Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. Social justice, urban renewal and development, the provision of decent dwellings-and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole.
The Vancouver Action Plan
June 1976
Agenda item 10 (d)
[Via an email pointer from JoeyD Sr. to a web page about Agenda 21.
I am reminded that Stalin had a particular interest in the land owners of the Ukraine and several million people died as he tried to “create a better society”. He and his followers considered themselves “progressives” and those that opposed him were called “regressives”. Sound familiar?
I would like to remind “public planners” (I prefer to call them “the central committee”) that rural land owners in this country are much more likely to own firearms than the population at large. My limited sample suggests nearly 100% of them own firearms.
Μολὼν λαβέ! can equally well and should apply to acres as well as guns.—Joe]
I find it very interesting that private land ownership is not allowed for us, but is a-ok for them. I’m sure that the private land of the people proposing this would be first to be sacrificed for the “common good”
Remind me again as to how many thousands of acres ted turner owns in the Idaho/Wyoming/Montana area? Not to mention his holdins in South America.
There’s a reason I cannot stand Vancouver BC.. and this just reinforces why…
Most of us from “Rural” BC figure Vancouver is a nice place to visit, but why would you live there?
The proof that many city dwellers are thinking the same way is evident when you see how many of them are moving out of the city, quite a few are moving out rural. Problem is, they bring their big city thinking with them.
That’s a standard, communist playbook argument;
“Since [this or that] is so important, private control must not be allowed…” That goes for energy, transportation, agriculture, food services, education, communication, medicine, housing, labor, business, banking and so on, and they’ve already infiltrated the basic family unit itself. My translation of such arguments is;
“Freedom is relevant only in matters of no consequence.”
The communists, however, are of course always finding new matters of consequence, so, straight to the point as it is, that is a translation of a deceptive statement- It implies an acknowledgement of some room for freedom. Ultimately of course, there should be zero freedom– The fact that you eat and breathe at all is a “matter of public interest”. They’ve been saying for decades that the Earth should have less than one billion people on it. So I suppose it should be;
“Freedom has no place in society” which, interestingly, is exactly what the jihadists have been saying. But the communists are never, or only very rarely, honest. I like the first translation because, although it’s a deception, it is exactly what the communists are saying without having the guts to say it so clearly and openly.
MD Willington’s comment got me thinking…
What is it about cities? Why are they so packed with liberals? Are liberals drawn to cities by some base instinct? Or are liberals created in conditions of overcrowding like locusts that morph into the gregarious form and then swarm out across the country side seeking to devour everything thing good and productive their path?
I’m reminded of the novel The Road to Damascus by John Ringo.
All we want is to be left alone. All they want is everything we have.
It all comes down to a matter of trust. Liberals don’t trust others to make the right decisions, either because inwardly they don’t trust themselves with the same power or because they have the inate belief that they are superior to the commoners surrounding them (I’ve known them to come in both flavors).
They don’t trust you to use your land responsibly; they want a committee to control how it is used. They don’t trust you not to go on a shooting rampage if you have a gun; they want to restrict gun usage only to trained agents under their control. They don’t trust you to educate your children, eat responsibly, or any of a myriad of other things. In all cases, they want an enlightened committee to make these decisions for you so that they don’t have to worry about you making a choice that they don’t agree with.
Jason – liberals/cities; cockroaches/cities… Both love to do their work in dark places /out of the light.
I always saw big cities as similar to a box full of rats, eventually if you put enough rats in a box, the rats will lash out at each other and start doing each other in.
This is the thing that disturbs me as I drive through the Salt Lake and Provo valleys: drab, brown, largish houses crammed onto little poster-stamp yards, with lots of condos and four-plexes, and the occasional “live-work-shop-play” multi-story monstrosities.
I have no problems with being able to live where people shop or work or play–but I have a hard time believing that someone will want to live in an inky-dinky place, where they are expected to work (as far as I can see, only as shop employees) and shop.
If we really wanted to have “live, shop, work, and play” environments, we would do well to get rid of zoning laws altogether, so that factories, homes, shops, farms, and parks can all intermingle freely.
Actually, I’d have only *one* zoning law: you can’t interfere with the next-door neighbor who was there first. If you move next to a noisy and noxious factory, or a farm, or an airport, or a gun range, you have no right to force such activities to be quiet or to reduce its smell; similarly, if you live in a quiet neighborhood, and someone sets up a factory or a farm, such activities had better be quiet and clean!
There was once a time that this basic principle was well-established–just look at Blackstone’s Commentaries, where it is nicely described–but this principle was destroyed by “trendy” zoning laws.
Georgism by another name….
Although the default position of conservative-thinking folks is to lump all liberals as city-dwellers, how do you explain a place like Minnesota? My in-laws back there all either grew up on farms, or are farm-linked in some way. But they all (with one exception, who lived and worked in the city as the owner of a small construction firm) slavishly vote Democrat, and although they will use a firearm from time to time, they have a real disdain for them. Since they are landowners, you wouldn’t think they’d subscribe to this notion of land being a public entity – but they sure like the idea of government subsidies and other entitlements.
Liberals tend to nest in the city, but there are plenty of them out in the rural areas too.
Another thought that arose while reading this – how’d that redistribution of land go in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe again? Oh – I remember, the country went from the garden spot of Africa, with significant exports of food, to one of the poorest. Good thing they kicked out those evil colonial European landholders and placed it back in the hands of the followers of a demented, maniacal “President for Life.”
Lyle, beautiful comment. I’d kind of thought the same things about how liberals think, but I was never able to put it is such succinct and eloquent terms. You’re right, they would never say “Freedom has no place in society”, in fact, most would never think it, but that is the kernel, or natural extension of their thinking.
From what I see, there are really two kinds of liberals. There are those who really do believe that “freedom has no place in society”, and those who believe in freedom, but are easily swayed by arguments about the importance of [land, medicine, schooling, whatever] trumping any expression of freedom in that subject. The leadership sees that, for their followers, the illusion of freedom is sufficient, and both groups they see those for whom the illusion is not sufficient as dangerous lawless people.