The incredible benefit of the completelly invented concept of privately-owned land
To remind where we left off talking about control of land we talked about how the territorial ruler, who exacted tribute from farmers in his territory would deal the the problem of an unmanageably large area:
(the ruler would) Pick one of his most trusted men for each village (except the closest) and send him to live in the village. Tell each that the village is "theirs" so long as they keep bringing the ruler tribute, minus a cut for themselves, of course. Keep the closest village as "headquarters," with all of the wealth for the ruler. Sons often make the most loyal of such vassals, but new blood in the mix, selected by merit are useful also.
Under a system like that, the trusted men are not expected to give all but barely above starvation subsistance to their rulers and suffer the deprivation along with the workers. Rulers found it was actually more lucrative to charge a percentage of the produced goods, or a set amount. That motivatged the vassals to drive their serfs to greater production. Even if the amount is set, the ruler will be aware when there are increases in production and raise the set amount.
This introduced the vital element of motivation to farming. No longer were the stewards of the king's land content to grow just enough to make the yearly payment. The more food they grew, the more wealth they would have.
But is extra food really "wealth?" If farming methods improve such that the same number of workers can grow twice or three times the amount of food, won't it go uneaten and rot, there being the same number of workers to feed?
No.
Food is fuel for workers. If your existing workers are better fed, they will breed more workers. The more capable of the workers can be put to work as fishers, hunters (with the master leading the hunt, of course), cooks, maids, footmen, tailers and seamstresses, carriage builders, carpenters, stone masons, miners, blacksmiths, silversmiths, jewellers, singers and musicians, artists, chefs, prostitutes, healers, and other non-farm workers that provide what will soon be seen as "necessities" above and beyond the day's ration of bread and beans.
The Egyptions were able to build the Pyramids, not because they had any alien spacecraft lifting the rocks for them, but because the fertility of the Nile allowed them to feed enough workers to lift them.
With all that wealth creation, it is nearly impossible to keep everyone poor. A middle-class develops and gains its own wealth. That's one of the reason the Egyptions build pyramids, to find an outlet for the wealth other than letting the workers keep it. It wasn't free market "capitalists" who invented keeping the wealth away from the workers, that was a long established tradition. The later free markets that brought the industrial age made the poor the healthiest, wealthiest and best educated poor in history.
Anyway, sooner or later the middle class found ways to get land of their own. Non-noble tennents were the first proto-private land owners, paying rent to the nobility. The nobility soon realized that they could give a deed to a landowner, making it private property and still be paid in the form of land taxes.
Working land with a set part of the crops as tribute to the ruler was more motivating than working land and giving all but a subsitance to the ruler. Working land as a tennat with a set monetary payment was more motivating still. Working land as an owner with a set yearly tax, not connected to production was most motivating of all. At that point, the yearly tax was likely less than the yearly increase in the land value, so it was more a bookkeeping nuisance than a serious bite of the landowner's wealthy.
The king must have hated that, right? Wrong. Small amounts of taxes, on so much land, almost willingly paid by landowners was much more reliably lucrative for the king/government than the old feudal system. Certainly better than the middle period where the nobles became so wealthy and powerful that they king had to often beg them for money to raise an Army. With private property and taxes, the central government was now back in the catbird seat.
To this day, I don't know of a single acre of privately owned land not subject to taxation as real estate. Privately owned land is and likely always will be allowed by government at the price of tribute.
Which makes sense. Owning land, by definition takes away the rights of others to walk on it. Under pure feudalism, walking on the nobleman's land was not tresspassing. Where else would people walk, if the noble controlled all the land and forbade people from walking on it. Besides, the people worked to produce his wealth. They were his peeps. He would no more tresspass them, than he would tresspass his cattle and chickens.
Anyway, the private ownership of land led to an agricultural revolution similar to the industrial revolution but at a much slower pace. That private ownership of land sharply increased the output of food and reduced the amount of labor to produce the increased amounts. Not because plowing was much different in the 1600's as it had been in the 800's, but because there was motivation and drive in what had once been an industry worked by slaves or people barely above slave status. More workers outside the farm led to banking, education, experimentation, and eventually to factory production that started the Industrial Revolution.
With all that benefit, it would be hard to argue for going back to a primitive state in exchange for being able to walk the Earth anywhere since no one owned it. The primitive people's belief that no one could own land was a product of their religious beliefs in the land, air, water, and trees as living and sentient beings, not of any concern for individual rights and liberty.
