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Future Hindsight
Land, Power, and Democracy: Michael Albertus
00:45:50
We discuss the great reshuffle of land in the last few centuries and the intersection of land, power, and democracy. Michael’s civic action toolkit recommendations are: Support conservation easements Learn about the indigenous...
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- [00:00]
A
Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com hopeful all lowercase and if you want to support Future Hindsight and all the work that we do as an independent pro democracy podcast, please join us at the Civics Club on patreon. Go to patreon.com futurehiinsight now. Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now. Our earth is covered by 71% water, leaving only 29% land. And here on Future Hindsight, we approach everything through a democracy lens. You could say it makes our world go round. We so today we want to examine the intersection of democracy and land. Our guest is Michael Albertus. He's professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of five books. His most recent is Land Power, who Has it, who doesn't, and how that Determines the Fate of Societies. Welcome, Michael. Thank you for joining us.
- [01:48]
B
Thanks for having me on the show.
- [01:50]
A
So you make the case, as per the subtitle of your book, that land ownership determines the fate of societies. Let's start with the basics. What is land power? How does it work?
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B
So land ownership confers its holders with economic, social, and political power. And because land is power, those who own it come to dominate power, whereas those who lose it or who don't own it become dominated. Many people underestimate how important land is to the way that societies work, even long after they urbanize. The biggest problems in society around the globe today, from racism to gender inequality, environmental degradation, and economic inequality, are deeply rooted in choices about who should get land and about how they could use it. From a couple generations ago, right?
- [02:41]
A
You call it the Great Reshuffle. These decisions that were made when people essentially were able to claim land as their own, because, of course, as we know, 20,000 years ago, people didn't have land titles. So tell us a little bit about how land ownership has been contested for centuries. You know, for example, the French Revolution, the dispossession of native populations during Colonization. And you argue that we can use land power to create a better world. So just like how land power has created this unjust, unequal, unequitable world, we can undo it with land reform, in a way. But to start, what is the Great reshuffle and how did it cause these problems?
- [03:24]
B
So the Great Reshuffle is what I call the period of upheaval in land ownership over the last two centuries, or really since the time of the French Revolution. It's hard to overstate how concentrated land became in places like Europe, Latin America, and most of East Asia as of a few centuries ago. And in the last two centuries, population growth, state making, and social conflict all increased. And the demand for land increased, along with the ability of governments to reallocate and reassign that land. And that sparked dramatic upheavals in who holds land and societies around the globe. And I call that the Great Reshuffle because it really fundamentally marked just about every society on Earth. And it did so in very different ways. We can think about examples like Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The country seized private landholdings and later forged collectives on the land that were used in part to support industrialization. It's really hard to conceive of the Soviet Union and the Cold War in modern Russia without that episode. There are also other ways in which reshuffling happens. So if we think about what happened in the United States or Australia, for example, those countries were both defined by the reallocation of land and the appropriation of land from indigenous groups and the reallocation to settlers in the course of settlement. And so it happens in different ways. And the different ways in which land reshuffling happens paves different trajectories of development and society as we see it and still live and breathe it today.
- [05:09]
A
Well, land will continue to be reshuffled. We're seeing it everywhere. Maybe most notably, most obviously to us, of course, right now, are wars, right? But there is an opportunity to right some of these wrongs, some of these longer trends, for example, settler colonialism and appropriating the land from indigenous groups, and then maybe giving them back, as you noted, for example, in South Africa. But there are multiple ways to do this, right? How do you think about this broadly? How do you think about turning the tables and using land to forge a more just and sustainable world? And since we are a pro democracy podcast, what kind of democracy do we need to render a more just outcome in the new reshuffling? Or maybe do you even think that democracy plays A role.
- [05:58]
B
Democracy definitely plays a role. We need strong institutions and we need engaged civic groups and participation in order to use land to make a better world. But there are a lot of examples that I cover in the book and many that I don't cover in the book as well. Well, where that's exactly what's happening today. You mentioned one of them already, South Africa, a country that for the last three decades has been grappling with the legacy of apartheid and has been restituting land to black communities that were forcibly displaced from it. And that's only one example of very many. But it's one that shows that land and land power can be used today to change our world for the better. And that can be true not only when it comes to racial relationships, racial hierarchies, but also treatment of the environment, anti poverty solutions, attempts to level the playing field in terms of greater equality and equity and opportunity as well. So it can have a lot of impacts on society.
