Comment by spjt

Many states have adopted various sorts of watershed protection or conservation laws that make many areas undevelopable in any profitable way. The cost of the hoops one must jump through to prove some small project will not run afoul of these laws is a non starter....unless the developer is professional capital fueled operation looking to put in a chain store, strip mall or 5-over-N. That drags up adjacent values enough that the suburban subdivision developers show up and start buying the farms, etc, etc.

So in a perverse sort of way you basically get what you want, wide swaths of low/no development wilderness, but it's paid for by the everyman not the billionares.

I'd rather the plot be a national park be yes, no need to pave the entire country in the name of efficiency.

> I'd rather have some billionaire sitting on a huge plot of wilderness

I'd rather not have a billionaire sitting on a huge plot of land. If we as a society want that wilderness to be preserved, it should be a state park or national park, that should be relinquished to our government.

They tried a land value tax in Hawaii. The results are described in the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi":

"They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot"