• snake_cased@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Landownership is wrong all together.

    If you think about it, it is completely absurd, why anyone assumes the right to ‘own’ a piece of land. Or even more land than the other guy. Someone must have been the person to first come up with the idea of ownership, but it is and was never based on anything other than an idea, and we should question it.

    After all inheritance of landownership is a major cornerstone of our unjust and exploitative society.

    • UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Every generation, people want to try new things and it’s nice. But landownership can and has been and good thing in a way that just going back to “anarchy” wouldn’t work. E.g. creation of ghettos, who gets to farm the best land, etc.

      So then the suggestions are that the land are owned and “managed” by the state apparatus. Now we have a few famines in history to show us how gaining favor in a political system is not the best way to manage the land.

      I’m open to better suggestions but just shitting on land ownership seems easy and unproductive.

      • Aasikki@sopuli.xyz
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        10 months ago

        If someone owns a house, they kinda have to own at the very least some land around it. I just don’t really see any other way for that to work. Would be interesting to hear how that could work otherwise.

        • snaprails@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          There’s a thing called leasehold whereby you own the building and lease the land usually for 99 years after which it returns to the freeholder. It’s one of the reasons that the US embassy in London moved from Mayfair to Nine Elms. It was the only US embassy in the world that the US government didn’t own, the freehold belongs to the Grosvenor family (i.e. Lord Grosvenor). When the US tried to buy the freehold the Grosvenor family refused but agreed to a 999 year lease in exchange for the return of 12000 acres of Florida that was confiscated from them after the Revolutionary War - yes, they’ve been landowners for a very long time! I think the US made sure to buy the freehold of the new site at Nine Elms (they sold the remainder of the 999 year lease in Mayfair for an undisclosed sum) 😀

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          10 months ago

          This isn’t something I know a whole lot about, because I don’t believe in the abolition of private property on an individual level, but it’s my understanding the crunchy types would ask:

          What makes you think they have to own the land around it? There are plenty of home owners right now who don’t have yards.

        • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          You can rent the land too. It’s cheaper in the short term, more expensive in the long term.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Now we have a few famines in history to show us how gaining favor in a political system is not the best way to manage the land.

        Doesn’t that also mean The Irish famine shows private land ownership isn’t the best way to manage land?

        • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          The potato famine was caused by a new type of blight being brought from the Americas back to Europe.

          I don’t see how being beaten by a novel disease has anything to do with private land ownership.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            The blight affected all of Europe, yet only Ireland had severe famine because while the French government bought food for their citizens, the English government publicly declared the invisible hand of the free market would fix the famine.

            Similarly the Ukraine famine was crop failure due to bad weather conditions that affected all of Eastern Europe. The crop failure wasn’t caused by the Soviets. Yet only Ukrainians died because the Soviets shipped Ukrainian food to Moscow in the same way Irish died because of free markets shipping Irish food to London. (Yes, Ireland was still a net exporter of food during the famine.)

            When natural disasters occured it’s, “Millions died because of communism.” Yet when millions die under the free market it’s only the natural disaster and not capitalism.

          • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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            10 months ago

            They grew enough potatoes to feed the population in spite of the blight losses. However said taters fetched a higher price abroad. So fuck the poor, I guess.

              • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                Also they would have had a higher diversity of crops if not for landlords. Landlords were extorting farmers and the only way the farmers could pay the bills was with the vegetable that had the highest margin. Farmers were forced to switch from other crops to growing potatoes by their landlords.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        10 months ago

        Define for the class what you think anarchy means, and, wait one minute, you think ghettos are created by people not recognizing private land ownership?

        • UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Anarchy in 2 words, no state. It’s mostly a thing in history in opposition to something else.

          Don’t be silly, I know why ghettos are created. My point was more towards the organization of urbanization through land ownership can help.

          Now what do you propose we implement instead?

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            10 months ago

            There’s quite a lot of thought missing from your definition of anarchy, including, ya know, all of the ideas on how to make that work, and the assumption by most that it wouldn’t be an immediate process, and for someone that knows how ghettos are created, you sure used it as a criticism of an idea that would make them literally impossible, while doubling down on insisting that the thing creating ghettos can solve the ghettos if you… Do it more, and harder?

