[kephra]

it starts promising with:

> Landlords are eating the world.

but it then falls short, by only pointing to the tip of the iceberg, the rising prices in city centers. But the problem is much bigger in the rural, in 2nd and 3rd world, where former small farms are replaced by big agriculture corporations.

> To understand why, we have to look at the reasons land has value in the first place.

And he totally fails here. He fails to explain, that land ownership depends on the state monopoly on use of force, and legalization of murder, rape and genocide during the time the state acquired the land. He fails to explain that money equals debt, debt is often preferring land as security, and therefore land prices are doomed to rise globally.

I do not expect a Marxist analysis in Economist, but I would at least expect some in deep comparison of how different countries cope with this problem. Point to massive buyout of agricultural land in eastern Europe, point to the housing bubble in Spain, point to how Hartz IV stabilized the German housing market, ... but this article is only pointing to the iceberg in front of the unsinkable.