Harry asked: > You said: > "For a transition from the present system, it is indeed "not necessary to > confiscate land". It would be sufficient to abolish inheritance of land, > i.e. the community inherits it when the land owner dies." > > Trouble is that much of the best land contains improvements. Will your > community inherit the improvements as well, or do you think that the house > or factory belongs to the person who built them, or bought them?
Buildings cover only a small fraction of all land, and since you talk about "the best land", i.e. the most expensive land, even the land directly under the buildings is often worth more than the buildings on it. Anyway, to answer your question: The solution to this "dilemma" could simply be to pay the value of the buildings (in cash) to the heirs. Btw, in many cases already today, this is what happens, namely when there are 2 or more children and only 1 of them (or none) wants to stay in the house but doesn't have enough liquidity to pay off the other heirs with their share in cash. Then they have to sell the house and each heir (even the one who wanted to stay in the house) only gets cash. OTOH, if the goal is equal starting conditions for everyone -- a goal that should be even shared by ultra-capitalists! --, then all legacies, incl. houses, should be inherited by the community. Anyway, the question of who will inherit the buildings, is not really an argument in favor of private land ownership. It's just an excuse for not having arguments in favor of private land ownership. Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
