Indeed. Giles used to argue
a ‘free’ conservative society is characterized by individuals with low time preference.
however, these individuals would prefer renting (short term, high time preference) instead of saving and buying their own houses.
So, the preferences wrt to housing and the alleged character of the people in such society are clearly at odds.
Giles’s point is that certain positive externalities would be internalized by manors. For example, parks could attract more people to the manor’s land, bringing him greater revenue. Thus, a manorial system could be superior.
All in all, I still doubt that such a system of land arrangement would become dominant. I still think that the externalities that Giles mentions could be internalized by individual home owners in different ways, like homeowner associations buying land to create a park.
That’s what’s done with condos. But often, condo sellers don’t pry into the private lives of potential buyers unless they look like the '“fly by night” sort. In fact, I’d argue that you’d want someone who isn’t attached too much or a couple that’s childless buying in over a couple already with a child for the simple fact that they have cash flow now to buy. Gay couples in this case have the cash flow to pony up for the price. That’s why some folks don’t mind gay couples, not just because of the cash flow, but also because they invest in their properties more so than not (physical improvements and maintenance are often paid for more so by gay couples). It’s sorta of a queer version of gentrification.
Exactly. I don’t need to rent to hire people to maintain my land. I don’t need to rent to have a swimming pool or a workout gym. And it is not necessarily desirable to have a shared swimming pool or workout gym. I also do not need to rent from a landowner to get a membership to a gym with all kinds of facilities. I just find the whole idea of manoralism laughable.
True there is no guarantee that past human actions will be identical in the future however doesn’t it make sense to start with the basis of how humans are now at this moment in predicting how humans will be tomorrow and unless there is some major change in human biology tomorrow we should anticipate that human behavior will be the same tomorrow as it is today.
It sounds reasonable to predict human behavior based on what has happened in the past, it just isn’t definite knowledge until the future occurs. Would you agree with this?
What the historical record tells us is that in 10,000 years of human history people have preferred to own rather than rent. Why will that suddenly change? Examining history provides lots of examples for the type of manorial society Giles envisions to be created and yet in these times people preferred to own rather than rent. When analyzing human behaviour to ignore what human behaviour has typically occurred and is occurring right now is idiotic.
Yes, I agree, in fact that is what I said. Obviously, there can be no definite knowledge of the future until it occurs. Would you also agree that if one is predicting the human behavior in the future that the most logical place to begin is where humans have and are currently faced with similar situations as to ones anticipated in the future? There have historically been and continue to be many opportunities where Giles possible theory could have occurred and yet people consistently have preferred ownership over renting. If people have historically rejected this option while will they accept the same option tomorrow?
That is one of the places I would start.
It is theoretically possible, but only if many people changed their prefrences. In order to show how his ideal society could occur, Giles must show why people would change their prefrences in this way, and have a logical basis for this prediction.
Where else would you start?
I would also analyze the present culture, past culture, and the things that could change it in the future, when trying to predict the value judgements that most people will have in the future.
I have a theory that people who get enough sex are better adjusted to society. most social ills can be traced to an angry undersexed male (politicians, rapists).
I’m making an epistemological point, not an ideological one. I’ve already said before that I doubt that manorialism would become dominant in anarchist society. The point I was making was that “the historical record” is an extremely shabby way to make an argument. Historicism only produces inductive arguments which are, by definition, always invalid. There is no such thing as a valid (or sound) inductive argument. Saying that in the past 10,000 years people have preferred to own over rent doesn’t mean much. All that it means is that in the past 10,000 years something gave the incentive to people to own. It doesn’t mean that in the next 10,000 years people will own or that people will want to own in an anarchist society.
As I said before, I doubt that manorialism would become dominant purely on a theoretical basis - there are multiple ways beside manorial planning to plan a society and there are other ways to capture externalities besides a manorial system. Because of this, people would likely choose to take the long-term cheaper route: ownership.
What you are arguing for is that cooperative ownership of an enterprise is more efficient than capitalistic ownership of an enterprise.
The results for land size are the same. Home owners pooling together to own land (makes no sense structurally since the land comes before the homes, but let’s assume they do it anyway) makes them into a cooperative land estate that rents land to the home owners. It’s no longer individual ownership.
Whether or not it’s a manor (which I find to be a silly term for capitalist enterprise) or a cooperative, the land market operates at a minimal scale. Competition between capitalist ownership or cooperative ownership of land will produce the best outcomes.
The historical record is that people own buildings but rent land. The American experience has obfuscated this because government has pursued an egalitarian land distribution policy to promote small land holdings and the government has acted as a landlord collecting rents (property taxes).
If we look at the way that new land is homesteaded, it is usually homesteaded by separate individuals, not by one individual who then rents it out to others. It doesn’t make sense for individuals to rent if they can instead own land. Taking this into account, new land would most likely be organized via homeowner associations when it is settled. Moreover, most land today is owned by separate individuals, and I doubt that they’d sell their land and housing to a “land entrepreneur” when they could instead capture externalities by using homeowner associations - many of which already exist.
That doesn’t make an iota of sense. You went from a world of independent land owners, which would merge and subdivide their properties to create an efficient structure of indepedent land ownership, to a world of a homeowner association with absolutely no process where land ownership is substituted for home ownership.
Since you don’t seem to have any idea where homeowner associations originate, here is how today’s homeowner associations exist. From a starting point of individual land ownership, the value of the land as a single enterprise falls below the value of the land for urbanization. A private developer buys the land in order to destroy the farm or whatever pastoral industry there is on it and instead subdivide it into urban plots. When the government services were able to take over the management of the future neighborhood, the developers did not bother with creating an association. The streets and common structures instead went into public ownership while the developer sold the plots with or without buildings on them. However because government has become unreliable to protect the value of the neighborhood, developers are drafting up homeowner associations in which those who purchase lots are bound by contract to belong to. In fact because the management of the association is allocated based on the number of building lots, and those remain the property of the developer until the project has been completed, the HOA is nothing more than an arm of the developer until all lots have been sold.
How is that different from “manoralism” or “enterprise-community”?
AFAIK, Romans love and want to own land. That’s evidence in your favor, Spideynw.
Yes, in the study of human bahavior actually looking at human behavior in the present and the past is a complete waste of time. Much better to do what you are attempting and just blindly extrapolate from nothing.
If human behavior can be predicted then human behavior in similar or identical situations to the predictions is completely relevant. Giles proposal has had 10,000 years of testing and it has failed. It is not a theoretical discussion.
False, one could make a reasonable case that the entire human history is in large part a search and struggle for individual land ownership. The notion that America is unique in desire for individual land ownership is ridiculous.