Thread: Land Distribution Communism/Capitalism Hybrid

A variant to the current land distribution system, which I've been thinking about for a while is to make land un-sellable, and give everyone equal ownership. Essentially there would be a currency issued and land could be rented with this currency, but the currency could only be traded by way of lending it. So if there were 200 acres of land and 20 people, perhaps 2000 units of currency could be printed and each person would get 100 units. Not all acres are of the same value, so some of them would command a higher price than others. Maybe the lending period is 1 year.

So a fine land plot of 10 acres might go for 200 credits, while a poor desert plot of 5 acres might go for 1/2 a credit. A person wishing to have the 10 acre plot would need to borrow credits from someone else to get 200. Another person might lend out their 100 credits for a sum of normal money. At the end of the year, the current owner of the 10 acre plot gets back his 100 credits, as does the person he borrowed from, and if he wants to keep using the 10 acre plot, he'll have to negotiate another borrow so he can give the government 200 credits again (if the bid stayed at 200).


It's complicated, but if a society were using it people would be able to figure it out.

The main advantage is you can never permanently sell your share of ownership in the nation's land and resources. If a person wants to work less, they could lend out their land credits to other, more ambitious people, and just live in a shack somewhere using the income from the lend to supplement their income. I don't know if that all by itself would be enough income to live on or not. Probably not, but it would help.

The philosophical backing is the idea that ownership of land should never be permanently lose-able. Just like at some point in history we decided that human labor should never be permanently lose-able (by way of selling oneself into slavery.) Labor can only be rented. (Paid for daily as a job.) If land could only be rented also, then a lot of issues of economic equality would be helped by that change.

I like your idea in lots of ways, it seems to have the benefit of making people more equal. Perhaps this would work best in areas where land is plentiful and another more development friendly system implement for city centre developments where land is usual very limited and expensive.

Yeah. In the city a person would never be able to afford a plot of land on their own. They'd constantly have to rent others' credits.

However, it's likely there would be a market where people could do this more-or-less anonymously. Brokers would be gathering credits from a large number of credit lenders and offering them in large volumes to the highest bidder. Probably if you wanted to lend your credits out you'd just go to the credit lender shop down the street and see what the going price was (in ordinary money). Then if you liked the price, you'd lend your credits to them, and they'd go find a renter.

For renters it would be the same. Just go find a credit lending shop. It wouldn't be some huge crisis every time the re-lending period came around to get enough credits to re-rent the land. There'd be plenty of middle men to smooth it all out.

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Originally Posted by Stanley514

A variant to the current land distribution system, which I've been thinking about for a while is to make land un-sellable, and give everyone equal ownership.

1)What about all other natural resources?

Good point. Being in control of a section of land should not include mineral rights. Perhaps the government could set a price on the minerals, and charge per kilogram extracted or something. (Using regular money, instead of credits.)

That is really a better way for a government to raise funds rather than using taxes. Hopefully the government will be very greedy and charge quite a lot, so people extract a minimal amount of resources.

2) What about immigrants in country?

Illegal immigrants would always have to rent their credits from citizens or legal residents by going to the credit shops. They would never be issued any unless they arrived legally.

Clearly the amount of credits issued per person would have to be based on the population, though. Newborn babies would be issued credits once they reached the age of majority.

3) If everyone have absolutely equal share then why not to make it government property and not let government collect rent payments?

That makes me chuckle. Governments are never corrupt, right? No government agent in history ever became intoxicated by power and started stealing from the people, right?

The way I see it, a high government official in a communist state, and a millionaire in a capitalist state - are one in the same thing. Just two different names for the same problem. In either system wealth and power become concentrated, and that's where all the problems begin. Rich people often walk all over the poor. Government officials often use tax money like it were their own, personal, piggy bank.

If you divide control up among the people, no one person has very much power. The potential for misuse is minimal. The system is designed so that nobody can even accumulate disproportionate power in this area.

So by taking it out of government hands, we eliminate the chief flaw of communism/socialism. By preventing the permanent accumulation of this kind of wealth, we eliminate the chief flaw of capitalism.

4) As I know there already exist property tax. Do you think it is not enough? Or you do not trust to government in money management and think collected taxes are misused?

Yes. Collected taxes are constantly misused, at least in the USA.

The big problem with property tax is it pushes the owners of land to make money off the land quickly. That can lead to very short sighted behavior, like poor farming practices, or people buying land and then stripping it of all of its valuable assets and then selling it again.

6) I think that in certain economy sectors such as farming land owing may not bust efficiency especially if there is more land available for farming than people who want to farm it. And if such land is good in quality and have small variation in climatic conditions. In such case government may just provide pieces of land in rent to anyone who personally farms it.

That is a really good idea, actually. It would be a good modification to the system. Perhaps the government could put restrictions on how land was to be used, and offer a reduction in price/credits to those who conform to it.

