Wilderness
Mason Gaffney: Economics in Support of
Environmentalism
Economics in support of environmentalism" - is that an oxymoron?
There are economists who put down environmentalists as unwelcome intruders
in social policy; there are environmentalists who file economists under "The
Great Satan." Some economists deserve it. I will show how these differences
arise, and how we may compose them.
I.
Worthy goals often conflict with each other A.
Corn vs. Barley B. New rules C. Unresolved conflicts D.
Danger of isolation through overkill
II.
The Dereliction of Economists A. Defining away land B.
Private property: from means to end C. Leapfrogging, floating value,
and compensation D. Siege mentalities
III.
Gifford Pinchot's Winning Formula A. Defining "Conservation" B.
Finding common ground
IV.
Pinchot on "Development"
V.
Urban Sprawl A. Development is not identical with Sprawl B.
Sprawl is not a quest for open space C. Sprawl is not the
product of free choice D. Looking for Mr. Goodbar E.
The public pays twice F. Proactive solutions
VI.
Dig deep
Karl Williams: Land
Value Taxation: The Overlooked But Vital Eco-Tax
I. Historical overview
II. The problem of sprawl
III. Affordable and efficient public transport
IV. Agricultural benefits
V. Financial concerns
VI. Conclusion: A greater perspective
Appendix: "Natural Capitalism" -- A Case Study in Blindness to
Land Value Taxation
While, at first sight, the prospect of
sprawling cities with lots of open space and possible greenery might be
appealing from an environmental perspective, a closer examination
should lead to a different conclusion. The inducement to collect
windfall profits (resulting from the failure of society to apply LVT)
encourages some landholders to withhold vacant land from the market and
forces new development to "leapfrog" this
land and move further out. Hence there is an unnecessary outlay
in roads, pipelines, power
supplies and other infrastructure which must service a greater area.
Commuting journeys, similarly, must now consume greater
resources.
Financially inducing land to be put to its optimal use is not "flogging" the
land, but is rather ensuring land is carefully used and that we only exploit
as much as we properly need. ...
The process of monitoring and assessing LVT itself leads to a
more
subtle, more environmentally-appreciative understanding of how best to
prioritise conflicting demands on land. Should a tract of land best be
used for green space for local residents, a light rail corridor or
employment providing development? LVT assessment inherently weighs the
pros and cons of a whole range of intangible costs and benefits for the
wider community now and into the future, and eliminates corrupting "NIMBY" motives and rent-seeking behaviour that influence existing
planning and development decisions. In response to the accusation that
LVT assessment is little more than a best guess at quantifying values
that are inherently unquantifiable, LVT advocates respond "Guilty as
charged!" However, they then add, "Our good guesses are based on solid,
objective methodology and are better than wild guesses, and even most
wild guesses are better than the decisions made today." Currently,
many natural resources are almost assigned a worthless value because,
not entering the mainstream marketplace, they usually have no $ tags
hanging off them - hence the existence of externalities whereby the
environment is plundered as near worthless. So
even wild guesses at the value of land and other natural resources are
better than the present situation, in which the "no guess" decision
effectively assigns natural and community resources a zero value.
One way or another, it is necessary to quantify and prioritise
the real
value (in a broad sense) of natural resources to better account for
economic externalities. In the end, only if a prospective resource user
is prepared to pay the full cost of utilising land and other natural
resources will resource extraction or development go ahead. The
intrinsic nature of the LVT assessment process considerably assists in
such cost estimation.
LVT's foundation of detailed
land use
assessments will also help expose the true costs of subsidies for
natural resources, which effectively amount to negative eco-taxes. Subsidies
come in all shapes and sizes, often barely visible, and urgently need to be
exposed and evaluated. Even some harmful subsidies
which are labeled land taxes have nothing to do with genuine LVT. Banks
gives the example of a Brazilian tax which was levied on unimproved
land but was reduced by up to 90% on land used for crops or pasture.
