What happens if everyone takes this declaration at face value and decides to be unemployed? Who pays for all the services that every person is entitled to?
Sitting on it is a predictable cost, while building means a costly chaos which may or may not turn out the wished profitability. So when you are used to "old profits" you maybe rather wait on the predicted do-nothing-cost, and hope for the tide to turn again in your direction.
Guys you have no idea about these things and what you are talking about. source: I am a city plot owner.
No land owner will suddenly become a developer to build an apartment block.
A plot owner can sell land to a developer or form a joint venture with developer putting in their land as starting capital (much more risky) most people either keep land as gold or sell it when they need money.
I hope it is clearer now.
The very idea that everyone who owns land should build an apartment block is laughable, it is very complicated endeavour best not to get into it if you know nothing about it. Hell building a single family house is complex, let alone five story building.
So you either keep it if you don’t need money or you sell it if you want to buy something else or need to have liquidity. And you don’t even sell it to buy other investment vehicle because land is already better than gold.
My plot increased 3 times in price in 10 years. Try to beat that with SP500. It’s virtually immune to inflation no matter how the broader economy fares it will always shield from inflation because you cannot make more land hah.
Even in utopia of automation and post scarcity society good location land will be truly lucrative and unimaginably expensive if not outright prohibited to own by private individuals. The question is what will be a “good location” in 30 years.
> My plot increased 3 times in price in 10 years. Try to beat that with SP500. It’s virtually immune to inflation no matter how the broader economy fares it will always shield from inflation because you cannot make more land hah.
> Even in utopia of automation and post scarcity society good location land will be truly lucrative and unimaginably expensive if not outright prohibited to own by private individuals.
Indeed, there’s a reason you see silicon valley execs going all in all acquiring land to build fortresses. At the end of the day, regardless of the cold march of technological progress, land remains the root of all real power.
> No land owner will suddenly become a developer to build an apartment block.
No one is suggesting this.
> A plot owner can sell land to a developer or form a joint venture with developer putting in their land as starting capital (much more risky) most people either keep land as gold or sell it when they need money.
Most people don't own vacant lots, but some who do hold onto it as an investment. It's a pretty poor one on average over time, just like gold (which is a good analogy).
> The very idea that everyone who owns land should build an apartment block is laughable, it is very complicated endeavour best not to get into it if you know nothing about it. Hell building a single family house is complex, let alone five story building.
Again, no one is suggesting this. The assumption is that a developer would buy a lot to build on, because that's what happens in practice.
> So you either keep it if you don’t need money or you sell it if you want to buy something else or need to have liquidity. And you don’t even sell it to buy other investment vehicle because land is already better than gold.
Land and gold are not better than the stock market over time.
> My plot increased 3 times in price in 10 years. Try to beat that with SP500. It’s virtually immune to inflation no matter how the broader economy fares it will always shield from inflation because you cannot make more land hah.
The S&P 500 beats real estate over time. Congratulations on getting lucky with your plot of land. Land is a good inflation hedge, assuming you are in a growing area. Ask rust belt land owners how things worked out for them.
> Even in utopia of automation and post scarcity society good location land will be truly lucrative and unimaginably expensive if not outright prohibited to own by private individuals. The question is what will be a “good location” in 30 years.
Thanks for highlighting one of the many issues with communism, but we will never reach a post-scarcity society for many reasons, including this one.
You know what increased more than 3x in the last 10 years? The S&P 500 index (it went from $203.87 at the start of 2016 to $681.92 at the start of 2026). And your plot of land is a massive outlier to the upside in the US overall during that time.
Historically, undeveloped land basically tracks inflation. Obviously, there are specific plots of land that dramatically exceed that, and there are specific plots of land that don't keep up with inflation.
That's the only thing you got right: raw land is an inflation hedge.
> Politically, we must stop prioritizing the views of homeowners at the local level. They already got their reward, massive unearned capital gains on their residence, there's no need to give them priority on land use over the general needs of society.
They are the majority of people in most areas, so it does make sense that they would be given priority in some ways.
The rest of your post is unsubstantiated vitriol, which isn't exactly convincing.
You quoted my vitriol to the homeowners, the rest is not vitriol, it's basic land economics.
> They are the majority of people in most areas, so it does make sense that they would be given priority in some ways.
In some ways sure. But in the ways that they are? Absolutely not, it's basic unfairness. The entire tax system is tilted in favor of home owners. We don't need to do that, we could make it more equal so that people with less wealth are not penalized.
It's not "basic land economics", it's your personal opinion about how things should be and whether you think current policies are fair.
The tax code does favor home ownership, because people want to support it. Less people will be able to afford their own home without that support, which seems to be the opposite of what you want.
> Grocery stores have very small margins, as little as 1%.
Looking at the Kroger 2024 Annual report shows that they have 22.3% gross margin . they pay dividends, had a stock buy back, etc so its entirely possible that they had a very low margin but gross margin seems to be similar to a home builder.
The net margin of around 1.5% seems more relevant: the gross margin is just the revenue minus the cost of good sold plus cost of transportation. The net margin is the money you have left after paying things like Rent, employee wages, electricity, taxes, interest on debt.
