Finders keepers, losers weepers?
My ancestors were pioneers, therefore I ...
Does that fact the one was the first to claim a piece of
land as one's own, or bought it from someone in a direct chain of people
who bought it from whomever first claimed that piece of land as one's own,
mean that one is entitled to keep that piece of land forever as one's own,
to will it to one's selected heirs, with no taxes or liens against it,
forever? Many people's immediate reaction would be "of course!"
Georgists
are among those who see it somewhat differently. Land is different from
that
which
man creates
with his own
work. Land was
here before man, and will be here after we're gone, and we are all directly
and completely dependent on having access to land in order to support
ourselves and our families. This necessarily means that all of us who claim
a piece
of land as our own are entitled to secure title, but that in return for
that secure title, must pay to the community the economic value of
the site, every year or every month.
I'm not suggesting that those who created the improvements
on land ought not to be compensated for their value. Those improvements
are legitimately private property. But the economic value of land is different.
It is rightly our common treasure.
Henry George: The Wages of
Labor
Thus Cain and Abel, were there only two
men on earth, might by agreement divide the earth between them. Under this
compact each might claim exclusive right to his share as against the other.
But neither could rightfully continue such claim against the next child born.
For since no one comes into the world without God's permission, his presence
attests his equal right to the use of God’s bounty. For them to refuse
him any use of the earth which they had divided between them would therefore
be for them to commit murder. And for them to refuse him any use of the earth,
unless by laboring for them or by giving them part of the products of his
labor he bought It of them, would be for them to commit theft. ... read the whole article
The value of land, as we have seen, is the price of monopoly.
It is not the absolute, but the relative, capability of land
that determines its value. No matter what may be its intrinsic
qualities land that is no better than other land which may be
had for the using can have no value. And the value of land always
measures the difference between it and the best land that may
be had for the using. Thus, the value of land expresses in exact
and tangible form the right of the community in land held by
an individual; and rent expresses the exact amount which the
individual should pay to the community to satisfy the equal rights
of all other members of the community.
Thus, if we concede to priority of possession the undisturbed
use of land, taxing rent into the public treasury for the benefit
of the community, we reconcile the fixity of tenure which is
necessary for improvement with a full and complete recognition
of the equal rights of all to the use of land.
Consider what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from
land; it is due to nothing that the land owners have done. It
represents a value created by the whole community.
Let the land holders have, if you please, all that the
possession of the land would give them in the absence of the
rest of the
community. But rent, the creation of the whole community, necessarily
belongs to the whole community. ... read
the whole chapter
Henry George: Coming Increase of Social Pressure (Chapter 3 of Social Problems, 1883)
[03] This westward expansion of population has gone on steadily since the
first settlement of the Eastern shore. It has been the great distinguishing
feature in the conditions of our people. Without its possibility we would have
been in nothing what we are. Our higher standard of wages and of comfort and
of average intelligence, our superior self-reliance, energy, inventiveness,
adaptability and assimilative power, spring as directly from this possibility
of expansion as does our unprecedented growth. All that we are proud of in
national life and national character comes primarily from our background of
unused land. We are but transplanted Europeans, and, for that matter mostly
of the "inferior classes." It is not usually those whose position
is comfortable and whose prospects are bright who emigrate; it is those who
are pinched and dissatisfied, those to whom no prospect seems open. There are
heralds' colleges in Europe that drive a good business in providing a certain
class of Americans with pedigrees and coats of arms; but it is probably well
for this sort of self-esteem that the majority of us cannot truly trace our
ancestry very far. We had some Pilgrim Fathers, it is true; likewise some Quaker
fathers, and other sorts of fathers; yet the majority even of the early settlers
did not come to America for "freedom to worship God," but because
they were poor, dissatisfied, unsuccessful, or recklessly adventurous — many
because they were evicted, many to escape imprisonment, many because they were
kidnapped, many as self-sold bondsmen, as indentured apprentices, or mercenary
soldiers. It is the virtue of new soil, the freedom of opportunity given by
the possibility of expansion, that has here transmuted into wholesome human
growth material that, had it remained in Europe, might have been degraded and
dangerous, just as in Australia the same conditions have made respected and
self-respecting citizens out of the descendants of convicts, and even out of
convicts themselves.
...
read the entire essay
Henry George: The Crime
of Poverty (1885 speech)
... You may say that those
Scotch people are very absurd people, but
they are not a whit more so than we are. I read only a little while
ago of some Long Island fishermen who had been paying as rent for the
privilege of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid it
because they believed that James II, a dead man centuries ago, a man
who never put his foot in America, a king who was kicked off the
English throne, had said they had to pay it, and they got up a
committee, went to the county town and searched the records. They
could not find anything in the records to show that James II had ever
ordered that they should give any of their fish to anybody, and so
they refused to pay any longer. But if they had found that James II
had really said they should they would have gone on paying. Can
anything be more absurd?
