Quote from: RE on Apr 11, 2024, 06:46 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 11, 2024, 02:00 PMLand is used for different purposes.  I posted "Marx's Theory of Land, Rent and Cities" in our resources section.  I am looking it over.

QuoteBy the 1990s, long-standing public assets were being privatised, giving the private sector ownership of profit-making monopolies such as airports, water services, toll roads and so on. In addition, hard-won government regulations, price controls and trade barriers that protected the interests of national industries, labor, consumers, tenants and residents were deregulated so that capital could cut costs, globalise and take other measures to maximize profits.

The land you put a house on is taxed as if you used it to make money.  Current arrangements make no distinction between private and personal property.  Land ownership as it is now is capitalist.  Public ownership vanishes under a religion of privatization.

And this is old news from 2021.  https://www.vox.com/recode/22528659/bill-gates-largest-farmland-owner-cascade-investments

Wait long enough and the problem of McMansions on farmland (or what should be an ecological reserve) goes away.  When Bill owns it all, he will rip the McMansions down to grow potatoes.  You just have to wait for the wisdum of the market to catch up.

Imagine owning a chunk of land that is HALF THE SIZE OF RHODE ISLAND.  Just from privatizing software.

Absolutely, land can be used for different purposes, and can be transfomed from one purpose to another depending on what you build on it, or what you raze to reclaim the land itself to use for another purpose.

The point is, that the same land under your definitions can be considered either Personal Property if you build a house on it and live in it (not used for rental), Private Property if used for Rentals, Farming where the produce belongs to the owner, or a Factory where the goods Produced also belong to the owner under a Capitalist system.  Under a Communist system as you describe, if used for house to live in it would again be personal property, and used for any of the other purposes would be Common Property of the community, where all the produce or profits would be distributed evenly among the community members.

Under either Capitalism or Communism as described, the problem comes in the transformation of the land originally in its natural ecological state without homo sapiens in the neighborhood, to a state where it is either used for housing or used for agricultural production of food or for industrial production of goods.  At that point it becomes divided and into 2 possible states, Personal Property vs Private or Communal property.

The conflict is in deciding how much land is allocated as Personal Property vs Private or Communal Property.  How much land can one person hold as Personal Property?  What if more land is needed for housing and the ag land gets carved up into a subdivision?  What if there is a food shortage and houses need to be razed to reclaim ag land?  How are the owners of the personal property compensated for the loss of their home by either the Community run farm coop or the Capitalist farm owner?  How is the population density determined and square footage allowed as personal property per person?

The further problem is with families and inheritance.  Back in Feudal times, the first born son of a landholder got title to the property, all the rest of his kids were shit out of luck and became Commoners.  If they were finacially successful, the families might buy neighboring properties and increase the size of their personal property.  Conversly, debtors might be forced to sell their land and become Commoners  at best if that covered the debt, or be thrown in debtors prison if not.  Thus some families became extremely wealthy and powerful nobility, while everybody else were tax paying, rent paying cannon fodder the next time the King decided he needed more land and commoners to tax.

Out of this system was born Capitalism, where land was just one asset class you could use to leverage up to immense wealth by building factories or apartment buildings etc on land your family now owned.  The question is, how do you avoid the use conflicts, allocation problems and decision making probles of how to use the land and what to put on it, regardless of whether it is communist or Capitalist in nature?

RE

My view is that inheritance should be taxed. 

Your questions about land introduce no new issues.  Regardless of what form ownership would take if there were a socialist revolution in America, things really would be no different than what we have now regarding land issues.  Law, government and courts decide land issues now, and nothing would change under kdog socialism.  There is still a government, and there is still the rule of law.  Currently land can be seized by eminent domain.  When that happens there is supposed to be just compensation.  Your worries about land seem reactionary to me.  Here is what I mean.

• How much land can one person hold as Personal Property?  -- The current limit is infinity so what is the concern?  Bill Gates owns a circle of farmland that is 24 miles across and I own with Mrs. Dog 1/4 of an acre of land that would otherwise be Pacific Northwest forest.  I am not worried about a citizen assembly deciding we have too much land.  117 feet across compared to over 24 miles is not so much.
• What if more land is needed for housing and the ag land gets carved up into a subdivision?  Since nobody gives a rip now, how could things get worse?
• What if there is a food shortage and houses need to be razed to reclaim ag land?  Citizen Assemblies and Soviets would decide.  Which is in contrast with the current system of fuck all.
• How are the owners of the personal property compensated for the loss of their home by either the Community run farm coop or the Capitalist farm owner?  They get paid same as now.
• How is the population density determined and square footage allowed as personal property per person?  Why are you asking this.  You know nobody does math in America.  Since nobody cares now, you do not have to worry about sudden chaos if there is any change.

Soviets and citizens assemblies would generate the necessary infrastructure to see that the appropriate law and control structures are put in place.