj]

You can apply all the logic you want, people who got there first (eg own land through inheritance) find a way to dismiss it.

[robertlagrant]

The issue isn't logic. It's in worldview.

If you're more left wing, you probably view the state as a parent who can be trusted to confiscate and dole things out fairly.

If you're right wing you probably view the state as a necessary evil for providing specific services that can't be provided fairly purely through people making agreements with each other.

If you're the former, you may well think that the state seizing property in the name of redistribution will solve more problems than it causes. If you're the latter, it's the other way round.

[xienze]

> IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time. How can we say with a straight face that granting people, institutions or corporate entities rights to own a piece of the Planet Earth in perpetuity, forever, is fair or a good thing that is sustainable?

Who's granting people perpetual ownership of a piece of land? Once you stop paying taxes on it, the state will take it back.

> but I think land should be only leased for a limited time, like the max lifespan of a person, ~100 years or so, and then expire, never owned in perpetuity by any individual or corporation.

I mean in a practical sense this is exactly what happens. You die -> taxes are no longer paid on the land -> someone else gets it. That "someone else" is either an heir who is now paying tax on it, or its sold to someone else entirely.

[insane_dreamer]

China has something like this (when you “buy” property you’re actually getting a 70 year lease from the government) and I can tell you that it’s a huge problem (no one wants to pay again for property they already paid for)

[simonh]

As has been pointed out leases are a thing and work just fine, but many of the objectives you're after could better be achieved through a land value tax. Most of the value of a piece of land is usually derived from it's location relative to other facilities and infrastructure that were not created by the land owner, so it seems reasonable to return a share of that 'excess' value to the public purse.

[manicdee]

What is the practical outcome of this?

Do I camp outside Microsoft headquarters then walk in on day 1 of year 101 and say, “this is mine now”?

Where I live we have leasehold land so titles theoretically extinguish after 99 years. What has happened in practise is that the lease just auto-renews, making the situation no different to freehold apart from the paperwork.

[mcv]

> Do I camp outside Microsoft headquarters then walk in on day 1 of year 101 and say, “this is mine now”?

You'd probably have to outbid Microsoft for it. I don't think land should ever be free for the taking for whoever claims it first; It should belong to society and you purchase use rights from society.

[robertlagrant]

There is no "society", though. Who actually owns it and decides? The state? A local body? Who do you give all the power over the land to, if you're removing its ownership from individuals?

[ChuckNorris89]

The state owns the land and will lease it to any individual, with the price being determined by the free market, same how property prices are determined today. Whoever can afford the most, gets it.

Best of both worlds. You discourage real estate speculative and hoarding for rent seeking purposes and still have the free market competition determining the prices.

Once your lease is up you can renew it at current market prices if you want it and can afford it. If not, then you make way for someone else to take up the lease.

[robertlagrant]

I don't know why you'd want a system where a rich person can take the land your house is on if they can pay £1 more than you for it every so often, unless you're a fan of the feudal system.

I also don't see how it discourages speculative investment. If nothing you own is really yours for very long then you're much more likely to have your property bought from under you if it's in a desirable area. As an investor I would want to do that if I believe I could rent it out at a profit.

[xkcd-sucks]

A modest proposal: Do land rights the way Nature intends, i.e. one's territory is that which one can physically defend against incursion by conspecifics. Social groups are okay. Acceptable tool use will have to be determined by the courts.

[cinntaile]

Don't deviate too much from the zeitgeist or they'll downvote you to oblivion. It will also cause tears in the spacetime fabric.