The problem with the equal division of land is that there is absolutely no way to equally divide land.
Mainly, there is the question of natural resources. How does the authority in charge of land parcelage (Would that be the World Assigned Land Authority, or WALA?) determine the worth of the land to make sure it's fair? And then what happens when that worth changes, ie. a new natural resource is discovered on my land, or a new use is made for an existing resource that puts it in much higher demand? Is my family land immediately reposessed and reparcelled to make things fair again? What happens to my house, my garage, and my backyard widget farm? Does the gov't pay to relocate them to a "fair" peice of land? Do I? Or do I get to stay there, but have to put up with the new oil rig the gov't plopped next to my house from which I don't even get to keep any oil?
OTOH, what happens when a volcano suddenly erupts in my back yard, swallowing up all of my precious widgets? Can I sue the gov't because they put my family on that land a few generations back? Can I get a better peice of land instead (with the aforementioned "who pays to move me" concerns again)? If so, what poor sucker loses his inherited land so I can get a fair deal? After all, there is a finite amount of land and an ever-increasing population, but that brings up a different, rather obvious set of problems anyway.
If the earth was perfectly homogeneous, this might be an interesting concept. But, of course, we all know it's not, and I for one wouldn't much enjoy a world where every place looks just like every other place anyway, even if I was guaranteed to own one of those places.
I won't even touch the "societal control over marriage" proposal, nor the forced population control that would be necessary to make this work (and I'm not talking about controlling population dispersal based on resources, I'm talking about the forcible halt that would have to be put to population growth to keep such a system stable) because complete governmental control over love and sex (about as basic as you can get when it comes to human needs beyond bare survival) are impossibilities in an even marginally free society.
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The problem with the equal division of land is that there is absolutely no way to equally divide land.
Mainly, there is the question of natural resources. How does the authority in charge of land parcelage (Would that be the World Assigned Land Authority, or WALA?) determine the worth of the land to make sure it's fair? And then what happens when that worth changes, ie. a new natural resource is discovered on my land, or a new use is made for an existing resource that puts it in much higher demand? Is my family land immediately reposessed and reparcelled to make things fair again? What happens to my house, my garage, and my backyard widget farm? Does the gov't pay to relocate them to a "fair" peice of land? Do I? Or do I get to stay there, but have to put up with the new oil rig the gov't plopped next to my house from which I don't even get to keep any oil?
OTOH, what happens when a volcano suddenly erupts in my back yard, swallowing up all of my precious widgets? Can I sue the gov't because they put my family on that land a few generations back? Can I get a better peice of land instead (with the aforementioned "who pays to move me" concerns again)? If so, what poor sucker loses his inherited land so I can get a fair deal? After all, there is a finite amount of land and an ever-increasing population, but that brings up a different, rather obvious set of problems anyway.
If the earth was perfectly homogeneous, this might be an interesting concept. But, of course, we all know it's not, and I for one wouldn't much enjoy a world where every place looks just like every other place anyway, even if I was guaranteed to own one of those places.
I won't even touch the "societal control over marriage" proposal, nor the forced population control that would be necessary to make this work (and I'm not talking about controlling population dispersal based on resources, I'm talking about the forcible halt that would have to be put to population growth to keep such a system stable) because complete governmental control over love and sex (about as basic as you can get when it comes to human needs beyond bare survival) are impossibilities in an even marginally free society.
-Mo