How much land can be allocated to each human
When you are considering the acquisition of a land property, your primary concern is its value.
Its market value, is the price you will pay the moment of the actual transaction. This number depends on many factors and changes from time to time and in my opinion has very little to do with the real long-term value of land.
Land –however- is eternal, can be passed from parent to child for unlimited generations, cannot be altered and doesn’t wear out (at least not in the way a car does) and until that moment arrives that humanity can colonize other planets, its surface is limited and cannot be increased in any way. In fact if the ice on the poles melt (as many say it will, due to global warming), flooding will occur and available earth surface will diminish.
One may argue that thanks to technology, we may start inhabiting the surface of the oceans (or even the bottom of the oceans), or that we may increase the number of people living stacked in high-rise apartment buildings. Still, I think that to most of us, a house with its own yard will remain an incomparable option.
As a first step towards the calculation of land property’s real value, I think that we must figure out how much earth can be allocated to every human, if it were all distributed equally:
The mathematical formula for the surface of a sphere is: 4πr². The Earth’s radius is: 6.380 km (about 4.000 miles). Hence, the Earths surface is 511.506.144 km². About ? of that is land, leaving the rest to oceans. That leaves us to 127.876.536 km². About half of this surface (this is an assumption but it seems logical to me), cannot be built for residential purposes, because it is either desert, steppes, steep mountain clifs, rivers, lakes, roads, public building etc.. This means that we have about 64.000.000 km² to build houses.
I think that the earth’s population is about 6 billion people.
In other words (simple division) about 10.000 m² (2,5 acres) per human.
Could the above estimate help in any way to calculate the real value of earth? For the purpose of this discussion let’s assume that we don’t need to exclude residential usage of earth for the wealth that exists beneath the surface, or reserve some of the earth’s surface for its food producing use (i.e. agriculture).
I can safely conclude, that if we take this latter into account, the remaining (for residential purposes) earth per human is a lot less. Perhaps less than 1 acre (about 4.000 m²) per human.
I know that in a world that everybody is looking to make a quick buck, the following approach is of little value. Maybe I am a little romantic or too theoretical in the way I think, but I am afraid that trying to make a quick buck, is the main reason of the current economic crisis. The world seems to have lost its moral principals in the way we humans think and act.
I would like to invite any criticism, thoughts, comments which should be addressed to: info@alpha6.gr
Thanasis Chatzopoulos
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