Dr. Michael Albertus, professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and author of the book Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, as well as the recent Foreign Affairs article The Coming Age of Territorial Expansion, joins the pod to discuss the history of land power, land owernship, territorial ambitions and their larger implications on global politics and socio-economic disparity. As Donald Trump advocates for claims on territories like Greenland, Canada, and parts of Panama, we question the ramifications of such rhetoric on international relations and American democracy.
We trace the colonial roots that continue to influence income inequality and social mobility across America, and encourage listeners to ponder the potential crises triggered by climate change-induced migrations that may force us to reconsider land ethics. Furthermore, Dr. Albertus discusses how our current understanding of land ownership and public policy may need re-evaluation to promote equity and shared resources, engaging directly with the delicate balance between private land investment and collective societal benefit.
By examining this concept of land power, and these contemporary issues facing America with age-old conflicts over land, power, and resources, Dr. Albertus urges us to think critically about the paths we pursue to safeguard our democracy against the backdrop of shifting global realities.
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Dr. Albertus (00:00):
You know, one of the things that worries me about
this is the fact that it's astrategic game, right, it's one
that involves the interplay ofmultiple global powers.
In other words, if I decide tograb Greenland, the United
States decides to grab Greenland, that means that Russia can't
grab Greenland, or that Chinacan't grab Greenland right,
(00:21):
china can't grab Greenland right.
And, as a result, you know,they might start to think, hey,
what are the other pieces thatare on the board here and what
can we grab?
And maybe we should try andgrab that now, before somebody
else grabs it right, so it cangenerate a race to do this sort
of thing and speed up thosedynamics speed up those dynamics
(00:55):
.
Shawn (00:55):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig.
As Donald Trump's greatAmerican image takes shape, it's
clear that that vision includesexpanding the borders of the
United States, as he makesclaims on Greenland, canada and
Panama.
Is this just bluster?
How does Trump make this areality, and what does it mean
for the future of globalstability and American democracy
?
In this episode, we're going toexplore the intricate
(01:17):
relationship between land powerand society and the profound
impact that land power has ongovernance and democracy.
My guest today is Dr MichaelAlbertus, professor of political
science at the University ofChicago and author of the new
book Land Power who has it, whoDoesn't, and how that Determines
(01:38):
the Fate of Societies.
Dr Albertus argues that landownership shapes the evolution
of societies, determiningequality, development and
environmental stewardship.
This idea takes on newrelevance as we witness
President Trump's renewed callsfor territorial expansion.
These demands reflect the worstexcesses of land power thinking
(02:01):
, harkening back to colonial eraland grabs and disregarding
national sovereignty.
Trump's approach not onlystrains relationships with
long-standing allies, but alsothreatens America's global
influence.
By focusing on territorialacquisition rather than
diplomatic cooperation, the USrisks isolating itself on the
(02:22):
world stage, and isolation mightsound good in theory, but it's
rarely a good thing in practice.
So in this episode, we examinehow land distribution impacts
economic inequality, socialmobility and democratic
processes.
We'll also consider thepotential consequences of
Trump's aggressive landacquisition policies on
(02:44):
international relations andAmerica's standing in the global
community.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
(03:06):
.
Let's do a deep dive, drAlbertus.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for inviting me on theshow.
Absolutely.
I think this is kind of anapropos topic for discussion
right now, for a handful ofreasons, I think.
(03:27):
For different reasons and indifferent ways.
We've been confronting thereality of land ownership and
land power globally, but alsovery specifically here in the
United States, since the dawn ofour country, but in some very
particular ways for the pastcouple of decades, and even when
we don't necessarily know thatthat's what we're talking about,
when we're talking about thingslike reparations and tribal
(03:48):
rights and land recognition, etc.
All of these things actuallyhave roots in historical
patterns of land ownership, andI think to some degree we have
thought, or we've made themistake of thinking, that land
and boundaries are settledissues, largely at least in the
northern and western world, thatwe've transcended a history in
which people were subjugated andenslaved and exploited over
(04:09):
land.
But that's really just patentlyfalse, and maybe the most
obvious examples today includeRussia's claim on Ukraine,
trump's ambitions for Greenlandand Canada, maybe even Trump's
claim on Ukrainian minerals.
So, while an understanding ofland ownership and its
implications is an historicalexercise, it is also very truly
(04:29):
an exercise in contemporarygeopolitics, and this is
something that you study andtherefore something that you
have thoughts about.
So I'm glad to have you here totalk about it.
Dr. Albertus (04:37):
Yeah, I have plenty of thoughts about all of
that.
It's a very interestingcontemporary moment in that land
is entering the stage, sort offront and center now and as such
, you know, these territorialclaims, territorial competition,
competition for resources aswell, which are of course rooted
(05:00):
in territory, are all at theforefront now of kind of a
changing global race for power.
Shawn (05:09):
And so maybe we should start here, because I think, I
mean, this might put us in aninteresting space for
conversation, in that you,studying this, might have a well
, you clearly have a broader,deeper bench of understanding,
and so you might see this, thecurrent state of play, very
differently than myself, and Iwould consider myself to be the
layperson.
(05:29):
So I think of the global orderas having been established
primarily around the end ofWorld War II, and that includes
not only the boundaries that wehave, for the most part,
established since then, but alsothe ambitions that people have
to expand their territory asbeing clipped wings since then,
but also the ambitions thatpeople have to expand their
territory as being clipped wingssince then.
And so we've had this to thelayperson, the boundaries that
(05:53):
we've had, for the most part, atleast for the great powers, are
pretty much established right,and so at least the last decade
has been, I think, somewhatjarring for people like me to
imagine that there are Europeancountries whose boundaries are
perhaps still at play right, andnow here in the United States,
this discussion, seriousdiscussion, of expanding US
(06:14):
territory.
Where I'm going with this is tosomebody like you, is this as
shocking as it is to somebodylike me, or is this just
something that, in the contextof history, ebbs and flows?
Dr. Albertus (06:25):
I would say both in some sense.
I mean, it's shocking, I think,to a lot of present observers
just because it's such asignificant departure from the
way in which the global orderhas operated over the course of
the last roughly eight decades.
But on the other hand, when youtake the broader sweep of human
history, there has always wellI shouldn't say always well I'll
(06:47):
talk about the limits, but foryou know, millennia there has
been an effort to assert controlover territory and extract
power and influence through thatcontrol over territory and then
to project that power andinfluence over space.
And so in a lot of ways, theglobal order since World War II
(07:10):
is something of an aberrationwhen we look at it from the
perspective of several hundredyears or even millennia of human
relationships with the land.
And I hesitated when I saidforever, because humans have
related to the land in verydifferent ways over the course
of human history and inparticular, there was no real
(07:34):
reason to own land per se whenyou go back, let's say, before
10,000 BC or before even about5,000 BC, when we started for
the first time to see settlementon the land, year-round
settlement in sedentarysocieties that started to occur
(07:56):
around 10,000 BC, and thenpermanent agricultural towns
started to take root around5,000 BC, and then that created
a new relationship with the landbecause, all of a sudden,
rather than say followingresources seasonally, things
like animal herds or wildharvesting of berries or nuts or
(08:19):
something like that people werefixed in space and the control
over that space meant control ofsurplus on the land, and that
generated a new relationshipbetween the land and power and
as a result, you know, and eversince, that has been something
that's really central to mosthuman societies and in that
(08:43):
sense, this last 80 years issomething of a deviation from
that and, for reasons we can getinto later, I think that have
to do with population dynamicsand the current structure of
geopolitics, as well as climatechange.
I think there are a lot ofpieces that are now shifting and
, as a result, we're going tosee a very dynamic picture in
(09:04):
the coming decades.
Shawn (09:06):
So I'm glad you bring up this concept of private land
ownership and providing a littlebit of context as to how that
evolved, because, born out ofthis assumption that there has
to be some type of a balancestruck between both private land
ownership and public landownership, people can always
quibble over where thoseboundaries lie, but the reality
is that private land ownershipand public land ownership.
People can always quibble overwhere those boundaries lie, but
(09:27):
the reality is that private landownership has not always been
something that has existed, andso I guess I wonder if you could
tell me a little bit more abouthow society structured itself
in such a way or in a time whenprivate land ownership didn't
exist, and how the evolution ofsociety changed as a result of
(09:47):
the introduction of things likeprivate land ownership, and how
that continues to inform oursocial development today.
Dr. Albertus (09:54):
Sure, I'll say that, you know, there's a lot of
, there's a lot of diversity inearly societies and in, more
generally, in indigenoussocieties, in terms of
relationships with the land andterritory.
But, for best we know fromhistorical records and from more
(10:15):
current practices as they'vebeen documented over the last
several centuries, humans andhuman societies were, you know,
prior to becoming sedentary,were relatively mobile, whether
year-round, all the time or, youknow, part of the year, and as
(10:36):
a result there was often arelationship with a territory,
but that territory didn'tnecessarily have definitive
boundaries in the way that wethink of definitive boundaries
today, and property rights wereoftentimes kind of layered or
sort of diffuse.
So there wasn't anything likethe contemporary notions of, you
(10:59):
know, individual, alienable,exclusive property rights.
Rather, rather, people hadaccess, let's say to you know,
certain permissions about usinghunting grounds in certain
seasons and that might havepassed through, you know, family
lineages or clan lineage,lineages and, depending on your
own ancestral links, you mighthave access to several different
(11:23):
hunting grounds or otherterritories or that sort of
thing.
So the but these relationshipswere really relatively diffuse.
And then that changed prettyradically, as we saw, you know,
the the greater, as we saw,population expansion, as we saw,
you know, more sedentarysocieties taking root and
developing and spreading.
You know, more sedentarysocieties taking root and
(11:43):
developing and spreading.
And then, of course, you know,starting to delineate land
ownership because that meantcontrol again over surplus and
that model went viral, so tospeak, with, you know, with
colonization and imperialism andas that, you know, as people
(12:05):
settled, especially fromEuropean countries, to new lands
around the globe and broughtthose notions and forms of
property rights with them, andthen they spread quite
substantially.
But of course that spread wasuneven.
I mean, even if you think aboutthe United States, if you look
at the eastern, if you look eastof the Mississippi, there's
very little public land east ofthe Mississippi.
(12:26):
If you look in the western partof the United States, it's
about 50% of land.
It's even higher when you lookat Alaska.