- [07:02]
A
Well, one of the questions I have is whether land reallocation is actually a pro democracy move. You mentioned briefly urbanization. You know, does basically land reallocation foster more democracy. And by that I mean does it create more political power for everyone? I live in New York City. A lot of people here are renters. Most people here are renters. I think a lot of listeners are probably renters. So this idea of land reallocation is maybe removed. Right. So conceptually, how does this work for everybody?
- [07:35]
B
Sure, if we think about some extreme examples where land reallocation has really worked, the post World War II period, in places like Taiwan, Japan or South Korea, all those economies were characterized by very unequal landholding that really fed into something like a feudal structure and authoritarian local politics and society as it was practiced. And in the post war period, all of those governments engaged in major reallocation of land, from landlords to tenants who worked on the land. And tenants received land, they also received support from the government. And within a generation or two, people were sending their kids to schools to become educated rather than to the fields. And within two generations and then three, these economies transformed radically because people had opportunity in ways that they didn't previously have opportunity. So in other words, land empowered people. The same is true if you think about the early settlement of New England, where land holding was relatively equally distributed amongst men. Certainly when you compare it to something like the plantation economy in the southern United States. Right. And there that was one of the earliest, if not the earliest modern example of democracy, that equality and distribution of access to property Also fostered greater equality in politics as well and in society. So we can think about that as replicating itself in many different ways as we move to more modern societies, as well as when we think about this in a changing economy and in more urban economy. You know, things like the GI Bill were intended to provide people a pathway to the middle class through the ownership of property. And in some ways that really helped, but it also had very racialized dimensions. Right. So black folks were in many ways sidelined from that program and as a result were relegated to renting. And there were very significant problems with intergenerational wealth building and the like. That has repercussions for today's democracy, for things like segregation and for housing access and the like today. And we can see some aspects of this debate playing out when we think about affordability questions in housing, not only for purchasing housing, but also rentals and the entrance of things like institutional investors and making it much more difficult for people to use housing as a platform for building wealth and opportunity.
- [10:15]
A
Well, you know, when we think about political power in the US So much about political power is tied up with property ownership, right? In the US at its inception in 1776, you needed to be a property owner in order to vote. Of course, that's changed. But what you were saying just now about the middle class and basically building an asset that can grow, you know, you call it, it's like taking an elevator when other people are taking the stairs. But it isn't only that you can grow your assets, but it's also that it gives you outsized political power when you have more money. And Elon Musk is the most obvious example in this moment. But American history is rife, right, with stories of small town bigwigs who throw their weight around because they are rich in their town, that they own land or they own a factory, they employ a lot of people and they can have outsized influence on political outcomes wherever they live. So how do you think about leveling this playing field in terms of current policy? And I don't know if you have any opinions on this, whether we should be doing this through zoning changes, tax breaks, mortgage reform. How do you think about this?
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B
Yeah, you're right that there are many examples of this. And it's true that land has all these other social and political implications that are well beyond the economic ones. Right. So you know, everything from who people pay deference to in social circumstances, to who do you listen to at a town hall and who's involved in the, in the homeowners Association. And who do you listen to? All these kinds of seemingly little but important kind of political things. Right. That end up filtering into things like zoning, which you mentioned, which is so critical to questions about who will have access to property and who won't have access to property and who should be excluded. And so another example that I give in the book, which is one that's a little bit older, is tied to the Palm Springs area. And there I talk about the. You know, there's a broader story here which we don't have to get into right now.
- [12:25]
A
Actually, I think that's a really good. Because it's a little bit crazy the way that they divvied up the land for the railroads and the alternating plots of land. I thought. Wait, who thought of this idea? But tell us a little bit about how, like, from the beginning, how did the Cahuilla people ended up in Agua Caliente? And how did the land grab make for this inequitable outcome for the indigenous population?
