The homestead act was genius.

If I had my way, we'd ban monoculture farming, ban loans to farmers, and ban pesticides. Then if the huge corporate farms can't make real farming work, they sell to the highest bidder, but the government would set the floor to the bidding by being a bidder, and any land acquired that way becomes free to whoever moves onto it and farms.

This plan only makes sense (the gov floor bid) while we're using USD. There's an inflection point where that kind of thing gets too costly, because the value of land gets drained into btc.