Ownership Of Land - A Deeply Flawed Concept?

[Sonoran Na'vi]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Who will control and protect the land? The very people that depend on it. If your life depends on that land, if it gives you water and food, they you take care of it. This is how native people did it for millennia and this is why they fight vigorously to protect the jungle and mountains they live on. They dont own it in a legal sense, but they defend it anyways! Maybe they dont stand a chance against rifles and helicopters but the point here was to ask who would protect the land from damages!

Native Americans may have had a general custom to how the land shall be used, or didn't have a large enough population in order to use up the resources of the land. But if we apply game theory to the use of land without ownership of the resources, we'll find that people will generally overuse resources on the land.

[redpaintednavi]

Originally Posted by Sonoran Na'vi

Native Americans may have had a general custom to how the land shall be used, or didn't have a large enough population in order to use up the resources of the land. But if we apply game theory to the use of land without ownership of the resources, we'll find that people will generally overuse resources on the land.

It is just a matter of how you use the resources. There are societies that have lived on limited resources for millennia without overusing them. We can learn from such societies.

[Fosus]

Here in Finland we have this thing called "Everyman's right".

The traditional Finnish legal concept of everyman's right allows free right of access to the land and waterways, and the right to collect natural products such as wild berries and mushrooms, no matter who owns the land. These rights also generally apply to foreign citizens, with certain exceptions related to local boating, fishing and hunting rights.

Everyman's right - environment.fi

IMO It's awesome.

[redpaintednavi]

Originally Posted by Fosus

Here in Finland we have this thing called "Everyman's right".

IMO It's awesome.

This we have here in Sweden too. It is truly awesome to be able to walking around in the nature as one likes. This is truly something we could teach other countries.

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

This we have here in Sweden too. It is truly awesome to be able to walking around in the nature as one likes. This is truly something we could teach other countries.

I agree. Though, in highly populated countries it could raise some problems.

[txen]

I actually own some land here in California and I have a bit of a different viewpoint. I don't really own the land. The ownership thing is a fiction that has been sold to the population. Sure I get to control that land to a large degree, but there are two big limitations. First my use of the land is subject to a mind boggling array of law and regulations which limit what I can do. Second I am taxed for this land. If I don't pay I lose the land.

What does that really mean? It means that I pay rent to the government. The fact that it's called taxes doesn't really mean much. If I don't pay my rent I get evicted, just like renting an apartment.

I'm not saying that anything should be changed, this is just an observation.

Now for a different topic, We have something a little bit like you Finnish and Swedish access laws. Here in California you must "defend" your property. You can enter open land and not be subject to trespass penalties. In order to enforce trespass you have to block all trails and roads. You also have to post "No Trespasing" signs at least ever 500 meters or so.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Sonoran Na'vi

Native Americans may have had a general custom to how the land shall be used, or didn't have a large enough population in order to use up the resources of the land. But if we apply game theory to the use of land without ownership of the resources, we'll find that people will generally overuse resources on the land.

Well - custom and culture is one way to restrict or control overuse for sure. Like the "seventh generation rule" (meaning to treat the land you live on in a way that allows the seventh generation to come to live on it as you do).
I dont believe in population as an issue. Population of any animal including the human animal grows until it reaches a natural limit of growth, determined by the resources available on the area. To move on to neighboring areas is impossible as there are other people living there, so that confinement naturally restricts a population to one area and population to the limits or resources in that area. Now you have two ways to deal with overuse of resources - accept that one day you will not be able to live on this land (or your childrens children will not be) - or become violent and start wars of conquest, which usually is not a good option as the land you conquer also has limited resources that are used up by the people who live there and such a war is an intense investment. Nevertheless, people would probably try, but basically it is a back-and-forth then. Within a short time after a conquest, the new lands are again populated and population growth and resource consumption return to a balance.
Of course if one culture decides to ignore sanity and simply strip their own land of all its resources to build a large army and waltz over the planet, that works. This is why the "fertile crescent", the origin of the dominant culture of the earth these days is a cruel joke. In the end of course it is only a temporary thing as there are always limits to growth.

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

A company is really not owned by anyone. A company is a collective effort, even if it is one particular person who started it.[...]
Since a company in reality is a collective effort the revenues should be equally distributed among those who work in it

Indeed - very well spoken. The person who starts a company is usually just an organizer. He is good at organizing sales, marketing, machines, workers. That is certainly a skill, but the profit of the company hinges on every worker that is going there daily as well as on the machines (and the people who built them) an the organizers. That is the way, a cooperative works - There is a "boss", but he is mainly the organizer and the whole company is owned by all the workers and employees equally. In modern corporations, the owners are usually also many people, but not the same that work there - rather some people who did nothing but to lend money at some point to form that company.
To see the founder of a company as the boss and organizer and all that - it used to be back in the days when a corporate empire was still ruled by one king who started out in the garage inventing machines. That is not how modern coprorations wirks, in which CEOs are also just employees. Actually family owned large businesses usually have way more consciousness, treat their workers a lot better than stock market corporations. Such an owner can have a morale, he can decide what the money is used for - to increase wages, to sponsor pension plans or healthcare or build workers homes. A CEO is not even allowed to do so, as the company regulations forbid this to him as long as it does not in some way profit the company. He would loose his job if he did something like that...

