Until someone gets the zoning board to wave a magic wand and change the allowable uses of the property, and then it's a lot more valuable.

This happens all the time, and is a major reason why people will sit on land for extended periods of time.

What on earth are you talking about?

You know what increased more than 3x in the last 10 years? The S&P 500 index (it went from $203.87 at the start of 2016 to $681.92 at the start of 2026). And your plot of land is a massive outlier to the upside in the US overall during that time.

Historically, undeveloped land basically tracks inflation. Obviously, there are specific plots of land that dramatically exceed that, and there are specific plots of land that don't keep up with inflation.

That's the only thing you got right: raw land is an inflation hedge.

It's really not.

What happens if everyone takes this declaration at face value and decides to be unemployed? Who pays for all the services that every person is entitled to?

> No land owner will suddenly become a developer to build an apartment block.

No one is suggesting this.

> A plot owner can sell land to a developer or form a joint venture with developer putting in their land as starting capital (much more risky) most people either keep land as gold or sell it when they need money.

Most people don't own vacant lots, but some who do hold onto it as an investment. It's a pretty poor one on average over time, just like gold (which is a good analogy).

> The very idea that everyone who owns land should build an apartment block is laughable, it is very complicated endeavour best not to get into it if you know nothing about it. Hell building a single family house is complex, let alone five story building.

Again, no one is suggesting this. The assumption is that a developer would buy a lot to build on, because that's what happens in practice.

> So you either keep it if you don’t need money or you sell it if you want to buy something else or need to have liquidity. And you don’t even sell it to buy other investment vehicle because land is already better than gold.

Land and gold are not better than the stock market over time.

> My plot increased 3 times in price in 10 years. Try to beat that with SP500. It’s virtually immune to inflation no matter how the broader economy fares it will always shield from inflation because you cannot make more land hah.

The S&P 500 beats real estate over time. Congratulations on getting lucky with your plot of land. Land is a good inflation hedge, assuming you are in a growing area. Ask rust belt land owners how things worked out for them.

> Even in utopia of automation and post scarcity society good location land will be truly lucrative and unimaginably expensive if not outright prohibited to own by private individuals. The question is what will be a “good location” in 30 years.

Thanks for highlighting one of the many issues with communism, but we will never reach a post-scarcity society for many reasons, including this one.

So if I declare a right to immortality, then no one dies?

It's almost like those words are the product of useless bureaucrats, rather than an actual right.

Holding costs of land are far from $0 in any major metropolitan area. Sitting on it involves its own form of risk.

Vacant land that's desirable is often held back from development due to zoning or infrastructure issues.

> Grocery stores don't require millions to billions of dollars of capital to execute each new transaction.

Neither do homebuilders, because homes don't cost millions to billions to build (high end custom homes can cost millions, but that's not what we're talking about here).

> So it's not the margin itself but actually the spread between the margin and what investors could get by investing in alternatives. Real estate investment opportunities are often measured by their advantage (measured in fractions of a percentage, .2% advantage being considered solid) over 10 Year Treasuries or S&P 500 returns.

Okay? So they have an advantage over alternatives, which means higher profits. And a .2% advantage is not considered solid, or meaningful in any way without a lot of missing context.

> Real estate developers do often actually lose money, but the more salient boundary condition is whether they can get financing for a project, where they have to clear a bar well above the "just make >$0" bar.

Many companies often lose money, due to incompetence or bad luck. The industry as a whole has very healthy margins.

Can you define razor thin? Grocery stores have very small margins, as little as 1%.

Homebuilders make at least an order of magnitude more on a very expensive item.

What about a non-ruthless corporation? How do you test that?

What about the fact that most homeowners get the vast majority of the money for said purchase from a (presumably ruthless) corporation?