Inheritance tax is making it expensive to trasnfer a family-owned farm down the generations, and as a result they are sold to corporations instead. Bigger, wealthier families avoid the tax altogether by using legal methods, which makes the inheritance tax burden mostly fall on the poorer farmers. Removing ownership of land would do nothing to combat this. In fact, if farmers didn’t own their land, things would get worse, not better: they would have no incentive to use long-term (costlier) agricultural strategies, since they wouldn’t have any guarantee they’d benefit from it. Further, they’d be less likely to invest in long term equipment. Guess who would? Larger corporations. In other words, this proposal would exactly concentrate the wealth to big corporations, perhaps the opposite of your intention.
That is why I added: "with an exemption for private businesses below a certain size that are both owned and administered by a single family".
> Bigger, wealthier families avoid the tax altogether by using legal methods
Yes, to make this work you'd have to eliminate those loopholes.
Second system syndrome is en vogue right now in politics. Maybe there is some tectonic shift that will happen this century due to technological progress, but I'd counter moderate and incremental change would be much less risky (if you botch a software project maybe people lose jobs, if you botch a political sea change millions of people die) and there is plenty of small but meaningful improvements to be had for every class of person.
Small iterative changes are fought tooth-and-nail by those emboldened through exploits encouraged by capitalism who, ironically, hold most the power to make such changes (not much unlike historical implementations of fuedelism).
The system itself is very self-preserving in that nature. Those who have the most to lose in the system have the most power and resources to resist change because that's how the underlying system is structured.
With socioeconomic mobility at an all time low due to earlier successes closing doors behind them (the "american dream"), it's no wonder people are growing more frustrated and seeking radical change over incremental changes. They've tried incremental change (and watched their parents and grandparents try it). It didn't work, so now they're pulling out the stops and who could blame them.
Look at the 2016 and upcoming 2020 presidential elections, largely fueled products of this issue in various forms. People are growing very tired of being lied to and exploited. The very wealthy groups, as the article suggests, need to consider that maximizing long term profits may require them to reduce their short term profit margins a bit and keep working classes from turning this entire country upside down.
If I lived in a third world country, I'd be more astounded that there are places I could never work a day in my life and be fed, sheltered, have access to incredible healthcare (yes even in the US) and probably lead an intellectually satisfying (with free access to books, entertainment, computers, Internet and FOSS etc) life.
The fact that there are thousands of billionaires that have possessions and power beyond my comprehension as even a very well off American doesn't mean much. No more than the fact that there is a Pope or Presidents or professional athletes or any other demigod I will never be. It's just another modern form of feudalism that humans seem to be hardwired for.
Read up on the phenomenon called "the tragedy of the commons" [1] to learn why this is a terrible idea.
For even more of an idea on where this can lead you can have a look at the 'Talk' page for the same Wikipedia topic [2] which shows an editing war on the very definition of the topic. Shared ownership does not imply shared stewardship as is made clear by the actions of some of the more vociferous Wikipedians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tragedy_of_the_commons
> one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases
Look at Hong Kong, housing prices there have grown seriously out of whack, average citizens are suffering and young adults are leaving.
You'd need a very competent and uncorrupt government to accomplish this ideal.
A lease is a contract arrived at by mutual agreement. Rent control is imposed unilaterally as a government fiat.
If you compensate the owners of the land and take your time building the government institutions that will manage it the second option seems possible. Maybe something like what Scotland did in the 90's (I think it was) when they abolished the last parts of the feudal system.
I don't see how that would be possible in the US though. US politicians are typically funded by corporations and corporations own land. Besides, from what I understand, the right to own their own land is very important to quite a few Americans.
Put differently: I'm pretty sure an adult American in the 80's would scream "communism" at your ideas. Some of those work as politicians today. :-)
For example, if I'm on land I don't own, I have no real right to freedom of speech because I have no right to be on the land to begin with since it's privately held. I'm there legally by permission of the property owner only and can be removed.
This becomes increasingly problematic the more private entities take ownership of land. Imagine a world where a few hundred people own nearly all the non-government owned property and the vast majority of citizens have to rent/lease or utilized shared property.
Those private entities begin to dictate if I can take pictures, say certain things, bring a weapon on that property, etc. If the entire industry decides "we only allow Comcast Internet service on our grounds to drill into walls," then unless new laws or enacted at a state/city level forcing landlords to allow it or the FTC steps in, I guess you're using Comcast or doing without.
In theory, conventional wisdom argues competitors will enter the market with less restrictions. In practice, it's all profit driven and the most efficient market solutions get adopted resulting in shared policies across the industry. If business across an industry in general finds it's more profitable that people can't have weapons on their properties and you have no land ownership, then you can own a gun but you'll have no where to put it. Or you may want to spread an idea through speech but no one will allow it. You're then restricted to either government properties where you do have those rights or another private entity that allows it.