Originally Posted by txen

It means that I pay rent to the government. The fact that it's called taxes doesn't really mean much.

yeah - makes one wonder, doesnt it?
Also - who actually gives the government the right to own land in the first place. It simply took it into posession or more likely killed people in wars for it. Then again who really fought these wars? People, not "the government".

The Bavarian constitution also has some nice paragraphs on open access to all mountains and lakes and the right of people to collect wild things. The way they found to limit this is however that as long as there is still some way to get to a lake, the rest of the shore can be sold. And if one wants to restrict foraging, "landscape protection areas" are called into existence. A huge part of the land is now such a protected area and while they are not nature reserves, you are not allowed to do all you would like in them either. And of course hunting and fishing is basically something reserved only for the rich, as you need a ridicolous amount of very costly regulations, courses, licenses and rights.

[Pygmy-Na'vi]

The indigenous peoples of the Xingu river basin (where that dam that Cameron:co protested against was going to be built) does not own land. Each plot is only owned by a person as long as he/she uses it, instead they own the crops that grow there. After the harvest, the plot is abandoned until someone else clears it and plants something there. The plants own the land, not they.
The nomads of Siberia (and until the 50's in northern Scandinavia) does not own land. They own the herds of horses and reindeers that graze there. They move with their herds, the herds own the land, not they.

This is not land ownership, just right of use of the resources that come from it, but not forever. You own the tent or hut or whatever you live in, but not the land it's built on. You own the crop that grows or the animal that graze in a meadow, but not the meadow itself. You own tools that you've made or traded for and that you use, you own clothes and perhaps jewellery that you wear and keep, but you can't bring the earth with you on a sled as you move, so how can you own that? The earth owns you, because you depend on it, not the other way around.

But of course, since these people doesn't own the land they've lived in for thousands of years, they're evicted by corporations that tear up the countryside, ruin the sensitive arctic swamps with huge trucks, clearcut the tajga for cheap lumber, and poison the rivers and lakes while mining oil and minerals. But they own the land or rent it from the government, and the indigenous peoples doesn't...

Ownership in itself is a basic human right, it's not inherently wrong. But the exclusive ownership of land itself, of earth and water gives rise to many problems (if you own a lake, can you forbid people from drinking from it?) and in many countries there is no exclusive ownership of resources. If some valuable mineral is found in quantity on your land for example, you HAVE to exploit it, mine it, or let others mine it, you're not allowed to simply leave it in the ground. The same with forest in Sweden, you're not allowed to leave it, you HAVE to "tend" it, that is cut and use or sell. And you can't just cut a tree now and then if it's planted forest (most forest in Sweden are) - you HAVE to clearcut. So you own the ground, but not the resources in/on it. If I have a piece of land that I really want to keep as it is, I have to negotiate with the local authorities who will evaluate whether it's worth making it a nature preserve. Usually it's not, and then I have no say.

[auroraglacialis]

Hehe - sonoran - no need to quote my whole post

Originally Posted by Sonoran Na'vi

Many times people do not know the consequences of their actions until it is too late. The advantage we have today is that we know of many of the failures of past societies, so that we may have the chance to learn from them.

Well - these days that is true. Civilization and its complexity made it also complex to foretell the consequences. It is not just complexity in society, technology, science that has arisen, it is also a complexity in problems and consequences. A hunter/fisherman can predict that overuse will deplete his resource. If game gets scarce, he knows there are less left and if all resources are getting scarce he or rather the women may decide that there would be not enough food in the future for too many children and act on it. In fact in a closed system (which is an approximation based on the lower mobility of non-industrial people and on the presence of other people around) there would not be another choice than to suffer hunger and starvation. It is self-regulating.
The failures in the past are there and we understand many of them. But I see not really that civilized humans have learned from them at all. Do you see any evidence that things are implied that are based on learning from them? And in fact - what would it be that we learn from them? One thing we can learn is that civilizations are not sustainable, that agriculture is not sustainable, that depleting or overusing resources leads to collapse. So what consequences would there be to learned?

The heart of the matter is that some sort of property rights need to be assigned to resources. Not assigning property rights will not work in large societies because people will maximize their use of the resource. Even many smaller, tribal, societies assigned use rights to land or a resource, giving the right to use the land or resource to an individual or a group for a particular amount of time.