And so you know the earlypatterns of settlement had a big
impact on the share of, youknow, public land versus private
land and that sort of thing aswell.
Shawn (12:47):
So one of the things that I find particularly.
I guess maybe the word isinteresting One of the things
that I find as maybe arelationship that we can
overcome, in that it'spreordained, is that there might
be a critical mass when itcomes to population at which
maintaining public land becomesuntenable or impossible, meaning
(13:12):
that the relationship is suchthat the greater the population,
the greater the land scarcity,which kind of lends itself to
private claims of land ownershipas almost like a matter of
survival.
If that's the case, is thereany possibility in a society
like ours today in which wecould tilt the balance such that
we have much more public landby ratio than we do private land
(13:36):
and still maintain essentiallystability and peace with such a
large population?
Dr. Albertus (13:42):
Yeah, those are really.
I would say that they'reinteresting questions.
On the land nerd.
So, yes, I would say that theredefinitely seems to be a pretty
significant relationshipbetween population and land
scarcity and things likeprivatization or, more generally
(14:03):
, you might think aboutenclosure.
So, you know, the globalpopulation in 10,000 BC was just
a handful of millions of people, something like, let's say, the
population of modern Latvia orFinland or something like that.
I mean, it was extremely,extremely small.
It was a few hundred million bythe year zero and it was a
(14:23):
billion by 1800.
Obviously, today we're at 8billion, and so that has huge
implications for thinking aboutpeople spreading out on the land
and, you know, and needing toaccess resources, especially in
agrarian economies, but evenwell beyond that, because, of
course, we still are all eatingfood off the land, right, are
all eating food off the land,right, that's produced on the
(14:43):
land and so so, yes, so there.
So there's an inherent, I think,tension between having kind of
public common pool resources and, you know, large populations,
and so that doesn't, however,mean that necessarily that we're
kind of doomed as populationscontinue to increase, for a
(15:03):
couple of reasons.
One is because you know thehuman population is going to go
from 8 billion today to about 10billion sometime before the end
of the century, at which pointdemographers predict that the
global population is going tocrash effectively rather than
plateau or slowly decline, andso we might be retracing, you
(15:25):
know, 8 billion, 6 billion, 4billion, relatively quickly, and
that's going to open up newpossibilities for, you know,
public land.
The other thing is that thereare different ways to conceive
of property rights or ownershipover land, and if you think
about something like, let's say,conservation easements, right,
(15:47):
that's an interesting notionthat is being increasingly
applied to public land sorry, toprivate land in the United
States, which is to say thatpeople can contract with, could
be state governments, could beprivate land trusts or other
outside parties to restrict,let's say, cutting down trees on
(16:12):
their land or to try andpreserve an ecosystem on their
property, or something like that, and that can end up having
certain features or certainaspects of ownership over land
that can help to strike agreater balance between private
(16:50):
interest and public good.
So there is this.
Shawn (16:53):
This is almost like a bifurcated way to think about
this.
This next question, which is abuilding off of what you've just
said, is how governments local,state and federal we can keep
this specific to the UnitedStates are managing that balance
between private and public landownership, and the examples
that you've just given have todo with kind of regulations
(17:14):
about what you can or cannot doon your private land and to what
end.
And to some degree, some of thisis designed with climate in
mind or with an ecosystem inmind or environment in mind and
the potential impact, thedevastating impact that private
land ownership and activities onthat land could have.
But the other side of this isthat land ownership also plays
(17:39):
into economic inequality andbarriers to upward social
mobility.
These are concepts that we'rewrestling with today and I think
when we think about them, wetalk about them in the context
of the impact that maybereligion has had on inequality
or the impact that aheteronormative society or
gender does.
But land does too, and landdistribution and land power and
(18:01):
land ownership have alsoinfluenced these in ways that I
think we don't talk much about.
But you do.
And to tie this back to theinitial part of the question I
guess I'm wondering well, twoparts.
One is how has land ownershipand land power influenced
economic inequality and socialmobility in the United States?
(18:21):
And then, if we think about thebalance between private and
public land policy andregulation, what are some things
that governments could be doingthat touches on alleviating
some of that tension related toeconomic inequality and social
mobility?
Dr. Albertus (18:38):
So land confers social, economic and political
power to those who hold it andto those who own it.
And because land is power,those who own it come to
dominate those forms of power,whereas those who don't come to
be dominated in different ways,and we see this repeatedly in
(18:59):
the context of American history.
So if you think aboutsmallholding farmers in New
England in the early colonialperiod and how that form of
economic equality fostered, youknow, political equality and
democracy as well as socialmobility within New England.
(19:20):
And if you contrast that with aplace like the American South
where you had the plantationeconomy and you know, and Blacks
were enslaved, there was verylittle social mobility, of
course, almost none enforcedsocial immobility in fact, and
extremely high economicinequality.
(19:41):
It's an incredible contrastbetween those.
And we see land is reallycentral to that discrepancy or
that difference between thosetwo different areas, and we can
think about that in the West aswell, right, and how it ended up
actually perpetuating itself incertain ways.
So you know, if we think abouthow reconstruction in the
(20:06):
post-Civil War era failed andBlacks didn't get 40 acres and a
mule and as a result they wereconsigned to sharecropping still
for many decades in the Southand that impacted, you know,
ultimately, patterns ofmigration to the North and
segregation in the North andzoning restrictions in urban
(20:26):
areas and all kinds of thingslike that.
And we also see some of thesepatterns play out in the West,
you know, where white settlershad an ability to access land
through the Homestead Act andBlack Americans did not.
And so again, we see really,really different patterns there
of how that impacts, you know,economic equality and inequality
on the American frontier, aswell as social mobility across
(20:49):
those different racial groups,right, and if we think about how
, you know, this relates topublic land and private land.
I mean some of this directlyfilters into what land is public
and what land is private.
So, you know, in the wake of theMexican-American War, for
example, the US gained hundredsof millions of acres of land in
(21:13):
the American West, all the wayout to the Pacific Ocean.
A fair amount of that land wasprivatized and given to almost
exclusively white settlers atthe expense of, you know, native
Americans who were on the land,as well as, you know, blacks,
who didn't have an opportunitybecause they were still, for the
(21:33):
most part, living in the Southand under, oftentimes, you know,
working in sharecroppingarrangements and the like on
former plantations, and sothat's a very direct link as
well.
But you know, today we can thinkabout how, you know, public and
private land ownership playsout in the American West and
(21:57):
certainly some of that is, youknow, has racial kind of
overtones, but most of itdoesn't kind of overtones, but
most of it doesn't.
Most of it has a lot more to dowith, um, you know, economic
factors and um and socialfactors and tensions between,
you know, groups who are wouldwould like to have a land
preserved for purposes of, youknow, recreation, um and
(22:19):
enjoyment and the like, versus,uh, the desire by the federal
government, let's say, tomaintain public lands for the
purposes of, you know, leasingout those lands for revenue
purposes or other purposes, andso we can get more into that if
you're interested.
But there's a lot of rich kindof relationships there.
Shawn (22:43):
So one of the narratives about our politics that does, I
suppose, stem to some degreefrom land allocation and
distribution and thus, byextension, land power, and that
is the struggle betweendemocracy and authoritarianism
and the struggle between whatpeople have and what people
don't have.
(23:03):
And I think there is inherentin kind of the democratic or the
true democratic model, thisidea that allocation of
resources, that at leastopportunity should exist for
everybody.
And if that were the case, thenthat does suggest that there
needs to be some type of policythat confronts land reallocation
(23:24):
or land redistribution, if notat minimum a new approach to
land distribution moving forward, even if it isn't
redistribution, but that kind ofruns straight into the
opposition, which is thatanything along these lines is
really communist and socialistand anti-democratic, and I'm not
(23:45):
sure how to characterize this,or if you would disagree with me
on this, but it does seem to methat without some new policy
that deals with redistributionand reallocation, it really is a
challenge to American democracymoving forward.
Dr. Albertus (24:01):
Right.
So you know, land remains themost valuable economic resource
on the face of the earth, valuedat about 200 trillion or
something like that, to theextent that we can really value
it.
So it's a really powerful,powerful resource and it's
extremely valuable.
So it's no surprise that it'sheavily contested.
(24:25):
Valuable, so it's no surprisethat it's heavily contested.
And what we see is that youknow, and it underpins, I should
say, in contemporary times, alot of the value of real estate
and housing.
You know, for about 40% of youknow, property value average in
the United States is land, thevalue of land, and in places
(24:47):
where there are housingshortages and where property is
more expensive, let's say in theBay Area or New York, it's
considerably higher than that,something like two thirds, let's
say.
And so in my view, and so thatmeans that this is a very
valuable resource.
There's only kind of so much togo around, so to speak, and,
like you say, how the decisionsthat we make about who gets
(25:09):
access to what have importantpolitical implications, and let
me tell you a couple of kind ofstories about that in the
recent-ish American past in waysthat are, I think, germane to
this discussion.
So if you think about otherhousing shortages.
Let's say, in the course of the20th century what that meant
(25:30):
for challenges to democracy.
We could think about, you know,housing shortage due to labor
and supply issues in World War I, and you know when vacancy
rates went close to zero inhousing and people started
stacking up within houses andthe government and public
(25:50):
officials were worried about thespread of disease, but also
they were worried about thespread of communism under those
circumstances.
And so you know, introduced abill to build housing for
workers on the home front at apretty massive scale and did
that housing for workers on thehome front at a pretty massive
scale and did that.
And then we had another housingcrisis in the Great Depression.
At the outset of the GreatDepression we had Hoovervilles,
(26:12):
what were known as Hoovervilles,basically homeless encampments
that were sprouting up, you know, across the country, and the
government decided to step inand create a federal housing
administration under FDR becausethey were worried about issues
of unrest and the failure ofcapitalism.
And then we had again in thewake of World War II.
(26:35):
There was another housingcrisis.
Prices were rising quitequickly and dynamics that are
relatively similar to today, andthere was a shortage of housing
and one of the major pieces oflegislation then was the GI Bill
in order to try and giveveterans a pathway to the middle
class through home ownership.
(26:55):
And again, truman was prettyclear in how he created that, in
terms of how that was createdand the logic behind that
legislation, which had to doagain with giving people a
chance at the American dream andunderpinning American democracy
through property ownership.
(27:17):
And that had its inequalitiesas well.
