undefined | Better HN

0 pointspmoriarty6y ago0 comments

"Landowners supply land, one of the key inputs to the economy."

Landowners don't supply land. That land is there whether these owners exist or not, and regardless of what they do or don't do.

Now, there is a system built up around denying access to land to anyone who doesn't own it or has the owner's permission, but that's a far cry from actually supplying land.

Contrast this to a baker who bakes bread. Without him that bread would not exist, so he actually does provide a service of supplying bread. Not so with the landowner, who creates nothing and whose ownership is a legal fiction.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

spikels6y ago· 1 in thread

Physics dictate that only one factory/office/home/bakery can occupy a particular location. So without the particular land for that particular bakery the bread wouldn’t exist either. People get all confused about basic economics, particularly real estate economics.

In most ways land is no different than other physical inputs in that they are “exclusive”. You can’t use the same wheat in two different loaves of bread are the same time either. And the same baker can’t work in two different bakeries at the same time.

The key thing that makes land different from other economic inputs is that it is immobile. This has many interesting implications but doesn’t make land useless or require a particular ownership system.

Sure you could imagine a different world with different legal system but that wouldn’t change the fact that land is needed for almost every economic activity and is thus valuable. So whoever decides who get to use (i.e. supplies) that land - let’s call them the landowner - is adding value to that economic activity.

Similar discussions around intangible assets are even more confusing.

pmoriartyOP6y ago

"So whoever decides who get to use (i.e. supplies) that land - let's call them the landowner - is adding value to that economic activity."

The ones who decide what to do with land need not be their owner. See the practice of eminent domain, public lands, and non-capitalist economic systems.

Allowing the concentration of ownership in to a relatively few hands at the expense of the many has been an absolute disaster for the overwhelming majority of the population.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse