The Free State Project

Announcement:
The Free State Project
by Jason P Sorens
jason.sorens@yale.edu

Special to TLE

Libertarian activists need to face a somber reality: nothing's working.

Partisan politics has clearly failed: Libertarian presidential candidates consistently fail to break the one per cent barrier, while no Libertarian candidate has ever won election to a federal office. What is the chance that a Libertarian presidential candidate will get even 5% of the presidential vote in the next, say, 20 years? Virtually zero; I'd be willing to bet the farm on that. And what about the chance that Libertarians will take over the Presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court and enact their entire program? One would have to be utterly delusional to consider this a possibility so long as the United States' political system exists in its current form.

http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/libe131-20010723-03.html

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The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision

Land Policy and the Open Community
The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision
by Spencer H. MacCallum

http://www.zolatimes.com/V5.2/maccallum_land.html


When planning a new community, questions of architecture, planning of streets and parks and other physical considerations immediately come to mind. It is rare that anyone consciously considers the system of land tenure. Seldom is it recognized that there is a choice other than subdivision, and least of all that the choice might make a difference for those who share the kinds of concerns that are most important to modern anarchists. Those concerns are individual autonomy, entrepreneurship and, lastly, community, which enables the flowering of the human spirit in cultural pursuits of every kind.
A necessary first step when forming a community of any kind is to parcel a tract of land into exclusive occupancies while retaining for common use areas such as parks and access ways. The parceling can be accomplished in either of two ways. One is to subdivide the land ownership into separate fees. The other is to let out parcels as leaseholds, keeping the land title intact. These two logical possibilities do not have equal merit.

At first blush, subdivision might seem to be the anarchist choice, each individual owning his own piece of turf and building thereon his castle to enjoy that individual autonomy that is the necessary precondition for community. This seems so self-evident that the alternative is seldom explored. This paper will help fill that gap by briefly reviewing the modern anarchist argument for land leasing. Bear in mind that land leasing means only what the phrase implies, namely, leasing the land, or location, itself and not necessarily any of the improvements on it such as buildings. These latter can be readily owned, bought and sold independently of the land under them.

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