There was again the big racialdiscrepancy between white
veterans and Black veterans andthe ability to access housing.
But it was clear that that wasa priority for American
democracy.
And you know, when we getcloser to the contemporary
housing crisis, let's saythere's good research that shows
(27:41):
today that you know, homeownership is associated with
greater participation in localtown hall meetings, greater
voter turnout rates.
You know donations to politicalcandidates and all that sort of
thing.
You know, effectively a formhow we might think about, you
know, contemporary localparticipatory democracy.
(28:02):
It's still connected tohomeownership and land ownership
in ways that hark back to smallholding farmers in New England
300 plus years ago.
Shawn (28:16):
I'm glad you bring this up because I'm going to preface
this by saying I am aprogressive.
But before I owned a home Ithought about housing very
differently than I do now.
I thought about it as securityand safety primarily right, like
someplace that I could go andfeel safe.
If there is an element ofownership, I could protect my
things right.
But when I bought a home, ofcourse there's, you know, safety
(28:39):
and security that comes withthat.
But then there's a monetaryelement to it which is about the
land that I have.
I don't want that taken awayfrom me and I do think that I do
participate, probably, in ourdemocratic processes more.
But I do catch myselfapproaching it from a different
perspective than I am maybe evencomfortable with it, which is
(29:00):
well, how much is this going toaffect my taxes or how much is
this going to affect my homevalue?
And that there's a certaintension in that, in being a
homeowner and I guess to somedegree a land owner then, by
extension, and being aprogressive that really does
care about land scarcity andabout inequality, and I'm not
sure if that ultimately, while Ipractice democracy more, plays
(29:24):
out in a purely democratic form,if that makes sense.
Dr. Albertus (29:28):
Yeah, that does make perfect sense.
I mean, and if you think aboutcontemporary debates in, let's
say, zoning restrictions, right,and housing affordability, I
mean some of the places that arethe most liberal places in the
country.
San Francisco, for example, isnotorious for nimbyism, and I'm
not saying that's necessarilywhat you're doing or what you're
(29:49):
advocating, but it simply showsthat there's a lot of times the
tension between sort ofpolitical beliefs and how that
kind of filters throughhomeownership, because people
care as homeowners about a lotof things, about their community
, right, the character of theircommunity and what that means,
you know, and how buildingsshould look and this, you know,
(30:12):
certain nostalgia for, whetherit's nostalgia for the past or a
, you know, an appreciation forthe status quo, since, after all
, one's selected into that.
You know that neighborhood orthat area and seeing it change
in some ways is, you know, canbe seen as you know that
neighborhood or that area andseeing it change in some ways is
, you know, can be seen as youknow, whether threatening or
simply bringing in somethingthat's quite different from what
(30:33):
one might have expected, right,and so that, yeah, so we see
oftentimes that you know, someof those tensions playing out in
, you know, amongst homeownersof all political stripes and and
you're right, it filters intoother things too, thinking about
property taxes and and manydifferent things.
(30:53):
So so, yes, I think thathomeownership, um, you know,
changes, changes of perspectivein a certain way, and and that
is related to to how peoplethink about kind of their you
know what we might call timehorizons, or whether we're
thinking about, okay, I'm goingto be, I know I'm going to be
here now for the course of manyyears, and so I want to have a
(31:16):
community, a neighborhood localethat reflects, you know, what I
hope it to be for, not onlytoday and next year and a few
years, but in 20 years or in 30years, and that has different
implications for how we thinkabout the present.
Shawn (31:30):
Considering land scarcity into the near future globally,
but specifically in the UnitedStates, and the implications
that that has for our localitiesand the type of governance that
we have and the influence thatit has on things like populism
and nationalism and xenophobia,etc.
What are some good policies orthings that localities and
(31:51):
municipalities should bethinking about when it comes to
land regulation moving forward?
Dr. Albertus (31:58):
Right.
I mean, the answer to thiscould, in theory, I think,
change over time, but in thepresent, it's pretty obvious, in
my view, that the problem isbasically a problem of
undersupply in the ways that weneed to access land for the
(32:28):
broader health of ourcommunities and the ability to
integrate.
You know, folks who are at themargins of the economy, who are
feeling the heat from renting,who are facing down an increase,
let's say, in institutionalinvesting, as well as young
people right, who are trying tocrack in for the first time to,
you know, to new jobs and intohome ownership in a way that
(32:50):
will give them this also thisvested kind of interest in the
future over the long haul, andenable them to build
generational wealth in ways thatprior generations have been
able to do.
And so, in my view, that has todo with things like you know.
How are you going to createaffordability and open up land
and development and building?
A lot of that has to do with,you know, changing how you
(33:14):
regulate construction andbuilding codes and as well as
zoning restrictions and tryingto drop zoning restrictions more
generally.
So if you think about a placelike you know, a very big
contrast would be a place likeTokyo right, where it's one of
the most populated cities in theworld.
Its population has increased inthe last several decades,
(33:37):
despite the fact that Japan'spopulation as a whole has, you
know, stagnated and even startedto decrease.
But housing prices have notgone up in Tokyo at all in a way
that reflects what has happenedin, let's say, you know New
York City or London, or you know, frankly, most you know cities
(33:58):
in the United States, both bigcities, even you know medium
tier cities and even a lot ofsmall cities and a lot of that.
The difference between thosehas a lot to do with zoning and
zoning restrictions and thezoning restrictions in Japan.
You know, in Tokyo inparticular, you know there's not
(34:19):
a, you know, permitting andrestrictions policy that applies
to individual properties in theway that it does in the United
States.
Right, when in the United Statesyou want to build on a
particular property, you've gotto go through all these
different hoops and city counciland get all these different
(34:40):
permits and you want to changezoning in an area, that's really
difficult, takes a long timeand, as a result, there's a big
lag in building right andthere's been a pent-up lag
really since the Great Recession, whereas in Japan, there's a
simple set of codes, you havedifferent nuisance levels.
There's 12 nuisance levels, andif you're below a certain
nuisance level, in terms ofbuilding, the idea is
(35:03):
residential, is residential, isresidential, and so you know.
If it's not, if you're nottrying to build a factory or
something like that in themiddle of a neighborhood, then
you can build, and that hasfacilitated greater housing
access and affordability overthe long term, and I think we
could take lessons from that inyou know, and try and apply them
(35:23):
to a lot of the locales in theUnited States, and there are
ways to think about doing thatfor states and the federal
government to try andincentivize a lowering of these
zoning restrictions and inplaces where there are real
bottlenecks, especially in theAmerican West, where there is a
(36:00):
lot of public land, using smallbits and pieces of public lands
that are already within cityboundaries or are at the very,
very limited and strategicfashion can also be helpful for
alleviating some of the housingcrisis that we have right now.
There are other ideas andpolicies out there too, like
providing first-time home buyerswith a credit or providing
(36:20):
favorable loan terms for folksas well, but all that has the
problem that there's still, atthe end of the day, right now, a
supply constraint and thatreally needs to be addressed.
Shawn (36:32):
I think, as long as we live in a place that has limited
resources and we're talkingabout land, so limited land
resources, land scarcityrelative to an increasing
population one of the practicesthat I feel that might have run
its course but to change itwould produce a massive backlash
, is this idea of owning land inperpetuity.
(36:55):
I used to live in New Zealandand there are large swaths of
New Zealand wherein you buy thehouse but you lease the land,
and this might be true of youknow other places as well, but
in the United States we'repretty much inculcated into
believing that once we've boughtland, as long as we pay our
taxes, that land is ours andthat and we can pass that on to
(37:16):
family members and we can expandthat if space permits, and that
land just becomes unusable orunavailable to anybody else
until we or some our ancestorsdecide to sell that land, and so
that does allow for certainpeople to gobble up quite a bit
of land that never has to thenreturn to the people, and I
(37:36):
wonder if that's something thatit doesn't seem feasible, but
it's something that we should beconsidering as in need of
renovation, something that weshould be considering as in need
of renovation.
Dr. Albertus (37:52):
That's right.
It's a very particular way ofthinking about land that is an
anomaly from the perspective ofbroader human history this
notion of you know, privateownership, and again, you know,
once you have land, it's yoursand others can't access it until
you decide that you're going to, you know, to sell it or give
it away or the like.
And there are other countriesthat don't have that at all,
right?
So China is another example ofa country that has no private
(38:15):
land ownership.
Land is zoned either as urbanland or as rural land.
Rural land is vested in andthere are leasing arrangements
over that land and those leasingpeople can contract and buy and
sell and the like in terms ofthese leases and these lease
(38:37):
arrangements, but there is notthe private ownership of land in
the same way that it exists inthe United States.
And so what we have here you'reright is kind of I wouldn't say
it's unique, because it existsin many other parts of the world
as well, but it is particular.
And we see now in recent yearspeople like Bill Gates or Mark
(39:03):
Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison thatbuy up large parts, large
swaths of land and then theybecome the owners of that land
and what they want to do withthat land is up to them.
And yeah, they cannot return tothe public domain unless they
decide that that's what theywant to do with it.
Right?
And so it's a very restrictiveform of thinking about ownership
(39:28):
and in that sense it alsoinherently has to have these
broader societal implications,right, because if some people
decide they're going to encloselarge tracts of land, then that
has implications andexternalities for other people.
Their inability to access thatland, maybe they're the
inability to decide, let's say,if that landowner wants to cut
(39:50):
down all the trees and thatimpacts the environment or
impacts biodiversity orcontributes to climate change,
and we don't have the capacity.
Other people in society don'thave any say over that, but they
have to suffer the consequences, right?
So inherently there is thiskind of social dynamic behind
property, whether you want toformally, you know, recognize
(40:12):
that and incorporate that in alegal structure or not.
Shawn (40:15):
So I feel like we need to talk about the recent US
expansionist view that we'vetaken.
So Trump has set and I guess byextension, the United States
have set their eyes on acquiringGreenland, canada I don't know
if that's tongue in cheek,doesn't you never really know
maybe parts of Panama, etc.
And that would disruptradically the global order.
(40:38):
And so obviously there aregeopolitical implications.
But for someone in your line ofwork and through the lens of
your work, what worries youabout this, if anything at all?
Dr. Albertus (40:49):
There's, in fact, a fair amount that worries me
about this.
So, for a variety of reasons,you know, as we talked about a
little bit earlier, this, theglobal order and in the last
eight decades since the end ofWorld War Two, has been one in
which outright territorial landgrabs have been, you know, more
(41:12):
or less off the table.
