Alexey Data Engineer

Hello. I am interested in your opinion.

The Problem

During land privatization, the right to choose is curtailed due to a lack of knowledge. And the consequences of this ignorance are often irreparable.

The Idea

All state land should be returned to the citizens, and its disposal should reflect the democratic nature of the state.

The Motive

If 3,155,372,300 hectares are divided among every citizen in the RF, it results in 21.84 hectares per person. At a market value of 1 million rubles per hectare, each of us is a potential millionaire. Unfortunately, the voucher privatization model proved itself unsuccessful, therefore I consider the above-described reform the optimal way to bring the market into solving the problem.

The Solution

Technological progress allows us, unlike in ancient times, to automate processes. Many things that were unavailable to the ancients are now possible.

All RF land can be divided into minimal squares (1 sq.m). Every citizen of the RF receives a proportional share of every square for life, without the right of resale, but with the right of temporary transfer under contractual terms.

Legislative Part

• Everyone has their own share in every square meter of Russia, giving them the right to dispose of it.
• Until all owners of the meter (Russians) have granted the right of specific land use to a User, the User has no right to carry out its specific use.
  • For example, if you want to build a factory, you must obtain the right to build a factory from all current owners of the leased land.
• Upon the death of a landowner, their land is distributed according to a will, or in its absence, to blood relatives. If there are no heirs, the shares are evenly distributed among all citizens.
• The land of incapacitated citizens is under the trust management of every citizen; rental income goes toward benefits for incapacitated citizens, and a percentage is paid to the manager as a reward for quality management.
• If a person obtains citizenship, they must pay the market price and buy out a proportional share from ALL citizens. This allows them to become a full citizen with the right to dispose of and grant rights to use the land.
• Budget funds are spent only on maintaining the blockchain that stores the data.
• Costs and lease agreements are also stored in the blockchain to solve the problem of citizens’ incomplete awareness of the real price.
• No tax is levied for owning such land, as all people possess equal rights.
• Land that was in private ownership prior to privatization remains private.

Consequences

Since land that is closer to a person is more valuable to them, companies will emerge that implement trust management of irrelevant land.

The process will create a huge number of jobs and contract templates, allowing interested people to negotiate and lease land from others.

Environmentalists can hinder the construction of factories without an expertise agreement; factories can hinder environmentalists in the exercise of their domestic disposal of lands.

And other market fantasies.

Answer from Ancap-chan

I’ll start with the simplest. Of course, there is not the slightest sense in keeping a land registry in a blockchain. The whole point of a distributed public ledger is to eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries. But if the land use mechanism includes the possibility of forced alienation of land or deprivation of management rights due to incapacity, then the corresponding entries in the blockchain would have to be made by certain persons with admin privileges. That’s it, the blockchain can be thrown away; the optimal solution here would be a regular centralized database. Errors in the database are inevitable, but they can be corrected through various appeal mechanisms.

Now let’s move to something more complex. The proposed mechanism assumes that there will be two land registries in the country simultaneously, and land will circulate within two fundamentally different mechanisms. The part of the land that will be in private ownership at the time of the aforementioned “privatization” (it would be more appropriate to call this procedure socialization, instead) will remain private. A contract between the seller and the buyer would be sufficient for its sale; in other words, the land will be quite liquid. Suppose that by hour X, such land in the RF will be 10%, and the remaining 90% of land belonging to the state will be in the shared ownership of all 140-something million citizens of Russia. The circulation of this socialized land will be extremely difficult, because it will be impossible to buy; only leasing for a specific project will remain, and this project must be approved by the consensus of all owners.

Thus, the legal turnover of socialized land will be completely frozen, and private land, due to the simplicity of its legal use, will immediately skyrocket in price. Judge for yourself. I want to build a factory. The construction cost is 100 million dollars plus the price of one hectare of land. If I build on socialized land, I will have to conclude an agreement with each of the 100 million disposers (counting only the capable ones who will manage the property of their wards). Suppose, with the help of arch-effective means of communication and persuasion, I manage to conclude this agreement in just one year at a price of just one dollar per vote. In total, we have an estimate: 200 million dollars and a year of time to buy construction permission. Alternative: one month of negotiations with a single owner, and I buy one hectare of land from him for just 50 million dollars. Voila: I save time and money, so I won’t even attempt the legal use of socialized land.

On the other hand, I can always carry out a land grab of this very land and use it quite peacefully. Who can stop me? Only the nearest neighbors, who would themselves not mind using this plot. I will share some money with them so they close their eyes to this. I will also share with the land inspector so that on paper the land continues to remain unoccupied. Voila, I build a factory, spending a measly million dollars on bribes and the same month of time.

Such land grabbing will take on a massive and uncontrolled character, because due to the tragedy of the commons, no one will be interested in doing things the long and expensive way if it can be done quickly and cheaply. The doctrine of deterrence will be applied to the most obtuse opponents.

So, the draconian regulation mechanism that was proposed will lead to the emergence of a very expensive white land market and a very massive black one. As we know from history, the prevalence of a black market sooner or later leads to its legalization. This happened in Great Britain, this happened in the USA, this happened in the USSR—yes, it happened in many places—and there is no reason to believe that this case will be an exception.