Day 124: Property

Today was a fasting day ... I think its harder when I'm on holiday.

The more I stay in america the more I understand communists (even though I'd say I'm more of a libertarian than a communist).   How big a house does a person or family need ?  Walking around Pacific Palisades ( a relatively chic but not ostentatious area of LA) I notice many houses which are over 500m2.  I can't help feeling nobody really needs or uses that much space (assuming a normal family of 2 adults and 2.1 Kids).  Maybe there should be a cap on the size of family homes or  apartments? I could imagine a law that says that a home or apartment cannot be more than 100m2 + 25m2  per person occupying the home.  People occupying oversized house would have 2 choices either vacate their premises and look for a smaller home or increase the number of people in their home.  Or maybe we should just follow Proudhon's well know phrase "La propriété, c'est le vol" (Property is theft).  After all in France for example you cannot privatise beaches, they belong to the state which can "rent" them out for limited periods of time and under strict conditions.  If that is true for beaches why not extend that principle to all land?  The government could then sell leases for a limited period (50 years for example) after which the property would revert to the government.  this would significantly reduce the cost of housing and would redirect capital which is at present locked in real estate to more fruitful purposes.  According to recent estimates the total value of land and buildings in the world is over 300,000,000,000,000 $.  If that amount was invested in a trust fund that would allow the world to easily spend 2x as much on education as it does now.