Why does the monarch own all the land in Britain?
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In the contest between disinherited, disenfranchised and domesticated people and the possessors of global wealth national territories; that are overwhelmingly occupied by people marked out by the circumstances of their birth with circumscribed disposable income and an inability to act independently, are controlled by incumbent capital because individuals have no enforceable interest in a commodity indispensable for life, land. The monopolist dealers in that commodity have created a rentier world economy based on it and the divine right of capital, any negotiation is one-sided the issue for the subordinate party is capitulation or poverty, the inevitable result for those subjected to the mores of Lex Mercantoria where land is given up to be dealt with solely on commercial principles, unqualified by public opinion, custom, justice or natural law. Land should not be private property, but be held in trust by the State for the general benefit of the community that calls itself a nation and only exclusively held by individuals and corporates on payment of ground rent distributed by the State to every individual national.
Neo-liberal political economy tells the individual to exploit what they possess by using it or selling it in the most profitable market, that supply and demand regulate the price of all commodities and that it is best for everyone that it should be regulated so. Most business-minded people act on these principles because of innate short-term self-interest and many out of a lack of commitment to support the society that creates the conditions which allow them to profit from the social and physical infrastructure only available to them because of societal stability that is promoted by a national State. Human beings interest in land is an interest in self-preservation which makes any system of exclusive private property in land a threat to all individuals inalienable right to life. That threat can be eliminated by nationalising the land and allowing exclusive use of it.
(edited 4 years ago)
The Earth is a special case of property it was not created by anybody it cannot be owned by anybody but people have to exploit it in order to live. Whoever exploits it for shelter or profit is depriving another of the freedom to enjoy access to part of the Earth, in commercial terms such exclusive occupation comes at a price to be paid to the excluded in order to legitimise occupation not ownership, occupation only a national State can protect against intrusions with the authority of a written constitution, an inanimate State cannot own the land over which its functionaries have jurisdiction because if we accept the State (monarch or other functionary) as owner it means the nation’s patrimony is subject to disposal by any partisan interests who have charge of it. The legal fiction that all nationals own it has to be enshrined in a constitution in order to prevent the avaricious from exercising despotic control over citizens lives by denying them property in the land of their birth
The materially fortunate in society embrace subjectivism to deny the existence of the debt they owe the passive/submissive majority who secure the environment which enables them to extract a reward that would be unattainable without them. Children are unknowing subjectivists responsible parents wean them off its more anti-social manifestations. Adults appreciate that their own and others reasoning is subjective but are often forced to engage society objectively in order to navigate the milieu of civilised life whilst trying to protect their individual sense of self. Humans can never be free in the physical or mental sense because of an inescapable dependence on air, water, food and shelter for their well-being and the necessity of observing particular social mores and national laws governing their behaviour in society, it is only a circumscribed level of liberty that individuals can enjoy. It is a liberty that can only be secured by property (an interest in the land of their birth) which gives the individual the ability to accept or decline association with another individual whatever the status of the other individual, it is the liberty to dispose of their labour freely in order to enhance their possession of material comforts, the acquisition of which is the motivation for much of humanity’s development, a motivation can only be exploited by the entrepreneur if the propertied citizen (who has subsumed property in their nations particular area of the Earth) is amenable in order to furnish themselves with disposable income rather than just subsistence the fate of the property-less subject for whom nationalisation of the land is the only avenue to liberty.
The commercially active within a State should be at liberty to pursue their private interests insofar as they do not compromise the well-being of the nation (which predicates oversight by bodies created to protect the well-being of the nation from anti-social and sociopathic commercial interests). Within the jurisdiction of the national State political institutions are supposed to protect the interests of the general public but as Adam Smith observed, 'Civil government as far as it is instituted for the protection of property is in reality instituted for the protection of the property of the rich against the poor, or against those who have some property against those who have none'. This view of the State by the ‘liberal’ elite, that the State’s exercise of political power is legitimate only when it protects private property, has informed discussion of the nature of the State for centuries and still retains agency today. Private property is a source of power even if it is only the power to say no to another. Without property in a monetised, civilised society no one is free to associate or not with another without the real risk they may be reduced to a beggarly condition. Nationalisation (Not State appropriation) in the only way in which to change a subject into a citizen because it makes each individual national an inalienable property owner albeit that their property is a subsumed legal material interest in the land of their birth (jus soli) a chose in action that requires the payment of ground rent by anyone who excludes them from their property and UBI from the State that legalises that exclusion (since it deprives them of the ability to see to their own subsistence).
