1
2
3
Wealth and Want | |||||||
... because democracy alone is not enough to produce widely shared prosperity. | |||||||
Home | Essential Documents | Themes | All Documents | Authors | Glossary | Links | Contact Us |
Illusion
of Freedom
Mark Twain Archimedes I
know of a mechanical
force more powerful than anything the vaunting engineer of Syracuse
ever dreamed of. It is the force of land monopoly; it is a screw and
lever all in one; it will screw the last penny out of a man's pocket,
and bend everything on earth to its own despotic will. Give me
the
private ownership of all the land, and will I move the earth? No; but
I will do more. I will undertake to
make slaves of all the human
beings on the face of it. Not chattel slaves exactly, but slaves
nevertheless. What an idiot I would be to make chattel slaves of
them. I would have to find them salts and senna when they were sick,
and whip them to work when they were lazy.
No, it is not good enough. Under the system I propose the fools would imagine they were all free. I would get a maximum of results, and have no responsibility whatever. They would cultivate the soil; they would dive into the bowels of the earth for its hidden treasures; they would build cities and construct railways and telegraphs; their ships would navigate the ocean; they would work and work, and invent and contrive; their warehouses would be full, their markets glutted, and: That everything they made would belong to me. It would be this way, you see: As
I owned all the land, they would
of course, have to pay me rent. They could not reasonably expect me
to allow them the use of the land for nothing. I am not a hard man,
and in fixing the rent I would be very liberal with them. I would
allow them, in fact, to fix it themselves. What could be fairer? Here
is a piece of land, let us say, it might be a farm, it might be a
building site, or it might be something else - if there was only one
man who wanted it, of course he would not offer me much, but if the
land be really worth anything such a circumstance is not likely to
happen. On the contrary, there would be a number who would want it,
and they would go on bidding and bidding one against the other, in
order to get it. I should accept the highest offer - what could be
fairer? Every increase of population, extension of trade, every
advance in the arts and sciences would, as we all know, increase the
value of land, and the competition that would naturally arise would
continue to force rents upward, so much so, that in many cases the
tenants would have little or nothing left for themselves. ... Read
the whole piece |
|
to
email this page to a friend: right click, choose "send"
|
||||||
Wealth
and Want
|
www.wealthandwant.com
|
|||||
... because democracy
alone hasn't yet led to a society in which all can
prosper
|