There have been a couple ofexceptions to that, but they've
been exceptional.
There have been very fewoutright land grabs in that time
period.
When you compare that, let'ssay, to the interwar period
between World War I and WorldWar II, or in the hundred years
prior to World War I, when therewas, you know, the amount of
(41:32):
territory that was changinghands was quite significant,
really quite significant.
I mean it was only in the late1800s, let's say that Italy
unified as a country, which wasbasically the culmination of a
process of territorial conquestby one part of Italy over others
, and the same was true withGermany, right?
So you know, the formation ofmodern countries and nation
(41:55):
states as we see them, thatoccurred through territorial
conquest and it was relativelyrecent.
And so there's a lot on thehorizon now and there's a lot
that might be, you know, subjectto reshuffling in a new world
in which we have, you know, areturn to those prior dynamics,
(42:18):
in which the global order is,you know, eroding in many ways
and the norms and the lawsagainst grabbing territory are
eroding, and you know thatraises the possibility, of
course, of not only outright war, but also increasing strategic
(42:38):
competition over resources and,again, over territory.
And one of the things thatworries me about this is the
fact that it's a strategic game,right, it's one that involves
the interplay of multiple globalpowers.
(42:58):
In other words, if I decide tograb Greenland, the United
States decides to grab Greenland, that means that Russia can't
grab Greenland, that China can'tgrab Greenland, right, and, as
a result, they might start tothink, hey, what are the other
pieces that are on the boardhere and what can we grab?
And maybe we should try andgrab that now, before somebody
(43:21):
else grabs it, so it cangenerate a race to do this sort
of thing and speed up thosedynamics.
There's another element, too,which is that it's hard to see
how climate change does not playa really important role here,
and we're only at the forefrontof what we're going to see when
it comes to changes that are onthe horizon from, you know,
(43:44):
dynamic and shifting climate.
So you know, as the you know,polar ice caps are melting to a
greater degree, seas are risingand some places are being hit by
more systematic drought or moreextreme weather patterns and
the like.
That's going to shift thehabitability and the
(44:06):
attractiveness of differentterritories in ways that are
unprecedented in human history.
In ways that are unprecedentedin human history, and so
Greenland is a very good exampleof this.
Greenland, right now, a lot ofit is still covered by ice.
It can be difficult to accessresources and the like, but by
(44:28):
basically all climatepredictions, that picture is
going to change dramatically inthe course of the next 50 years
and certainly by the year 2100,such that a lot more of
Greenland is going to beice-free throughout the year.
It will be much easier toconduct mining for valuable
natural resources and theclimate is going to become more
(44:49):
attractive.
And, furthermore, northern know,northern shipping routes are
going to open up in very newways, such that there will be
northern shipping routes thatrun along the northern part of
Canada, the famous NorthwestPassage, as well as along the
northern coast of Russia, andthose are going to become major
shipping routes, and Greenlandis a waypoint along those
(45:11):
shipping routes, and so there'salso a geostrategic reason why
one might want to have anoutpost there.
And so you start to extend thatlogic and you think about hey,
now what about Antarctica, aplace where a vast territory
that has been covered in ice forthe course of human history and
(45:33):
is basically inaccessible inmany ways, and there's long been
international cooperation touse Antarctica for scientific
purposes, and some of that isstarting to erode now.
There's already encroachmentand the abrogation of some of
those agreements and we couldsee how that might unravel in
(45:53):
the future.
And then you start to go down arabbit hole, as I have gone
down a little bit, and thinkingabout how that's going to affect
other places.
You think about the AmericanSouthwest or North Africa
becoming far more far drier andhotter and agricultural
productivity declining andpeople leaving those areas and
(46:16):
moving to other areas and thesorts of population pressures
that's going to generate inareas that are currently less
populated.
There's going to be a lot ofmoving and shifting and I think
we're I think Greenland is kindof an early warning signal for
that.
Shawn (46:31):
So this is probably a leading well, this is a leading
question.
But considering all of that, sothis new kind of expansionist
view that the United Statesseems to be taking the land
scarcity that we're facing,which has economic implications,
inequality implications, thatcreates tension, political
tension, and then also all ofthe potential impacts associated
(46:54):
with climate change, as youjust outlined, is the world
ready for this?
Dr. Albertus (46:58):
I don't think we're ready for this at all.
I don't think that there, youknow, I think that it comes at a
bad time in some ways, because,you know, the global order is
starting to's it's a ratherdynamic period in that sense and
because we're in now, you know,an increasingly multipolar
(47:19):
world, with, you know, the therise of China and Russia
becoming more aggressive as well, you know, and other countries
that are starting to to becomemore powerful.
It's a it's a challenging timeand it's one in which the
post-war order that waspredicated on competition
between the United States andthe Soviet Union is no longer so
(47:42):
well-suited in this currentmoment and in the years and
decades that are ahead.
And, as a result, I don't thinkthat we're very ready for this
and I think that we're going tosee more and more of these, you
know, territorial land grabs andproposals for land grabs on the
(48:03):
horizon in ways that are goingto.
That might seem surprising, butI think they're going to start
to become part of a broaderpattern that and I believe it'll
be a relatively decipherablepattern as well that's a
function of these expectationsof changes in migration and
changing climate and what allthat portends for the future.
Shawn (48:28):
While I think that generational divides along
political lines no longer holdthe way that we maybe have
thought they have over the last20 or 30 years, I do see a bit
of a silver lining, which couldbe completely empty air.
But I do notice that some ofthese folks that seem to be very
resistant to change and areaggressive and seem to be posing
(48:51):
some type of a threat to theglobal world order are
aggressive and seem to be posingsome type of a threat to the
global world order.
They're really the older guysin China and Russia and the
United States.
But if you look at places likeEurope for the most part Canada,
south America, for the mostpart, barring Brazil you know
there are a lot of.
There's a lot of younger folksthat are coming up and leading
(49:11):
the country and taking control,and I do have a little bit of
hope that that means we may seea shift in the near future, but
I don't know.
Dr. Albertus (49:19):
That gives me some hope too.
I'm hopeful of that.
I mean, I think that youngergenerations are very attuned to,
you know, long range issues ofclimate change, since they're
going to be living it.
And you know breathing,breathing it and having to deal
with it and and I think, in manycases, have a lot of um.
(49:39):
You know, refreshing um takeson the world and ways for
thinking about our politics andour environment and our economy
and the like.
I also do.
You know I am concerned by, youknow, trends like, let's say,
in Europe.
You know, the rise of the farright in you know, a number of
(50:01):
countries in Europe and even inthe United States, and you know,
inclusive amongst young folksat rates that we haven't seen in
recent decades, at rates thatwe haven't seen in recent
decades, and so so I'm alsoattuned to that and that also
gives me some pause, or makes mebelieve, at least, that it's
not going to be a sort of end ofhistory kind of conclusion and
(50:25):
that we're we're definitelysailing for, you know, kind of a
brighter future, but ratherthat it's going to be something
that that people are going tohave to fight for and it's not
going to necessarily come of itsown accord or in our lifetimes.
Shawn (50:39):
Okay, final question you ready for it?
Yeah, what's somethinginteresting you've been reading,
watching, listening to or doinglately?
And it doesn't have to be aboutthis topic, but it can be.
Dr. Albertus (50:49):
Well, one thing that I'm doing a lot lately is
running, which is something thatI usually.
Oh Well, one thing that I'mdoing a lot lately is running,
which is something that Iusually do a lot of, but I find
myself doing even more of it inthese times as a way to kind of
center myself and clear my mindand a lot as well about kind of
climate predictions.
And you know, when thinkingabout the future, as well as you
(51:21):
know a couple of other thingsthat I'm working on, I've been
thinking more about the, thereconstruction era in American
history and that real you knowwhat I would think consider to
be a missed opportunity in sortof getting things a lot better
than we did.
And you know, thinking aboutwork of the Freedmen's Bureau
and how a lot of that work wasundone and captured in different
(51:44):
ways by vested interests andwhites who sought to peel back
you know progress that wasstarting to really occur in the
South in that time period, andso you know thinking about that
even a little bit for our youknow our modern political
(52:04):
situation.
You know how do we get thingsright, how do we get things
wrong, what does that look likeand for whom?
So I've been thinking through alot of that more lately as well
, like and for whom.
So I've been thinking through alot of that more lately as well
.
Shawn (52:14):
I've been doing the same and I've also been focusing on
rebuilding Europe and then, Isuppose, the global order after
World War II, because I thinkwhat's becoming clear is there's
a lot that we got right, butalso a lot that we got wrong
then as well, and I thinkthere's this little glimmer of
hope that we tend to kind offocus on the worst possible
outcome.
But I have this hope thatthere's maybe at least a 50%
(52:37):
chance that, yeah, things getpretty bad but it shakes out for
the better in the end and thatwe learn from that.
Dr. Albertus (52:43):
Yeah, agreed, I mean, I would say, you know, one
of the things that I mentionedsort of in passing but should be
taken quite seriously is thefact that the global population
is probably going to declinepretty substantially in the next
century and that's going tocompletely rewire how people
relate to the land, to theirenvironment, to each other
(53:07):
within society.
Everything, I think, is goingto be reshuffled.
When that actually starts tooccur and you know, you can see
glimmers of it already incertain places like Japan or
Germany, um and, and I think,but at a at a far larger scale,
that's going to happen and, andin many ways I think that that
could represent a new dawn forhumanity.
(53:28):
If we can kind of get it right,if we can position ourselves in
the next decades to takeadvantage of that and to get
that right to build a much moresustainable way of relating to
the land and the environment andeach other.
Frankly, I think that thatcould be something that's really
quite exciting, and there's alot that can you know.
(53:49):
There's a lot of opportunitythere.
Shawn (53:52):
Dr Albertus, thanks for the conversation and here's to
brighter days.
Dr. Albertus (53:56):
It was a pleasure to be here.
Yes, I'm looking forward tothese days.
Shawn (54:07):
Trump's aggressive rhetoric toward acquiring
Greenland, canada and the PanamaCanal reflects a dangerous
misunderstanding of moderngeopolitics and land power
dynamics.
As Dr Michael Albertusexplained, such territorial
ambitions are misguided andpotentially harmful.
These policies could severelydamage international relations,
(54:31):
undermine US soft power anddestabilize long-standing
alliances.