Forests were classified as unimproved land and were therefore taxed at
the full rate, which induced settlers to chop down the trees to reduce
their tax liability." read
the entire article
Henry George: The Savannah (excerpt
from Progress & Poverty, Book IV: Chapter 2: The Effect of
Increase of Population upon the Distribution of Wealth; also found in Significant
Paragraphs from Progress & Poverty, Chapter 3: Land Rent Grows as Community
Develops)
Here, let us imagine, is an unbounded savannah, stretching off
in unbroken sameness of grass and flower, tree and rill, till the traveler
tires of the monotony. Along comes the wagon of the first immigrant. Where
to settle he cannot tell — every acre seems as good as every other
acre. As to wood, as to water, as to fertility, as to situation, there
is absolutely no choice, and he is perplexed by the embarrassment of richness.
Tired out with the search for one place that is better than another, he
stops — somewhere, anywhere — and starts to make himself a
home. The soil is virgin and rich, game is abundant, the streams flash
with the finest trout. Nature is at her very best. He has what, were he
in a populous district, would make him rich; but he is very poor. To say
nothing of the mental craving, which would lead him to welcome the sorriest
stranger, he labors under all the material disadvantages of solitude. He
can get no temporary assistance for any work that requires a greater union
of strength than that afforded by his own family, or by such help as he
can permanently keep. Though he has cattle, he cannot often have fresh
meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill a bullock. He must be his own
blacksmith, wagonmaker, carpenter, and cobbler — in short, a "jack
of all trades and master of none." He cannot have his children schooled,
for, to do so, he must himself pay and maintain a teacher. Such things
as he cannot produce himself, he must buy in quantities and keep on hand,
or else go without, for he cannot be constantly leaving his work and making
a long journey to the verge of civilization; and when forced to do so,
the getting of a vial of medicine or the replacement of a broken auger
may cost him the labor of himself and horses for days. Under such circumstances,
though nature is prolific, the man is poor. It is an easy matter for him
to get enough to eat; but beyond this, his labor will suffice to satisfy
only the simplest wants in the rudest way.
Soon there comes another immigrant. Although every quarter section* of
the boundless plain is as good as every other quarter section, he is not
beset by any embarrassment as to where to settle. Though the land is the
same, there is one place that is clearly better for him than any other
place, and that is where there is already a settler and he may have a neighbor.
He settles by the side of the first comer, whose condition is at once greatly
improved, and to whom many things are now possible that were before impossible,
for two men may help each other to do things that one man could never do.
*The public prairie lands
of the United States were surveyed into sections of one mile square,
and a quarter section (160 acres) was the usual government allotment
to a settler under the Homestead Act.
Another immigrant comes, and, guided by the same attraction, settles where
there are already two. Another, and another, until around our first comer
there are a score of neighbors. Labor has now an effectiveness which, in
the solitary state, it could not approach. If heavy work is to be done, the
settlers have a logrolling, and together accomplish in a day what singly
would require years. When one kills a bullock, the others take part of it,
returning when they kill, and thus they have fresh meat all the time. Together
they hire a schoolmaster, and the children of each are taught for a fractional
part of what similar teaching would have cost the first settler. It becomes
a comparatively easy matter to send to the nearest town, for some one is
always going. But there is less need for such journeys. A blacksmith and
a wheelwright soon set up shops, and our settler can have his tools repaired
for a small part of the labor it formerly cost him. A store is opened and
he can get what he wants as he wants it; a postoffice, soon added, gives
him regular communication with the rest of the world. Then come a cobbler,
a carpenter, a harness maker, a doctor; and a little church soon arises.
Satisfactions become possible that in the solitary state were impossible.
