Blackstone

The distinction between common property and state property is lost on royal libertarians. Common property is that to which we all have inalienable rights. State property is that which the state actually owns, and can dispose of as it sees fit. For example, a public right of way is literally a right of way. Under principles of common law, nobody, not even the king, could close a traveled road and make it private property. A state maintenance truck, on the other hand, is state property, which can be sold if it no longer suits state purposes.

It is a royal libertarian notion, and not a classical liberal ideal, to treat land as state property, for if land did not rightfully belong to the state, how could the state have granted it to favored citizens?

Classical liberals, not royal libertarians, are the ones who deny the state's right to appropriate the earth and allocate it to privileged individuals on favored terms. Classical liberals also who hold the key to abolishing taxation, by suggesting that the community (not the state) charge a user fee to landholders based on the value of the land.... Read the whole piece

In the Georgist context a titleholder has the right to ownership of land in usufruct, but not in fee simple. As long as an owner uses land and other elements of nature in accord with the rules and laws of society, one retains a possessory interest. That interest extends to the privilege to use land for all purposes consistent with its proper maintenance and care. It extends even in some cases to the right to preclude others from any trespass at all. But what it typically does not include is the right to any speculative gain that would follow from title in freehold, or the right to use land beyond what it is capable of sustaining. Use implies that its quality is not diminished for the future availability of others, and that there is an obligation for the user to pay to society a just price in exchange for such use. One had no right, for example, to strip a forest of its trees. Enough is known now about the arrangements of land ownership and use in comparative perspective to assert with confidence that the historical practice of title in fee simple or freehold has been far more the exception than rule.20 Taking the long view of history, title in usufruct has been by far the more common pattern of ownership of natural resources, except where Roman jurisprudence and its offspring have spread throughout the world and come to dominate.

In the United States, the definition of real property as explicated in the legal Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone may have been pivotal in the adoption of freehold interpretations of ownership over leasehold.21 For several years after this nation was founded which system of title would prevail hung in the balance.22 Thomas Paine was certainly an advocate of the latter,23 as was Jefferson.24 Hamilton, on the other hand, was a defender of propertied interests and titles in fee simple, and especially to his in-laws, the landowning families of upstate New York known as the Patroons.25 Leaseholds were used in several of the colonies, with the fees paid to governors.26 ... read the whole article

Wealth and Want
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity.
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