If it is accepted that the common domain represents the principal capital of the nation then any part of the common domain that is exclusively occupied requires the titular owner (the nation) to be compensated for their exclusion from it. By the creation of a territorial registry that includes the area which the community at large will defend (and within which the community will defend the individual’s personal and territorial property rights), an area in which every man, woman and child that forms the citizenry has a proportionate interest. Each citizen’s interest is recognized by a payment (Ground Rent, about £25 p.a. and UBI from the State) for their nominal interest (through use of a legally binding chose in action) in any particular sub-division of the State (an unwritten contract with all citizens which is guaranteed in a written constitution) from the individual who exclusively occupies land by purchasing a national lease or being awarded a national lease if they presently have freehold title to their property. Any person holding land leasehold of the monarch which the monarch holds in personum or a freeholder will have the lease converted to a life-time rental agreement with the monarch/freeholder with the right after a fixed number of years to purchase the property at a price fixed by the land registry commensurate with surrounding valuations of similar properties. Landlordism on agricultural land would be dealt with by the market in national leases; exclusive occupation or renting by those who hold the national lease. Renting of domestic property would remain as a useful social service for mobile individuals and families with safeguards for both the landlord and tenant.
(edited 4 years ago)
Because Willliam the Conqueror took it by force.
Original post by popples321
Because Willliam the Conqueror took it by force.
We are prisoners of history?
If the right of each individual is to a life which is free from unwarranted coercion by others then they must have property in the area their society exercises jurisdiction over. Property rights are the selfish agents of civilisation they secure an individual’s identification with the society that can protect them which is why territorial States with huge disinherited populations suffer from endemic discontent. Ayn Rand (US, C20th ) expressed the paramount position property occupies in human relations “Remember that there is no such dichotomy as ‘human rights’ versus ‘property rights’. No human rights can exist without property rights.” Maitland (UK, C19th) in his writings on the British constitution informs us that, ‘If we are to learn anything about the constitution it is necessary first and foremost to learn a good deal about land law. We can make no progress whatever in the history of parliament without speaking of tenure indeed our whole constitutional law seems at times to be but an appendix to the law of real property.’ - particularly with reference to property in land. If you have no inalienable property in land your human rights are what those who have alienable property in land determine. Genuine humanists would vote for land nationalisation.
(edited 4 years ago)
Original post by landscape2014
The monarch is the absolute owner of land in the UK all others hold an estate in land. Estates took many forms in the past but were reduced to two by the Law of Property Act 1925; a) an estate in fee simple absolute in possession, generally known as freehold and b) an estate for a number of years absolute, generally known as leasehold. The preamble to the Land Registration Act 2002 states, ' The concepts of leasehold and freehold derive from medieval forms of tenure and are not ownership' in relation to land in the UK we are all tenants on the basis of the feudal superiority of the Crown created in 1066 and supported by legal norms formulated to uphold that feudal superiority. In February 2009 Bridget Prentice, a parliamentary undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice replied to a question from an MP, 'The Crown [whoever wears it] is the ultimate owner of all land in England and Wales (including the Isles of Scilly); all other 'owners' hold an estate in land.' My question is why is it socially acceptable in a country that is supposed to believe in equality of opportunity that property law is founded on the supposition that one person owns all of it. Surely in a supposedly democratic State the nation should own it, why not?
That "preamble" to the Land Registration Act 2002 simply does not exist. The quote from Bridget Prentice is out of context (and has some extra quote marks added in for good measure): she was referring to the Crown as the ultimate owner in succession terms: land that is not owned reverts to the Crown.
In reality, these quaint allusions to feudal practice are effectively meaningless in the modern world and have been for some time. A freehold over a patch of land is ownership in every meaningful sense.
The official government’s preamble to the Land Registration Act 2002 (not contained in the actual legislation) explained the legal nature of both freehold and leasehold. Freehold is an estate in land, in fee simple, a medieval term for the sum paid to represent the fact that the freehold was actually a tenancy and that the monarch was the ultimate landowner. Leasehold is an interest in an estate in land, in fee simple, for a term of years. The framers of the legislation acknowledged that these concepts of ownership derived from medieval land concepts. The legal advisers to the Crown Estate (that is owned by the monarch - QE 2) explain,’ it is usually taken in this office that the crown legal estates under our management are in the paramount ownership of the sovereign, since freehold itself is a tenancy’. In law the Queen is the superior owner a manifest continuation and legitimisation of feudalism in the modern world. Bridget Prentice was merely repeating the legal opinion contained in the official government preamble to the legislation. The fact that one person can be considered in law to be the owner of the entire country opens the door to the possibility that through a change in the law every individual national in a country could partake of ownership of the land of their birth through legislation supported by ECHR Protocols. Article 1 - Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law - a political definition of the public good could prevail over the rights of [disobligated] private property. This should give some encouragement to any legislators who wish to engage in a quest for a law that would extinguish the feudal nature of landholding in the UK and replace it with a territory annexed for its citizens and held in trust for them by the British State.