Trump's approach ignores thesenuanced realities, potentially
exacerbating issues like poverty, inequality and climate change,
instead of fosteringcooperation and mutual benefit.
Such aggressive land grabshearken back to colonial-era
(54:53):
thinking, which history hasshown to be detrimental to
global stability and progress.
In the end, america will reapwhat it sows, and it won't be
good.
Alright, check back next weekfor another episode of Deep Dive
Chat soon, folks.
Thank you, thank you.
You know, one of the things that worries me about
this is the fact that it's astrategic game, right, it's one
that involves the interplay ofmultiple global powers.
In other words, if I decide tograb Greenland, the United
States decides to grab Greenland, that means that Russia can't
grab Greenland, or that Chinacan't grab Greenland right,
(00:21):
china can't grab Greenland right.
And, as a result, you know,they might start to think, hey,
what are the other pieces thatare on the board here and what
can we grab?
And maybe we should try andgrab that now, before somebody
else grabs it right, so it cangenerate a race to do this sort
of thing and speed up thosedynamics speed up those dynamics
(00:55):
.
Shawn (00:55):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig.
As Donald Trump's greatAmerican image takes shape, it's
clear that that vision includesexpanding the borders of the
United States, as he makesclaims on Greenland, canada and
Panama.
Is this just bluster?
How does Trump make this areality, and what does it mean
for the future of globalstability and American democracy
?
In this episode, we're going toexplore the intricate
(01:17):
relationship between land powerand society and the profound
impact that land power has ongovernance and democracy.
My guest today is Dr MichaelAlbertus, professor of political
science at the University ofChicago and author of the new
book Land Power who has it, whoDoesn't, and how that Determines
(01:38):
the Fate of Societies.
Dr Albertus argues that landownership shapes the evolution
of societies, determiningequality, development and
environmental stewardship.
This idea takes on newrelevance as we witness
President Trump's renewed callsfor territorial expansion.
These demands reflect the worstexcesses of land power thinking
(02:01):
, harkening back to colonial eraland grabs and disregarding
national sovereignty.
Trump's approach not onlystrains relationships with
long-standing allies, but alsothreatens America's global
influence.
By focusing on territorialacquisition rather than
diplomatic cooperation, the USrisks isolating itself on the
(02:22):
world stage, and isolation mightsound good in theory, but it's
rarely a good thing in practice.
So in this episode, we examinehow land distribution impacts
economic inequality, socialmobility and democratic
processes.
We'll also consider thepotential consequences of
Trump's aggressive landacquisition policies on
(02:44):
international relations andAmerica's standing in the global
community.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
(03:06):
.
Let's do a deep dive, drAlbertus.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thanks for inviting me on theshow.
Absolutely.
I think this is kind of anapropos topic for discussion
right now, for a handful ofreasons, I think.
(03:27):
For different reasons and indifferent ways.
We've been confronting thereality of land ownership and
land power globally, but alsovery specifically here in the
United States, since the dawn ofour country, but in some very
particular ways for the pastcouple of decades, and even when
we don't necessarily know thatthat's what we're talking about,
when we're talking about thingslike reparations and tribal
(03:48):
rights and land recognition, etc.
All of these things actuallyhave roots in historical
patterns of land ownership, andI think to some degree we have
thought, or we've made themistake of thinking, that land
and boundaries are settledissues, largely at least in the
northern and western world, thatwe've transcended a history in
which people were subjugated andenslaved and exploited over
(04:09):
land.
But that's really just patentlyfalse, and maybe the most
obvious examples today includeRussia's claim on Ukraine,
trump's ambitions for Greenlandand Canada, maybe even Trump's
claim on Ukrainian minerals.
So, while an understanding ofland ownership and its
implications is an historicalexercise, it is also very truly
(04:29):
an exercise in contemporarygeopolitics, and this is
something that you study andtherefore something that you
have thoughts about.
So I'm glad to have you here totalk about it.
Dr. Albertus (04:37):
Yeah, I have plenty of thoughts about all of
that.
It's a very interestingcontemporary moment in that land
is entering the stage, sort offront and center now and as such
, you know, these territorialclaims, territorial competition,
competition for resources aswell, which are of course rooted
(05:00):
in territory, are all at theforefront now of kind of a
changing global race for power.
Shawn (05:09):
And so maybe we should start here, because I think, I
mean, this might put us in aninteresting space for
conversation, in that you,studying this, might have a well
, you clearly have a broader,deeper bench of understanding,
and so you might see this, thecurrent state of play, very
differently than myself, and Iwould consider myself to be the
layperson.
(05:29):
So I think of the global orderas having been established
primarily around the end ofWorld War II, and that includes
not only the boundaries that wehave, for the most part,
established since then, but alsothe ambitions that people have
to expand their territory asbeing clipped wings since then,
but also the ambitions thatpeople have to expand their
territory as being clipped wingssince then.
And so we've had this to thelayperson, the boundaries that
(05:53):
we've had, for the most part, atleast for the great powers, are
pretty much established right,and so at least the last decade
has been, I think, somewhatjarring for people like me to
imagine that there are Europeancountries whose boundaries are
perhaps still at play right, andnow here in the United States,
this discussion, seriousdiscussion, of expanding US
(06:14):
territory.
Where I'm going with this is tosomebody like you, is this as
shocking as it is to somebodylike me, or is this just
something that, in the contextof history, ebbs and flows?
Dr. Albertus (06:25):
I would say both in some sense.
I mean, it's shocking, I think,to a lot of present observers
just because it's such asignificant departure from the
way in which the global orderhas operated over the course of
the last roughly eight decades.
But on the other hand, when youtake the broader sweep of human
history, there has always wellI shouldn't say always well I'll
(06:47):
talk about the limits, but foryou know, millennia there has
been an effort to assert controlover territory and extract
power and influence through thatcontrol over territory and then
to project that power andinfluence over space.
And so in a lot of ways, theglobal order since World War II
(07:10):
is something of an aberrationwhen we look at it from the
perspective of several hundredyears or even millennia of human
relationships with the land.
And I hesitated when I saidforever, because humans have
related to the land in verydifferent ways over the course
of human history and inparticular, there was no real
(07:34):
reason to own land per se whenyou go back, let's say, before
10,000 BC or before even about5,000 BC, when we started for
the first time to see settlementon the land, year-round
settlement in sedentarysocieties that started to occur
(07:56):
around 10,000 BC, and thenpermanent agricultural towns
started to take root around5,000 BC, and then that created
a new relationship with the landbecause, all of a sudden,
rather than say followingresources seasonally, things
like animal herds or wildharvesting of berries or nuts or
(08:19):
something like that people werefixed in space and the control
over that space meant control ofsurplus on the land, and that
generated a new relationshipbetween the land and power and
as a result, you know, and eversince, that has been something
that's really central to mosthuman societies and in that
(08:43):
sense, this last 80 years issomething of a deviation from
that and, for reasons we can getinto later, I think that have
to do with population dynamicsand the current structure of
geopolitics, as well as climatechange.
I think there are a lot ofpieces that are now shifting and
, as a result, we're going tosee a very dynamic picture in
(09:04):
the coming decades.
Shawn (09:06):
So I'm glad you bring up this concept of private land
ownership and providing a littlebit of context as to how that
evolved, because, born out ofthis assumption that there has
to be some type of a balancestruck between both private land
ownership and public landownership, people can always
quibble over where thoseboundaries lie, but the reality
is that private land ownershipand public land ownership.
People can always quibble overwhere those boundaries lie, but
(09:27):
the reality is that private landownership has not always been
something that has existed, andso I guess I wonder if you could
tell me a little bit more abouthow society structured itself
in such a way or in a time whenprivate land ownership didn't
exist, and how the evolution ofsociety changed as a result of
(09:47):
the introduction of things likeprivate land ownership, and how
that continues to inform oursocial development today.
Dr. Albertus (09:54):
Sure, I'll say that, you know, there's a lot of
, there's a lot of diversity inearly societies and in, more
generally, in indigenoussocieties, in terms of
relationships with the land andterritory.
But, for best we know fromhistorical records and from more
(10:15):
current practices as they'vebeen documented over the last
several centuries, humans andhuman societies were, you know,
prior to becoming sedentary,were relatively mobile, whether
year-round, all the time or, youknow, part of the year, and as
(10:36):
a result there was often arelationship with a territory,
but that territory didn'tnecessarily have definitive
boundaries in the way that wethink of definitive boundaries
today, and property rights wereoftentimes kind of layered or
sort of diffuse.
So there wasn't anything likethe contemporary notions of, you
(10:59):
know, individual, alienable,exclusive property rights.
Rather, rather, people hadaccess, let's say to you know,
certain permissions about usinghunting grounds in certain
seasons and that might havepassed through, you know, family
lineages or clan lineage,lineages and, depending on your
own ancestral links, you mighthave access to several different
(11:23):
hunting grounds or otherterritories or that sort of
thing.
So the but these relationshipswere really relatively diffuse.
And then that changed prettyradically, as we saw, you know,
the the greater, as we saw,population expansion, as we saw,
you know, more sedentarysocieties taking root and
developing and spreading.
You know, more sedentarysocieties taking root and
(11:43):
developing and spreading.
And then, of course, you know,starting to delineate land
ownership because that meantcontrol again over surplus and
that model went viral, so tospeak, with, you know, with
colonization and imperialism andas that, you know, as people
(12:05):
settled, especially fromEuropean countries, to new lands
around the globe and broughtthose notions and forms of
property rights with them, andthen they spread quite
substantially.
But of course that spread wasuneven.
I mean, even if you think aboutthe United States, if you look
at the eastern, if you look eastof the Mississippi, there's
very little public land east ofthe Mississippi.
(12:26):
If you look in the western partof the United States, it's
about 50% of land.
It's even higher when you lookat Alaska.
And so you know the earlypatterns of settlement had a big
impact on the share of, youknow, public land versus private
land and that sort of thing aswell.
Shawn (12:47):
So one of the things that I find particularly.
I guess maybe the word isinteresting One of the things
that I find as maybe arelationship that we can
overcome, in that it'spreordained, is that there might
be a critical mass when itcomes to population at which
maintaining public land becomesuntenable or impossible, meaning
(13:12):
that the relationship is suchthat the greater the population,
the greater the land scarcity,which kind of lends itself to
private claims of land ownershipas almost like a matter of
survival.
