One interesting thing that many economists endorse as a way to improve prosperity in developing countries is to issue titles to property, thereby enabling the poor people there to contract debt upon, or sell outright, their property. The logic is that without title, these common ways of improving one's lot are off limits. On the other hand, many of us can think of cases (Indian reservations, purchase of Manhattan) where rightful owners were duped of their property for a pittance.
Enter the ancient Israelite concept; land was granted to the family in perpetuity, and could be sold only for a period of seven years. If you made a mistake, your property wasn't gone forever, and neither could you heavily leverage your property a la Trump.
The result? The prosperity of Solomon. I would dare suggest that a Biblical view of economics does not preclude certain limits on contracts.
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15 hours ago
8 comments:
that puts a limit on sizes of developments to individual properties.
I like the idea, at least in theory, but the ability to pull together larger tracts of land is crucial to planning and development (at least in the ways we currently do it...)
I'd imagine that the contractual negotiations necessary to construct a mall or city block mixed-use development would be very difficult to negotiate with multiple owners.
Cooks in the kitchen, you know...
That said, isn't it true that most city planners are (ironically) trying to duplicate the kind of development that naturally occurred before urban planning in big cities--easy to walk, multi-story, fairly dense development?
yes, that's absolutely true...and that's exactly what I'm getting at:
unless an individual family had enough land to build an entire building on (as well as necessary parking, unless you leased land from another family; and then you're right back into the legal quagmire of use agreements etc. that I was worried about), how would you be able to pull together a parcel the size that would really be necessary to actually build a walkable, mixed use, dense development?
I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't know how you would be able to structure the contracts so that you could build with the kind of density that we can effectively do now-a-days. That was a non-problem for the Israelites, because they didn't have multi-story condos with first floor retail. :)
Plus...you mention the wealth of solomon...true, but was that the king's wealth, and therefore the king's structure? If it was, how have we helped people out of poverty? Also, that worked based on a theocratic government with a loud and powerful god. We've got the powerful, but not very loud God, and I'm terrified (rightly so, as I assume you are) of the idea of theocracy.
All in all, I guess that that could work for a while based on very low density development, but eventually, you're going to have to be able to sell land, or have some other sort of collateral to offer up to raise capital. Indentured servitude is another option; offer yourself for a fixed time as an indentured servant as terms for the loan. A well developed contract would protect you from physical exploitation, and you'd never lose your land.
I just keep getting back to the idea that it would take large parcels of land to really develop something, and you can't get that as an individual landowner, let alone get the necessary capital to develop it w/o the land itself as collateral.
/rambling.
I thought that "selling" property was like selling one's self (except for the option on permanency) in that you could only do it until a Jubilee year - every 50th year.
You can enlighten me with chapter and verse. :^) Thanks!
does that mean israel is overdue in giving back the lands taken by ethnic cleansing in 1948?
Gino, probably beyond the scope of what I'm prepared to address. For starters, it's hotly debated exactly why those people left--what I'm told is that those who left did so with the promise that there would be an ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Israel.
Could even Solomon sort this one out?
Mark, you're right: Levitucus 25. Still, even a 48 year limit (average of 24 years) on sales would probably restrain some things, no? Also consider that a relative could redeem the land at any time.
And Shawn, it's hard to understand, but I just can't get beyond the fact that when urban planners want to make something, they almost always want to make something that looks like an old urban downtown--two to six stories tall, apartments/condos on top of stores, etc..
And the golden era for this kind of development? Well, it's all prior to zoning regulations, more or less. As hard as it is to comprehend, it maybe one of those cases where "less is more" in terms of what you want.
bert...you're absolutely correct about what planners 'want' to make (and often what the market actually does like, at least in terms of what we've been designing a lot of)...my point is that, working within the model that you're proposing here, it would be hard (to impossible) for that kind of development to happen.
Larger tracts of land than a family is likely to own are necessary for the development we do now, unless each family had their 40 acres (though we do a good bit of development in larger tracts than that), interconnected with a nice quantity of rights-of-way to provide services and access.
Would it be that difficult, or would the business simply go to smaller landscape firms instead of big "landscape architects", apart from new subdivisions on the edge of town made when the farmer sells is quarter section?
You're absolutely right that things would be quite different. I just don't know that it would be catastrophic, though; business would simply be done on a smaller scale.
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