Property ownership is very complex here.
Not if you have a lease.
If you do have a lease at a given location and it specifies an enforceable restriction that is otherwise legal under federal and state law, they can certainly evict you or often fine you as a breach of contract. This could be for a variety of things related to restrictions of freedom of speech, gun ownership, to owning a cat.
If you can't afford private property, rent, and want to say, grill a burger, good luck finding a lease that permits that. You now live with a subset of legal rights determined by private property owners. Obviously there are things that aren't tied to property... they can't detain you or harm you but they can have the police detain you.
You call it "penalizing success." I call it the principle that successful people have a civic duty to contribute more to the common good.
> owned for generations
You say that as if it's axiomatically a good thing for something to be owned for generations. This is far from clear. Why should one person be entitled to own something that another is not just because of who their parents were?
Historically, what follows this is mass poverty.
The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people.
Native Americans tended to go to war when one group infringed on another's territory.
The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases.
The government struggles administering drivers licenses. And wherever they've been the landlord, the results have almost universally been impoverished ghettos.
What do you mean?
In 2005, historically, Myspace was THE social network and Facebook was basically nothing.
It's not historically Myspace was the social network, it's historically social networks are displaced by others, of which Facebook is only the latest incarnation. And the future of Facebook is Myspace, ideally sooner rather than later, but eventually one way or another.
If every time something has happened before it has had the same result, trying it again and expecting something else is not a plan that inspires confidence.
Yes, but historically capitalism has worked. That's the whole point here: things are changing. Not all of the lessons of history apply in a post-scarcity world.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
I'm not sure what you mean by "post-scarcity"? Things may be "available", but that doesn't mean people have access to them.
While it's nice to think of land as "unowned", in practice, someone controls it, and they almost never have the interests of the occupants in mind. Besides, I've found that people tend to treat property better when they consider it theirs and have space AWAY from people.
Going along with your point though, it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land (large enough to build a small family residence on at least). Yes, there would be competition, but in competitive areas, the land plots could be smaller. In "unwanted" areas (Kansas, Wyoming), plots could be large enough for profitable cattle and farming industry. The good thing would be that no one would be without land to built on; they would have their own space to "be them" and live as they wished without rubbing shoulders with their neighbors (which tends to make Americans rough around the edges, regardless of age/sex/political views). Currently, many people struggle just getting an apartment, let alone a house. Notably, the mechanics of a new system would need to be worked out, and would likely be abused, manipulated, and ruined because of selfish people, but it's a nice thought.
Yes, that's why I'm advocating leases. This allows you to separate short-term control from long-term control more easily. The interests of the occupants are best attended to via short-term control (the sink needs to be fixed now) but the interests of society are best attended to via long-term control (we need to tear down this single family house, which made sense 50 years ago, and replace it with a multi-family unit).
> it might be best if everyone received some designed size plot of land
That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
Sounds nice, but good luck finding politicians and leaders who will exercise just (as in "justice") decisions in this manner.
More generally: The problem right now is a people problem, corruption. The system isn't the primary problem. If everyone were benevolent, sharing, kindhearted individuals, then we'd work together to see everyone had a home, regardless of whether the system was capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. Instead, we live in a world of selfish people. sigh
It's nice to talk about theories though. :)
> That might work if there was a constant supply of new land to distribute, but there isn't.
True, but there is plenty of unused land. Just that people tend to crowd the coasts. EDIT: I didn't finish my thought. I meant to add that there's still enough earth for people to occupy for years... and we can build vertical realestate too.
No, I don't agree. I've done a lot of traveling in Africa so I know what corruption looks like, and what we have in the West ain't it (yet). The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite. The rules are also based on some assumptions that were never true, like that societal well being can be objectively measured in terms of GDP or ROI or something like that, and that infinite growth is possible.
To fix this problem we need to fundamentally change the rules of the game to better align with today's reality, and more importantly, tomorrow's likely reality: machines can do pretty much anything that humans can do, so the market value of labor is almost certainly going to plunge. That's good for buyers, but bad for sellers. But sellers are people too. We can't just discard them the way we do excess horses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_Need_Not_Apply).
> The situation we're in is a result of people acting rationally within a set of rules that were predicated on some assumptions that are no longer true, like that the demand for labor is essentially infinite.