There is a square in New
York—Stuyvesant Square that is
locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on the long summer
evenings. Why is it locked up? Why are the children not allowed to
play there? Why because old Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't
know how many years ago, so willed it. Now can anything be more
absurd?*
*After a popular agitation, the park
authorities since decided to have the gates open later than six
o'clock.
Yet that is not any more absurd
than our land titles. From whom
do they come? Dead man after dead man. Suppose you get on the
cars here going to Council Bluffs or Chicago. You find a passenger
with his baggage strewn over the seats. You say: "Will you give
me a seat, if you please, sir?" He replies: "No; I bought
this seat." "Bought this seat? From whom did you buy
it?" I bought it from the man who got out at the last
station," That is the way we manage this earth of ours. ... read the whole speech
Henry George: Thou Shalt Not
Steal (1887 speech)
Crowded! Is it any wonder that
people are crowded together as they are in this city, when we see other
people taking up far more land than they can by any possibility use,
and holding it for enormous prices? Why, what would have happened if,
when these doors were opened, the first people who came in had claimed
all the seats around them, and demanded a price of others who
afterwards came in by the same equal right? Yet that is precisely the
way we are treating this continent. ...
"Thou shalt not steal"; that is the law of God. What does it
mean? Well, it does not merely mean that you shall not pick pockets! It
does not merely mean that you shall not commit burglary or highway
robbery! There are other forms of stealing which it prohibits as well.
It certainly means (if it has any meaning) that we shall not take that
to which we are not entitled, to the detriment of others.
Now, here is a desert. Here is a caravan going along over the
desert. Here is a gang of robbers. They say: "Look! There is a rich
caravan; let us go and rob it, kill the men if necessary, take their
goods from them, their camels and horses, and walk off." But one of the
robbers says:
"Oh, no; that is dangerous; besides, that would be stealing! Let us, instead of doing that, go ahead to
where there is a spring, the only spring at which this caravan can get
water in this desert. Let us put a wall around it and call it ours, and
when they come up we won’t let them have any water until they have
given us all the goods they have." That would be more
gentlemanly, more polite, and more respectable; but would it not be
theft all the same? And is it not theft of the same kind when people go
ahead in advance of population and get land they have no use whatever
for, and then, as people come into the world and population increases,
will not let this increasing population use the land until they pay an
exorbitant price?
That is the sort of theft on which our first families are
founded. Do that under the false code of morality which exists here
today and people will praise your forethought and your enterprise, and
will say you have made money because you are a very superior person,
and that all can make money if they will only work and be industrious!
But is it not as clearly a violation of the command: "Thou shalt not
steal," as taking the money out of a person’s pocket? ... read
the whole article
Henry George: Justice
the Object -- Taxation the Means (1890)
Suppose that in answer to the
prayers that ascend for the relief of
poverty, the Almighty were to rain down wealth from heaven, or cause
it to spout tip from the bowels of the earth. Who, under our present
system, would own it? The landowner. There would be no benefit to
labour. Consider, conceive any kind of a world your imagination will
permit. Conceive of heaven itself, which, from the very necessities
of our minds, we cannot otherwise think of than as having an
expansion of space — what would be the result in heaven itself, if
the people who should first get to heaven were to parcel it out in
big tracts among themselves? ... Read the entire article
Henry George: The
Single Tax: What It Is and Why We Urge It (1890)
From the Single Tax we may expect
these
advantages:
1. It would dispense with a
whole army of tax gatherers and other officials which present taxes
require, and place in the treasury a much larger portion of what is
taken from people, while by making government simpler and cheaper, it
would tend to make it purer. It would
get rid of taxes which necessarily promote fraud, perjury, bribery, and
corruption, which lead men into temptation, and which tax what the
nation can least afford to spare--honesty and conscience. Since
land lies out-of-doors and cannot be removed, and its value is the most
readily ascertained of all values, the tax to which we would resort can
be collected with the minimum of cost and the least strain on public
morals. ...
... These are the fundamental reasons for which we urge
the Single
Tax, believing it to be the greatest and most fundamental of all
reforms. We do not think it will
change human nature. That, man can
never do; but it will bring about conditions in which human nature
can develop what is best, instead of, as now in so many cases, what
is worst.
- It will permit such an enormous production as we can now
hardly conceive.
- It will secure an
equitable distribution.
- It will
solve the labor problem and dispel the darkening clouds which are now
gathering over the horizon of our civilization.
- It will make
undeserved poverty an unknown thing.
- It will check the
soul-destroying greed of gain.
- It will enable men to be at least as
honest, as true, as considerate, and as high-minded as they would
like to be.
- It will remove temptation
to lying, false, swearing,
bribery, and law breaking.
- It will open to all, even the poorest, the
comforts and refinements and opportunities of an advancing
civilization.
It will thus, so we reverently
believe, clear the way
for the coming of that kingdom of right and justice, and consequently
of abundance and peace and happiness, for which the Master told His
disciples to pray and work. It is not that it is a promising
invention or cunning device that we look for the Single Tax to do all
this; but it is because it involves a conforming of the most
important and fundamental adjustments of society to the supreme law
of justice, because it involves the basing of the most important of
our laws on the principle that we should do to others as we would be
done by.
The readers of this article, I may
fairly presume, believe, as I
believe, that there is a world for us beyond this. The limit of space
has prevented me from putting before them more than some hints for
thought. Let me in conclusion present two more:
1.
What would be the result in heaven itself if those who get there first
instituted private property in the surface of heaven, and parceled it
out in absolute ownership among themselves, as we parcel out the
surface of the earth?
2. Since we cannot conceive of a heaven in which the equal
rights of God's children to their Father's bounty is denied, as we now
deny them on this earth, what is the duty enjoined on Christians by the
daily prayer: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is
in heaven?" read the whole article
Henry George: The
Land Question (1881)
IMAGINE an island girt with ocean; imagine a little world swimming in space.
Put on it, in imagination, human beings. Let them divide the land, share
and share alike, as individual property. At first, while population is sparse
and industrial processes rude and primitive, this will work well enough.
Turn away the eyes of the mind for a moment, let time pass, and look again.
Some families will have died out, some have greatly multiplied; on the whole,
population will have largely increased, and even supposing there have been
no important inventions or improvements in the productive arts, the increase
in population, by causing the division of labor, will have made industry
more complex. During this time some of these people will have been careless,
generous, improvident; some will have been thrifty and grasping. Some of
them will have devoted much of their powers to thinking of how they themselves
and the things they see around them came to be, to inquiries and speculations
as to what there is in the universe beyond their little island or their little
world, to making poems, painting pictures, or writing books; to noting the
differences in rocks and trees and shrubs and grasses; to classifying beasts
and birds and fishes and insects – to the doing, in short, of all the
many things which add so largely to the sum of human knowledge and human
happiness, without much or any gain of wealth to the doer. Others again will
have devoted all their energies to the extending of their possessions. What,
then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated as private property?
Clearly, we shall see that the primitive equality has given way to inequality.
Some will have very much more than one of the original shares into which
the land was divided; very many will have no land at all. Suppose that, in
all things save this, our little island or our little world is Utopia – that
there are no wars or robberies; that the government is absolutely pure and
taxes nominal; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a currency; imagine,
if you can imagine such a world or island, that interest is utterly abolished;
yet inequality in the ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual
slavery.
For the people we have supposed are human beings – that is to say,
in their physical natures at least, they are animals who can live only on
land and by the aid of the products of land. They may make machines which
will enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the air, but to
build and equip these machines they must have land and the products of land,
and must constantly come back to land. Therefore those who own the land must
be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come to own all the land,
he is their absolute master even to life or death. If they can live on the
land only on his terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without
land they cannot live. They are his absolute slaves, and so long as his ownership
is acknowledged, if they want to live, they must do in everything as he wills.
If, however, the concentration of landownership has not gone so far as to
make one or a very few men the owners of all the land – if there are
still so many landowners that there is competition between them as well as
between those who have only their labor – then the terms on which these
non-landholders can live will seem more like free contract. But it will not
be free contract. Land can yield no wealth without the application of labor;
labor can produce no wealth without land. These are the two equally necessary
factors of production. Yet, to say that they are equally necessary factors
of production is not to say that, in the making of contracts as to how the
results of production are divided, the possessors of these two meet on equal
terms. For the nature of these two factors
is very different. Land is a natural element; the human being must have his
stomach filled every few hours. Land can exist without labor, but labor cannot
exist without land. If I own a piece of land, I can let it lie idle
for a year or for years, and it will eat nothing. But the laborer must eat every day, and his family
must eat. And so, in the making of terms between them, the landowner has
an immense advantage over the laborer. It is on the side of the laborer that
the intense pressure of competition comes, for in his case it is competition
urged by hunger. And, further than this: As population increases,
as the competition for the use of land becomes more and more intense, so
are the owners of land enabled to get for the use of their land a larger
and larger part of the wealth which labor exerted upon it produces. That
is to say, the value of land steadily rises. Now, this steady rise in the
value of land brings about a confident expectation of future increase of
value, which produces among landowners all the effects of a combination to
hold for higher prices. Thus there is a constant tendency to force mere laborers
to take less and less or to give more and more (put it which way you please,
it amounts to the same thing) of the products of their work for the opportunity
to work. And thus, in the very nature of things, we should see on our little
island or our little world that, after a time had passed, some of the people
would be able to take and enjoy a superabundance of all the fruits of labor
without doing any labor at all, while others would be forced to work the
livelong day for a pitiful living.