- [12:55]
B
Right. So, like many Native American communities, land southeast settlement and reshuffling in the American west for the Cahuilla more broadly meant land dispossession. The US Government forced them into a lopsided treaty that ceded much of their land in 1852, and then 25 years later, gave the Southern Pacific Railway a right of way through the remaining land. And because railroad grants at the time gave every other square mile of public land to railroad companies in order to help them raise capital to fund laying railroad tracks. And the Agua Caliente Reservation, which is one of the bands of Cahuilla Indians, was created as a checkerboard of land where they got every other square mile of land. So it's this almost comically cruel pattern of land ownership that was a very effective way to break down tribal cohesion and the community more generally. And it was part and parcel of creating a new racial hierarchy in the American west that was dominated by white settlers, it's hard to imagine how that could have been achieved in the same ways without this sort of land reshuffling.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah, for sure. Tell us about how today they have a different arrangement and how they got there, because I thought that was also fascinating and maybe could serve as an example of how you turn the tables.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah, that's right. So the Agua Caliente had to, you know, they didn't only have to battle this initial checkerboard pattern of a reservation, but then they had to battle the city of Palm Springs. One of the squares that belonged to the Agua Caliente is A square known as Section 14, that is downtown Palm Springs. And there's a lot of development now in Palm Springs and in the Post World War II period, as it was becoming clear that this was sort of going to become a playground for the rich and famous, you know, from Hollywood and elsewhere in the Southwest, that there was a lot of demand to build hotels, to build attractions, spas, et cetera, in this area. And so there was this enormous racialized battle for land in that particular area. And it was very ugly for over the course of many decades. But in the end, what ended up happening is the community. The tribe ended up litigating its leasing arrangements with the federal government. And that changed a lot of what was happening in that area. And furthermore, the state of California intervened and sort of clipped the wings of Palm Springs, the city. And so what happened is that the Agua Caliente then struck a land use arrangement that gave them far more autonomy to decide about land use in any particular case, with the city of Palm Springs. And they created a much more collaborative relationship. And that collaborative relationship is one that persists to this day, and it's actually generated gains and benefits for both sides. And it's also benefited from some federal legislation, like gaming legislation, that's enabled Agua Caliente to bring in casinos and the like and use those revenues to kind of reconstitute freight aspects of tribal life. But it's an interesting story of a lot of difficult struggles over land, and then the forging of a much more collaborative relationship in which all the different players were brought in in many ways.
- [16:16]
A
We'll be right back with Michael Albertus, so stay with us. I know that you don't want to miss this episode's civic spark. It's a small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. But first, when you think about the most successful businesses, brands with sales going through the roof, like Gymshark or Alo Yoga, I'm sure you think about a great product and a cool brand with brilliant marketing, right? But let me tell you the super special ingredient that makes selling and for shoppers buying simple. It's the businesses behind the business. Because you just can't do it alone. For millions of businesses, that business behind them is Shopify. Why? Because nobody does selling business better than Shopify. Let me tell you how this works. Shopify is home to the number one checkout on the planet. And there's this little secret that's actually not so secret. Shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way fewer Carts going abandoned and way more sales going Cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, and who are we kidding? You are. Then your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. And that's why businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level, no matter how big you want to grow. And that's what I love about Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period@shopify.com hopefully all lowercase go to shopify.com hopeful to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com hopeful. And now let's return to my conversation with Michael Albertus. I have a question about the environment because, of course, this is a big part of some of the problems we're having today because the climate crisis is here. I think nobody disputes that anymore. I mean, I think or select few people maybe, but the Interior Secretary just ordered all agencies within the Interior Department to review policies with the intent of increasing fracking, drilling and mining across all public lands and waters, including areas that are currently protected. And in this time, it seems kind of crazy, right? And not just because of the environmental degradation, but because public land is land that belongs to all Americans. At least this is the way I think all of us think about it. So in my mind, it's like a double whammy between the tragedy of the commons and also the dispossession of all American citizens by its own government. And I feel like there's maybe not a full appreciation of how the tragedy of the commons works when I bring this up in conversation. People don't know what I mean. So how would you explain that to the audience using this example of drilling on public lands?
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B
Well, I hate to say it, but unfortunately, there's been drilling on public lands for a long period of time.
- [19:37]
A
Yes, for sure.
- [19:38]
B
And, you know, broader resource extraction. Right. So timber harvesting, mineral extraction, you know, fracking, oil extraction, a lot of different things. You know, there's an interesting history of how the US Developed this discrepancy between privately owned land and public land. But over half of the land, a little bit over half of the land in the American west is public land. And that is land, as you say, that belongs to the American people. Right. But the federal government also uses that land to do concession making and to enable, you know, extraction of resources. And the Intent in some cases or in many cases is an attempt at sustainable extraction. Or, you know, while they're timber harvesting, they're also trying to reforest and the like. But of course, that's not always the case. And there can be extensive damage and degradation to the land, as well as the fact that it can trammel on how people think about the nature of these public lands, right? That they're meant to be in service also of the environment, of conservation, recreation and the like. And so sometimes those goals or ideals are in contradiction with one another or rub up against one another. And it feels in many ways particularly galling, like you say, at this moment, right, because here we are where the climate is changing relatively rapidly. We see the signs of that all around us. We know it's going to accelerate in the coming years. And it's very important to take climate action now as opposed to increasing oil drilling and resource extraction. So there are many alternatives to doing this sort of thing, right? And the economy, in many ways, is already moving away from some of these things. There's less and less coal that's being used to power the electrical grid, for example. There's a broader shift in the car fleet towards EVs and hybrid vehicles and away from gas guzzlers. And so do we need this sort of thing right now? It feels like the answer to that is no. But this is part and parcel of a broader kind of political and economic agenda that the current administration has.
- [21:53]
A
For sure, it's part of the larger agenda. But in terms of the climate crisis, we know, of course, that the big red switch in the wall is decarbonization, stop burning fossil fuels. But land reshuffling is a factor. So as you think about land reshuffling in the context of the climate crisis, how can we maximize reshuffling land to mitigate the climate?
- [22:17]
B
There are a number of different ways in which we can do it. So one way is without the actual reshuffling of land per se, but rather reshuffling property rights over land. So, for example, conservation easements on the land and the creation of land trusts and the like can help with protecting and preserving and conserving natural resources, biodiversity, et cetera, on land holdings right now, without actually reshuffling those lands. Right. So individual landowners can contract for conservation easements that limit how they can use their land in certain ways in order to preserve the environment. And that has been occurring in the United States. And actually there's been a relatively explosive growth in that over the course of the last several decades to the tune now of probably about 20 million acres of land are covered by various forms of land trusts and conservation easements. Another way to do it is to think about actually rewilding land. So I did work for the book in Chile and Patagonia and there was a really interesting example there. I visited and hiked in Patagonia national park, which was formerly a ranch, for about 100 years. Before that it was pristine natural land. And an American philanthropist actually bought that land in the early 2000s and then told the Chilean government that they would give the Chilean government that land if they would promise to conserve it and provide protections for it. And the Chilean government agreed and they integrated it as part of a broader deal to create a much bigger set of national parks and conserve a much larger land area as well. So that's another option, rewilding. And there are rewilding efforts not only in Chile and places like Argentina, but also in Europe and in the United States as well. Yet a third possibility is to partner with communities to steward land in ways that are forward thinking and consider the long term preservation of the land. So there has been a limited amount of this in the United States, but it's a more widely used model in Australia and Canada, both at the national level as well as the federal level, partnering with oftentimes indigenous groups to co manage and co steward lands for preservation for the future. And because oftentimes those groups think about those as ancestral homelands, they think about the long term. They think about endowing future generations with land that is going to be worthwhile having there and that represents something like it has represented since time immemorial.
- [24:59]
A
I like that third effort. I have a question about the conservation effort in Chile, because that is the effort of one philanthropist, right. Somebody with very deep pockets. And I'm always skeptical about the long term philanthropic arrangement of something like this because people could change their minds, the rich people could change their minds, and it's not really democratic. Right. Although it's good for conservation, it's good for the planet, and therefore it's good for us. It's the action of one person. And this philanthropist was very generous and very forward looking. But at the same time there are people like Mark Zuckerberg who are buying up huge parts of Hawaii or have already completed that, or Larry ellison who owns 98% of the island of Lanai. So where does this trend in billionaires buying up land fit in to this great reshuffle?
- [25:50]
B
Right? Yeah, and thanks for those examples. Those are two great examples. And that fit with a broader trend of billionaires in the US Buying up land. Bill Gates is another who has bought up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. And so, yes, that is certainly a trend, and in my view, it's a worrying trend. And it's one that ties up a limited resource in the hands of a very small number of people and tends towards this inequality in access, this inequality in ownership. And so I think to distinguish that from, you know, from this example in Chile or even, frankly, of another extremely wealthy philanthropist who bought up land. Rockefeller. Right. The difference in these examples is that with Rockefeller and with the Chilean example, both of those, those individuals sort of surreptitiously bought up large amounts of land using their own private funds, and then they donated that land to the government. And so they relinquish control, and they no longer have control over that. Even if they're going to try and reacquire at this point, they cannot. Right? So I think that's something that distinguishes those different efforts, and it's different also from yet another type of effort which is ongoing right now in the Bay Area. You know, speaking of some folks involved in tech, right, so what is known as the East Solano Plan to start a new city basically from scratch in the northeastern part of the San Francisco Bay area. And the initial efforts within the plan were the same way that some of these other projects have been conceived of, right? Which is to clandestinely buy up large tracts of land and then try and present a plan for, hey, here's what we're going to do with the land. But this is not an effort of conservation. This is an effort of building a new city basically to house. People are going to work ultimately in tech. And what happened in this case? Well, locals rebelled, basically, right, and said, no way, we don't want this in our backyard. This is going to raise our bills in terms of providing water and sewerage infrastructure. It's going to change traffic patterns, it's going to change the cultural patterns here as well. And so how come nobody asked us about this? Right? So these kinds of land grabs, land acquisitions, they can happen in different ways. They aren't necessarily democratic, but they can ultimately lend towards different ends.
- [28:09]
A
Well, that makes me think of gentrification. And we love to go to the island of Nantucket in the summers. And in recent years, the real estate there has become so expensive that you can no longer afford summer rentals, essentially, and especially not for labor. Right. So if you are a restaurant nowadays, you actually have to, like, own a house. Big Enough to create a dorm for the people who work in your restaurant, which sounds totally crazy. And there was a restaurant that we loved. It was a burger joint, so it was not expensive food. It was just a burger joint. And they had to close because they could not afford labor and they could not afford housing. And it just makes me feel like, where is this going? And you mentioned earlier about corporate interests, notably private equity, buying up housing. And it's the kind of thing where clearly there is going to be continued demand for more land or apartments or housing, you know, depending on how you want to think about it. But how do you think about gentrification? And I'm surprised you didn't mention it in your book.
- [29:18]
B
Right. So, yeah, land is a critical part of this. More generally, within the United States now, land comprises about 40% of the value of real estate. And in high demand places in urban areas where real estate is expensive, oftentimes land comprises an even larger share. So like in the Bay Area, it's closer to two thirds of the value of property is in land, not in the house on the land. The same is true in a lot of ways in parts of New York and in outlying parts of New York, what's hard to get is the land. Right. So that's a really important part of this. And. And there are some underlying dynamics here. Right. Which are pushing up the value of land. So one would simply be population growth that has been increasing over time throughout the United States. Also, urbanization crowding in urban areas has pushed up prices in urban areas disproportionately. Obviously, the pandemic had a big impact on this in terms of increasing inflation and also putting bottlenecks on supply chains for building materials and the like. And land happens to be a very good hedge against inflation, which is part of the reason why institutional investors are so heavily involved in it, because it's a great hedge against inflation. Land tends to go up, you know, at least at the same rate as inflation and to basically never go down in value. And so that has led to pushing up prices even more. And so that's all part of the backdrop of this picture. But of course, it's. It's even more complicated than that in the sense that there's other dimensions of it and things like zoning, which we've mentioned already in passing. Zoning restrictions are crucial to this right and have their roots in Supreme Court decision in the 1920s that allowed for this sort of zoning restrictions to happen at a local level. And in subsequent decades, these restrictions proliferated such that now they really restrict the ability to build in many places. That has a huge impact on where gentrification happens and how it happens and all that sort of thing as well. So land is a really important part of all of this, and we can talk more about how to peel that away a little bit.
- [31:33]
A
Well, I have a question about continuing to live in the aftermath of the Southern plantation system, which also feeds into this. And you made a short reference to this already in our conversation, but in your book, you made a very, very brief reference to 40 acres and a mule. And I'm surprised you didn't write more about where we are today, because it feeds into zoning. And redlining, for example, you know, comes directly out of this. Right. You do say, like I mentioned just now, that we are living and breathing the consequences of failing actually to fully reckon with the Southern plantation system. So I feel like I have to ask you this. What are your thoughts on reparations in the context of having just written this book?
