CLTs

An estimated 400 million acres of US farm land will change hands in the coming decades. What should sustainable agriculture look like in communities of the near future?
Community land trusts provide regionally based structures for affordable access. #CLTshttps://t.co/v4ktOQZ7y6

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) January 19, 2022

The Need for... Distributism

"Taking the rising value of property and the growth of landless populations into account for the first time, the report calculates land inequality is 41% higher than previously believed."

Our small farmers need permanent, affordable access to #land.https://t.co/k15IvtjnAR

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 27, 2020

Though painted with too wide a brush, Andro Linklater still creates a fascinating and imaginative portrait of the history of land ownership. https://t.co/a4LzqTCv14

— Law & Liberty (@LawLiberty) November 27, 2020

Edit.

A new study has revealed just how concentrated farmland ownership is: one percent of the world’s #farms operate a whopping 70% of crop fields. @guardian https://t.co/ebNbZ3wkfk

— Rodale Institute (@RodaleInstitute) November 28, 2020

But the Land is for the People, a Community

Not for atomized individuals to claim based on the rights defined by liberal justice

"The idea that #land should be treated from an economic point of view as it if were a commodity that you buy and sell and make money on has to change. Land can’t be treated that way. It has to be treated as a form of #trust, and we have to be stewards of the land."

-Bob Swann

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 12, 2020

Raj Patel, Land Reform

Post by Schumacher Center for a New Economics.

Background Causes for Uhmerican Social Atomism

Westward Expansion: How the West was Won? by Bruce Frohnen

On Brad’s more important point, the problem of western expansion, I’d like to simply encourage him in further beating up on Thomas Jefferson–always a good thing, and particularly appropriate in this instance. It probably was inevitable that Americans would settle the bulk of habitable North America. From their beginnings, Americans have been a restless people perhaps too enamored of adventure and material self-betterment. Our national character is not perfect, but it is a thing we must recognize. However, that this expansion was made far more harmful to America and Americans as well as the peoples who “got in our way,” is beyond question. Old fashioned greed, being a part of our fallen nature, is to be expected, but was made far worse by a combination of racism and power. When our thug-in-chief at the time, Andrew Jackson, decided that peaceful, law-abiding Cherokee, living in European-style settlements, were to be removed with deadly force because their land was too valuable to let them keep, we saw the worst in America come forth. Most westward expansion was far more morally ambiguous than this, with blame and praise earned on both sides, but expansion was almost always made worse by a progressive drive on the part of the government.

Related:
The global land grab: The new enclosures by Liz Alden Wily (Resilience)

Dr. Fleming on Property

Back to the Stone Age II F 2

I shall be content to use it, here, in a basic etymological sense as that which belongs to us (proprius is a Latin adjective meaning one's own), but not (even though a case could be made for such usage) including our physical or mental attributes.

Property, as Aristotle observed, is natural because it is essential to human functioning and thriving. We have to eat and shield ourselves from the elements, hunt animals with weapons and grow food with implements. I am going to postpone an extended discussion of property until later because I do not wish to lose the thread of this albeit simple argument.

Property is universal in human societies and claims to the otherwise, put forward by Marxist and feminist anthropologists, can only hold up if we insist that property be defined in Anglo-American terms. It is true that in a tropical climate a hunter-gatherer people needs little property: privileged access to watering holes, spears to hunt with, perhaps baskets to store the nuts and berries our women gather, but anything a man makes or improves or finds can be (though it is not always) property, even if he is expected to share its use with his relatives.

The consequences of liberal notions of property and citizenship.

Oz Conservative: Hawke Sells Off the Farm to China

I am reminded of Will Hoyt's piece at FPR, The Flaw in Jefferson's Idea of Ward Republics. While these notions of property (the right to property, buying and selling, being "absolute, with no other considerations limiting it) may be defended by [academic] liberals at present, did they originate with liberals? Or with those seeking to despoil property from the powerless and needing a rationale to justify it?

Steve Sailer, Absolute Nuclear Families

What is the business model for Recology and the like? What does the company do with the composted materials, and if they are making a profit from should they be benefiting wholly from this, or should the community get the composted materials or some share of the profit back? (Does the company own the waste and is it free to do what it wants with it, or is it owed to the community?) And is it really necessary for a private company to do the composting, or should people be encouraged to either compost it themselves, or give it to someone in the neighborhood who will?

Whatever you do for the least of these...

Barbara Ehrenreich, Homeless in America (CP, EB)

Do we allow the homeless and the poor to have access to productive property, including access to public land for growing food and such? The may no longer able to take care of themselves in that way, but how many of them would be willing to learn? And how many are unable because of mental illness or other issues? One could argue that food is no longer a common good because we do not live in a hunter-gatherer society and everyone must make a contribution, either by growing their own food or working so they can exchange for it, but is the notion of what is "common" really that clear-cut? Is it an injustice if one in unable to acquire the means (productive capital) to produce their own food because the majority of property is in the hands of the few? Is this really progress?

Some of the complaints against the "young people" of OWS by those not sympathetic to the movement may be understandable, but a lot of seems like resentment of wage slaves who don't realize how fortunate they are. One can criticize some in OWS for embracing the platform of the contemporary Democratic party, but they nonetheless have some legitimate gripes.

If there is insufficient land, then do we force some to move, while reconsidering what it is to be a citizen or a member of a community? Or do we just let things play themselves out, and let people move "voluntarily" when the times become more desperate, even though it may be too late?

Items of Interest, 6 September 2011

Rod Dreher returns to blogging -- he is now at TAC.
Thomas Fleming, Idling, Week 1
Patrick Buchanan, How Capital Crushed Labor

Distributist Review:
The Debt Ceiling Deception
Does Property Have a Purpose?

John Robb, HOLLOW STATES and a CRISIS OF CAPITALISM

Medievalists.net: The Death of the Knight: Changes in Military Weaponry during the Tudor Period

Peak Oil: No laughing matter by Brendan Barrett (EB)

NPR: The 'Top Secret America' Created After Sept. 11
Dana Priest and William Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State

Sen. Jim Webb: Editorial: Webb puts troops ahead of profits

TED

Every new invention changes the world -- in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.

Music:
Q&A: Bela Fleck on banjo, storms

Dr. Fleming, The Properties of Property