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198 points isaacfrond | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jl6 ◴[] No.45100453[source]
> As today’s world faces rising sea levels driven by climate change, the researchers hope to shed light on how Stone Age societies adapted to shifting coastlines more than eight millennia ago.

Unfortunately I don't expect there is any particularly reusable solution to be uncovered. Ancient peoples facing rising tides almost certainly just walked a bit inland and built new huts there. They probably thought nothing of it. They were a far more physically mobile culture, without great dependence on immense, immovable infrastructure - nor on rigid land ownership rules.

Our culture's migration will be entirely different.

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ehnto ◴[] No.45100671[source]
Rigid land ownership seems to be the source of a great deal of our troubles.
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inglor_cz ◴[] No.45100925[source]
Now try non-rigid land ownership, where land and buildings can be expropriated in the name of nebulous greater good.

Been there, done that, it is worse than the alternative. People will stop cultivating anything, because why bother if a random officer can just take things from you at will.

Western regulations about land appropriation are strict for a reason, and they always require just compensation for a reason. That is the only way to prevent powerful people from just grabbing what they want, cloaking the thieving act in word bubbles about common prosperity.

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diggan ◴[] No.45101245[source]
> Now try non-rigid land ownership, where land and buildings can be expropriated in the name of nebulous greater good.

Maybe there could be some balance instead of "Either everything can be owned, or nothing is!".

It isn't impossible to move cities if it's really needed and someone is footing the bill, even in a democratic Western country that is famously highly regulated, like Sweden. Since a mine in the north is expanding, they have to move the entire city (paid by the mine's operator in this case), building by building, which of course isn't without complaints, but it's a thing that actively being done as we speak. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3xp4xlw9o

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1. inglor_cz ◴[] No.45101271[source]
I don't really mind takings for very good compensation. If you want to uproot people in the name of X (say, a railway that cannot really change its path, or a very valuable mine), pay them some low multiple of the current market price of their property and off they go. The part with the market price helps them buy property elsewhere and the extra part is sugar to compensate for injured feelings. (It is not easy to abandon a home if your family lived there for generations, and we should account for that.)

But such situations are relatively rare. Perhaps the mine in Kiruna is worth it and the corporation/government can pay for the compensations. Same for vital ground communications (highways, railways).

If it isn't, though, then let the ore in the ground and let the people live where they built their homes.

Most of the time I hear ideas about "flexible ownership" etc., upon further discussion, the person starts talking about outright expropriation from people they don't like.

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2. sentinelsignal ◴[] No.45101910[source]
Yeah i agree. Theres a very thin layer between these ideas and outright crazy.
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3. ehnto ◴[] No.45104468[source]
To defend myself a little, I never said rigid land ownership was not still what I would prefer. But tying significant value to land and allowing individuals to hold it has some downsides.