If that's the case, is thereany possibility in a society
like ours today in which wecould tilt the balance such that
we have much more public landby ratio than we do private land
(13:36):
and still maintain essentiallystability and peace with such a
large population?
Dr. Albertus (13:42):
Yeah, those are really.
I would say that they'reinteresting questions.
On the land nerd.
So, yes, I would say that theredefinitely seems to be a pretty
significant relationshipbetween population and land
scarcity and things likeprivatization or, more generally
(14:03):
, you might think aboutenclosure.
So, you know, the globalpopulation in 10,000 BC was just
a handful of millions of people, something like, let's say, the
population of modern Latvia orFinland or something like that.
I mean, it was extremely,extremely small.
It was a few hundred million bythe year zero and it was a
(14:23):
billion by 1800.
Obviously, today we're at 8billion, and so that has huge
implications for thinking aboutpeople spreading out on the land
and, you know, and needing toaccess resources, especially in
agrarian economies, but evenwell beyond that, because, of
course, we still are all eatingfood off the land, right, are
all eating food off the land,right, that's produced on the
(14:43):
land and so so, yes, so there.
So there's an inherent, I think,tension between having kind of
public common pool resources and, you know, large populations,
and so that doesn't, however,mean that necessarily that we're
kind of doomed as populationscontinue to increase, for a
(15:03):
couple of reasons.
One is because you know thehuman population is going to go
from 8 billion today to about 10billion sometime before the end
of the century, at which pointdemographers predict that the
global population is going tocrash effectively rather than
plateau or slowly decline, andso we might be retracing, you
(15:25):
know, 8 billion, 6 billion, 4billion, relatively quickly, and
that's going to open up newpossibilities for, you know,
public land.
The other thing is that thereare different ways to conceive
of property rights or ownershipover land, and if you think
about something like, let's say,conservation easements, right,
(15:47):
that's an interesting notionthat is being increasingly
applied to public land sorry, toprivate land in the United
States, which is to say thatpeople can contract with, could
be state governments, could beprivate land trusts or other
outside parties to restrict,let's say, cutting down trees on
(16:12):
their land or to try andpreserve an ecosystem on their
property, or something like that, and that can end up having
certain features or certainaspects of ownership over land
that can help to strike agreater balance between private
(16:50):
interest and public good.
So there is this.
Shawn (16:53):
This is almost like a bifurcated way to think about
this.
This next question, which is abuilding off of what you've just
said, is how governments local,state and federal we can keep
this specific to the UnitedStates are managing that balance
between private and public landownership, and the examples
that you've just given have todo with kind of regulations
(17:14):
about what you can or cannot doon your private land and to what
end.
And to some degree, some of thisis designed with climate in
mind or with an ecosystem inmind or environment in mind and
the potential impact, thedevastating impact that private
land ownership and activities onthat land could have.
But the other side of this isthat land ownership also plays
(17:39):
into economic inequality andbarriers to upward social
mobility.
These are concepts that we'rewrestling with today and I think
when we think about them, wetalk about them in the context
of the impact that maybereligion has had on inequality
or the impact that aheteronormative society or
gender does.
But land does too, and landdistribution and land power and
(18:01):
land ownership have alsoinfluenced these in ways that I
think we don't talk much about.
But you do.
And to tie this back to theinitial part of the question I
guess I'm wondering well, twoparts.
One is how has land ownershipand land power influenced
economic inequality and socialmobility in the United States?
(18:21):
And then, if we think about thebalance between private and
public land policy andregulation, what are some things
that governments could be doingthat touches on alleviating
some of that tension related toeconomic inequality and social
mobility?
Dr. Albertus (18:38):
So land confers social, economic and political
power to those who hold it andto those who own it.
And because land is power,those who own it come to
dominate those forms of power,whereas those who don't come to
be dominated in different ways,and we see this repeatedly in
(18:59):
the context of American history.
So if you think aboutsmallholding farmers in New
England in the early colonialperiod and how that form of
economic equality fostered, youknow, political equality and
democracy as well as socialmobility within New England.
(19:20):
And if you contrast that with aplace like the American South
where you had the plantationeconomy and you know, and Blacks
were enslaved, there was verylittle social mobility, of
course, almost none enforcedsocial immobility in fact, and
extremely high economicinequality.
(19:41):
It's an incredible contrastbetween those.
And we see land is reallycentral to that discrepancy or
that difference between thosetwo different areas, and we can
think about that in the West aswell, right, and how it ended up
actually perpetuating itself incertain ways.
So you know, if we think abouthow reconstruction in the
(20:06):
post-Civil War era failed andBlacks didn't get 40 acres and a
mule and as a result they wereconsigned to sharecropping still
for many decades in the Southand that impacted, you know,
ultimately, patterns ofmigration to the North and
segregation in the North andzoning restrictions in urban
(20:26):
areas and all kinds of thingslike that.
And we also see some of thesepatterns play out in the West,
you know, where white settlershad an ability to access land
through the Homestead Act andBlack Americans did not.
And so again, we see really,really different patterns there
of how that impacts, you know,economic equality and inequality
on the American frontier, aswell as social mobility across
(20:49):
those different racial groups,right, and if we think about how
, you know, this relates topublic land and private land.
I mean some of this directlyfilters into what land is public
and what land is private.
So, you know, in the wake of theMexican-American War, for
example, the US gained hundredsof millions of acres of land in
(21:13):
the American West, all the wayout to the Pacific Ocean.
A fair amount of that land wasprivatized and given to almost
exclusively white settlers atthe expense of, you know, native
Americans who were on the land,as well as, you know, blacks,
who didn't have an opportunitybecause they were still, for the
(21:33):
most part, living in the Southand under, oftentimes, you know,
working in sharecroppingarrangements and the like on
former plantations, and sothat's a very direct link as
well.
But you know, today we can thinkabout how, you know, public and
private land ownership playsout in the American West and
(21:57):
certainly some of that is, youknow, has racial kind of
overtones, but most of itdoesn't kind of overtones, but
most of it doesn't.
Most of it has a lot more to dowith, um, you know, economic
factors and um and socialfactors and tensions between,
you know, groups who are wouldwould like to have a land
preserved for purposes of, youknow, recreation, um and
(22:19):
enjoyment and the like, versus,uh, the desire by the federal
government, let's say, tomaintain public lands for the
purposes of, you know, leasingout those lands for revenue
purposes or other purposes, andso we can get more into that if
you're interested.
But there's a lot of rich kindof relationships there.
Shawn (22:43):
So one of the narratives about our politics that does, I
suppose, stem to some degreefrom land allocation and
distribution and thus, byextension, land power, and that
is the struggle betweendemocracy and authoritarianism
and the struggle between whatpeople have and what people
don't have.
(23:03):
And I think there is inherentin kind of the democratic or the
true democratic model, thisidea that allocation of
resources, that at leastopportunity should exist for
everybody.
And if that were the case, thenthat does suggest that there
needs to be some type of policythat confronts land reallocation
(23:24):
or land redistribution, if notat minimum a new approach to
land distribution moving forward, even if it isn't
redistribution, but that kind ofruns straight into the
opposition, which is thatanything along these lines is
really communist and socialistand anti-democratic, and I'm not
(23:45):
sure how to characterize this,or if you would disagree with me
on this, but it does seem to methat without some new policy
that deals with redistributionand reallocation, it really is a
challenge to American democracymoving forward.
Dr. Albertus (24:01):
Right.
So you know, land remains themost valuable economic resource
on the face of the earth, valuedat about 200 trillion or
something like that, to theextent that we can really value
it.
So it's a really powerful,powerful resource and it's
extremely valuable.
So it's no surprise that it'sheavily contested.
(24:25):
Valuable, so it's no surprisethat it's heavily contested.
And what we see is that youknow, and it underpins, I should
say, in contemporary times, alot of the value of real estate
and housing.
You know, for about 40% of youknow, property value average in
the United States is land, thevalue of land, and in places
(24:47):
where there are housingshortages and where property is
more expensive, let's say in theBay Area or New York, it's
considerably higher than that,something like two thirds, let's
say.
And so in my view, and so thatmeans that this is a very
valuable resource.
There's only kind of so much togo around, so to speak, and,
like you say, how the decisionsthat we make about who gets
(25:09):
access to what have importantpolitical implications, and let
me tell you a couple of kind ofstories about that in the
recent-ish American past in waysthat are, I think, germane to
this discussion.
So if you think about otherhousing shortages.
Let's say, in the course of the20th century what that meant
(25:30):
for challenges to democracy.
We could think about, you know,housing shortage due to labor
and supply issues in World War I, and you know when vacancy
rates went close to zero inhousing and people started
stacking up within houses andthe government and public
(25:50):
officials were worried about thespread of disease, but also
they were worried about thespread of communism under those
circumstances.
And so you know, introduced abill to build housing for
workers on the home front at apretty massive scale and did
that housing for workers on thehome front at a pretty massive
scale and did that.
And then we had another housingcrisis in the Great Depression.
At the outset of the GreatDepression we had Hoovervilles,
(26:12):
what were known as Hoovervilles,basically homeless encampments
that were sprouting up, you know, across the country, and the
government decided to step inand create a federal housing
administration under FDR becausethey were worried about issues
of unrest and the failure ofcapitalism.
And then we had again in thewake of World War II.
(26:35):
There was another housingcrisis.
Prices were rising quitequickly and dynamics that are
relatively similar to today, andthere was a shortage of housing
and one of the major pieces oflegislation then was the GI Bill
in order to try and giveveterans a pathway to the middle
class through home ownership.
(26:55):
And again, truman was prettyclear in how he created that, in
terms of how that was createdand the logic behind that
legislation, which had to doagain with giving people a
chance at the American dream andunderpinning American democracy
through property ownership.
(27:17):
And that had its inequalitiesas well.
There was again the big racialdiscrepancy between white
veterans and Black veterans andthe ability to access housing.
But it was clear that that wasa priority for American
democracy.
And you know, when we getcloser to the contemporary
housing crisis, let's saythere's good research that shows
(27:41):
today that you know, homeownership is associated with
greater participation in localtown hall meetings, greater
voter turnout rates.
You know donations to politicalcandidates and all that sort of
thing.
You know, effectively a formhow we might think about, you
know, contemporary localparticipatory democracy.