Grocery stores don't require millions to billions of dollars of capital to execute each new transaction.
So it's not the margin itself but actually the spread between the margin and what investors could get by investing in alternatives. Real estate investment opportunities are often measured by their advantage (measured in fractions of a percentage, .2% advantage being considered solid) over 10 Year Treasuries or S&P 500 returns.
Real estate developers do often actually lose money, but the more salient boundary condition is whether they can get financing for a project, where they have to clear a bar well above the "just make >$0" bar.
> Grocery stores don't require millions to billions of dollars of capital to execute each new transaction.
Neither do homebuilders, because homes don't cost millions to billions to build (high end custom homes can cost millions, but that's not what we're talking about here).
> So it's not the margin itself but actually the spread between the margin and what investors could get by investing in alternatives. Real estate investment opportunities are often measured by their advantage (measured in fractions of a percentage, .2% advantage being considered solid) over 10 Year Treasuries or S&P 500 returns.
Okay? So they have an advantage over alternatives, which means higher profits. And a .2% advantage is not considered solid, or meaningful in any way without a lot of missing context.
> Real estate developers do often actually lose money, but the more salient boundary condition is whether they can get financing for a project, where they have to clear a bar well above the "just make >$0" bar.
Many companies often lose money, due to incompetence or bad luck. The industry as a whole has very healthy margins.
Even a small (~10 home) development, of which we need hundreds of thousands, will require millions in financing. And as the development gets smaller and requires less financing, the economics get a bit worse due to ~fixed cost of land acquisition, development, and infrastructure/utilities.
> Many companies often lose money, due to incompetence or bad luck
One of those signs of incompetence or bad luck is building a bunch of new supply into a market with falling prices, in which case you will find yourself not among those with healthy margins ;)
Yes. The bigger the gap becomes, the more the economy will be geared towards serving the needs of the wealthy instead of regular people. If a trillionaire wants a mansion on Pluto or an AI to serve him, a large workforce and a lot of resources will be put towards that goal, making those resources and work more expensive to use for other goals. Your healthcare and shelter has to compete for resources and their prices will rise as the demand for overlapping resources goes up due to the huge purchasing power of the wealthy.
What we produce in this economic system is decided by money. If 90% of all money is in the hands of the wealthy, then 90% of all we make with out limited workforce and resources will be decided by them.
Why are you assuming we're all dependent on the billionaires in the first place?
I pay for my child's education and healthcare myself, and expect to continue to so whether Bezos is a trillionaire, a pauper, or anything in between. It ultimately has very little impact on my life.
It has very little impact on your life... for now. Maybe you're well off for this not concern you but as a direct example how about Amazon warehouse worker who is squeezed so hard for profits that they live in a car, work 7 days a week without healthcare or vacations or anything? Them being poor is what enables jeff to be rich.
Generally speaking whether you realize this or not the economic system creates a competition between entities. And larger richer entities will subsume assimilate and destroy smaller entities when they're looking for that eternal growth with fixed resources.
The argument to this always is that "it's not a zero sum game". Except that in practice it is. Economies are growing tiny few percent per year perhaps while the rich people are growing their wealth 10-20% per year. This is only possible by changing the wealth distribution making it effectively a zero sum game.
That means wealthy individuals will outcompete poorer individuals for all resources such as housing, education, health care. Everything will be used to extract maximum wealth from the society until there's nothing more to take.
As of March 2026, the average annual salary for a full-time Amazon warehouse worker in the U.S. is approximately $39,183–$47,415 annually, or roughly $18.84–$23.00 per hour. Total compensation, including benefits, can exceed $30 an hour, with many positions paying over $22 hourly for entry-level, plus potential for increased pay based on location and experience.
Don't compare this year to last year. Compare this year to 10 years ago. To 20 years ago. Then say it's a zero sum game. Ask yourself if you would switch places with John D. Rockefeller. I would not.
> how about Amazon warehouse worker who is squeezed so hard for profits that they live in a car, work 7 days a week without healthcare or vacations or anything? Them being poor is what enables jeff to be rich.
Amazon warehouse workers are paid enough to afford shelter (especially if they are working 7 days a week), or they are welcome to find a better job.
> Generally speaking whether you realize this or not the economic system creates a competition between entities. And larger richer entities will subsume assimilate and destroy smaller entities when they're looking for that eternal growth with fixed resources.
Yes, capitalism is competitive; that's the point. If a larger entity can perform better than a smaller one, then the smaller one doesn't need to exist.
> The argument to this always is that "it's not a zero sum game". Except that in practice it is. Economies are growing tiny few percent per year perhaps while the rich people are growing their wealth 10-20% per year. This is only possible by changing the wealth distribution making it effectively a zero sum game.
It's not a zero sum game, and you just pulled those numbers out of your ass.
> That means wealthy individuals will outcompete poorer individuals for all resources such as housing, education, health care. Everything will be used to extract maximum wealth from the society until there's nothing more to take.
One person can't consume so much healthcare, shelter, or education that it prevents others from accessing it. Claiming otherwise is absurd.
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