1. Your real "land / population" fair share is 16 acres. About half of Earth's land mass is "rank wilderness", practically inhospitable. Hence 8 acres, practically all of which has
something naturally growing on it, indicating you can adapt that land accordingly. Yes, some land will be more productive than other for varying needs; you're welcome to engage in some form of trade.
Rough estimate is one typically needs 1-3 acres to grow enough food for one person. 8 acres should be more than enough, enough so to generate quite a surplus. Multiplying that by # of family members leverages productivity further, giving a simple family of 4 some 32 acres to work with, and into 50-100 acres for a larger family (leveraging another HNer's calculations, that can push a half-million $ revenue).
2. Most people are legally free; those who aren't are either incarcerated (and subject to equivalent subsistence by the state), or are the subject of criminal abuse (and freeing them is a major purpose of the state). Wasn't all that long ago that the USA was first settled by people who literally picked up what little they had and walked (or rode a mundane covered wagon) hundreds or thousands of miles across unpaved terrain to reach their settlement.
I just looked on zillow.com for land in the 8 acre range. There is enough available for well under $10,000 (with just a few seconds' search effort) to make the thought experiment viable. "Able to relocate" is little more than picking up a briefcase and hitching a ride no more than halfway across the state.
And it is a thought experiment. It is not a comprehensive analysis of encyclopedic depth and peer-reviewed correctness; it is a back-of-the napkin sanity check of what would roughly constitute a bottom-line standard, bracketing the discussion skewed by "soak the rich" redistributive thinking. Insofar as there will be complications: yes, there will be complications; figure it out, yes you may have to break ties (we're talking survival here), yes it will require effort (we're talking survival here), no it may not be pleasant (we're talking survival here).
There's a recurring discrepancy I see on the subject:
- some people expect "functional poverty" be achievable with virtually zero effort by the individual, all resources & energy supplied by others
- some people expect "functional poverty" requires an all-out effort by the individual, with virtually zero resources & effort supplied by others.
My great-grandparents having hauled themselves into Central Nowhere, Utah and elicited a decent living from the dirt there, without prolific & compulsory government welfare programs to do so, I'm rather firmly in the latter group.
Bottom line is: one is expected to work AT LEAST as hard is required for subsistence farming on an average 8-acre lot. Whether the reality is actually farming an 8-acre lot, or working a mundane job in a factory, or writing apps on a borrowed MacBook, it is not unreasonable to expect/require an individual to produce at least that much in exchange for basic sustenance. This notion that the capable idle should be sustained, thru the confiscation of at least that much productivity from others, for the mere act of breathing is preposterous. Survival isn't free; you're expected to work at least that hard.