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[1] By “popular libertarian dogma” I refer to popular dogma that isn’t necessarily supported by and may even contradict true libertarian principles.
[2] For a critique of private land ownership, read about Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) and Geolibertarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism). Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian? (http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html) makes the case against land as private property very plain.
[3] If you believe in the free market and it's ability to find the "right" price for everything, even the abstract (e.g. the time value of money), then how can you support a government enforced system that allows a finite amount of money to purchase an infinite amount of something, which is what ownership of land in perpetuity amounts to? How can $10,000 or even $10,000,000 be the price of full rights over a plot of land for an infinite amount of time?
I understand the debate about property ownership, but you can either choose to discuss using the system we have in place, or you can talk about the system itself. But trying to talk about both at the same time robs both points of view from the first principles they are starting from. Any argument in one system can be refuted by changing the principles in the other.
The land ownership system, currently in place in the US, may or may not be morally reprehensible and unfair, but that is not the issue to which the NY Times speaks.
I think the 'traditional dogmatic libertarianism' you mention can best be described as paleoconservativism or something similar. It is one end of an extreme with complete disregard of property as the other extreme.
Georgist treatment of land as property is interesting because it doesn't actually deny land as private property, it just treats it as a negative externality to the commons and demands a Pigovian land value tax as recompense. This same philosophy can be extended to any tragedy of the commons, be it environmental, land use, radio bandwidth, etc. One may make property of these things, but at infinite cost for the privilege of such monopoly; a privilege that is guaranteed not by one's own right, but by the social contract of the state.
I think it goes beyond land ownership too. In theory, I should not be judging other people's values and what they choose to spend their own money on. But when the free market tells us to dedicate our resources to building things like $500,000-per-month apartments, I am not sure I am willing to blindly agree.
Infinite ownership of land and "I got here first, screw you" mentality doesn't work when everybody wants to live in the same place.
Look at the property records for Woodside (a city zoned _only_ for residential mansions). Everything is an LLC, but most of them are under the names of the owner (e.g. "Betty Big House LLC") with traceable property tax records.
The strange thing about Woodside LLCs are seemingly nobodies own them. Why does the "philanthropy administrator" at Stanford own a $20 million estate in Woodside? Blarg. It's really nice house too: http://www.trulia.com/homes/California/Woodside/sold/7397232...
I don't see any negative effects of the LLC property ownership. Woodside is a very tight nit community and I never really felt any wealth gap effects, even though there are a lot of people who are just ranchers. Its not like the people who live in these mansions steam roll over everybody and get what they want they work together to make sure Woodside remains the way it is (small town feel, rural, ranches, horses, etc.)
Its rather unfair to go "blarg" just because someone has a nice house.
Preventing dirty foreign money from entering the real estate market is one of the defining issues of the 21st century. Personally, I think it would be tragic to have all the world's great cities to be owned by Davos shitheads and ex-KGB oligarchs and narcobarons. Let's start fighting this now.
As a result, despite Copenhagen getting really popular as a culinary/cultural/etc. destination in the past decade, housing is still cheapish (1-bd ~$800-1100/mo, 2-bd ~$1300-1600/mo).
For example: investing in residential real estate?
1/ What if an investment fund wanted to buy and hold 20 apartments in a building?
2/ What if I wanted to invest in a property, partially backed by debt (hence the need for limited liability)?
That should be illegal in and of itself. People can't afford apartments because "investors" have bought them all to jack up the prices as rent instead of property. If we had true market-clearing prices for ownership (instead of "the rich get richer and use more money to buy more property to get more money to buy more property"), everybody could be less rentfucked.
It's "excessive landlord" syndrome. Why should one guy be allowed to own 40 apartment buildings full of residents who have lived there 20 years? Shouldn't they own their own living conditions instead of being locked into capitalist "I got here 3 years before you, now I own everything, and you are my source of income forever" mindsets?
What makes this so frustrating is that anyone moving to the city has to either pay exorbitant amounts of money for tiny apartments or rooms, or live far out of the center.
Selling property is a cumbersome and difficult process, selling an LLC is trivial. If you own a property as an investment then you may want to liquidate some or all of that property at a given time to cover other costs. Not really very easy to do if you have to go through a title process. Contrast that with selling someone half interest in an LLC which owns the property. That is easy to do, requires only a notary, and voila you've got cash. I'm all for having direct ownership on your primary residence but for vacation homes, or investment properties, using an LLC is just a whole lot smarter from a money management perspective.