Cyclone Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 Land monopoly has a slightly different definition, wikipedia explains it well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_monopoly It doesn't have to be one person that controls all the land, it can be a class of people, or another entity. I was also taught in economics that you only need about 25% of the market to have control over it & have the ability to set prices, which is a monopoly. You don't need the majority of the supply, just a much larger percentage than any competitors. A cartel can be described as a monopoly if it's a strong cartel, all the members of the cartel are co-operating & acting as one. It's always been a problem in the UK, maybe less so than it was 200 years ago, but it's still a big problem, there are still landed gentry. There are still a class of people that inherited huge amounts of land/property & live off the rents & CAP subsidies. Inheritance tax has helped to reduce the problem over the last 100 years, but I think I could give a good argument for inheritance tax to be increased so it had more effect. Interestingly the wikipedia article is very short on details and google has nothing else about land monopoly apart from links to books for sale... It's always been a problem in the UK according to whom, and by what measure? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 Interestingly the wikipedia article is very short on details and google has nothing else about land monopoly apart from links to books for sale... It's always been a problem in the UK according to whom, and by what measure? This is an interesting article that is along the same lines has chem1st posts. http://www.independent.co.uk Saturday 19 May 2012 Britain's land is still owned by an aristocratic elite - but it doesn't have to be this way Who owns Britain? Most of us would instinctively reply: we do. The British people own the British Isles. This is a democracy, isn't it? But the facts tell a different story. When you look at a map of the British Isles, you are looking not at your home but at a land mass overwhelmingly owned by a tiny aristocratic elite. Extraordinary though it might seem, in the 21st century, 0.6 per cent of the British people own 69 per cent of the land on which we live - and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 19th century. When it comes to land ownership, Britain today is a more unequal country than Brazil - where there are regular land riots. We are beaten in the European league tables only by Spain, a country which largely retains the land patterns imposed by General Franco's fascist regime. It's time we realised: this land is not your land, from Land's End to the Scottish Highlands. It is theirs. This makes a mockery of the principles our society is supposed to be built on. Very few people defended the idea of hereditary peers - so why should most of the country's land be owned according to hereditary principles? For a system of private property to thrive - and I believe it must, because it is the best way to generate wealth - it has to be legitimate. There must be a relationship between work and reward: if you work hard, you should be rewarded. But most of these landowners have put in no work, and they are given a vast reward: the land on which we live. And - even where wealth has been earned, as in a few cases - nobody has earned this obscene amount of space on a crowded island. There has to be some sense of proportion, or the idea of human equality becomes a bad joke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halibut Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 No, of course not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roy Jones Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 Good news IMO. I'd like to see it reduced much further, to two, and then to one. We need to reduce the population before resources are gone. I completely agree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Web Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 I completely agree But if we stop having children and most of us are now living longer then who will support you and others when you're an ageing wrinkled ugly old geezer and worthless to society? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Web Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 But if we stop having children and most of us are now living longer then who will support you and others when you're an ageing wrinkled ugly old geezer and worthless to society? .......................................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSmith Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 But if we stop having children and most of us are now living longer then who will support you and others when you're an ageing wrinkled ugly old geezer and worthless to society? You support yourself with the aid of family until the day you can't and then you die. Problem solved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tipex Posted May 20, 2012 Share Posted May 20, 2012 I personally think you shouldn't have any children if you cannot afford them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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