But let us introduce another element into the supposition. Let us suppose
great discoveries and inventions – such as the steam-engine, the power-loom,
the Bessemer process, the reaping-machine, and the thousand and one labor-saving
devices that are such a marked feature of our era. What would be the result?
Manifestly, the effect of all such discoveries and inventions is to increase
the power of labor in producing wealth – to enable the same amount
of wealth to be produced by less labor, or a greater amount with the same
labor. But none of them lessen, or can lessen the necessity for land. Until
we can discover some way of making something out of nothing – and that
is so far beyond our powers as to be absolutely unthinkable – there
is no possible discovery or invention which can lessen the dependence of
labor upon land. And, this being the case, the effect of these labor-saving
devices, land being the private property of some, would simply be to increase
the proportion of the wealth produced that landowners could demand for the
use of their land. The ultimate effect of these discoveries and inventions
would be not to benefit the laborer, but to make him more dependent.
And, since we are imagining conditions, imagine laborsaving inventions to
go to the farthest imaginable point, that is to say, to perfection. What
then? Why then, the necessity for labor being done away with, all the wealth
that the land could produce would go entire to the landowners. None of it
whatever could be claimed by any one else. For the laborers there would be
no use at all. If they continued to exist, it would be merely as paupers
on the bounty of the landowners! ... read the whole 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
Henry George: The
Condition of Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response
to Rerum Novarum (1891)
Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of the inclusive
term “property” or “private” property, of which
in morals nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your meaning,
if we take isolated sentences, in many places ambiguous. But reading
it as a whole, there can be no doubt of your intention that private
property in land shall be understood when you speak merely of private
property. With this interpretation, I find that the reasons you urge
for private property in land are eight. Let us consider them in order
of presentation. You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is rightful property.
(RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of
reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.) ...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the use of land.
(RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself.
(RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the common opinion
of mankind, and has conduced to peace and tranquillity, and that it
is sanctioned by Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and that private
property in land is necessary to enable them to do so. (RN, paragraphs
14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates industry, increases
wealth, and attaches men to the soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph
51.) ...
8. That the right to possess private property in land is from nature,
not from man; that the state has no right to abolish it, and that to
take the value of landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel
to the private owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from man’s gift of
reason. (6-7.)
In the second place your Holiness argues that man possessing reason
and forethought may not only acquire ownership of the fruits of the
earth, but also of the earth itself, so that out of its products he
may make provision for the future.
Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed the distinguishing
attribute of man; that which raises him above the brute, and shows,
as the Scriptures declare, that he is created in the likeness of God.
And this gift of reason does, as your Holiness points out, involve
the need and right of private property in whatever is produced by the
exertion of reason and its attendant forethought, as well as in what
is produced by physical labor. In truth, these elements of man’s
production are inseparable, and labor involves the use of reason. It
is by his reason that man differs from the animals in being a producer,
and in this sense a maker. Of themselves his physical powers are slight,
forming as it were but the connection by which the mind takes hold
of material things, so as to utilize to its will the matter and forces
of nature. It is mind, the intelligent reason, that is the prime mover
in labor, the essential agent in production.
The right of private ownership does therefore indisputably attach
to things provided by man’s reason and forethought. But it cannot
attach to things provided by the reason and forethought of God!
To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling through the desert
as the Israelites traveled from Egypt. Such of them as had the forethought
to provide themselves with vessels of water would acquire a just right
of property in the water so carried, and in the thirst of the waterless
desert those who had neglected to provide themselves, though they might
ask water from the provident in charity, could not demand it in right.
For while water itself is of the providence of God, the presence of
this water in such vessels, at such place, results from the providence
of the men who carried it. Thus they have to it an exclusive right.
But suppose others use their forethought in pushing ahead and appropriating
the springs, refusing when their fellows come up to let them drink
of the water save as they buy it of them. Would such forethought give
any right?
Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying water where it
is needed, but the forethought of seizing springs, that you seek to
defend in defending the private ownership of land!
Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth while to meet those
who say that if private property in land be not just, then private
property in the products of labor is not just, as the material of these
products is taken from land. It will be seen on consideration that
all of man’s production is analogous to such transportation of
water as we have supposed. In growing grain, or smelting metals, or
building houses, or weaving cloth, or doing any of the things that
constitute producing, all that man does is to change in place or form
preexisting matter. As a producer man is merely a changer, not a creator;
God alone creates. And since the changes in which man’s production
consists inhere in matter so long as they persist, the right of private
ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and gives the right
of ownership in that natural material in which the labor of production
is embodied. Thus water, which in its original form and place is the
common gift of God to all men, when drawn from its natural reservoir
and brought into the desert, passes rightfully into the ownership of
the individual who by changing its place has produced it there.
But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right of temporary
possession. For though man may take material from the storehouse of
nature and change it in place or form to suit his desires, yet from
the moment he takes it, it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood
decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, while of
more perishable products, some will last for only a few months, others
for only a few days, and some disappear immediately on use. Though,
so far as we can see, matter is eternal and force forever persists;
though we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote that floats
in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that stirs a leaf, yet in the
ceaseless flux of nature, man’s work of moving and combining
constantly passes away. Thus the recognition of the ownership of what
natural material is embodied in the products of man never constitutes
more than temporary possession — never interferes with the reservoir
provided for all. As taking water from one place and carrying it to
another place by no means lessens the store of water, since whether
it is drunk or spilled or left to evaporate, it must return again to
the natural reservoirs — so is it with all things on which man
in production can lay the impress of his labor.
Hence, when you say that man’s reason puts it within his right
to have in stable and permanent possession not only things that perish
in the using, but also those that remain for use in the future, you
are right in so far as you may include such things as buildings, which
with repair will last for generations, with such things as food or
fire-wood, which are destroyed in the use. But when you infer that
man can have private ownership in those permanent things of nature
that are the reservoirs from which all must draw, you are clearly wrong.
Man may indeed hold in private ownership the fruits of the earth produced
by his labor, since they lose in time the impress of that labor, and
pass again into the natural reservoirs from which they were taken,
and thus the ownership of them by one works no injury to others. But
he cannot so own the earth itself, for that is the reservoir from which
must constantly be drawn not only the material with which alone men
can produce, but even their very bodies.
The conclusive reason why man cannot claim ownership in the earth
itself as he can in the fruits that he by labor brings forth from it,
is in the facts stated by you in the very next paragraph (7), when
you truly say:
Man’s needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied today, they
demand new supplies tomorrow. Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse
that shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this
he finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the earth.
By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to all men be made the
private property of some men, from which they may debar all other men?
Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness, “Nature, therefore,
owes to man a storehouse that shall never fail.” By Nature you
mean God. Thus your thought, that in creating us, God himself has incurred
an obligation to provide us with a storehouse that shall never fail,
is the same as is thus expressed and carried to its irresistible conclusion
by the Bishop of Meath:
God was perfectly free in the act by which He created us; but having
created us he bound himself by that act to provide us with the
means necessary for our subsistence. The land is the only source
of this
kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every country is
the common property of the people of that country, because its real
owner,
the Creator who made it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift
to them. “Terram autem dedit filiis hominum.” Now, as
every individual in that country is a creature and child of God,
and as all
his creatures are equal in his sight, any settlement of the land
of a country that would exclude the humblest man in that country
from
his share of the common inheritance would be not only an injustice
and a wrong to that man, but, moreover, be AN IMPIOUS RESISTANCE
TO THE BENEVOLENT INTENTIONS OF HIS CREATOR.
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land
itself. (9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended on land gives a
right to ownership of the land, and that the improvement of land creates
benefits indistinguishable and inseparable from the land itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify the ownership of land
by those who expend industry on it. It would not justify private property
in land as it exists. On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic
no-rent declaration that would take land from those who now legally
own it, the landlords, and turn it over to the tenants and laborers.
And if it also be that improvements cannot be distinguished and separated
from the land itself, how could the landlords claim consideration even
for improvements they had made?
But your Holiness cannot mean what your words imply. What you really
mean, I take it, is that the original justification and title of landownership
is in the expenditure of labor on it. But neither can this justify
private property in land as it exists. For is it not all but universally
true that existing land titles do not come from use, but from force
or fraud?
Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part of the land of Italy
is held by those who so far from ever having expended industry on it
have been mere appropriators of the industry of those who have? Is
this not also true of Great Britain and of other countries? Even in
the United States, where the forces of concentration have not yet had
time fully to operate and there has been some attempt to give land
to users, it is probably true today that the greater part of the land
is held by those who neither use it nor propose to use it themselves,
but merely hold it to compel others to pay them for permission to use
it.
And if industry give ownership to land what are the limits of this
ownership? If a man may acquire the ownership of several square miles
of land by grazing sheep on it, does this give to him and his heirs
the ownership of the same land when it is found to contain rich mines,
or when by the growth of population and the progress of society it
is needed for farming, for gardening, for the close occupation of a
great city? Is it on the rights given by the industry of those who
first used it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that you would found
the title to the land now covered by the city of New York and having
a value of thousands of millions of dollars?
But your contention is not valid. Industry expended on land gives
ownership in the fruits of that industry, but not in the land itself,
just as industry expended on the ocean would give a right of ownership
to the fish taken by it, but not a right of ownership in the ocean.
Nor yet is it true that private ownership of land is necessary to secure
the fruits of labor on land; nor does the improvement of land create
benefits indistinguishable and inseparable from the land itself. That
secure possession is necessary to the use and improvement of land I
have already explained, but that ownership is not necessary is shown
by the fact that in all civilized countries land owned by one person
is cultivated and improved by other persons. Most of the cultivated
land in the British Islands, as in Italy and other countries, is cultivated
not by owners but by tenants. And so the costliest buildings are erected
by those who are not owners of the land, but who have from the owner
a mere right of possession for a time on condition of certain payments.
Nearly the whole of London has been built in this way, and in New York,
Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as in
continental cities, the owners of many of the largest edifices will
be found to be different persons from the owners of the ground. So
far from the value of improvements being inseparable from the value
of land, it is in individual transactions constantly separated. For
instance, one-half of the land on which the immense Grand Pacific Hotel
in Chicago stands was recently separately sold, and in Ceylon it is
a not infrequent occurrence for one person to own a fruit-tree and
another to own the ground in which it is implanted.
There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether it be clearing,
plowing, manuring, cultivating, the digging of cellars, the opening
of wells or the building of houses, that so long as its usefulness
continues does not have a value clearly distinguishable from the value
of the land. For land having such improvements will always sell or
rent for more than similar land without them.
If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what the land irrespective
of improvement would bring, it will take the benefits of mere ownership,
but will leave the full benefits of use and improvement, which the
prevailing system does not do. And since the holder, who would still
in form continue to be the owner, could at any time give or sell both
possession and improvements, subject to future assessment by the state
on the value of the land alone, he will be perfectly free to retain
or dispose of the full amount of property that the exertion of his
labor or the investment of his capital has attached to or stored up
in the land.
Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is impossible in any other
way to secure, what you properly say is just and right — ”that
the results of labor should belong to him who has labored.” But
private property in land — to allow the holder without adequate
payment to the state to take for himself the benefit of the value that
attaches to land with social growth and improvement — does take
the results of labor from him who has labored, does turn over the fruits
of one man’s labor to be enjoyed by another. For labor, as the
active factor, is the producer of all wealth. Mere ownership produces
nothing. A man might own a world, but so sure is the decree that “by
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” that without labor
he could not get a meal or provide himself a garment. Hence, when the
owners of land, by virtue of their ownership and without laboring themselves,
get the products of labor in abundance, these things must come from
the labor of others, must be the fruits of others’ sweat, taken
from those who have a right to them and enjoyed by those who have no
right to them.
The only utility of private ownership of land as distinguished from
possession is the evil utility of giving to the owner products of labor
he does not earn. For until land will yield to its owner some return
beyond that of the labor and capital he expends on it — that
is to say, until by sale or rental he can without expenditure of labor
obtain from it products of labor, ownership amounts to no more than
security of possession, and has no value. Its importance and value
begin only when, either in the present or prospectively, it will yield
a revenue — that is to say, will enable the owner as owner to
obtain products of labor without exertion on his part, and thus to
enjoy the results of others’ labor.
What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery involved in private
property in land is that in the most striking cases the robbery is
not of individuals, but of the community. For, as I have before explained,
it is impossible for rent in the economic sense — that value
which attaches to land by reason of social growth and improvement — to
go to the user. It can go only to the owner or to the community. Thus
those who pay enormous rents for the use of land in such centers as
London or New York are not individually injured. Individually they
get a return for what they pay, and must feel that they have no better
right to the use of such peculiarly advantageous localities without
paying for it than have thousands of others. And so, not thinking or
not caring for the interests of the community, they make no objection
to the system.
