[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.

[vidarh]

I think you're right that codifying what had previously existed as a de facto but no de jure right certainly was a direct response to increasing pressure from landowners to limit access.

Norway was in a similar situation in that until the 1950's the right was implicit - the one major area of law which was not codified because it was seen as so self-evident that it wasn't considered necessary (Sweden, in contrast, has it embedded in its constitution) - until pressure from land owners who increasingly started blocking off land in ways which violated of centuries of tradition made it clear it needed to be codified so it could be defended in court.

It's seen as integral enough to Norwegian culture that it's taught in primary school.

[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.

[scatters]

They are an elastic resource. The amount being created is responsive to demand.

Also, they're substitutable; if people can't afford classic cars, they'll buy art, or wine, or yachts, or Rolexes, or a thousand other luxury goods. Land is only imperfectly substitutable, and it substitution has definite economic costs.

[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.

[ChuckNorris89]

>The state intervening more in housing should be the last resort, not the first.

Agree that too much gov regulations push prices up, but like it or not, the gov intervention is a necessary evil for quality housing that has infrastructure and won't fall on you after 10 years. Where I'm from in Eastern Europe housing is affordable due to the lack of gov regulations as developers go crazy and just build anything everywhere but those buildings while nice looking and modern, have no good infrastructure anywhere near them as neither the developers nor the government wants to spend money on it. So you get apartment buildings with no paved roads or parking lots, no schools, no kindergartens, no doctors, no bus stops, no parks or green spaces. Awful. Gov regulation could fix this but also make buildings more expensive for the developers and for the end buyers. In the end you can't just leave everything to the "free market".

>Realise that most people have property because their parents or grandparents worked hard and sacrificed for years or decades or their whole lives

Or, they got lucky to be born in a time when real estate, even in now red hot metro areas, was far cheaper for the average worker/family, as was getting education and a stable career and raising a family.

Saying hard work and sacrifice is the key ingredient to getting rich is massive survivorship bias and young people have wised up to this fact.

>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.

That's so untrue for Western Europe where the wealthiest families go back hundreds of years, and due to high taxes and low skilled wages you can't really move to the top 1%.

In Austria, the country's top 100 richest people own a third of the wealth in the entire country, and during the covid pandemic, the gap between them and everyone else got even wider while they got richer and everyone else poorer. One city already voted a communist mayor into power. Their wealth goes back centuries and hasn't been lost in 3 generations and will survive 3 more generations.

[robertlagrant]

It's hard to debate without citations. Here are two things:

> Saying hard work and sacrifice is the key ingredient to getting rich

I didn't say it's the key to getting rich. I said they worked extremely hard (no holidays / long hours of hard jobs / making sure their kids prioritised school and working hard) to ensure their descendents could afford something. Not get rich. Afford something.

> is massive survivorship bias

I'm not saying that these things guarantee a home. They're just the most likely path to getting one.

[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.