I've seen that one used so much; that apparently if you're not making proper use of the land, there's nothing immoral about taking it from you and turning it into something better.
If that was logical then corporations would have the right to every ounce of land as they can make them extremely profitable.
All that space wasted to house just three people? All that unused garden space? Companies would make every square inch contribute towards productivity.
In Thomas More's classic Utopia, 1516, he argued that colonists would be justified in seizing territory by force if local people were unwilling to join in the colonists' productive way of life. Land not fruitfully used could rightfully he seized by those who would render it fruitful. In such cases, the colonists were entitled by natural law to appropriate land without the permission of any local authority.
The English would go even further, extending the principles outlined by More to encompass not just land unused or uncultivated altogether, but land not used fruitfully enough, and not in the right way, by the standards of English commercial agriculture.
to complicate the matter further that principle was orginally developed in England as a criticism of private ownership of land and advocacy of collective farms owned by the working class and then reapplied to justify theft from natives
the only thing you're missing is "Well, they weren't really using the land properly"
I've seen that one used so much; that apparently if you're not making proper use of the land, there's nothing immoral about taking it from you and turning it into something better.
If that was logical then corporations would have the right to every ounce of land as they can make them extremely profitable.
All that space wasted to house just three people? All that unused garden space? Companies would make every square inch contribute towards productivity.
although no one ever talks about seizing car parks to turn them into housing blocks
Correct! :capitalist-laugh:
this but communist
In Thomas More's classic Utopia, 1516, he argued that colonists would be justified in seizing territory by force if local people were unwilling to join in the colonists' productive way of life. Land not fruitfully used could rightfully he seized by those who would render it fruitful. In such cases, the colonists were entitled by natural law to appropriate land without the permission of any local authority.
The English would go even further, extending the principles outlined by More to encompass not just land unused or uncultivated altogether, but land not used fruitfully enough, and not in the right way, by the standards of English commercial agriculture.
to complicate the matter further that principle was orginally developed in England as a criticism of private ownership of land and advocacy of collective farms owned by the working class and then reapplied to justify theft from natives