| 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. |