The Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty-eight is famous for establishing constitutional monarchy, but its real genius lay in property rights reform. According to Works in Progress, early modern Europe was strangled by fragmented landholdings and rigid inheritance laws that nobody had the power to untangle—until England's newly empowered Parliament stepped in. Between sixteen eighty-nine and eighteen thirty, Parliament passed thousands of acts consolidating scattered fields, breaking entails that locked estates in legal amber, and chartering turnpike trusts to build roads and canals. The payoff was immediate: agricultural yields jumped forty-five percent, road freight costs fell seventy-five percent, and England became the world's most connected economy. Here's the paradox: because landowners themselves drove the reforms and stood to profit, nearly everyone supported them. Today, zoning restrictions and regulatory tangles create the same gridlock—and the same remedy still applies. Work with incumbents rather than against them.

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