It is however essentially giving certain families their own personal estate.
Its not however. The land is owned by the People, and the proceeds go to the people. The families will get a performance bonus for improving administration above baseline quotas, and they will suffer legal penalties for underperforming or other malicious practices upon the land.
Did we ever find out why the provinces choose Enforce Justice exclusively and never Restoration Of Order?
-Provinces will never take actions which cost Stability or Legitimacy.
-Provinces will never risk redlining Centralization
-Provinces will never take 'Royal' actions where the option describes royal authority(Proclaim Glory, Salt Gift, Distribute Land)
Didn't we get a WOG that WP meant the people who did the prospecting just got paid some more, rather than having any actual claim of ownership? I wasn't nearly so worried about a single generation of increased income as I was about the beginnings of a landed nobility.
If that's not the case... well I'd care less, but I'd still prefer WP since I care much more about long-term resource gains than a one-off boost to Wealth (even ignoring all the other benefits, boosting trade good production often leads to more long-term wealth anyway.)
This is what happens with Distribute Land as well.
Sorry, that wasn't quite what I meant, my bad: The setup of who's owning what land shifts around, and presumably doesn't change back after the not-really-owners die, instead being taken over by someone else. Whereas in the case of Wildcat Prospecting, after the original prospectors die, there's no long-term effects - you aren't paying anyone extra money (and thus perpetuating an income inequality).
No, that applies to BOTH.
Private administrators are assigned for land or mines.
They will manage said resource in their own time, producing taxes or resources as per their proposal.
After they die, the best administrator for the land or mines will be assigned to the land or mines.
Said best administrator is usually the children of the original administrator, who are familiar with the land and it's usage.
The new administrator will continue to gain the performance bonus as long as they maintain output, or be replaced if their management falls short or is against the law, they have no legal recourse against state reclaiming.
I don't think it is. My understanding is that it's more like a landlord hiring a property manager.
No-one is being given private ownership, but some people are being given extra management rights - at an area level, I gather, not individual tracts of land - in order for them to improve efficiency, and they're supposed to give the central government a share of the improvements.
This yeah
My understanding of DL, just to be completely clear:
Someone comes to the King and says "I can make this plot of land X more efficient if I administrate it".
King considers and says "Okay! You do that and in return you specifically pay me more taxes and get to keep a small extra fraction yourself for your hard work."
There is a significant difference between "administrates" and "owns" in my mind. The King still owns the land in question, technically it's communally owned. But there is this person who administrates it more directly to easy Admin burden.
It could do this. It is not a certainty because inside that plot of land merit still holds value and the family in control can be supplanted.
I will also point out we already have de facto land controllers in our chief families for the reason you point out.
It may well be, on the other end of the scale, that whoever comes to the King with this proposal may well not be from the chief family of their area.
And this too.
The model is clear, it opens up room for corruption and abuse, because the process of choosing the administrator invariably picks from the best conneccted who can make the best sales pitch that they know what they are doing.
