patrick.net

"Tanzania accused of backtracking over sale of Masai’s ancestral land"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/16/tanzania-government-accused-serengeti-sale-maasai-lands

I finally got around to finishing this article, brilliant. Should be required reading.

Very cogent in arguing that cronyism is baked in the cake, in so many insidious ways.

Also depressing...

Reminds me of this article:

http://mises.org/library/war-making-and-class-conflict

And everyone is stuck in a feed back loop of the R v D thing.

Manorialism, never even heard the word before. I have read before about how the English (and other) aristocracy essentially stole the land of the peasants by inventing new legal concepts and using fencing to prevent peasant from getting access to their own land, hence making it easier to steal. No right-of-way given, I suppose.

The original article is really good.

I often wondered where the English term "freehold" for land ownership came from, and I see there is also "copyhold" mentioned. I'm going to have to study this some more.

One thing you can be certain of, the founders and other early arrivals in the US were well aware of what had happened in England around 1650, and were in a position to grant themselves huge swaths of valuable land, which later arrivals had to buy back from them in small pieces.

The land grabs in the US may have been a good case for a Federal land-use tax, the whole Georgism thing, although I am skeptical about making land-use tax the ONLY form of taxation.

justme says

I often wondered where the English term "freehold" for land ownership came from, and I see there is also "copyhold" mentioned. I'm going to have to study this some more.

The relevant point is that the peasants had held the land until it was forcibly taken from them.

Does anyone know the math of, if TNC had to pay their share of roads and maintenance what that additional cost would be to them?

Good article. Wealth concentration would have been greatly reduced in 2008 and its aftermath if the government/Fed hadn't stepped in and made the uber-wealthy even wealthier while eroding the upper middle class with tax increases and currency debasement/inflation. Note that the article mostly details a "leftist" libertarian (mildly anarchist), highly decentralized alternative view which is not totally in line with modern right leaning libertarians, definitely an interesting read.

cool story bro

jazz music says

how patents are government enforced monopolies

There is no other kind of monopoly...l

jazz music says

The moneys go to them not these fictitious welfare cheats... After mentioning how our taxes fund the development of pharmaceuticals which are patented and are foisted upon us for usurious prices....

OK, so now that the election (wipe-out) is over, can we please acknowledge that Grubercare/Romneycare/HeritageFoundationCare/Obamacare is a bad policy, or at least an unpopular policy, that empowers Bill McGuire and his peers at the expense of everyone else? As far as I can tell, the Republicans have literally zero majority positions other than opposing that legislation. Yet, because that policy touches everyone intimately, whether they want it or not, it has returned Republicans to power.

justme says

and were in a position to grant themselves huge swaths of valuable land, which later arrivals had to buy back from them in small pieces.

Washington was a land surveyor . . .

The "Financier of the Revolution" was a land speculator, too.

He speculatively bought land in W NY -- well, he basically bought W NY -- but the cut-off of trade with Europe during the early Napoleon era BK'd him big-time.

Ended up in a debtors prison until Congress bailed him out in 1800.

Robert Morris (financier)

anyhoo, the main takeaway I got from Georgism is that we shouldn't conflate natural wealth with the 'capital' in 'capitalism'. Apple & Oranges, basically, since capitalism should be all about the actual provision of new wealth, not just the capture of pre-existing wealth.