@sp332 You posted the Jefferson link, so I figured you understood it.
Treating land as part of "the commons" doesn't preclude the idea that you can have temporary ownership, aka a lease.
The problem is that land is not infinite. Going with your example, if someone clears 100,000 acres, have they not deprived others of the natural use of the land? If a small percentage of the population owns most of the land and cuts down all the trees (for their sole profit), how is that no worse than you dumping toxic waste on "my" land?
Oddly libertarians consider free market principles as sacred, yet they do not realize that being able to pay a finite sum of money for an infinite amount of something (that is what owning land in perpetuity means) runs totally counter to free market principles. Just as there is a time value of money, there is a time value of capital. Owning land in perpetuity amounts to a free lunch to the landlord. They can charge rent and they and their line of heirs can live for free. Property tax and inheritance tax mitigates this problem (only partially at current levels), but populist libertarians are adamantly against these.
Please read up some on Georgism and Geoliberarianism. Understand why Jefferson is saying what he is saying.
The problem is that land is not infinite. Going with your example, if someone clears 100,000 acres, have they not deprived others of the natural use of the land? If a small percentage of the population owns most of the land and cuts down all the trees (for their sole profit), how is that no worse than you dumping toxic waste on "my" land?
The way property generally works is first-come, first-served. Let's say I find a gold vein, and mine it and refine it and cast it into ingots. That would give me 100% of the ownership of that gold. If you walk by the same area and "discover" my ingots, in the exact same way that I found that same gold in the ground before, you get 0% claim of ownership over that gold.
It's the same with patents, trademarks, and other IP. Whoever makes the first claim gets the rights.
Treating land as part of "the commons" doesn't preclude the idea that you can have temporary ownership, aka a lease.
The problem is that land is not infinite. Going with your example, if someone clears 100,000 acres, have they not deprived others of the natural use of the land? If a small percentage of the population owns most of the land and cuts down all the trees (for their sole profit), how is that no worse than you dumping toxic waste on "my" land?
Oddly libertarians consider free market principles as sacred, yet they do not realize that being able to pay a finite sum of money for an infinite amount of something (that is what owning land in perpetuity means) runs totally counter to free market principles. Just as there is a time value of money, there is a time value of capital. Owning land in perpetuity amounts to a free lunch to the landlord. They can charge rent and they and their line of heirs can live for free. Property tax and inheritance tax mitigates this problem (only partially at current levels), but populist libertarians are adamantly against these.
Please read up some on Georgism and Geoliberarianism. Understand why Jefferson is saying what he is saying.