A libertarian argument that I recollect is that all land should be privatized because if the land is more valuable as a park the market will turn it into a private park and it will be available to be a park, however if it is more valuable for the land to be something else then market forces will naturally turn it into its most valuable use. When land is being used in its most valuable way it has the most positive effect on GDP.
As a demonstration of this, at minute 8 in this video of Walter Block talking about public and private land you can see him mention GDP. I have not and will not watch the full video but I'll assume his argument is along the lines of what I remember hearing him talk about in the past.
This makes logical sense, however the question is whether increased GDP is the most important aspect? We have can think of how a coal mine sickens those living around it, however in a libertarian view those sickened can sue the coal mine and it will be destroyed financially. I am not sure if science is good enough to establish the correlation between the coal mine and lets say cancer onset after 20 years. Also, by the time cancer is occurring no one cares about being compensated with money from a suit. I am not saying they wont sue, I am saying I doubt it will matter to them. The GDP was increased by the coal mine temporarily, before it was shutdown by lawsuits, but the cost obviously isn't worth it.
Now to be more specific about land. Yes it makes logical sense if land is being used in its most valuable way, which may not be as a park it will increase GDP the most. The point of increasing GDP is for the prevention and alleviation of poverty. The point of a richer population is to have a happier population. There is evidence that an increase in GDP leads to an increase in happiness according to this happiness economics Wikipedia entry. It currently says citation needed, but it makes logical sense.
However, what if a study that examines the correlation removes outliers and extreme cases? Statistically, an extreme case can greatly effect a mean or median. For example if you compared the US and Mexico or a richer country and a slightly less rich country would GDP have more of an effect than cultural influences? What if you compare a town in middle America to a village that has all the food and shelter it needs but no money? There would be huge difference in GDP but would there be a huge difference in happiness? If you compare a town in middle America with a town undergoing a famine there may the same difference in GDP and most likely a huge difference in happiness would be expected, so I am asking what if you removed these extreme cases, or only include cases where there is an abundance of food in both societies but a huge difference in GDP? This would help us get to the real evidence of whether GDP is the most important goal for an economy or society, or should we focus on other things. As an example see the original affluent society which I will write a separate article about.
Now once again to be more specific about land, what if an increased in GDP is achieved by converting all public parks to private parks? People would have less recreational choices. Also perhaps less choices of modes to survival, for those who get their meat from hunting and fishing for example. I doubt whether there has ever been a study to see what effect an increase in GDP has on the happiness of a population when that increase is purely from the privatization of public parks. I think we can assume most current public land would not be turned naturally into private parks through market forces, so allowing the market to take over may result in the privatization of most public parks.
Thank you for your time and appreciate your sharing of opinions. With love because you were born equal and good.