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Wealth and Want | |||||||
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Air
The
equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal
right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their
existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have the right to be in
this world and others no right.
If we are all here by the equal permission of the creator, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his bounty — with an equal right to the use of all that nature so impartially offers. This is a right which is natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in every human being as he enters the world, and which during his continuance in the world can be limited only by the equal rights of others. Robert G. Ingersoll: A Lay Sermon (1886) No man should be allowed to own
any land that he does not use.
Everybody knows that -- I do not care whether he has thousands or
millions. I have owned a great deal of land, but I know just as well as
I know I am living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use
it. And why? Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they
would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling
Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and
millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am
not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is. Now, the land belongs
to the children of Nature. Nature invites into this world every babe
that is born. And what would you think of me, for instance, tonight, if
I had invited you here -- nobody had charged you anything, but you had
been invited -- and when you got here you had found one man pretending
to occupy a hundred seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and
thereupon you were compelled to stand up -- what would you think of the
invitation? It seems to me that every child of Nature is entitled to
his share of the land, and that he should not be compelled to beg the
privilege to work the soil, of a babe that happened to be born before
him. And why do I say this? Because it is not to our interest to have a
few landlords and millions of tenants.
The tenement house is the enemy of modesty, the enemy of virtue, the enemy of patriotism. Home is where the virtues grow. I would like to see the law so that every home, to a small amount, should be free not only from sale for debts, but should be absolutely free from taxation, so that every man could have a home. Then we will have a nation of patriots. Now, suppose that every man were to have all the land he is able to buy. The Vanderbilts could buy today all the land that is in farms in the State of Ohio -- every foot of it. Would it be for the best interest of that State to have a few landlords and four or five millions of serfs? ... read the whole article Robert Smilie, quoted by James Dundas White in a pamphlet entitled "Land-Value Policy"
Times have caught up with
Ingersoll. Ronald Coase, prominent
Chicago economist, says polluters (whom he calls emitters, to avoid
bias) have as much right to emit as victims (he says receptors) have
to breathe clean air. It doesn’t matter, says Coase, how we
assign property rights originally: as long as property is firm, the
market will sort it all out. However, since emitters have invested in
costly facilities, and property is sacred... you see whither this
unbiased science is tending.
Was he laughed to scorn? Au contraire, he was raised on the shoulders of his adulatory peers and anointed a demi-god (which tells you something about his peers). Having risen on wings of theory the idea found its way into practice, and today The South Coast Air Quality Management District awards "offset rights" to those with worthy track records of emitting. New emitters must buy "property rights" from old ones. ... And those who want to breathe?
Coase says they should pay for the
privilege, as they pay for indulging any personal taste. After all,
they already pay those who supply them with land to live on. Only
welfare bums would expect property owners to dip into their
hard-earned savings and supply them with free air, when the market
has a solution at hand. All they need do is buy offset rights from
Ancient and Honorable Emitters. When they want to breathe, they just
retire the rights upwind of them. This is a marvel of efficiency,
too. They retire only what it takes to clean the air they need: no
waste.
If they can’t afford to buy
outright, they could rent --
markets have ingenious solutions for all problems, like any good
panacea. Gas masks are another free-market solution: much better than
socialistic policies that would impose uniform clean air on everyone,
whether they want it or not. ... read
the whole article Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0: Preface (pages ix.-xvi)
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