Land in Europe was almost exclusively in private ownership up to the French revolution. That didn’t mean that everyone could and should be a land owner.
If we throw out the confusion that owning an urban plot is land ownership, there remains only very few land owners even in America. Land has been consolidated into much more productive farming estates, and most people have no interest in being land owners. They prefer the higher productivity of urban life.
Hard to imagine a more vague or inaccurate claim than that. In france for instance a lot of land was owned by the government, that is : the monarchy, the catholic theocracy and the oligarchical ‘nobility’. All these people were ‘the public sector’ and owned, or rather usurped land.
If land is in private hands then “could” own land is a matter of the market and “should” own land is best determined by the market and not your implied central planning.
You need to get out more. America is a very big place and lots of people own land. Most of America is not composed of urban areas. Clearly your definition of owning land and my definition is different. If you own land in the city it still counts as land.
According to the census 70% of the population lives in a city of 50,000 or more, and that would likely increase if you counted smaller cities.
There is no land ownership in the city because land is not an economic production unit for homeowners. You are not allowed to make a living from that land because of its proximity and zoning. It is impossible to make a living in the city without the road, which is the entire purpose of urban life. The house is just a place to stay, but economic life comes from the road and that is shared between multiple tenants.
That’s true and that is why there are very few land owners in America or anywhere.
What is this nonsense. Land ownership is not related to what use the land is for. You either own something or you don’t. The question is land ownership not economic use of the land. It is like saying nobody can own a car unless you are using it to produce some tangible article, ludicrous.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Urban homeowners do not own land because they do not have the rights that accompany land ownership.
What Stranger is trying to get at is that if he just were able to own the roads then he could rule the world…
I would have no leverage on the land owners.
I’m not sure what you mean since in your language ‘land owner’ doesn’t mean land owner, as illustrated by your not regarding people who own land in a city as land owners.