>From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > For an occupant, the incentive to build on one's own land would be the >same > > as always. Since there would be no restriction on the right of the >actual > > occupier of a piece of land to charge a price before quitting it
>Does "quitting" have to mean "selling full title"? It sounds like it >rules out leaving but renting to the next occupant. That's right--under mutualist rules of appropriation, ownership is established and maintained by occupancy. So quitting the land and transferring occupancy would be a full transfer of ownership. The upshot is that >only people who can afford to buy property outright in full can use it. Technically true--but without the ability of absentee owners to exclude homesteaders from unoccupied land, the full purchase price would be a lot cheaper. There would be no obstacle to simply homesteading vacant land, including vacant lots in the city. The price of land, according to Tucker, would fall to a combination of the value of improvements plus economic rent. >Capital markets can partly solve that problem, but a big problem >remains. Or do I misunderstand your remarks about slum occupants taking >over their buildings, etc? I meant slum occupants would simply become de facto owners, and stop paying rent--was that your understanding? In the transition to a mutualist society and the expropriation of landlords, I'd be willing to negotiate some settlement in which landlords were paid up to the equivalent of what they could have saved from wage labor during their lifetime. Many wage earners are frugal and put their savings into small rental properties as a form of retirement investment, and I'd hate to see anyone robbed of the actual proceeds of his labor. But big slumlords and owners of vast tracts of land would be SOL. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
