When the FT asked the previous Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor, for advice for young entrepreneurs he replied: “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.”
Today, less than one per cent of the population owns at least half of England. The Crown and Norman aristocracy still dominate.
Land is power, argues the political scientist Albertus. He shows this imbalance is true of the planet.
Over the last two centuries what he calls the Great Reshuffle saw attempts to democratise land ownership falter and “choices… laid the groundwork for racial hierarchy, gender inequity, underdevelopment and environmental degradation — the four horsemen of modern social maladies”.
Ranging from Soviet and Chinese collectivisation through post-Apartheid South Africa to the founding of Palm Springs he slightly overstretches his point but ends in hope.
His examples include the Patagonia National Park in Chile, not far from Pumalin, where in 2017 the widow of North Face’s billionaire founder donated a million acres to the nation.
