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Comment by jdnenej | Hacker News Reader

By that logic you have to reject all property ownership entirely and modern society becomes totally unable to function since no one could ever build a building.

I think the vast majority of us find the ability to own land to be more useful than everyone living in grass tents that someone else could knock over because they want to sleep there.

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I think the GP is drawing a distinction between private and personal property. If you outlaw private property (e.g. things owned in absentee by entities, usually to seek rent, like landlording) then you are not outlawing people owning the places in which they work or sleep.

It is only when you outlaw personal property (e.g. your clothes, your home) that you encounter the problematic scenario that you suggest.

When Marx says he wants to abolish private property (i.e. the means of production), he does not mean to abolish personal property. I think this nuance is often ignored or unknown, which is unfortunate.

So you are saying that people may only own land if they work or live on the land? This is not desirable for most businesses where renting property makes much more sense since it gives them the flexability to expand or downsize. It is also not desirable for people who are living somewhere temporarily.

Renting is desirable because land is expensive to buy. And that's because its value is inflated because you can use it as the source of passive income (rent).

If you could buy land from somebody moving out at the price similar to todays renting you wouldn't want to rent. And the company that's moving out would have incentive to sell it to you at low price because ofter it stops operating there it will loose the ownership and get nothing.

Renting itself is fine. Property ownership is actually a huge, annoying pain in the ass which, putting aside financial security reasons, and the fact that renters are often treated like scum, nobody would want to go through.

What is at issue here is landlording for private gain. As I pointed out, these rents are entirely unearned because nobody made land, and so should flow to the general public, not private owners.

Under that logic wouldn't a farmer farming for private gain have unearned money? They didn't make the land.

Not that there is never unjust rent-seeking activity but there are real investment of capital and work involved and merely "dependence on land" isn't a sufficient arguement.

In your example, who gets to decide who will use the "private" property? The government? The person who got there first? Does it become a sort of law of the Jungle that the person to defend a place is the one who gets to enjoy the view? At least in the latter the property is truly owned by the public. But in the former, you simply made the government the rent seeker instead of a individual person or company. The end result is no different.

You think there's no difference between public and private land?

You talk as though the concept of public property doesn't exist.

It's also possible eliminate land rents from private property ownership, by charging 100% tax on the land portion (as opposed to the facilities on it).

Perhaps your political preferences close your eyes to the practical possibilities?

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