(edited 4 years ago)
All institutions are constructed or approved by legislatures composed of political ‘animals’ the institutions they create or allow to be created or permit to exist reflect the character of the legislative class. The legislation that mainly determines social relations and the stability of the State is the law of property which in the UK is based on the feudal settlement of 1066; the reigning monarch owns all the land, everyone else holds an estate in land (freehold of the monarch or leasehold of the monarch or a freeholder). Since the C17th freeholders have despotic title to land and can (barring the excise of the royal prerogative of eminent domain by ministers to whom it has been ceded) act as an inferior monarch over their domain (as per Prime Minister Pitt). The privilege freeholders enjoy to a greater or lesser extent is that of an exceptional individual in a nation of disinherited individuals, those who cannot exercise rights of property. As Ayn Rand (US, C20th ) observed, ’ Remember there is no such dichotomy as ‘human rights’ verses ‘property rights’ no human rights can exist without property rights’. Her assertion is based on the fact that the only way one individual can treat with another or not as either party decide is if both can say no. The exceptional individual can say no, they have property but without even minimum property in the land of their birth the individual with none is coerced by the propertied in order to obtain access to minimum subsistence, a modern-day disgruntled forelock-tugger.
The Earth is fundamental to an individual’s existence, from time immemorial it has been the source of the air, water, food and shelter vital to well-being, if the individual is to maintain sovereignty over their continued well-being a material interest in the Earth (jus soli), that is inalienable, is an imperative precondition. If it is not so then an individual’s existence is determined by another’s personality to whom the individual must be subordinate for when the individual accepts alienation of their interest in the Earth they have alienated their liberty.
The concept of an inalienable right to life (maintained by jus soli) is a philosophic fiction that can only have currency if humans subscribe to it and if it is adopted as a society’s Modus Vivendi it will be in a legal class of its own - suis generis - the benchmark for all other legislation.
Labour (and alienation of good title) gives birth to private possession; the right in a thing - jus in re - the product that has been accessed from the Earth, it does not encompass the Earth from which it was obtained. The inalienability of humanity's material interest in the Earth is a right of jus ad rem, a right to ‘property’ in something that is in the possession of another; humanity has a superior interest in the Earth (survival) and those who wish to possess it as exclusive 'property' must therefore favour with a consideration those humans who are denied the opportunity to fend for themselves because a certain constituency enjoys the privilege of conditional exclusive 'property' in land. Nationalisation of land will accomplish an initial situation of equality for people in those societies that choose to replace the empty rhetoric of an inalienable right to life with substantive legislative action to give it the force of law.
The concept of an inalienable right to life (maintained by jus soli) is a philosophic fiction that can only have currency if humans subscribe to it and if it is adopted as a society’s Modus Vivendi it will be in a legal class of its own - suis generis - the benchmark for all other legislation.
Labour (and alienation of good title) gives birth to private possession; the right in a thing - jus in re - the product that has been accessed from the Earth, it does not encompass the Earth from which it was obtained. The inalienability of humanity's material interest in the Earth is a right of jus ad rem, a right to ‘property’ in something that is in the possession of another; humanity has a superior interest in the Earth (survival) and those who wish to possess it as exclusive 'property' must therefore favour with a consideration those humans who are denied the opportunity to fend for themselves because a certain constituency enjoys the privilege of conditional exclusive 'property' in land. Nationalisation of land will accomplish an initial situation of equality for people in those societies that choose to replace the empty rhetoric of an inalienable right to life with substantive legislative action to give it the force of law.
(edited 4 years ago)
An alienable right to private ‘property’ is a fundamental right (according to law), as is an inalienable right to life (according to the US Constitution, UN and EU) - subsistence from the common domain. Both are philosophic fictions, only facts of life if sufficient humans support them, in general people support the first and not the second. These fundamental rights are only compatible if the exercise of the alienable right to private ‘property’ does not infringe an individual’s inalienable right to life; everyone’s inalienable right to life is a superior principle to an individual’s right to private ‘property’ but in most societies is a secondary consideration. The Earth is common domain access to which if denied requires consideration from those who deny access to those who are denied the ability to obtain their subsistence from it and only nationalisation of land (NOT STATE APPROPRIATION) will bring about a just society that has so far eluded humanity.
