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.
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.
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".
I did not claim there was a "true first owner".
I said that there was ownership by the common people.
A successful system of land stewardship for many centuries. It was maintained and looked after by the people that lived near to it.
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.
... 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.
https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/
My favourite is probably Camasunary:
https://annestravelsandhikes.com/2018/02/16/a-walk-to-camasu...
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.
Given than 1.2m people migrated to the UK in the year ending June 2023, it doesn't seem to be putting people off.
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".
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.