- [32:17]
B
Right, right. I'm glad you brought this up. I wish that I had more space in the book to write more about this because it's so foundational. Right. To how we think about America today and all the different racial dimensions of our cities, our politics, our society. As you know, and as we've been discussing, obviously, you know, the Southern plantation system was one in which blacks were enslaved. In the aftermath and Reconstruction, Civil War era Reconstruction, there was this incipient promise of 40 acres and a mule to formerly enslaved folks that for a very brief time seemed like it. It might occur. But it was very quickly peeled back, and people fell back into, you know, sharecropping in many cases on the. The same lands that they previously worked on when they were enslaved. Right. And as the Great Migration took place and brought more blacks to northern cities in large numbers, you know, between the 1910s up through the 1930s and 40s, all these zoning restrictions, redlining, et cetera, that all grew out of that. And so there was this initial blockage for blacks to receive land in the south, and then it was replicated in northern cities. They were marginalized and sidelined and segregated into the peripheries of cities. Right. And where they weren't, oftentimes, there were problems. And then they became so, you know, over the course of decades, like, for example, you know, race riots in Detroit or Chicago or the like, we still see the enormous discrepancy in household wealth between black Americans and white Americans. And my view can be very directly tied into that initial failure in the post Civil War Period. But also the subsequent failures and the subsequent policies of segregation, of redlining, of restricting blacks basically from accessing housing through the GI Bill, et cetera. And so, in my view, that is a situation that definitely does call for recognition and reparation. And I think that a way of thinking about that is through the lens of land and housing and the sort of value that blacks were deprived of because of the inability, the exclusion from these policies that were afforded to other Americans. I will say it's a complicated debate, and it's made more complicated by the fact that the histories are different in different places and the policies that different generations were subjected to are different in different places. And so California is working on reparation. There are different cities that are working and counties that are working on reparations for black Americans. And I think that there needs to be a much bigger conversation about this at a national level.
- [34:59]
A
Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, in terms of housing, how do you think about housing justice? This is something that affects everybody immediately every day. You know, you're paying your rent every month or you're paying your mortgage every month. So if you could suggest one piece of public policy in this field for housing justice, what would you recommend?
- [35:19]
B
Well, one thing I think that was an interesting policy that was proposed by the Harris campaign was to provide first time home buyers with a grant in order to. To make a mortgage more affordable. Right, right. And if we think about that, it's in, in many ways, like the sum that was proposed there is not that different. And the, the outlines of the proposal are not that different from what happened with something like the GI Bill in the sense of making it easier for people to afford housing and to track in. In to the housing market in that way. Right. There are potentially broader economic repercussions of that in terms of housing prices and the like. And so it's not in that sense a silver bullet. But that's one policy, I think, that could be used as a starting point and that could be tailored in different ways. Different groups could have access to different loan pools, could have access to different initial grants in order to purchase housing and the like. But that's one very small aspect of this. Right. I think there needs to be much broader reform. And I think the biggest bang for the buck would be in really trying to change zoning restrictions, which is a very difficult thing to do politically. But also the federal government could step in, or state governments could step in and provide incentives, economic incentives to cities and counties to drop certain zoning restrictions by then investing. Investing funds in Development and the like. And so there are funds available for that, and greater funds could be made available to do that as well. And I think that would have an enormous impact because when you look at places that have much simpler zoning laws, places like Tokyo and Japan, where there's been significant growth but the price of housing hasn't outpaced the growth in people's, you know, wallets and the like, that is something that is really important, and we can take lessons from those kinds of places. Right, right.
- [37:15]
A
Yeah. Those are good examples. I especially like that you mentioned the Harris campaign promise, which I think a lot of people didn't believe. For the record, they didn't think that was actually gonna happen even if she were elected. But I wanna zoom out a little bit here and talk about the puzzle piece of human population. Right. We are currently at over 8 billion people on the planet, and current population models suggest that we will peak at about 10 billion people in about 60 years. So as we mentioned already, there'll be more demands on land in the coming decades, and so reshuffling will happen again and again. So let's put on the future hindsight goggles for a moment. You know, if we were from the future, looking back at this time, what do you think we have to be aware of now to position ourselves in the right way for the population peak that's still coming, and then the population decline.
