One of the problems that I think could help this a lot is income inequality. The economic gains are no longer that of the people working for them, but those of the ownership class. The only way to get ahead is to become an Owner, and such a thing is harder and harder as one has to compete against entire organizations of owners.
It's not like there was just empty land
> Possibly
Definitely.
> at some point someone had to be the first humans in an area
Yes, and we know who they were. Hundreds of different tribes, spanning from coast to coast.
They came during the last Ice Age, crossing over the Bering Straight which was solid ground at that time.
The way American settlers treated the native peoples is not something that can just be "possibly"-d away.
Anyway the idea of land "ownership" is kind of stupid in the first place. You can't "own" land, you can just possess it under the rules of some kind of system of power.
"Most of [land speculation] was done on the company-system; a number of adventurers would unite, secure a grant of land, survey it, and then sell it off as speedily as they could. Their aim was a quick turnover; they did not, as a rule, contemplate holding the land, much less settling it - in short, their ventures were a pure gamble in rental-values. Among these pre-revolutionary enterprises was the Ohio Company, formed in 1748 with a grant of half a million acres; the Loyal Company, which like the Ohio Company, was composed of Virginians; the Transylvania, the Vandalia, Scioto, Indiana, Wabash, Illinois, Susquehannah, and others whose holdings were smaller.
It is interesting to observe the names of persons concerned in these undertakings; one can not escape the significance of this connexion in view of their attitude towards the revolution, and their subsequent career as statesmen and patriots. For example, aside from his individual ventures, General Washington was a member of the Ohio Company, and a prime mover in organizing the Mississippi Company. He also conceived the scheme of the Potomac Company...
Patrick Henry was an inveterate and voracious engrosser of land lying beyond the deadline set by the British State; later he was heavily involved in the affairs of one of the notorious Yazoo companies, operating in Georgia. ... His company's holdings in Georgia [amounted] to more than ten million acres...
Benjamin Franklin's thrifty mind turned cordially to the project of the Vandalia Company, and he acted successfully as promoter for it in England in 1766. Timothy Pickering, who was Secretary of State under Washington and John Adams, went on record in 1796 that "all I am now worth was gained by speculations in land." Silas Deane, emissary of the Continental Congress to France, was interested in the Illinois and Wabash Companies, as was Robert Morris, who managed the revolution's finances; as was also James Wilson, who became a justice of the Supreme Court and a mighty man in post-revolutionary land-grabbing. Wolcott of Connecticut, and Stiles, president of Yale College, held stock in the Susquehannah Company; so did Peletiah Webster, Ethan Allen, and Jonathan Trumbull, the "Brother Jonathan," whose name was long a sobriquet for the typical American, and is still sometimes so used. James Duane, the first mayor of New York City, carried on some quite considerable speculative undertakings; and however indisposed one may feel towards entertaining the fact, so did the "Father of the Revolution" himself - Samuel Adams."
He further says that the British forbade claiming land beyond a certain western border, and says that this was probably a strong motive for the revolution, stronger than some of the other things the British had done.
"In 1763 [the British] forbade the colonists to take up lands lying westward of the source of any river flowing through the Atlantic seaboard. The dead-line thus established ran so as to cut off from preemption about half of Pennsylvania and half of Virginia and everything to the west thereof. This was serious. With the mania for speculation running as high as it did, with the consciousness of opportunity, real or fancied, having become so acute and so general, this ruling affected everybody. One can get some idea of its effect by imagining the state of mind of our people at large if stock-gambling had suddenly been outlawed at the beginning of the last great boom in Wall Street a few years ago.
... A mere common-sense view of the situation would indicate that the British State's interference with [the land-granting process] was at least as great an incitement to revolution as its interference, through the Navigation Acts, and the Trade Acts ... In the nature of things it would be a greater incitement, both because it affected a more numerous class of persons, and because speculation in land-values represented much easier money."
I mean the game is janky but the concept was really interesting.
Becoming an owner is just opening a brokerage account away.
If land is your thing, you can buy shares in REITs, too. (Real Estate Investment Trusts)
Anyone can buy shares in Microsoft (for example) and become a part-owner and have votes. And it's never been easier to do so. Microsoft will even pay you a quarterly dividend as your cut of the company's profits.