Comment by akudha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akudha | Hacker News Reader

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That is not at all what I am implying. When you buy that much amount of land, which is a basic human necessity, at minimum the public needs to know what the plans are for those lands, right? If someone buys 5 acres of land, that is a different story, nobody cares. The scale is what making the difference here.

Let me ask you another question - recently (2019 I think), Bill bought 14,500 acres of land for 171M in a single deal. 171M is pocket change for Bill. According to your logic, he can continue to buy farmlands across the country (because "freedom") with nobody asking any questions. What happens if he ends up owning half (or 75% or whatever) of all available farmlands? You want one single man to control your food supply?

He can buy all the Ferraris/Picassos/megayachts etc on the planet, that would make zero difference to anyone (except maybe other billionaires). It is when he starts buying water sources, land etc it becomes a problem. It has nothing to do with dictatorship.

Who decides where the line is drawn for scale?

Dude, this is not some weird fine line slippery slope situation.

Normal people don’t often buy 269,000 of acres of land, only influential people like Bill Gates can.

The claim is that Bill Gates has bought too much farm land.

If someone is making that claim surely they can clarify exactly what too much is and why.

How do you expect anyone to take this suggestion seriously? How do you expect actual policy to be set without clearly defined boundaries of acceptable behaviour?

It’s a lot like the famous “I’ll know it when I see it” concept. Also none of us here are lawmakers…

But hey, you seem very sure of yourself. Do you think there is any amount you consider too much?

To be clear here you're advocating for a law that forbids the private ownership of an unspecified quantity of property. How do you intend for this law to be enforced?

Will every single private transaction be subject to scrutiny by some sort of administrative panel that takes into account the current holdings of the prospective buyer?

It's curious to me that there is such a visceral opposition to Bill Gates owning some farm land in a place neither of us have ever heard of when he has so much more direct power over all of us through Microsoft.

I don't think that there is a specific quantity of stuff that is too much stuff for one person to own. I think that there are issues with wealth concentration but I don't think it's absolute.

The issue isn't that one person owns a lot of stuff the issue is that one person owns a lot of stuff while most other people own nearly nothing or are in debt.

The issue here isn't that one person owns lots of stuff, the issue here is that one person is in the process of accumulating something that is vital for humans to live, something that is also limited in supply. I mentioned Ferraris etc, you conveniently keep ignoring it.

There are alternatives to every Microsoft product. Comparing vital resources like food/water supply etc with a computer operating system makes no sense.

I don't think anyone is proposing any laws here, at least not yet. Simply pointing out the fact that one individual is in the process of amassing insane amounts of a vital resource which will result in him having insane influence on something as basic as food. You seem to be more concerned about causing a minor inconvenience to someone with crap ton of money (if and when some laws are enacted) than the risk of one individual having power over vital resources. Already some 80% of meat in US is controlled by 3 companies, 50% of seeds are controlled by one company and so on. The situation is only getting worse.

I am going to stop arguing. By all means, please support billionaires with hideous monopolistic past/insane amounts of money and let private, unelected individuals influence policies etc if that is what you believe in.

Usually there are anti trust and competition laws that prevent one entity from amassing so much market power that it would hurt consumers.

The quantity should also depend on the land quality, imo.

For example, Larry Ellison's island in Hawaii, vs rural undeveloped landlocked farmland.

Better questions would be - why does one man need so much farmland? What is he going to do with it? How much more is he planning to buy? If he suddenly stops all farming on all farmlands that he buys, what would be the impact on the food supply?

It is amazing that you're arguing in support of a billionaire with a monopolistic, predatory past. He might be doing good things today, but he is also a big supporter of companies like Monsanto. He also has the arrogance of influencing things his way using his money, even when a majority of people/voters don't agree with him. Here is an example : https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13085/charitable-plutoc...

I do not know if you are arguing in good faith at this point. No single person, especially an unelected person, should have as much influence as Bill has. He is just one example. There are other super shitty examples. At least Bill is doing some good, there are other billionaires that are much, much worse.

I don’t think you realize how small 14,500 acres is.

Also, that’s nearly 12k per acre for every acre, even the ones you can’t farm. That’s a very good price, hard pressed to find a farmer who wouldn’t sell for that.

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