The Founders Knew It: A Country or a Company Owned by Its People Is Best

In 1829, James Madison predicted the size of America’s population in 1930. Dividing his estimate by the number of acres of arable land, he drew an unsettling conclusion: “there will, in a century or a little more, be nearly as crowded a population in the United States as in Great Britain or France.” His specific estimates proved inaccurate, but the basic point was sound. As the population rose, the country would eventually run out of land.

This was a serious problem. For many early American political thinkers, property ownership was the bedrock of political stability. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to Madison earlier in their careers: “[The] unequal division of property… occasions the numberless 3instances of wretchedness which… [are] observed all over Europe.” This conclusion did not prompt him to support total equality. “I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable,” Jefferson wrote to Madison. “But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.”

Many of the founders saw a cautionary tale in this “wretchedness” caused by Europe’s unequal distribution of property. Thomas Paine perceived in the bloodshed of the French Revolution a clear argument for some redistribution of wealth. He proposed a tax on landowners that would fund a distribution paid to “every person, rich or poor.” Paine’s suggestion parallels modern proposals for a universal basic income. In contemporary thought, jobs function as the new land: a vast but not infinite resource that will contract in the future. For Madison, finite territory and a rising population would gradually concentrate wealth and create dangerous levels of inequality. Today, automation is invoked as the force that will decrease the supply of jobs, with similar results.

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