(28:02):
It's still connected tohomeownership and land ownership
in ways that hark back to smallholding farmers in New England
300 plus years ago.
Shawn (28:16):
I'm glad you bring this up because I'm going to preface
this by saying I am aprogressive.
But before I owned a home Ithought about housing very
differently than I do now.
I thought about it as securityand safety primarily right, like
someplace that I could go andfeel safe.
If there is an element ofownership, I could protect my
things right.
But when I bought a home, ofcourse there's, you know, safety
(28:39):
and security that comes withthat.
But then there's a monetaryelement to it which is about the
land that I have.
I don't want that taken awayfrom me and I do think that I do
participate, probably, in ourdemocratic processes more.
But I do catch myselfapproaching it from a different
perspective than I am maybe evencomfortable with it, which is
(29:00):
well, how much is this going toaffect my taxes or how much is
this going to affect my homevalue?
And that there's a certaintension in that, in being a
homeowner and I guess to somedegree a land owner then, by
extension, and being aprogressive that really does
care about land scarcity andabout inequality, and I'm not
sure if that ultimately, while Ipractice democracy more, plays
(29:24):
out in a purely democratic form,if that makes sense.
Dr. Albertus (29:28):
Yeah, that does make perfect sense.
I mean, and if you think aboutcontemporary debates in, let's
say, zoning restrictions, right,and housing affordability, I
mean some of the places that arethe most liberal places in the
country.
San Francisco, for example, isnotorious for nimbyism, and I'm
not saying that's necessarilywhat you're doing or what you're
(29:49):
advocating, but it simply showsthat there's a lot of times the
tension between sort ofpolitical beliefs and how that
kind of filters throughhomeownership, because people
care as homeowners about a lotof things, about their community
, right, the character of theircommunity and what that means,
you know, and how buildingsshould look and this, you know,
(30:12):
certain nostalgia for, whetherit's nostalgia for the past or a
, you know, an appreciation forthe status quo, since, after all
, one's selected into that.
You know that neighborhood orthat area and seeing it change
in some ways is, you know, canbe seen as you know that
neighborhood or that area andseeing it change in some ways is
, you know, can be seen as youknow, whether threatening or
simply bringing in somethingthat's quite different from what
(30:33):
one might have expected, right,and so that, yeah, so we see
oftentimes that you know, someof those tensions playing out in
, you know, amongst homeownersof all political stripes and and
you're right, it filters intoother things too, thinking about
property taxes and and manydifferent things.
(30:53):
So so, yes, I think thathomeownership, um, you know,
changes, changes of perspectivein a certain way, and and that
is related to to how peoplethink about kind of their you
know what we might call timehorizons, or whether we're
thinking about, okay, I'm goingto be, I know I'm going to be
here now for the course of manyyears, and so I want to have a
(31:16):
community, a neighborhood localethat reflects, you know, what I
hope it to be for, not onlytoday and next year and a few
years, but in 20 years or in 30years, and that has different
implications for how we thinkabout the present.
Shawn (31:30):
Considering land scarcity into the near future globally,
but specifically in the UnitedStates, and the implications
that that has for our localitiesand the type of governance that
we have and the influence thatit has on things like populism
and nationalism and xenophobia,etc.
What are some good policies orthings that localities and
(31:51):
municipalities should bethinking about when it comes to
land regulation moving forward?
Dr. Albertus (31:58):
Right.
I mean, the answer to thiscould, in theory, I think,
change over time, but in thepresent, it's pretty obvious, in
my view, that the problem isbasically a problem of
undersupply in the ways that weneed to access land for the
(32:28):
broader health of ourcommunities and the ability to
integrate.
You know, folks who are at themargins of the economy, who are
feeling the heat from renting,who are facing down an increase,
let's say, in institutionalinvesting, as well as young
people right, who are trying tocrack in for the first time to,
you know, to new jobs and intohome ownership in a way that
(32:50):
will give them this also thisvested kind of interest in the
future over the long haul, andenable them to build
generational wealth in ways thatprior generations have been
able to do.
And so, in my view, that has todo with things like you know.
How are you going to createaffordability and open up land
and development and building?
A lot of that has to do with,you know, changing how you
(33:14):
regulate construction andbuilding codes and as well as
zoning restrictions and tryingto drop zoning restrictions more
generally.
So if you think about a placelike you know, a very big
contrast would be a place likeTokyo right, where it's one of
the most populated cities in theworld.
Its population has increased inthe last several decades,
(33:37):
despite the fact that Japan'spopulation as a whole has, you
know, stagnated and even startedto decrease.
But housing prices have notgone up in Tokyo at all in a way
that reflects what has happenedin, let's say, you know New
York City or London, or you know, frankly, most you know cities
(33:58):
in the United States, both bigcities, even you know medium
tier cities and even a lot ofsmall cities and a lot of that.
The difference between thosehas a lot to do with zoning and
zoning restrictions and thezoning restrictions in Japan.
You know, in Tokyo inparticular, you know there's not
(34:19):
a, you know, permitting andrestrictions policy that applies
to individual properties in theway that it does in the United
States.
Right, when in the United Statesyou want to build on a
particular property, you've gotto go through all these
different hoops and city counciland get all these different
(34:40):
permits and you want to changezoning in an area, that's really
difficult, takes a long timeand, as a result, there's a big
lag in building right andthere's been a pent-up lag
really since the Great Recession, whereas in Japan, there's a
simple set of codes, you havedifferent nuisance levels.
There's 12 nuisance levels, andif you're below a certain
nuisance level, in terms ofbuilding, the idea is
(35:03):
residential, is residential, isresidential, and so you know.
If it's not, if you're nottrying to build a factory or
something like that in themiddle of a neighborhood, then
you can build, and that hasfacilitated greater housing
access and affordability overthe long term, and I think we
could take lessons from that inyou know, and try and apply them
(35:23):
to a lot of the locales in theUnited States, and there are
ways to think about doing thatfor states and the federal
government to try andincentivize a lowering of these
zoning restrictions and inplaces where there are real
bottlenecks, especially in theAmerican West, where there is a
(36:00):
lot of public land, using smallbits and pieces of public lands
that are already within cityboundaries or are at the very,
very limited and strategicfashion can also be helpful for
alleviating some of the housingcrisis that we have right now.
There are other ideas andpolicies out there too, like
providing first-time home buyerswith a credit or providing
(36:20):
favorable loan terms for folksas well, but all that has the
problem that there's still, atthe end of the day, right now, a
supply constraint and thatreally needs to be addressed.
Shawn (36:32):
I think, as long as we live in a place that has limited
resources and we're talkingabout land, so limited land
resources, land scarcityrelative to an increasing
population one of the practicesthat I feel that might have run
its course but to change itwould produce a massive backlash
, is this idea of owning land inperpetuity.
(36:55):
I used to live in New Zealandand there are large swaths of
New Zealand wherein you buy thehouse but you lease the land,
and this might be true of youknow other places as well, but
in the United States we'repretty much inculcated into
believing that once we've boughtland, as long as we pay our
taxes, that land is ours andthat and we can pass that on to
(37:16):
family members and we can expandthat if space permits, and that
land just becomes unusable orunavailable to anybody else
until we or some our ancestorsdecide to sell that land, and so
that does allow for certainpeople to gobble up quite a bit
of land that never has to thenreturn to the people, and I
(37:36):
wonder if that's something thatit doesn't seem feasible, but
it's something that we should beconsidering as in need of
renovation, something that weshould be considering as in need
of renovation.
Dr. Albertus (37:52):
That's right.
It's a very particular way ofthinking about land that is an
anomaly from the perspective ofbroader human history this
notion of you know, privateownership, and again, you know,
once you have land, it's yoursand others can't access it until
you decide that you're going to, you know, to sell it or give
it away or the like.
And there are other countriesthat don't have that at all,
right?
So China is another example ofa country that has no private
(38:15):
land ownership.
Land is zoned either as urbanland or as rural land.
Rural land is vested in andthere are leasing arrangements
over that land and those leasingpeople can contract and buy and
sell and the like in terms ofthese leases and these lease
(38:37):
arrangements, but there is notthe private ownership of land in
the same way that it exists inthe United States.
And so what we have here you'reright is kind of I wouldn't say
it's unique, because it existsin many other parts of the world
as well, but it is particular.
And we see now in recent yearspeople like Bill Gates or Mark
(39:03):
Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison thatbuy up large parts, large
swaths of land and then theybecome the owners of that land
and what they want to do withthat land is up to them.
And yeah, they cannot return tothe public domain unless they
decide that that's what theywant to do with it.
Right?
And so it's a very restrictiveform of thinking about ownership
(39:28):
and in that sense it alsoinherently has to have these
broader societal implications,right, because if some people
decide they're going to encloselarge tracts of land, then that
has implications andexternalities for other people.
Their inability to access thatland, maybe they're the
inability to decide, let's say,if that landowner wants to cut
(39:50):
down all the trees and thatimpacts the environment or
impacts biodiversity orcontributes to climate change,
and we don't have the capacity.
Other people in society don'thave any say over that, but they
have to suffer the consequences, right?
So inherently there is thiskind of social dynamic behind
property, whether you want toformally, you know, recognize
(40:12):
that and incorporate that in alegal structure or not.
Shawn (40:15):
So I feel like we need to talk about the recent US
expansionist view that we'vetaken.
So Trump has set and I guess byextension, the United States
have set their eyes on acquiringGreenland, canada I don't know
if that's tongue in cheek,doesn't you never really know
maybe parts of Panama, etc.
And that would disruptradically the global order.
(40:38):
And so obviously there aregeopolitical implications.
But for someone in your line ofwork and through the lens of
your work, what worries youabout this, if anything at all?
Dr. Albertus (40:49):
There's, in fact, a fair amount that worries me
about this.
So, for a variety of reasons,you know, as we talked about a
little bit earlier, this, theglobal order and in the last
eight decades since the end ofWorld War Two, has been one in
which outright territorial landgrabs have been, you know, more
(41:12):
or less off the table.
There have been a couple ofexceptions to that, but they've
been exceptional.
There have been very fewoutright land grabs in that time
period.
When you compare that, let'ssay, to the interwar period
between World War I and WorldWar II, or in the hundred years
prior to World War I, when therewas, you know, the amount of
(41:32):
territory that was changinghands was quite significant,
really quite significant.