In what way does property of land help in any way to ensure long term caring for the land? Property itself does not assure that - property means that it can be sold and traded, that one has a right to use the land or deny other people access to the land even if it is not used. So I guess the only situation property helps, is in case of a family owning a piece of land - and the incentive in that case is to keep the land in a state that allows the own children to live on that land - and in fact that does not really require ownership, just the prospect that people one cares for have a benefit from the land in the future. And that works well without assigning ownership - actually it works better without ownership. Land ownership fortifies sedentarism. It creates many more trouble than it alleviates. People can own huge amounts of land while others even have to pay for a place to sleep (that is called rent then). Companies can own land and they dont care about future land use. Individual people are fixed to a piece of land for good and bad years and dont share a common landbase to care for and for supply. In a mass society, I see the trouble of course. Probably both things are intertwined deeply and part of the catastrophe. A mass society is born out of overusing the landbase and out of land ownership (those who own more land can control the ones who own less and increase in population at the cost of the ones who own less). And of course a continuation of a mass society requires that system to continue. The fact that in a mass society land ownership and overuse of resources are required for continuation speaks for the instability and weakness of such a system, as it takes only a few abstract concepts to go for it to not work out any longer.

Good examples of working ways to deal with land use are provided by Pygmy:

Originally Posted by Pygmy-Na'vi

The indigenous peoples of the Xingu river basin [...] does not own land. [...] they own the crops that grow there. [...] The plants own the land, not they.
The nomads of Siberia (and until the 50's in northern Scandinavia) does not own land. They own the herds of horses and reindeers that graze there. They move with their herds, the herds own the land, not they.

And AFAIK the early settlers to the US "reverted" to that way of live and called it freedom. They owned herds and cowboys tended them. Later, land ownership with barbed wires came to pass and things went downhill from there...

But of course, since these people doesn't own the land they've lived in for thousands of years, they're evicted by corporations [...] - they own the land or rent it from the government, and the indigenous peoples doesn't...

Indeed - the government basically seized ownership. If you want to put it in terms of ownership, the natives "own" the whole country - but since they have no such concept, some government took it all and now seized the power to determine who gets what part of the bounty.

If some valuable mineral is found in quantity on your land for example, you HAVE to exploit it, mine it, or let others mine it, you're not allowed to simply leave it in the ground.

That is part of the laws in many countries and it is a major reason why companies can buid mines in the first place. Seriously - we had "mineral rights" in university and you have to allow a company to mine your land if there are resources under it. Even a company can only keep the option to mine these minerals for a few years until they have to start mining, so they are forced to mine them too (or loose the property). The only way around would be a nature preserve, but that is hard to get. So if someone should be allowed to own land, at least that person or community should have the right to keep these companies out if land ownership is in any way supposed to help protecting land.

[Sonoran Na'vi]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Well - these days that is true. Civilization and its complexity made it also complex to foretell the consequences. It is not just complexity in society, technology, science that has arisen, it is also a complexity in problems and consequences. A hunter/fisherman can predict that overuse will deplete his resource. If game gets scarce, he knows there are less left and if all resources are getting scarce he or rather the women may decide that there would be not enough food in the future for too many children and act on it. In fact in a closed system (which is an approximation based on the lower mobility of non-industrial people and on the presence of other people around) there would not be another choice than to suffer hunger and starvation. It is self-regulating.
The failures in the past are there and we understand many of them. But I see not really that civilized humans have learned from them at all. Do you see any evidence that things are implied that are based on learning from them? And in fact - what would it be that we learn from them? One thing we can learn is that civilizations are not sustainable, that agriculture is not sustainable, that depleting or overusing resources leads to collapse. So what consequences would there be to learned?

There could still be consequences to actions we are unaware of. Being unaware of such consequences puts us in danger of becoming victims of such consequences without realizing those consequences before hand. Another aspect of societal collapse is that some societies continue with an activity knowing the consequences. They aren't compelled to change until they are forced to. I think this is what you are referring to in regard to today's society.

In what way does property of land help in any way to ensure long term caring for the land? Property itself does not assure that - property means that it can be sold and traded, that one has a right to use the land or deny other people access to the land even if it is not used.

Property rights give economic incentive on the use of land and/or resources. By assigning property rights, the use of resources will be more efficient.

Land ownership fortifies sedentarism. It creates many more trouble than it alleviates. People can own huge amounts of land while others even have to pay for a place to sleep (that is called rent then). Companies can own land and they dont care about future land use. Individual people are fixed to a piece of land for good and bad years and dont share a common landbase to care for and for supply. In a mass society, I see the trouble of course. Probably both things are intertwined deeply and part of the catastrophe. A mass society is born out of overusing the landbase and out of land ownership (those who own more land can control the ones who own less and increase in population at the cost of the ones who own less). And of course a continuation of a mass society requires that system to continue. The fact that in a mass society land ownership and overuse of resources are required for continuation speaks for the instability and weakness of such a system, as it takes only a few abstract concepts to go for it to not work out any longer.

Ownership of land and resources is not without its drawbacks, but I have already outlined the the problems of not assigning property rights.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Andisavatar

you can't own the land, man

Read the thread and then reply please.