People don't necessarily have to keep up the land, what if they just buy it as a commodity that they could potentially make money or trade of in some other way that benefits them? It still seems like it would make way to a class of landowners and a class of tenants who would be subservient to them.
I am trying to understand because, at the very least, this all sounds a little bit better than what we have now, I just don't see how it would be sustainable coming from where we are coming.
As of now (and you are welcome to try and convince me otherwise, as I said, I'm more focused on what I can do to make the situation better right now), I see more potential in the idea that land belongs to no one, not a state, not an individual. Couple this with a return to a more tribal way of living where consensus is built within communities and then a similar consensus built between communities. I think these communities are already being formed now, as we speak and they're ability to solve problems efficiently would be pretty obvious if they weren't always the victims of coercion.
I think it's really impossible to come up with any substantial system or non-system that could really be sustainable if we don't first foster a culture of cooperation and interdependence and change the overall mentality from scarcity to abundance.
I am happy to learn more about your ideas though, the earlier we can find consensus with others the better :-D
If land belongs to no one - that is, no one can claim exclusive use - who gets to use a particular plot for what end?
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That could be up for discussion in the community or between different communities. When there's a dispute other communities could be invited to mediate
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So then one of the communities owns the land in question. Either way, the land is not open for anyone to come into and claim to use exclusively if its being currently used. Ownership doesn't denote that you somehow have physical possession of the land and you can take it with you. It just means that you have established that you exercise exclusive control of it. Nothing I've described would prevent what you're suggesting; it would actually facilitate it. It is likely, and advantageous, that private property owners would come together to create covenant communities like you're describing.
Private property norms seek to mitigate and help resolve disputes over the use of scarce, rivalrous resources. That's the purpose that ownership serves.
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Ok but what if the ones who would like to start these kind of communities don't have access to land? Is it really hard to imagine why some people coming from the old would paradigm would want to hoard land in various ways for various reasons? How do you prevent those who are coming into this new paradigm with old world values from acting this way?
What's wrong with softening the concept of private property rather than relying exclusively on it?
You understand I'm not arguing, right? I'm curious.
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Well, by virtue of the fact that you're engaging in a debate between opposing points, you're engaging in argumentation. Arguing doesn't mean yelling at each other :)
Again, hoarding land requires enormous use of resources unless that land is being utilized. Maintaining a nature preserve like Yosemite privately, for example, would be enormously expensive. The cost of hoarding land puts an upper limit on how much land can be hoarded just to keep it. If your concern is buying up the land to drive up the cost, developed areas would compete with those people hoarding land to provide housing for people, driving down the cost. Market forces exert a downward pressure on costs and an upward pressure on quality.
Access to land isn't a right. The only right you have is to not have your consent violated; it's the only so-called right that can be universalized to everyone. It's the reason why acts like murder and rape are always going to be immoral. Since private property extends from that (based in the exclusive control you exercise over your body, which is itself a scarce, rivalrous resource), softening on that opens the door to soften the ethical limits on trespass against individual human beings.
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As for purchasing land as a commodity, how would you prevent trespassers from attempting to utilize your land and homestead it in violation of your property ownership? You'd have to expend resources to secure it, which is in effect the upkeep of that land. Maintaining large tracts of land absent a socialized enforcement agency like government is costly (though cheaper than the funds used to that purpose currently) and it would have to be paid by the individual attempting to maintain that land as a commodity. Excluding people from unused land just to hoard it is a financially losing proposition except in the very long term, and one would have to be unimaginably wealth in order to maintain that claim over time.
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