It recently came to light in New York that a man having no title
whatever had been for years collecting rents on a piece of land
that the growth
of the city had made very valuable. Those who paid these rents
had never stopped to ask whether he had any right to them. They
felt that
they had no right to land that so many others would like to have,
without paying for it, and did not think of, or did not care for,
the rights
of all.... read the whole letter
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from
George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
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. There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in land.
There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive
ownership in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant away
their equal rights, they could not grant away the right of those
who follow them. For what are we but tenants for a day? Have we made
the earth that we should determine the rights of those who after
us shall tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who created the earth
for man and man for the earth, has entailed it upon all the generations
of the children of men by a decree written upon the constitution
of all things — a decree which no human action can bar and
no prescription determine, Let the parchments be ever so many, or
possession ever so long, natural justice can recognize no right in
one man to the possession and enjoyment of land that is not equally
the right of all his fellows. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
HAS the first comer at a banquet the right to turn back all the
chairs and claim that none of the other guests shall partake of
the food provided, except as they make terms with him? Does the
first man who presents a ticket at the door of a theater and passes
in, acquire by his priority the right to shut the doors and have
the performance go on for him alone? Does the first passenger who
enters a railroad car obtain the right to scatter his baggage over
all the seats and compel the passengers who come in after him to
stand up?
The cases are perfectly analogous. We arrive and we depart, guests at a banquet
continually spread, spectators and participants in an entertainment where there
is room for all who come; passengers from station to station, on an orb that
whirls through space — our rights to take and possess cannot be exclusive;
they must be bounded everywhere by the equal rights of others. Just as the
passenger in a railroad car may spread himself and his baggage over as many
seats as he pleases, until other passengers come in, so may a settler take
and use as much land as he chooses, until it is needed by others — a
fact which is shown by the land acquiring a value — when his right must
be curtailed by the equal rights of the others, and no priority of appropriation
can give a right which will bar these equal rights of others. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property in land
THE general subjection of the many to the few, which we meet with
wherever society has reached a certain development, has resulted
from the appropriation of land as individual property. It is the
ownership of the soil that everywhere gives the ownership of the
men that live upon it. It is slavery of this kind to which the
enduring pyramids and the colossal monuments of Egypt yet bear
witness, and of the institution of which we have, perhaps, a vague
tradition in the biblical story of the famine during which the
Pharaoh purchased up the lands of the people. It was slavery of
this kind to which, in the twilight of history, the conquerors
of Greece reduced the original inhabitants of that peninsula, transforming
them into helots by making them pay rent for their lands. It was
the growth of the latifundia,
or great landed estates, which transmuted the population of ancient
Italy from a race of hardy husbandmen, whose robust virtues conquered
the world, into a race of cringing bondsmen; it was the appropriation
of the land as the absolute property of their chieftains which
gradually turned the descendants of free and equal Gallic, Teutonic
and Hunnish warriors into colonii and villains, and which changed
the independent burghers of Sclavonic village communities into
the boors of Russia and the serfs of Poland; which instituted the
feudalism of China and Japan, as well as that of Europe, and which
made the High Chiefs of Polynesia the all but absolute masters
of their fellows. How it came to pass that the Aryan shepherds
and warriors who, as comparative philology tells us, descended
from the common birth-place of the Indo-Germanic race into the
lowlands of India, were turned into the suppliant and cringing
Hindoo, the Sanscrit verse which I have before quoted gives us
a hint. The white parasols and the elephants mad with pride of
the Indian Rajah are the flowers of grants of land. — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy: Injustice of private property
in land
TRACE to their root the causes that are thus producing want in the midst of plenty,
ignorance in the midst of intelligence, aristocracy in democracy, weakness in
strength — that are giving to our civilization a one-sided and unstable
development, and you will find it something which this Hebrew statesman three
thousand years ago perceived and guarded against. Moses saw that the real cause
of the enslavement of the masses of Egypt was, what has everywhere produced enslavement,
the possession by a class of the land upon which, and from which, the whole people
must live. He saw that to permit in land the same unqualified private ownership
that by natural right attaches to the things produced by labor, would be inevitably
to separate the people into the very rich and the very poor, inevitably to enslave
labor — to make the few the masters of. the many, no matter what the political
forms, to bring vice and degradation, no matter what the religion.
