Wealth in The Form of Land
In the western tradition, the concepts of owning land and accumulating wealth in the form of land were engendered in the rise of the first state, for a primary service and power of government was, and is to this day, the awarding and adjudication of land use rights.
Land ownership was also justified according to John Locke. He claimed that because we mix our labour with the land, we thereby deserve the right to control the use of the land and benefit from the product of that land (but subject to his Lockean proviso of "at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.").
Additionally, in developed countries post-agrarian society (industrial society) this argument has many critics (including those influenced by Georgist and geolibertarian ideas) who argue that since land, by definition, is not a product of human labor, any claim of private property in it is a form of theft; as David Lloyd George observed, "to prove a legal title to land one must trace it back to the man who stole it."
Many older ideas have resurfaced in the modern notions of ecological stewardship, bioregionalism, natural capital, and ecological economics.
Read more about this topic: Wealth
Famous quotes containing the words wealth, form and/or land:
“I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes, hills and streams and plains; the mountains over our land and nature’s wealth deep under the earth, are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it ... try to fake three laughs in an hour—ha ha ha ha ha—they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)