I would like land to be thought of the way broadcast rights are thought of. If you own a radio station, say 100 mhz. You pay the government for the right to use that frequency. Nobody else is free to create radio signals at that frequency, so your radio station will be heard.

However it's clear you don't own it. You're renting it. If you misuse it, the government is free to revoke your rights to it.

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Originally Posted by Stanley514

I do not see a lot of sense to withdraw moderate private houses and small pieces of land from somebodies property. "My house is my castle" is good expression. Why even poor or middle class people should depend on government decision weather they have to rent place they live or not? I do not see any problem with reasonable private property for personal living. The agenda you propose has more relation to commercial property. Really, I do not see how private land property for commercial purposes is busting efficiency. What is difference if some land where is hotel, restaurant or farm is located is owned or rented. But in any case all this problems could be regulated and will be through the tax system. If reasonable government will see that everyone got small income from his equal share of land they will increase taxes. If they will see that people have less income they will decrease taxes. Also it take tremendous difficulty to divide all property in US in absolutely equal shares by value. How do you think it could be done?

As the population grows, fewer and fewer people will be able to own their own house. Most people today rent an apartment anyway. Soon the only ones who will own any land will be the ones lucky enough to be born into a family that already owns it.

Real estate is gradually pricing itself upward, even after the real estate crisis we had in the USA. It's becoming increasingly unrealistic to think you can start life without it and acquire it later on.

The big problem with property tax is it pushes the owners of land to make money off the land quickly. That can lead to very short sighted behavior, like poor farming practices, or people buying land and then stripping it of all of its valuable assets and then selling it again.

How different from it would be land renting?

To be honest, there is similarity in this respect. There will always be temptation for someone to acquire land, ruin it, and then move on.

However it's also not different in terms of the "my home is my castle" issue. If you have to pay taxes on that castle, and the government is free to repossess it if you fail to pay those taxes, then you don't hardly really own it do you?

Under the credit system, if you owned a plot of land that was modest enough to be afforded by your own credits, you would always own it. You'd never be short the credits needed to re-rent it - which is basically the same thing as owning. Only those who want to own extravagant properties would need to keep buying credits all the time.

A condition we could add is that the incumbent renter of a plot of land always has "first dibs". Nobody can rent it out from under them as long as they're making the current credit requirement. A lot of states in the USA have laws of this sort which apply to the rental of apartments, so it's not such a big stretch to apply it to a credits system also.

As I said, if there is more arable land than those who personally want to be farmers and farm this land there may be no sense in private land property from efficiency point of view. Government would just provide to everyone who want it piece of land sufficient to farm it personally or by family.

I don't think that condition ever exists. There are always plenty of people who would love to be farmers. They just can't afford it.

If somebody abondons his land government just withdraws it and gives to fresh farmer. If some farmer worsens quality of land government may fine him or new lander could apply in court and demand compensation.

Yeah. That sounds like a good rule to have in any system.

From what I know similar system exist in some post-Soviet countries such as Russia where many people depend on self-grown food and where every citizen with relative ease could obtain piece of land from government free of any charge, usually up to 1000 square metres per family to farm it. This is so-called "gardens". This land still belongs to government. But principally I do not see some problem with private property for moderate in size farms who their owners farm themselves or with their family mostly. Or occasionally use some seasonal workers. Usually it were "latifundias" - an enormous in size parcels of land which were under attention of governments as they became more socially oriented. The owners of latifundiums are almost never engaged themselves in farming and live just like rantiers.Latifundium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That is a good idea, but 1000 square meters is a very meager farm. That's not efficient. You're better off giving out 1000 acres to each farmer and just plain having fewer farmers.

With modern tech, big farms create the most food with the least effort. Even if that means some people are working as employees on another person's farm instead of being able to own their own, it's still better to be producing food cheap.

The less effort we spend subsisting, the more effort we are able to apply to advancing. It's like if you're swimming and all your effort is going into just staying afloat. Then you wouldn't be able to swim toward land. The less effort you spend on floating, the more effort you can spend moving. The quicker you are able to get somewhere better.

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Originally Posted by Stanley514

There are always plenty of people who would love to be farmers.

So what if there is more people who want to rent a land than land available for farming? What difference does it make?

You need a way to turn some of them away, so they don't feel too badly about it, and so they don't feel that they are being treated unfairly because someone else got given land that should have gone to them.

Using some kind of a currency system you can tell them the reason for turning them away is that they were out-bid by someone else. Then they still maintain hope that maybe someday that can still become a farmer if they keep trying to gather currency. Or if the outlook for achieving that looks bleak, then they may try a different profession.

The less bitter feelings people have, the less likely they will become criminals. Instead they may channel their emotions into doing something productive, like starting a non-farm business. Of course farm businesses are better if there is enough land for it, but when there isn't we still want the people to be doing something useful if they can.