Land, Owning land, Sharing land, Defending land, Etc.

[Ernie]

This is a thread to discuss:

Land, Owning land, Defending land, Sharing land, Driving people off of land, Etc.

You can discuss policies, procedures, bureaucracy and even laws that you don't like. But if you want to post a comment in favor of or against a particular party or ideology, please refrain. Please do not engage in promoting left wing/right wing ideology or critiquing the actions or viewpoints of a particular political party or political leaning in this thread.

[Ernie]

I think it is fairly well established that at least some major Native American people groups viewed land as something to be shared by all, and not something that should be designated as personal property or tribal property.

Have there been other people groups with the same concept of land?

[steve-in-kville]

I've never seen sharing land work out in the end, except in a native American culture.

[Ken]

I think it is fairly well established that at least some major Native American people groups viewed land as something to be shared by all, and not something that should be designated as personal property or tribal property.

Have there been other people groups with the same concept of land?

I don't think that is entirely accurate.

Many Native American tribes fought endless war over territory. They did not have any system of individual property ownership within tribes. But they certainly had the notion that those were Cheyenne lands, or Crow lands or Blackfeet lands, or Comanche lands or whatever.

[Ken]

I've never seen sharing land work out in the end, except in a native American culture.

Vast stretches of the United States is composed of shared (public) lands. National Forests, National Parks, BLM rangelands, and so forth.

What about that isn't working out?

[steve-in-kville]

I've never seen sharing land work out in the end, except in a native American culture.

Vast stretches of the United States is composed of shared (public) lands. National Forests, National Parks, BLM rangelands, and so forth.

What about that isn't working out?

I was thinking more in terms of communal living, as in working the land and so on.

[Josh]

I've never seen sharing land work out in the end, except in a native American culture.

Vast stretches of the United States is composed of shared (public) lands. National Forests, National Parks, BLM rangelands, and so forth.

What about that isn't working out?

I was thinking more in terms of communal living, as in working the land and so on.

Family ownership of land is common as is ownership by corporations or nonprofits.

[Ken]

Vast stretches of the United States is composed of shared (public) lands. National Forests, National Parks, BLM rangelands, and so forth.

What about that isn't working out?

I was thinking more in terms of communal living, as in working the land and so on.

Family ownership of land is common as is ownership by corporations or nonprofits.

I think communal living tends to fail, not because of the land ownership, but because of other social features such as communal work and communal income. Which are frankly completely different from communal land ownership.

Communal land ownership tends to work just fine when individual farmers are working for themselves on shared land according to whatever rules are in place. Communal lands are often rented or leased to individual farmers all around the world. Most ranchers in the west don't actually own their own land, for example. They lease grazing rights. In that case it is the ranching business that is private, not the land ownership.

[Neto]

The US and Canada have pretty clear laws that deal with land ownership, and it's difficult for "squatters" to gain legal ownership. Not so in some other countries. Squatters' rights are pretty well established in Brazil, which results in some "private violence" on the part of large land owners, to maintain control of the property they have purchased or developed. Basically, one needs to maintain use of all owned land, and must be vigilant concerning plots that have access routes open to the back areas. As far as the situation here in North America, while land is seen as a 'secure investment' under current law, if there was a major collapse of the government, it would be all up for grabs. Do not put your confidence in wealth, no matter what it is.

[RZehr]

I may have this wrong. But it is my understanding that the Russian Mennonites in Belize and Paraguay have a unique land ownership arrangement. To my understanding it goes something like this: The colony owns the land, so far as the government is concerned. Maybe similar to the Hutterites. But where they differ from the Hutterite model, is that the Russian Mennonites then take that huge block of land, and they have their own surveyors and their own records, and they subdivide and sell parcels within that block of land to individual Russian Mennonites. And they survey roads and public spaces too. And then they issue their own property tax bills for each person to pay, which is used to maintain roads and public spaces and pay the government taxes on the huge original block of land. Now the unique part, is that these individual land parcels are deed restricted. First, they can only be sold to a member of the colony, never to an outsider. And second, the colony sets a per acre/hectares price (at least for land. I don’t know how they might handle improvements such as houses) for farmland. These farmland prices are periodically adjusted, but my impression is that they aren’t adjusted constantly.
This control can make it difficult to turn land into cash. If you have a 100 acres that is valued at $5,000 per acre, and you want to sell it? Well, you can’t lower the price. And if no colony member wants to buy it, you’re just stuck with it for a while.


In defending: a few weeks ago, a preacher brought that up. He warned that here in America we may face confiscation of our farms, and that if we have AR15’s, and other weaponry, it may be a temptation to use them. Maybe initially to “just fire in the air” and as things progressively get worse, we continue to defend and guard and hold, until something really regrettable happens. He advised us to consider the wisdom of having rifles and firearms, and to make sure to hold our possessions and lands very lightly.
This preacher is a farmer and hunter. He wasn’t just telling others what to do.