Land ownership is already a fiction in Canada.

If I buy a book, it’s mine to do what I want with, for as long as I want.

If I buy real estate, the government still gets to say what I do on/with it, and can take it away if they decide they really want it, or if I stop paying them property taxes. That doesn’t sound like ownership; it sounds like a rental agreement.

The First Nations never had our concept of owning land. The land owns us. So we should respect it - or it will all end up looking like a strip mine eventually.

100% agree. Private, inheritable land ownership in the context of a population that doesn’t all enter the game at the same time with the same resources available to them is inherently unjustifiable.

WHERE in life is anyone promised ‘the same resources’? My dad was a poor farmer. My friend’s dad was a multi millionaire owner of a thriving business. No one gets the same start. But you start with what you’ve got and work to improve your life if you want.

There is land value, it’s reflected in the amount the government charges the lessee. A property downtown is not going to have the same monthly lease value as a property in the suburbs for the same land size. This changes over time as areas become more or less desirable.

I also don’t believe that the government is perfect, but I do think they’re still better than private landlords who are showing how un-trustworthy they are as we live and breath.

As for your “anarchic society”, you’re actually not correct in this assertion. Large-scale personal ownership of land was uncommon historically, though of course it depends on where and when you look.

The roman empire had private land ownership, but only for a small people. Very few people owned their own land or home.

England was the same, a bunch of lords and dukes and shit. Lots of peasants that didn’t own even the shit from the animals.

If you look at First Nations cultures in North America pre-European contact there was no private ownership at all, it was all collective for the tribes. The Aztec empire was the same, collective ownership by groups.

Tracking the ownership of a plot of land for a lot of people requires a lot of bureaucracy and centralized systems to track it, along with citizenship rights, which simply didn’t exist in most places.

I agree, but it needs to still be talked about.

People still think we can build our way into affordable homes, which is impossible. Alternatives like this would actually deliver affordable housing, but you’re right that a lot of people would be unhappy about it.

Uh, nowhere? That’s why private, inheritable land ownership is unjustifiable. There is no way to make such a system fair when tomorrow you will have a child who is born who will be orphaned and another who will be the beneficiary of land inheritance, neither child being responsible for the conditions they were born into. Yet both are expected to compete for the same resources. We can do much better.

I dont understand why having two different life circumstances make land ownership “unjustifiable”? That doesnt correlate. Life doesnt give us equality. Some will be richer, some poorer but why does that mean a citizen shouldn’t own land?

What’s not to understand? Please, justify to me why an orphan and the child of a billionaire who will receive a land inheritance being made to compete for resources is the best system that we shouldn’t try to get away from? As for what life “gives” us, who cares? We aren’t bound by that, else we should throw away all our tools and return to monkey. We have brains and we can design better, fairer systems than, “Well that’s just the way it is.”

We have a mixed market economy with strong socialist safety net in Canada and it IS the best system because other systems have failed miserably. If you work hard in Canada, you CAN make a lot of money. But even if you are born an orphan in a poor family you won’t die of hunger, because we do take care of the poorest. I worked with street kids in a major Canadian city and NONE of them were completely destitute. They didn’t always have stable housing (often because of their own choices) but they had shelter and they had enough to eat and clothes to wear and a surprising number of them had enough for cell phones and cigarettes despite not having jobs. You cant say that about countries that dont have safety nets.

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/reports-publications/health-promotion-chronic-disease-prevention-canada-research-policy-practice/vol-44-no-11-12-2024/distribution-hunger-canadian-youth.html

Overall, one in six (16.6%) survey participants reported experiencing hunger.

But they didn’t literally die from it so we’re in the best system. Please.

Wealth inequality is at the highest level it’s ever been in Canada. Our system is currently failing.

Compared to what? Things are better for the poor in China? Venezuela? The US? What are you comparing to?

Will it? I’d say the land I own looks a lot more cared for than the thousands of acres of Crown land that’s right up against my yard. My land gets tended to regularly, the trees and grass are cared for, the weeds are taken out and the deer and bears still get to walk across it and the birds and squirrels still live in the trees. No strip mines in sight.

Food insecurity is currently decreasing in China (source) while it’s increasing in Canada (source). So maybe there is a lesson on central planning and land distribution for us to learn.

“which is impossible”

I beg to differ. In Alberta, three years ago I bought a home for 65,000. Two months ago I bought another one for 60,000. The second one needs some love but it’s livable. I’m currently building a small alleyway home by combining two used buildings and the final cost will be under 30,000.

It IS possible - with some sweat equity - but not in Toronto or Vancouver, thats for sure.

So you buying places where nobody wants to live and doing all the construction yourself is somehow proof that it’s possible to build affordable housing for everyone?

Give your head a shake.

Nobody wants to live in Alberta? Did we mention that Alberta has the HIGHEST interprovincial migration of any province in Canada? We’re building as fast as we can cause there are so many people moving here.

And yes, all the skills Ive learned over the years are now on youtube and can be learned by anyone. My first house gained about 25% in value because I painted it, cleaned up the yard, and built a tiny 4 x 8 front porch and then waited a couple of years to sell it. Not rocket science, just takes some work.

I’m not promoting private ownership of land, but I fail just fail to see how allowing a single entity to manage land would be better than a more decentralized one. Having one dickhead who owns some land trying to gouge others is bad, but we can go somewhere else. If instead, we have THE dickhead who “owns” ALL of the land trying to gouge groups of people they specifically don’t like (oh you know that those racists and neo-Nazi’s will try to get into government), then where the hell are people supposed to go?

Sure, there may be a handful of landlords who own a lot of land and it’s hard to avoid them, but that’s more telling of an oligarchic society and its problems, and not that private ownership is a problem.

Some of those examples from history weren’t great. If anything, they (aside from the tribal ownership of land) more-so exemplify things that seem to frustrate you: few people own the lands and they’ve dickheads about it, but we are left with no choice.

And just because it never happened in the past, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Personal property isn’t private property. You can use a piece of land how you wish, but you don’t own it forever: you can use it as long as you’re still using it for your personal needs. This “you” can expand into a group, eg a family, and as long as this group still continues to use it directly, it’s “theirs”. No small private group of people can “own” a piece of land and demand those on it to pay for it.

As for saying that tracking private ownership of land is bureaucratic, that doesn’t sound too different from how it’s inherently bureaucratic that the government owns it all.

You must be in ON, cause I can assure you that in provinces where the Landlord-Tenant board actually functions, like Alberta, thats NOT happening. Its not a Canadian problem, its largely an ON and BC problem and the reason its a problem in those two provinces is because of their restrictive rent controls. They SOUND like a good idea at first but when the rubber hits the road, you cant tell a landlord they can only raise the rent by 2% when inflation has been rising by 4% to 8% and expect them not to use any means possible to raise the rent. Maintenance goes up, supplies go up, appliances go up, trades go up, taxes go up, insurance goes up, but the landlord can only absorb so much and then something’s gotta give and 2% doesnt cut it.

Here in Alberta we can raise the rent by any reasonable amount we like and it works. Rents go up in times of shortage but they also go down when there is an oversupply. So in the last year, the rents in Calgary have DROPPED by 9% because there have been a lot of new rentals come on the market. It works. Rent controls do not.

I’d only want this if we did election reform to any variant of ranked choice voting federally, mandated it for provincial and municipal elections as well and somehow enshrined this in the charter that no subsequent government can change this. We should also have ten year terms mandated. 4-5 years is too little for proper long term planning.

Would of course need a couple more safeguards preventing that I can’t think of, but either way, I would not want a dictatorship to take away land for itself with malice.