Land value is created by society, not the landowner’s enterprise

Evidence

To make sure that readers caught the implications of that point, the report also rejected outright the major legal and philosophical obstacles to regulation, especially the understanding of property rights embodied in the “takings” concept. If property owners were entitled to develop their lands in any way they saw fit, then they had to be compensated if regulation took away their right to profit from development. But that conclusion was based on a faulty understanding of the nature of land values. Traditionally, the report argued, Americans had believed that the value of land came from the “bottom up” – from the enterprise of the landowner. In truth, however, the value of land came from the “top down”: It was created by society, which provided the context for economic development. Without the opportunities offered landowners by membership in a community, that is, a piece of property never could be worth more than the subsistence value of the land’s harvest – it could never have a greater value as a site for subdivisions, factories, offices, or shopping centers. The members of society, therefore, had the right to define the obligations which all property owners must respect. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 537

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘top down’ land-value argument directly serves the LGST course thread on law and property, and connects to the Eco-Justice course’s treatment of land as something other than a commodity. — connects to: Abuse of land stems from regarding it as owned commodity rather than community — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 10; Money’s invention legitimizes unequal land possession without society — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 61; Values are inherited from the social world, not invented from nothing — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 213 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Explains how the ‘takings’ doctrine rests on an assumption of bottom-up land value that reformers contested.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ and especially the land-use themes of ‘Grafting & Growth’ — land value coming from communal context parallels how root grafts and shared infrastructure make value collective, not individual.
• DEEPTHINKING: The top-down theory of land value is a dense legal-philosophical claim that reframes property entitlement — worth sitting with for the law course.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Money’s invention legitimizes unequal land possession without society #corroborates (0.75) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 61
• Values are inherited from the social world, not invented from nothing #corroborates (0.72) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 213
• Monopoly capitalism destroys the very notion of property while retaining its form #corroborates (0.72)
• Courts rejected maximization of land value as the measure of owners’ rights #corroborates (0.70) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 950