IBYP? I don't know anyone who thinks the demand for labor is infinite. I can see in your next paragraph, you're jumping the gun and thinking about a robotic society, but hang on there, cowboy (a pun on your last line). While such a shift in system may seem necessary in light of such a future, you're still thinking about economics in terms of how the system will improve things. It's natural for most people on HN to be the rationally-minded architectural types, so they think systems will solve problems. But pause for a moment and consider: Which world would you rather live in:
A) A world where humans (and maybe robots) compete in the market place, where people pursue their own interests and ends in effort to "get ahead". i.e. The world we're headed for. And by the way, this world could be either capitalistic, socialistic, or communistic. The fact is, people will pursue their own interests regardless of the system.
B) A world where humans (and maybe robots) are supportive of each other, offering help to those in need, sharing resources, and seeking the well being of each other.
Yes, it's a leading question, but I think you'd agree world B is nicer. That's the one we want. However, that's the one that requires change in the MORAL AND ETHICAL CHARACTER of people, i.e. the part of people that says "Do good to your neighbor", "Help your neighbor buy groceries", "Help your neighbor fix his/her sink/tub/car", "Help teach your neighbor's kids", as opposed to selfish mentality of "Pay the Stanford coach to let your kid be admitted ahead of other kids" and "When the balance is in your favor, say nothing" and "Make the poor pukes be the garbage man while I, privileged individual, get the high-paying executive role". The fact is, if everyone supported each other, we'd all be ahead by now. But then each person gets the idea that they'll let OTHER people be helpful while THEY get ahead, and the whole thing collapses.
In short, unselfishness would work. And before you object and say it won't happen here (which is quite plausible and very likely), you can't say it NEVER works. For example, Tokyo is one of the safest places in the world due to the underlying philosophical foundations of Japan that taught people to rely on the good of society. It worked for a while (although in more recent times, these philosophical foundations are decaying, so more violence is prevalent, and notably, the reliance on society was directed inwardly (towards the Japanese) not outwardly (towards foreigners), otherwise they wouldn't have been part of WWII). It's a complicated story, and I'm not expounding much. I'm also talking too long and you're going to want to stop reading.
tl;dr - It's a human problem, not a problem of the system we have.
I don't know why it should be, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is in fact different. To be sure, the U.S. is moving more towards the African model (to my great dismay) but it's not quite there yet.
> I think you'd agree world B is nicer.
Sure. And I'd like a pony too. But if you want to actually solve problems in the real world you have to deal with reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
It wouldn't work. Building codes and permits would make it too costly for the poor to ever do anything with it.
As I'm fond of saying: In a capitalistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power. In a communistic system, a few people end up with all the money and power. The means are different, but the result is the same.
There are very few countries in the world that lived by the laissez faire rules of capitalism, because its been a disaster every time.
If a country is too far socialist or too far capitalist, the result is the same; the few gaining great power and privilege, while the many are powerless and suffering in poverty. Its obvious that a balance is needed, socialism can be very good at leveling the playing field for basic necessities, while regulated capitalism can be good at distributing power hierarchies while remaining fairly efficient.
The problem i see us facing right now is that capitalism has had a lobby on political power for fifty years and is preventing this balance, substituting its own power-wealth hungry pseudo-balance. This is why we have difficulty dealing with climate change, and why places like the US are struggling with a universal health system, or why the UK is dismantling theirs.
>Can you imagine any of this success without socialist schools?
Yes.
But to answer why people come here, I'd say they come for freedom and the hope of a future - and many try to stay. The east coast is full of Indian doctors who come here for their degree and have no intention of ever going back to India.
But hey, the Soviets beat us into space by about a month. All they had to do was murder a million of their political opponents and then starve their people for a few decades. You decide if it was worth it.
And if you think the US has a "free market" healthcare system you are quite mistaken.
Finland? China?
The Chinese just steal research papers and pretend they're theirs.
Also, it's efficient to steal ideas. I assure you, given the opportunity, businesses in the US frequently steal ideas/IP as well, they're just more careful about it because there's more consequences. Why do you think so many IP lawsuits exist.
Furthermore, stealing or copying a successful process is in human nature for survival, heck, it's part of the foundations of evolution. Most people are only concerned when it's their ideas being stolen but not when they "borrow" others'.
(I'm not Chinese)
Another possibility: eliminate private ownership of land. This is actually not as radical as it sounds. It's a big shift in mindset, but not that big a change in how things actually work. The mindset shift is to go back to the native american idea that all land is collectively owned by the people. The government is the "management company" that administers it, and one of the things it can do is offer long-term leases. This would essentially be the same as the status quo except that instead of owning the land and paying property tax, you'd own a lease and pay rent. The reason I think this would have a beneficial effect is that the change in mindset would change the dynamics of political debates. For example, NIMBYism would be less tenable because it's not your back yard any more. You're just a tenant.