- [38:07]
B
Right. And that is what the demographic models predict. Right. Is after the population peaks, that there will be a significant decline. You know, we will retrace 8 billion, we might retrace 6, you know, 4 billion, 2 billion. Within the next couple hundred years, populations might decline really radically. And at the same time that populations are increasing throughout this century, also the climate is changing, and the climate is going to be changing pretty rapidly. So places like coastal Florida, wildland, urban peripheries in California or Oregon or Washington, those are. Or frankly, a lot of the Southwest that's going to be heating up and it's going to be undergoing ongoing drought. Those are places where we're going to see people moving out of those places and we're going to see people moving into other places. There's definitely going to be land reshuffling. This is not only a United States phenomena, obviously, this is a global phenomena, and people are going to be moving globally as well. And so we need to position ourselves for thinking about the future of cities and also for thinking about how to preserve biodiversity and land if we can get through this bottleneck in some ways for the next 75 or 100 years to a position in which there are less people that are on the planet, then it will be a little bit easier to manage land allocation and the environment. And, and an important component of the population growth question is also a broader land use question about feeding that population. Right. If people are eating red meat at the same rates that they're eating red meat now, and if people are substituting into meat in countries that are becoming wealthier, as we have seen time and time again, there's going to be a lot of consumption of meat which is very land intensive in terms of its use. I think about 30% of land in the United States is dedicated simply to grazing cattle or raising feed for cattle, for beef consumption alone. Right. So that's an important part of this as well. So what do we do about all of that? I think we need to find places that are climate friendly to think about growth and we also need to adopt at a much greater scale some of the solutions that I was talking about earlier, like conservation easements and land trusts and the like. We have to think about changing how we conceive of property rights and moving away from these notions of exclusive, alienable individual property rights and towards thinking about property rights arrangements that consider the broader externalities of ownership as it impinges on things like the environment and other people's ability also to access housing and homes. And so there are a lot of interesting experiments that are going on with that right now. And I think, I think scaling that up could play a really big role in the future.
- [40:51]
A
Well, every week on Future Hindsight, I always ask my guest to share civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. So what's a good way to turn the insights you've just shared into action?
- [41:06]
B
Could I give more than one?
- [41:07]
A
Yes, give more than one.
- [41:09]
B
Yeah. I think that people can actually do a number of things on this front. And I think that in many ways that's kind of empowering to know that you can, that you can impact the current environment in several different ways. So if you care a lot about the environment, you can support land trusts and conservation easements through donations, whether through financial donations or by inviting a conservation easement on your own land. Right. If you have land that's not strictly urban land, you could think about what you eat. Right. You know, substituting out even a little bit of red meat for a plant based diet is something that is really important for carbon emissions and for land use patterns going forward as a way to halt climate change to a greater degree. If you care about Indigenous issues and Indigenous rights, you could think about Indigenous displacement on the land that you live on. You could find out who lived there and you could read about how they were displaced and you could think of donating to a tribal council or to tribal initiatives that are oftentimes present. And so those are a few things that people could do individually in order to take steps to address some of the issues that we've talked about here.
- [42:20]
A
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for these suggestions. So, last question, looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
- [42:27]
B
So I think that there are models for the future for how we can deal with some of these problems. I mentioned briefly the examples of Canada and Australia and how they're tying up the treatment of of Indigenous communities with environmental concerns and climate change and working in partnership with those communities. And so that gives me hope in the sense that there are models now for how to work for the betterment of society and the environment as a whole. And as I mentioned as well, in the United States, there are these practices of private conservation around things like land trust and conservation easements such that that even if there are problems with respect to the use of federal lands or a lack of action in terms of conservation or preservation, that we can turn to these other private solutions that private parties can get involved in to help move the dial in a positive way.
- [43:24]
A
Well, I hope all of those things are happening with increasing frequency all over the planet. Thank you so much, Michael, for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you.
- [43:36]
B
It was a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.
- [43:38]
A
Michael Albertus is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of Land who Has it, who doesn't, and how that Determines the Fate of Societies. Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress, like sharing this episode with a friend. Let's recap this week's Civic Spark and fire up, up our collective power. First, there's no shortage of ways you can help move the dial. If you care about the environment, you can support conservation easements or think about what you eat. Just drop one steak a week maybe. If you care about Indigenous land and displacement, learn more about the Indigenous communities that have been displaced from the land where you live and find ways to support reallocation or even connect and donate to Tribal council. As always, find out what matters to you and take the first step. Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Aru Shaini Ajay. She's the Executive Director of Sunrise Movement, a movement of young people to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. At its core, the Green New Deal is the idea that the federal government needs to drive the effort to stop the climate crisis, and in doing so, it can make our lives better. That's next week on Future Hindsight. Before you head off, make sure to follow us on your podcast app. We know you would never miss a week of Future Hindsight, so let us come to you every week with our brand new episodes. And if you just can't get enough, head over to futurehinsight.com now to sign up for the newsletter. This way we'll come straight to your inbox so you can be the spark every week. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, see clearly, act boldly and spark the change you want to see. This episode was produced by Zach, Travis and me.
- [45:43]
B
This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.