Beneficence
of the Creator
For whose benefit was the world created? Are some of us more entitled to
it than others? If so, what entitles us? What do we owe to our fellow human
beings? Henry George saw the creator as supremely generous, and sought the
reasons why there should be poverty under such conditions. The question is
still with us today, and few who are not now Georgists have sought out the
answers George found.
Henry George: The
Land for the People (1889 speech)
Dr. Nulty goes on to say what
every man who has studied this
subject will cordially endorse, that the natural law of rent — that
law by which population increases the value of land in certain places
and makes it grow higher and higher — that principle by which, as
the city grows, land becomes more valuable — that that is to his
mind the clearest and best proof, not
merely of the intelligence but
of the beneficence of the Creator. For he shows clearly that
that is
the natural provision by virtue of which, if men would only obey
God's law of justice, if men would only obey the fundamental maxim of
Christianity to do to others as they would be done to them: that by
virtue of that provision, as the advance of civilization went on, it
would be towards a greater and greater equality among men — not a now
to a more and more monstrous inequality. Read the whole speech
Weld Carter: A Clarion Call to Sanity, to Honesty, to Justice
Our stage, of course, for making this study will be this world of ours, for
it is upon this world that the drama of human living is played out, with all
its joys and all its sorrows, with all its great achievements and all its failures,
with all its nobilities and all its wickedness.
Regardless of its size relative to other planets, with its circumference of
about twenty-five thousand miles, to any mere mortal who must walk to the station
and back each day, it is huge. Roughly ninety-six million miles separate the
sun from the earth on the latter's eliptical journey around the sun. At this
distance, the earth makes its annual journey in its elliptical curve and it
spins on its own canted axis. Because of this cant, the sun's rays are distributed
far more evenly, thus minimizing their damage and maximizing their benefits.
Consider the complementarity of nature in the case of the two forms of life
we call vegetable and animal, in their respective uses of the two gases, oxygen
and carbon dioxide, the waste product of each serving as the life-giving force
of the other. Any increase in the one will encourage a like response in the
other.
Marvel at the manner in which nature, with no help from man or beast, delivers
pure water to the highest lands, increasing it as to their elevation, thus
affording us a free ride downstream and free power as we desire it. Look with
awe at the variety and quantity of minerals with which this world is blessed,
and finally at the fecundity nature has bestowed so lavishly throughout both
animal and vegetable life: Take note of the number of corn kernels from a single
stalk that can be grown next year from a single kernel of this year's crop;
then think of the vastly greater yields from a single cherry pit or the seeds
of a single apple, or grape or watermelon; or, turning to the animal world,
consider the hen who averages almost an egg a day and the spawning fish as
examples of the prolificacy that is evident throughout the whole of the animal
world, including mankind.
If this marvelous earth is as rich in resources as portrayed in the foregoing
paragraph, then the problem must be one of distribution:
- how is the land distributed among the earth's inhabitants, and
- how are its products in turn distributed?
Land is universally treated as either public property or private property. Wars
are fought over land. Nowhere is it treated as common
property.
George has described this world as a "well-provisioned ship" and when one
considers the increasingly huge daily withdrawals of such provisions as coal
and petroleum as have occurred say over the past one hundred years, one must
but agree with this writer. But this is only a static view. Consider the
suggestion of some ten years ago that it would require the conversion of
less than 20%
the of the current annual growth of wood into alcohol to fuel all the motors
then being fueled by the then-conventional means. The dynamic picture of
the future is indeed awesome, and there is every indication that that characteristic
has the potential of endless expansion. So how is it that on so richly endowed
a Garden of Eden as this world of ours we have only been able to make of it
a hell on earth for vast numbers of people?
The answers are simple: we have permitted, nay we have even more than that,
encouraged, the gross misallocation of resources and a viciously wicked distribution
of wealth, and we choose to be governed by those whom we, in our ignorance,
have elected. ... Read the whole essay
The Most Rev. Dr Thomas Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath
(Ireland): Back to the Land (1881)
I have already observed that the
chief peculiarity of the land of
a country was that its value was never stationary, that it was always
progressive and rising, that in fact it increased in a direct ratio
with the growth of the population and the advancing progress of the
industry of the nation.
It would seem as if Providence had
destined the land to serve as a
large economical reservoir, to catch, to collect and preserve the
overflowing streams of wealth that are constantly escaping from the
great public industrial works that are always going on in communities
that are progressive and prosperous.
Besides the permanent improvements
that are made in the land
itself, and which increase its productiveness and value, there are
other industrial works not carried out on the land itself, but on its
surroundings and in its vicinity, and which enhance its value very
considerably. A new road is made for the accommodation of a district;
a new bridge is thrown across a river or a stream to make two
important localities accessible to each other; a new railway passes
close by and connects it with certain large and important centres of
industry; a new factory or a new mill is erected, or a new town is
built in the neighbourhood.
Industrial works like these add
very materially to the value of
all the land in their vicinity. It is a well-known fact that a new
railway has in several instances doubled the value of the land
through which it passed, in consequence of the increased facilities
it had afforded for the sale of its agricultural products.
In every state of society, which
is progressive and improving,
such industrial works are continually going on, and hence the value
of the land is rising also everywhere. But its value rises enormously
with the enlarged growth of the population of a nation, and with the
increased productiveness of its industry. Read the whole letter
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