Who Owns America? Social Conflict Over Property Rights - Review

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Jan, 1999

Harvey M. Jacobs, ed., Who Owns America? Social Conflict Over Property Rights. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. ISBN 0 299 15994 9. Index.

This is a conference volume that packs a wallop. The Land Tenure Center (LTC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison sprouted from the radicalism of the 1960s and is apparently blooming into a most scholarly and provocative force in the law and economics movement. If there were any central credo for LTC, it is probably that "decentralized and secure land tenure - individual, well-protected ownership and control of land, natural and environmental resources - has a direct relationship to issues such as community well-being, resource sustainability, and well-functioning markets" (p. xi). LTC's original focus was Latin America where a tiny percentage of the population owns huge percentages of the valuable land. This situation perpetuates poverty and the virtual absence of "social capital" - networks of communication, trust, and shared responsibility that promote coordination and cooperation in society (p. 240).

In the summer of 1995, the LTC researchers turned their research tools from the third world to the United States. As one author stated it, they discovered a new "third world" country - the United States. The result is this stunningly controversial but scholarly presentation of ideas and themes surrounding the private ownership and control of the land in America.

In the law school programs, students are advised to think of property rights in land as a bundle of rights that are constantly changing. Some rights are removed by the state - the right to build chemical weapons in one's backyard - and other rights are added - the right to add two stories onto your building. With the recognition during the 1970s that environmental degradation and the destruction of biodiversity are problems that can be solved by modifying property rights structures in various ways, many property owners perceived that their bundle of rights were getting unreasonably lighter and that they needed to be compensated for these "takings" as is required by the Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution. The reaction to the environmental movement has taken many forms. Litigating right up to and through the Supreme Court produced some stunning victories for property owners, especially during the 1990s. The authors in this book address their libertarian opponents' arguments and in some ways offer better arguments from the same normative foundations.

There is only enough space here to all but mention two or three of the dozen contributions that are collected together in this text. Professor Harvey M. Jacobs offers a scholarly critique of the classical liberal "Wise Use Movement" (WUM). The WUM wants to limit the government from removing "rights" from any landowner's bundle, by requiring compensation, notice to the landowners, and impact statements. This movement has succeeded in slowing down the zealous interventions of the wide-eyed environmentalists who perfected the lobbying strategy during the 1970s and early 1980s.

The remaining essays in the book review the history of land management in the United States. The American tribes and their land customs, as well as the railroads and their sprawling domains, are discussed along the way. Of special interest is the search for true owners and hidden interest. It is sobering to learn from Professor John Gaventa that the large coal corporations in the Appalachian region control "34 percent of the land and approximately 80 percent of the coal wealth, [yet] they pay less than 4 percent of the local property taxes" (p. 227). Furthermore, in Appalachia and the upper South of the United States only one percent of the "local population, along with absentee holders, corporations, and government agencies, controls at least 53 percent of the total land surface in the eighty counties" (p. 229). Gaventa found this out by scouring dusty county records and laboriously decoding which trust and which corporation is really owned by what owners. It is a form of investigative journalism that is long overdue and produces many surprises. As Professor Jacobs stated in his closing summary to the book, "the truth is that we do not know who owns America, but we need to. We also need to know how America is owned (the forms that ownership takes) and why America is owned (the motivations that drive ownership)" (p. 250).

[Dr. Boden is assistant professor of business economics at the College of Business Administration of the University of Toledo in Ohio.] Dr. Boden's research interests include factors affecting individual's decisions to become self-employed and the relationship between owner and business characteristics and the survival prospects of new business ventures, as well as employer-size differences in worker's job satisfaction, wages, and characteristics. He has published one or more papers in each of these areas. ed totals of