I mean it was only in the late1800s, let's say that Italy
unified as a country, which wasbasically the culmination of a
process of territorial conquestby one part of Italy over others
, and the same was true withGermany, right?
So you know, the formation ofmodern countries and nation
(41:55):
states as we see them, thatoccurred through territorial
conquest and it was relativelyrecent.
And so there's a lot on thehorizon now and there's a lot
that might be, you know, subjectto reshuffling in a new world
in which we have, you know, areturn to those prior dynamics,
(42:18):
in which the global order is,you know, eroding in many ways
and the norms and the lawsagainst grabbing territory are
eroding, and you know thatraises the possibility, of
course, of not only outright war, but also increasing strategic
(42:38):
competition over resources and,again, over territory.
And one of the things thatworries me about this is the
fact that it's a strategic game,right, it's one that involves
the interplay of multiple globalpowers.
(42:58):
In other words, if I decide tograb Greenland, the United
States decides to grab Greenland, that means that Russia can't
grab Greenland, that China can'tgrab Greenland, right, and, as
a result, they might start tothink, hey, what are the other
pieces that are on the boardhere and what can we grab?
And maybe we should try andgrab that now, before somebody
(43:21):
else grabs it, so it cangenerate a race to do this sort
of thing and speed up thosedynamics.
There's another element, too,which is that it's hard to see
how climate change does not playa really important role here,
and we're only at the forefrontof what we're going to see when
it comes to changes that are onthe horizon from, you know,
(43:44):
dynamic and shifting climate.
So you know, as the you know,polar ice caps are melting to a
greater degree, seas are risingand some places are being hit by
more systematic drought or moreextreme weather patterns and
the like.
That's going to shift thehabitability and the
(44:06):
attractiveness of differentterritories in ways that are
unprecedented in human history.
In ways that are unprecedentedin human history, and so
Greenland is a very good exampleof this.
Greenland, right now, a lot ofit is still covered by ice.
It can be difficult to accessresources and the like, but by
(44:28):
basically all climatepredictions, that picture is
going to change dramatically inthe course of the next 50 years
and certainly by the year 2100,such that a lot more of
Greenland is going to beice-free throughout the year.
It will be much easier toconduct mining for valuable
natural resources and theclimate is going to become more
(44:49):
attractive.
And, furthermore, northern know,northern shipping routes are
going to open up in very newways, such that there will be
northern shipping routes thatrun along the northern part of
Canada, the famous NorthwestPassage, as well as along the
northern coast of Russia, andthose are going to become major
shipping routes, and Greenlandis a waypoint along those
(45:11):
shipping routes, and so there'salso a geostrategic reason why
one might want to have anoutpost there.
And so you start to extend thatlogic and you think about hey,
now what about Antarctica, aplace where a vast territory
that has been covered in ice forthe course of human history and
(45:33):
is basically inaccessible inmany ways, and there's long been
international cooperation touse Antarctica for scientific
purposes, and some of that isstarting to erode now.
There's already encroachmentand the abrogation of some of
those agreements and we couldsee how that might unravel in
(45:53):
the future.
And then you start to go down arabbit hole, as I have gone
down a little bit, and thinkingabout how that's going to affect
other places.
You think about the AmericanSouthwest or North Africa
becoming far more far drier andhotter and agricultural
productivity declining andpeople leaving those areas and
(46:16):
moving to other areas and thesorts of population pressures
that's going to generate inareas that are currently less
populated.
There's going to be a lot ofmoving and shifting and I think
we're I think Greenland is kindof an early warning signal for
that.
Shawn (46:31):
So this is probably a leading well, this is a leading
question.
But considering all of that, sothis new kind of expansionist
view that the United Statesseems to be taking the land
scarcity that we're facing,which has economic implications,
inequality implications, thatcreates tension, political
tension, and then also all ofthe potential impacts associated
(46:54):
with climate change, as youjust outlined, is the world
ready for this?
Dr. Albertus (46:58):
I don't think we're ready for this at all.
I don't think that there, youknow, I think that it comes at a
bad time in some ways, because,you know, the global order is
starting to's it's a ratherdynamic period in that sense and
because we're in now, you know,an increasingly multipolar
(47:19):
world, with, you know, the therise of China and Russia
becoming more aggressive as well, you know, and other countries
that are starting to to becomemore powerful.
It's a it's a challenging timeand it's one in which the
post-war order that waspredicated on competition
between the United States andthe Soviet Union is no longer so
(47:42):
well-suited in this currentmoment and in the years and
decades that are ahead.
And, as a result, I don't thinkthat we're very ready for this
and I think that we're going tosee more and more of these, you
know, territorial land grabs andproposals for land grabs on the
(48:03):
horizon in ways that are goingto.
That might seem surprising, butI think they're going to start
to become part of a broaderpattern that and I believe it'll
be a relatively decipherablepattern as well that's a
function of these expectationsof changes in migration and
changing climate and what allthat portends for the future.
Shawn (48:28):
While I think that generational divides along
political lines no longer holdthe way that we maybe have
thought they have over the last20 or 30 years, I do see a bit
of a silver lining, which couldbe completely empty air.
But I do notice that some ofthese folks that seem to be very
resistant to change and areaggressive and seem to be posing
(48:51):
some type of a threat to theglobal world order are
aggressive and seem to be posingsome type of a threat to the
global world order.
They're really the older guysin China and Russia and the
United States.
But if you look at places likeEurope for the most part Canada,
south America, for the mostpart, barring Brazil you know
there are a lot of.
There's a lot of younger folksthat are coming up and leading
(49:11):
the country and taking control,and I do have a little bit of
hope that that means we may seea shift in the near future, but
I don't know.
Dr. Albertus (49:19):
That gives me some hope too.
I'm hopeful of that.
I mean, I think that youngergenerations are very attuned to,
you know, long range issues ofclimate change, since they're
going to be living it.
And you know breathing,breathing it and having to deal
with it and and I think, in manycases, have a lot of um.
(49:39):
You know, refreshing um takeson the world and ways for
thinking about our politics andour environment and our economy
and the like.
I also do.
You know I am concerned by, youknow, trends like, let's say,
in Europe.
You know, the rise of the farright in you know, a number of
(50:01):
countries in Europe and even inthe United States, and you know,
inclusive amongst young folksat rates that we haven't seen in
recent decades, at rates thatwe haven't seen in recent
decades, and so so I'm alsoattuned to that and that also
gives me some pause, or makes mebelieve, at least, that it's
not going to be a sort of end ofhistory kind of conclusion and
(50:25):
that we're we're definitelysailing for, you know, kind of a
brighter future, but ratherthat it's going to be something
that that people are going tohave to fight for and it's not
going to necessarily come of itsown accord or in our lifetimes.
Shawn (50:39):
Okay, final question you ready for it?
Yeah, what's somethinginteresting you've been reading,
watching, listening to or doinglately?
And it doesn't have to be aboutthis topic, but it can be.
Dr. Albertus (50:49):
Well, one thing that I'm doing a lot lately is
running, which is something thatI usually.
Oh Well, one thing that I'mdoing a lot lately is running,
which is something that Iusually do a lot of, but I find
myself doing even more of it inthese times as a way to kind of
center myself and clear my mindand a lot as well about kind of
climate predictions.
And you know, when thinkingabout the future, as well as you
(51:21):
know a couple of other thingsthat I'm working on, I've been
thinking more about the, thereconstruction era in American
history and that real you knowwhat I would think consider to
be a missed opportunity in sortof getting things a lot better
than we did.
And you know, thinking aboutwork of the Freedmen's Bureau
and how a lot of that work wasundone and captured in different
(51:44):
ways by vested interests andwhites who sought to peel back
you know progress that wasstarting to really occur in the
South in that time period, andso you know thinking about that
even a little bit for our youknow our modern political
(52:04):
situation.
You know how do we get thingsright, how do we get things
wrong, what does that look likeand for whom?
So I've been thinking through alot of that more lately as well
, like and for whom.
So I've been thinking through alot of that more lately as well
.
Shawn (52:14):
I've been doing the same and I've also been focusing on
rebuilding Europe and then, Isuppose, the global order after
World War II, because I thinkwhat's becoming clear is there's
a lot that we got right, butalso a lot that we got wrong
then as well, and I thinkthere's this little glimmer of
hope that we tend to kind offocus on the worst possible
outcome.
But I have this hope thatthere's maybe at least a 50%
(52:37):
chance that, yeah, things getpretty bad but it shakes out for
the better in the end and thatwe learn from that.
Dr. Albertus (52:43):
Yeah, agreed, I mean, I would say, you know, one
of the things that I mentionedsort of in passing but should be
taken quite seriously is thefact that the global population
is probably going to declinepretty substantially in the next
century and that's going tocompletely rewire how people
relate to the land, to theirenvironment, to each other
(53:07):
within society.
Everything, I think, is goingto be reshuffled.
When that actually starts tooccur and you know, you can see
glimmers of it already incertain places like Japan or
Germany, um and, and I think,but at a at a far larger scale,
that's going to happen and, andin many ways I think that that
could represent a new dawn forhumanity.
(53:28):
If we can kind of get it right,if we can position ourselves in
the next decades to takeadvantage of that and to get
that right to build a much moresustainable way of relating to
the land and the environment andeach other.
Frankly, I think that thatcould be something that's really
quite exciting, and there's alot that can you know.
(53:49):
There's a lot of opportunitythere.
Shawn (53:52):
Dr Albertus, thanks for the conversation and here's to
brighter days.
Dr. Albertus (53:56):
It was a pleasure to be here.
Yes, I'm looking forward tothese days.
Shawn (54:07):
Trump's aggressive rhetoric toward acquiring
Greenland, canada and the PanamaCanal reflects a dangerous
misunderstanding of moderngeopolitics and land power
dynamics.
As Dr Michael Albertusexplained, such territorial
ambitions are misguided andpotentially harmful.
These policies could severelydamage international relations,
(54:31):
undermine US soft power anddestabilize long-standing
alliances.
Trump's approach ignores thesenuanced realities, potentially
exacerbating issues like poverty, inequality and climate change,
instead of fosteringcooperation and mutual benefit.
Such aggressive land grabshearken back to colonial-era
(54:53):
thinking, which history hasshown to be detrimental to
global stability and progress.
In the end, america will reapwhat it sows, and it won't be
good.
Alright, check back next weekfor another episode of Deep Dive
Chat soon, folks.
Thank you, thank you.
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