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Comment by reify | Hacker News Reader

The thirty people who own half of Berkshire here on Airstrip One.

https://whoownsengland.org/2017/04/17/the-thirty-landowners-...

Loads of sychophants in that list.

Airstrip One has been invaded by so many countries over many hundreds of years that those who have defeated the our poor armies have then, without any authority, given "OUR" lands to their friends, lords, ladies, and any sychophantic mendicants.

These lands are not their lands!

All these lands were stolen from the common people.

Its called Berkshire for a reason and where the cockney rhyming "Berkshire" comes from

I never gave my permission to give away my land.

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UK is literally still a monarchy mostly, a limited one, but still a kingdom, no surprise there. No one says it was "stolen from common people", because they have always owned it.

UK people still pay land tax to baron families from ancient times in many places, London included. AFAIR the whole House of Lords is created to protect their rights.

You may say it's unfair, but I'm not sure it's productive. Good thing nowadays you can emigrate relatively easily.

> No one says it was "stolen from common people", because they have always owned it.

... but enclosure acts were specific legislative acts which privatized land and removed common access. I.e. common people had access to the land, and it was taken away. Whether it is "stolen" is perhaps messier to decide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Parliamentary_Inclos...

Being a monarchy is orthogonal; Norway has a king and right to roam, for example.

Scotland is part of the UK and has right to roam.

I've heard about Scottish bothies. As an American, culturally it seems hard to imagine not only a right to walk over private land, but land owners sometimes even donating shelter for use by strangers, for free.

Bothies are awesome:

https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

My favourite is probably Camasunary:

https://annestravelsandhikes.com/2018/02/16/a-walk-to-camasu...

> I.e. common people had access to the land

Only in a limited sense. The public did not have access to the land; specific "commoners" (local farmers) had specific usage rights e.g. for grazing.

As is often the case, Scotland is different. Fue duty was abolished decades ago, for example.

> No one says it was "stolen from common people", because they have always owned it.

Not true. Common land, in particular, was stolen during the agricultural revolution and enclosed. This also created the cheap labour needed for the industrial revolution. The modern world was built on theft from the rural common people.

> Good thing nowadays you can emigrate relatively easily.

As an immigrant (as a child) I have already done that. I even have dual nationality so one emigration option is easy. The problem is I do not know of anywhere much better.

Given that the "rural common people" were just as happy killing each other for access to land, good luck finding the "real" owner.

Seriously, there are lots of things wrong with the allocation of wealth and property around the world, but "it was stolen during the agricultural revolution" is an absolutely meaningless argument. Britain e.g. has 900k years of human history. (With the first humans only visiting between cold spells).

There is no "true first owner".

> There is no "true first owner".

I did not claim there was a "true first owner".

I said that there was ownership by the common people.

Which common people? Unless you'd like to treat "the common people" as an amorphous blob?

The commons: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons

A successful system of land stewardship for many centuries. It was maintained and looked after by the people that lived near to it.

Funnily enough, the need to have a passport to leave your country is a relatively recent thing. Pre-World War I, people could just pack and go to another country, and passports were rarely enforced. They were more a helping document while traveling than a controling tool.

Only after WWI one of the explicit objetives of the passports was to limit the emigration of skilled people. Not to menction that most countries in America were happily receiving huge amounts of people from everywhere without too much hassle. I don't think that is happening today.

I think OP was referring to enclosures

Yep, my point is that owner is owner. Owner can give some rights (e.g. to roam), but owner can take them away (to enclose).

But I don't argue whether it's good or bad. I personally don't even know if land ownership is a good thing to begin with. On the other end of range is Communism, that I've experienced personally, and choosing between the two evils I'd choose Monarchy. Probably some middle ground, like land can be leased from government for max 50-99 year at a market price. Or like with the right to roam -- land is owned forever, but government highly restricts the definition of "ownership".

>>Good thing nowadays you can emigrate relatively easily.

Given than 1.2m people migrated to the UK in the year ending June 2023, it doesn't seem to be putting people off.

Blatant ignorance of history said with overconfidence. The land was literally called common land and was in common ownership until the enclosure acts.

As I see it, the Land was in common ownership only until 1066 AD. Then William I distributed the land amongst his 180 barons. However, he promised the English people would be able to exercise their previous rights (pasture, roam etc), hence "common land".

That's important -- all land was (is?) owned by 180 barons (not sure how many families survived till today), it's just the government restricted land owners to prevent people using it in some cases. Yes it was called "common land". But it doesn't mean its owner is common people.

3 out of the 30 "people" on that list are the government, and some others are companies. And only 7 of these properties are over 3000 acres. I don't really see what the problem is with large rural properties. How many people even want to own empty land in the first place?

>How many people even want to own empty land in the first place?

My experience, based on the price of property, is that a shit ton of people want to own empty land, in the anticipation of it not being empty at some point in the future.

Or they like the buffer space. Between my smaller amount of property and my two neighbors, we’re collectively on about 75 acres. (My house is the property’s original 1820s farmhouse.) I’m not sure the rest of the property would be buildable anyway.

Yeah, you never know when Wal*Mart might want to come along and buy it to put up a another big box.

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