(edited 4 years ago)
Inalienable ‘property’ has to be a subsumed shared right of all individuals who constitute a nation, insulated by law from the normal machinations of the polity, a legal construction that allows for disparities in ‘property’ to arise through individual industry but disallows alienation of any individual’s ‘property’ in the Earth (jus soli) because the individual’s material interest in the Earth is fundamental to their existence and allowing individuals to alienate that interest threatens all other individuals. Individuals subordinating themselves to another creates the possibility of numerous dependants under the control of a person who can then threaten the coherence of society by using those dependants to further a partisan agenda. The inalienability of an individual’s jus soli is the overriding principle for creating the initial equal circumstance that is the key to equitable ‘property’ law.
Without ‘property’ it is impossible for the individual to enjoy political equality, everyone must have ‘property‘ in order to enjoy the unencumbered liberty to decline association with other individuals, without ‘property’ people cannot be equal before the law. Arguments in defence of the present iteration of ‘property’ deny that need of an initial condition of equality essential for developing a genuine democratic State. The ‘property’ the nation requires is in the territory of the State.
The unbalanced distribution of property due to the diversity in human faculties and fortune is an obstacle to shared interest but not an insuperable barrier in a society that accepts all humans have a right to life. Accepting this idea allows that a human life that does not threaten one’s own is to be defended society at large being responsible for deterring or punishing those who threaten other’s lives. The protection of its citizens lives is the first object of government and in execution of that duty it has to secure their access to air, water, food and shelter. If people are denied the ability to freely access them because the institutional arrangements of the State physically deny access to their patrimony then the State has an obligation to create an institutional framework which recognises as unjust the annexation of the nation’s patrimony by exceptional individuals and provide those essentials of existence that people are denied the ability to provide for themselves from the surpluses those exceptional individuals and organisations generate from disinherited humanity’s patrimony. A just State would hold the nation’s patrimony in trust for the nation not support the territory being sold to the highest bidder its destiny mortgaged to whoever commands the most invented money (bank credit) from banks.
Those who have and those who have not property have distinct interests in society but without property no individual has the liberty to say no to exceptional individuals, the ‘haves’. In an equitable State governed as a genuine representative democracy all citizens need to be possessed of the security afforded by property (subsumed property in the land of their birth) to secure their right to air, water, food and shelter which State functionaries are duty-bound by a written constitution to protect because of the adoption of an individual's inalienable right to life as a fundamental precept in an equitably structured State. A pre-condition for any truly representative democratic State is subsumed ownership of it by its citizens otherwise those exceptional individuals with, or control of property in the State territory will be in a position to coerce those without, nationalisation (NOT State appropriation) of the State's territory is a necessary first step in the creation of an equitable representative democracy.
(edited 4 years ago)
’All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in every age to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind’ was Adam Smith’s (UK, C18th) considered view of the philosophy followed by the privileged and authority figures who had influenced civilization’s course up to his time. It is apparent from our present experience that his observation continues to have pertinence.
The materialistic zero-sum ideology of the ambitious/aggressive is founded on a belief that the inertia of the passive/submissive disqualifies them from enjoying an inalienable inheritance in nature's largesse which ambitious/aggressives determine will become their exclusive property without reference to the well-being of the rest of humanity.
Washington Irving’s (US, C19th) view was that;
‘Until nations are generous they never will be wise.
True policy is generous policy.
All selfishness may gain small ends but lose great ones.
Expedients may answer for the moment,
they gain a point, but do not establish a principle.’
The materialistic zero-sum ideology of the ambitious/aggressive is founded on a belief that the inertia of the passive/submissive disqualifies them from enjoying an inalienable inheritance in nature's largesse which ambitious/aggressives determine will become their exclusive property without reference to the well-being of the rest of humanity.
Washington Irving’s (US, C19th) view was that;
‘Until nations are generous they never will be wise.
True policy is generous policy.
All selfishness may gain small ends but lose great ones.
Expedients may answer for the moment,
they gain a point, but do not establish a principle.’
The political economy of the West has arisen out of European ideas of individual rights which because they have not been universally applied to polities have tended to create situations of cartelised or monopoly power both politically and commercially so the pursuit of cherished ideals of equity and justice have resulted in social and economic results different from those which were expected by the establishment proponents of equity and justice. “Remember that there is no such dichotomy as ‘human rights’ versus ‘property rights‘. No human rights can exist without property rights.” (Ayn Rand, C20th , US) Rand’s assertion spells out the fundamental condition necessary to stability in human society one authority figures have consistently denied was necessary while they could successfully play one section of society off against another. The lack of universality of rights particularly property right inevitably divided society into those with property and those with no property, us and them, and precipitated the discontented world of inequitable civilisations that humanity has suffered for countless millennia. If the world is looking for a new paradigm then equal property in the Earth (or just national territory for a start) fills the bill for those who are genuine humanists; for corporatists there is no alternative.
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