There are gratifications for the social and the intellectual nature — for
that part of the man that rises above the animal. The power of sympathy,
the sense of companionship, the emulation of comparison and contrast, open
a wider, and fuller, and more varied life. In rejoicing, there are others
to rejoice; in sorrow, the mourners do not mourn alone. There are husking
bees, and apple parings, and quilting parties. Though the ballroom be unplastered
and the orchestra but a fiddle, the notes of the magician are yet in the
strain, and Cupid dances with the dancers. At the wedding, there are others
to admire and enjoy; in the house of death, there are watchers; by the open
grave, stands human sympathy to sustain the mourners. Occasionally, comes
a straggling lecturer to open up glimpses of the world of science, of literature,
or of art; in election times, come stump speakers, and the citizen rises
to a sense of dignity and power, as the cause of empires is tried before
him in the struggle of John Doe and Richard Roe for his support and vote.
And, by and by, comes the circus, talked of months before, and opening to
children whose horizon has been the prairie, all the realms of the imagination — princes
and princesses of fairy tale, mailclad crusaders and turbaned Moors, Cinderella's
fairy coach, and the giants of nursery lore; lions such as crouched before
Daniel, or in circling Roman amphitheater tore the saints of God; ostriches
who recall the sandy deserts; camels such as stood around when the wicked
brethren raised Joseph from the well and sold him into bondage; elephants
such as crossed the Alps with Hannibal, or felt the sword of the Maccabees;
and glorious music that thrills and builds in the chambers of the mind as
rose the sunny dome of Kubla Khan.
Go to our settler now, and say to him: "You have so many fruit trees which
you planted; so much fencing, such a well, a barn, a house — in short,
you have by your labor added so much value to this farm. Your land itself
is not quite so good. You have been cropping it, and by and by it will
need manure. I will give you the full value of all your improvements if
you will give it to me, and go again with your family beyond the verge
of settlement." He would laugh at you. His land yields no more wheat or
potatoes than before, but it does yield far more of all the necessaries
and comforts of life. His labor upon it will bring no heavier crops, and,
we will suppose, no more valuable crops, but it will bring far more of
all the other things for which men work. The presence of other settlers — the
increase of population — has added to the productiveness, in these
things, of labor bestowed upon it, and this added productiveness gives
it a superiority over land of equal natural quality where there are as
yet no settlers. If no land remains to be taken up, except such as is as
far removed from population as was our settler's land when he first went
upon it, the value or rent of this land will be measured by the whole of
this added capability. If, however, as we have supposed, there is a continuous
stretch of equal land, over which population is now spreading, it will
not be necessary for the new settler to go into the wilderness, as did
the first. He will settle just beyond the other settlers, and will get
the advantage of proximity to them. The value or rent of our settler's
land will thus depend on the advantage which it has, from being at the
center of population, over that on the verge. In the one case, the margin
of production will remain as before; in the other, the margin of production
will be raised.
Population still continues to increase, and as it increases so do the
economies which its increase permits, and which in effect add to the productiveness
of the land. Our first settler's land, being the center of population,
the store, the blacksmith's forge, the wheelwright's shop, are set up on
it, or on its margin, where soon arises a village, which rapidly grows
into a town, the center of exchanges for the people of the whole district.
With no greater agricultural productiveness than it had at first, this
land now begins to develop a productiveness of a higher kind. To labor
expended in raising corn, or wheat, or potatoes, it will yield no more
of those things than at first; but to labor expended in the subdivided
branches of production which require proximity to other producers, and,
especially, to labor expended in that final part of production, which consists
in distribution, it will yield much larger returns. The wheatgrower may
go further on, and find land on which his labor will produce as much wheat,
and nearly as much wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper,
the professional man, find that their labor expended here, at the center
of exchanges, will yield them much more than if expended even at a little
distance away from it; and this excess of productiveness for such purposes
the landowner can claim just as he could an excess in its wheat-producing
power. And so our settler is able to sell in building lots a few of his
acres for prices which it would not bring for wheatgrowing if its fertility
had been multiplied many times. With the proceeds, he builds himself a
fine house, and furnishes it handsomely. That is to say, to reduce the
transaction to its lowest terms, the people who wish to use the land build
and furnish the house for him, on condition that he will let them avail
themselves of the superior productiveness which the increase of population
has given the land.
Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater and greater utility
to the land, and more and more wealth to its owner. The town has grown
into a city — a St. Louis, a Chicago or a San Francisco — and
still it grows. Production is here carried on upon a great scale, with
the best machinery and the most favorable facilities; the division of labor
becomes extremely minute, wonderfully multiplying efficiency; exchanges
are of such volume and rapidity that they are made with the minimum of
friction and loss. Here is the heart, the brain, of the vast social organism
that has grown up from the germ of the first settlement; here has developed
one of the great ganglia of the human world. Hither run all roads, hither
set all currents, through all the vast regions round about. Here, if you
have anything to sell, is the market; here, if you have anything to buy,
is the largest and the choicest stock. Here intellectual activity is gathered
into a focus, and here springs that stimulus which is born of the collision
of mind with mind. Here are the great libraries, the storehouses and granaries
of knowledge, the learned professors, the famous specialists. Here are
museums and art galleries, collections of philosophical apparatus, and
all things rare, and valuable, and best of their kind. Here come great
actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in short,
is a center of human life, in all its varied manifestations.
So enormous are the advantages which this land now offers for the application
of labor, that instead of one man — with a span of horses scratching
over acres, you may count in places thousands of workers to the acre, working
tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other, five, six, seven and
eight stories from the ground, while underneath the surface of the earth
engines are throbbing with pulsations that exert the force of thousands
of horses.
All these advantages attach to the land; it is on this land and no
other that they can be utilized, for here is the center of population — the
focus of exchanges, the market place and workshop of the highest forms
of industry. The productive powers which density of population has
attached to this land are equivalent to the multiplication of its original
fertility by the hundredfold and the thousandfold. And rent, which measures
the difference between this added productiveness and that of the least
productive land in use, has increased accordingly. Our settler, or whoever
has succeeded to his right to the land, is now a millionaire. Like another Rip
Van Winkle, he may have lain down and slept; still he is rich — not
from anything he has done, but from the increase of population. There
are lots from which for every foot of frontage the owner may draw more
than an average mechanic can earn; there are lots that will sell for
more than would suffice to pave them with gold coin. In the principal
streets are towering buildings, of granite, marble, iron, and plate glass,
finished in the most expensive style, replete with every convenience.
Yet they are not worth as much as the land upon which they rest — the
same land, in nothing changed, which when our first settler came upon
it had no value at all.
That this is the way in which the increase of population powerfully acts
in increasing rent, whoever, in a progressive country, will look around
him, may see for himself. The process is going on under his eyes. The increasing
difference in the productiveness of the land in use, which causes an increasing
rise in rent, results not so much from the necessities of increased population
compelling the resort to inferior land, as from the increased productiveness
which increased population gives to the lands already in use. The most
valuable lands on the globe, the lands which yield the highest rent, are
not lands of surpassing natural fertility, but lands to which a surpassing
utility has been given by the increase of population.
The increase of productiveness or utility which increase of population
gives to certain lands, in the way to which I have been calling attention,
attaches, as it were, to the mere quality of extension. The valuable quality
of land that has become a center of population is its superficial capacity — it
makes no difference whether it is fertile, alluvial soil like that of Philadelphia,
rich bottom land like that of New Orleans; a filled-in marsh like that
of St. Petersburg, or a sandy waste like the greater part of San Francisco.
And where value seems to arise from superior natural qualities, such
as deep water and good anchorage, rich deposits of coal and iron, or
heavy timber, observation also shows that these superior qualities are
brought out, rendered tangible, by population. The coal and iron
fields of Pennsylvania, that today [1879] are worth enormous sums, were
fifty years ago valueless. What is the efficient cause of the difference?
Simply the difference in population. The coal and iron beds of Wyoming
and Montana, which today are valueless, will, in fifty years from now,
be worth millions on millions, simply because, in the meantime, population
will have greatly increased.
It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If
the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch
and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And
very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the
hatches are opened are permitted to say, "This is mine!" ... read
the whole chapter of Significant Paragraphs
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