Who Owns the World
The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet
By: Kevin Cahill, Rob McMahon
Published: January 29, 2010
Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
ISBN: 9780446581219
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
"Land is the single most common characteristic of wealth worldwide. What the poor lack - land - the rich have in spades. In fact, land defines the wealthy to a far greater extent than cash", writes journalist, editor, and geographer Kevin Cahill, along with journalist Rob McMahon, write in their comprehensive and fascinating study of global land ownership Who Owns the World: The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet. The authors assert that land ownership is very heavily concentrated in a few hands, has been concentrated throughout history, and that lack of access to real property was and remains the leading cause of national and global poverty.
Kevin Cahill and Rob McMahon provide startling statistics about who really owns the land in every country and territory on earth. Tables and charts, complete with numbers of owned acres, demonstrate that the ownership of land everywhere is not widely held. Instead, a few wealthy people, members of royal families, churches, and governments represent the vast overwhelming majority of land ownership. The authors identify Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom as the largest owner of land in the world. Through Crown ownership, her ownership extends to entire countries and encompasses one seventh of the globe. Other monarchs hold similar ownership levels in the countries of their dominion. In the United States, the largest landowners are the government and Ted Turner. The book lists the major owners in exhaustive lists of their extensive holdings.
Kevin Cahill (photo left) and Rob McMahon assert that the overwhelming proportion of land held by a few people, including hereditary monarchs, is the primary source of global poverty. For Kevin Cahill, the lack of land ownership and the exclusion of any access to owning land, creates poverty and perpetuates the gap between rich and poor around the world. The authors consider that land ownership, and the access to property, is a basic human right. They demonstrate that the usual rates of population density, and measures of land ownership fail to take into account disparity in population placement and the ultimate state or monarch ownership. The authors write that there is just over 5 acres of land per person in the world. They propose that everyone have access to one tenth of an acre to live or two acres of rural property. They believe this step would do more to end the gap between rich and poor than any other measure that can be undertaken in terms of wealth redistribution.
Foe me, the power of the book is the extensive and intensive research done by the authors in building their case about who really owns the world's property. They provide hard data in the form of documented numbers, lists of the major owners in various groups, and how property title is often not as secure as thought previously. With only 15% of the world's population owning all of the land, the authors make a solid assessment of who holds real property. Those statistics also underline the vast majority of the world's people who own no land. For the authors, that exclusion to land ownership is the most important indicator and cause of world poverty. By examining the global ownership of land, the book provides a valuable forecasting tool for how developments in property ownership may evolve, helping to formulate and create public land ownership policy.
I highly recommend the monumental and often shocking book Who Owns the World: The Surprising Truth About Every Piece of Land on the Planet by Kevin Cahill (with Rob McMahon), to anyone seeking a comprehensive study into the real truth about global land ownership, and its effect on wealth and poverty on a worldwide basis. Whether you agree with the authors' assessment and analysis or not, the book is a must read for everyone, as land ownership affects everyone living on the planet. This understanding is also critical to understanding our collective future as well.
