Ownership of land

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I'll admit this was sparked by a comment to a specific person; this is not, however, directed at that person alone. I am interested in how any/all of you respond to this.

What is it that permits a person to OWN land?
It is from land that all other private property comes from, right? Need the land to build the house, or the factory or the oil drill. Without owning land, you may pick an apple from a tree and say "This is my apple" but anyone else can walk up to that tree and take an apple too. But if that apple tree is on MY PROPERTY, I can deny others the apples of that tree.

But, fundamentally, what is it that permits a person, any person, to OWN land? What makes ownership legit?

This is a question I have wrestled with, and while I am no Jacob, I am almost sure that owning land is a fabricated idea and that it's actually a pretty bad one.
Not that I suggesting we do away with it; but while I may not know the cure, I can spot a disease. Private property is antithetical to communal living and I think communal living may be way healthier for the homo-sapien than this private property thing we have going.

Please do not argue for the MERITS of the idea. Justify the idea ITSELF.

How does one lay a stake to this or that being MY LAND?

Public-private partnership

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

As part of its ad hoc sprawl over the years, the US Federal government amassed somewhere around 3,000 data centers. In February 2010, then-Federal CIO Vivek Kundra launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) to cut costs and streamline operations by eliminating 40% of these data centers. Given how much duplicate and under-utilized IT infrastructure federal agencies had built, this seemed like an achievable goal.

Unfortunately, data center infrastructure consolidation requires capital. You have to inventory what you have and understand how it is being used. You have to craft and execute a plan for moving applications from the data centers you are closing to the ones you are expanding. And you have to upgrade those expanded data centers to support more applications on less hardware.

But most agencies don’t have that kind of capital. In fact—given the inexorable growth in data and processing requirements—they struggle to keep the stuff they already have running.

Enter the Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC). An ESPC is a contracting vehicle by which federal agencies can consolidate their data centers without capital.
Essentially what happens is that a private-sector contractor puts up the capital for the project up front and then gets paid back by receiving the lion’s share of the resulting energy savings. Once the contractor gets its return-on-capital, the contract terminates and the agency (along with the US taxpayer) reaps all savings going forward.

The ESPC is an interesting partnership between the public and private sectors. Theoretically, the public sector gains by being able to modernize its infrastructure in ways that result in long-term savings and better service to constituents. And the private sector gains by generating reasonable returns on capital through the delivery of quantifiable economic value.

For some reason, the OMB stands ready to screw up these deals. We shall see if Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden (D, Oregon) is able to get the deal between DoE and Lockheed Martin unblocked.

Thoughts?