ABSTRACT

This chapter presents ownership, largely to provide an overview of trends in the structure of landowner-ship. It argues that the mixed private/public property system of the United States is derived from social contract, rather than a natural right. The chapter suggests that property rights are based on a pluralistic ethic, only one element of which is efficiency. Agriculture occupies nearly two-thirds of the private land in the United States, 878 million acres. The pattern of landownership determines who will gain and who will lose from private and public decisions about what happens on the land. The negative connotation of absentee reflects a community’s apparent antipathy to the immigrant, stranger, or outsider. Land-use decisions are made in some cases by the exercise of special authority. Reasoning about the use, control, pricing, and taxation of land might proceed from, say, a neo-Kantian basis. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.