            I don’t actually believe in the dissolution of private property, at least in regards to individual land ownership, up to a certain point. I just take issue with people stating their opinions as facts, especially when they’re just flat out wrong.

            • UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca
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              10 months ago

              Yeah i was referring to the dissolution of property rights when referring to anarchy. It was more colloquial than the actual system. Yes I didn’t copy the wiki for anarchy because it was irrelevant.

              Not sure where you took the opinion as facts thing but okay…

      • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I’m pretty sure the Native Americans didn’t believe in land ownership, at least not individual land ownership, more of a communal version, and it worked out well for them. They had huge societies, vast trade networks, and were able to feed themselves fine. It requires a different, non-capitalist, non-Western mindset, but it can work.

          • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Neither was the Western population at the time, but it scaled up fine. There’s nothing saying alternative systems of land ownership can’t scale up either. The only reason we went with the current one is because it benefited the people who killed everyone else.

          • Kentifer@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Why is it that their population hasn’t grown in the same way as people with other views on land ownership, do you think? Is it because the other people were the good guys in your imagination?

      • pokexpert30@lemmy.pussthecat.org
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        10 months ago

        Holy shit I didn’t expect such a quality comment in this discussion.

        I would argue that corporations shouldn’t be able to own residential land, and regular people shouldn’t own more than two land pieces.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      People like the idea of the stability ownership offers. You can’t be kicked out of your house or off your land you own because your income dropped out lost a job. How would you suggest this stability is maintained?

      • Rev3rze@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        You’re not wrong but surely you don’t mean to say that mankind should never have discovered agriculture, right? At that point we may as well say that gaining sentience fucked everything up because it was the beginning of wilfully hurting others despite having the capacity for empathy (aka doing evil things).

        • alex@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          but surely you don’t mean to say that mankind should never have discovered agriculture, right?

          RETURN TO MONKE

          • Rev3rze@feddit.nl
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            10 months ago

            Well, you did a good job condensing where you were coming from in two paragraphs. Enough to make me realise that I mistook your original meaning completely. I hadn’t heard the 6 hours of work a week number before. In fact, I’ve never really questioned the logic I was taught with regards to agriculture being the start of civilisation due to freeing up hands and allowing people to settle down, because hunter gatherers would have to roam around at least a little to follow herds or seasonal effects on available forage. That understanding was based on what I’ve learned in history 101 at high school though.

            I started out a bit argumentative because I read your comment as an overly dramatic lamentation that I took to mean something like: “people are so bad I wish we weren’t born/evolved”. Thanks for taking the time to kindly explain. I’m always interested in having a possible blind spot or internalised assumption revealed and to reassess entrenched beliefs.

            • Zoop@beehaw.org
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              10 months ago

              Their previous comment read the same way to me, too; just so you know it’s not only you that thought that’s what they meant.

              Sometimes when I misinterpret something, I wonder if I’m the only one, or if others would’ve interpreted it similarly, so I can take that information and have a better idea of how to move forward and learn from the situation. So, I dunno, just thought I’d say something just in case you’re similar ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Unfortunately land will fall into disrepair if someone doesn’t actually own it. They have no incentive to invest in its upkeep if it can just be taken away at any moment. There’s a reason rental buildings have a reputation for being unkempt, the renters don’t want to pay for the upkeep since it’s not theirs and the landlords don’t want to pay for the upkeep because they don’t live there.

      It gets even worse if government owns it, it would take 6 months just to get a light bulb changed let alone a new roof or hedges trimmed.

      • Varan1@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Land that falls into “disrepair” has already been savaged, devastated and altered by greedy human hands in the first place.

      • ruplicant@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        so i guess over 20% of houses in Austria, Netherlands, or Denmark have no lights and leaking roofs. if only those people got their own…

      • snake_cased@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        That might be the case in your country, but there are many cultures that are perfectly capable of sharing and keeping common infrastructure in good conditions. Your personal experience isn’t generic and globally true.

        A country’s land should not be owned by individuals, in my opinion, but used by those who need it and when they do so. A country’s land is what makes it a land, so it cannot be owned or sold. Someone inheriting it from someone who took it and maybe sold it should give no legitimate claim to possession.