And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who legislates not for the
need of a day, but for all the future, he sought, in ways suited to his times
and conditions, to guard against this error. — Moses
THE women who by the thousands are bending over their needles or sewing machines,
thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours a day; these widows straining and striving
to bring up the little ones deprived of their natural bread-winner; the children
that are growing up in squalor and wretchedness, under-clothed, under-fed, under-educated,
even in this city without any place to play — growing up under conditions
in which only a miracle can keep them pure — under conditions which condemn
them in advance to the penitentiary or the brothel — they suffer, they
die, because we permit them to be
robbed, robbed of their birthright, robbed by a system which disinherits the
vast majority of the children that come into the world. There is enough and to
spare for them. Had they the equal rights in the estate which their Creator has
given them, there would be no young girls forced to unwomanly toil to eke out
a mere existence, no widows finding it such a bitter, bitter struggle to put
bread in the mouths of their little children; no such misery and squalor as we
may see here in the greatest of American cities; misery and squalor that are
deepest in the largest and richest centers of our civilization today. — Thou
Shalt Not Steal
... go to "Gems from George"
Louis Post: Outlines of Louis
F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)
Note 56: The ownership of the land is essentially
the ownership of the men who must use it.
"Let the circumstances be what they may — the
ownership of land will always give the ownership of men to
a degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial) for
the use of land. Place one hundred men on an island from which
there is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the
absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner
of the soil of the island, will make no difference either to
him or to them." — Progress and Poverty, book vii,
ch. ii.
Let us imagine a shipwrecked sailor who, after
battling with the waves, touches land upon an uninhabited but
fertile island. Though hungry and naked and shelterless, he
soon has food and clothing and a house — all of them
rude, to be sure, but comfortable. How does he get them? By
applying his Labor to the Land of the island. In a little while
he lives as comfortably as an isolated man can.
Now let another shipwrecked sailor be washed
ashore. As he is about to step out of the water the first man
accosts him:
"Hello, there! If you want to come ashore
you must agree to be my slave."
The second replies: "I can't. I come from
the United States, where they don't believe in slavery."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't know you
came from the United States. I had no intention of hurting
your feelings, you know. But say, they believe in owning land
in the United States, don't they?"
"Yes."
"Very well; you just agree that this island
is mine, and you may come ashore a free man."
"But how does the island happen to be yours?
Did you make it?"
"No, I didn't make it."
"Have you a title from its maker?"
"No, I haven't any title from its maker."
"Well, what is your title, anyhow?"
"Oh, my title is good enough. I got here
first."
Of course he got there first. But he didn't
mean to, and he wouldn't have done it if he could have helped
it. But the newcomer is satisfied, and says:
"Well, that's a good United States title,
so I guess I'll recognize it and come ashore. But remember,
I am to be a free man."
"Certainly you are. Come right along up
to my cabin."
For a time the two get along well enough together.
But on some fine morning the proprietor concludes that he would
rather lie abed than scurry around for his breakfast and not
being in a good humor, perhaps, he somewhat roughly commands
his "brother man" to cook him a bird.
"What?" exclaims the brother.
"I tell you to go and kill a bird and cook
it for my breakfast."
"That sounds big," sneers the second
free and equal member of the little community; "but what
am I to get for doing this?"
"Oh," the first replies languidly, "if
you kill me a fat bird and cook it nicely, then after I have
had my breakfast off the bird you may cook the gizzard for
your own breakfast. That's pay enough. The work is easy."
"But I want you to understand that I am
not your slave, and I won't do that work for that pay. I'll
do as much work for you as you do for me, and no more."
"Then, sir," the first comer shouts
in virtuous wrath, "I want you to understand that my charity
is at an end. I have treated you better than you deserved in
the past, and this is your gratitude. Now I don't propose to
have any loafers on my property. You will work for the wages
I offer or get off my land! You are perfectly free. Take the
wages or leave them. Do the work or let it alone. There is
no slavery here. But if you are not satisfied with my terms,
leave my island!"
The second man, if accustomed to the usages
of the labor unions, would probably go out and, to the music
of his own violent language about the "greed of capital," destroy
as many bows and arrows as he could, so as to paralyze the
bird-shooting industry; and this proceeding he would call a
strike for honest wages and the dignity of labor. If he were
accustomed to social reform notions of the namby-pamby variety,
he would propose an arbitration, and be mildly indignant when
told that there was nothing to arbitrate — that he had
only to accept the other's offer or get off his property. But
if a sensible man, he would notify his comrade that the privilege
of owning islands in that latitude had expired. ...
c. The Law of Division of Labor and Trade
Now, what is it that leads men to conform their conduct to the
principle illustrated by the last chart? Why do they divide their
labor, and trade its products? A simple, universal and familiar
law of human nature moves them. Whether men be isolated, or be
living in primitive communities, or in advanced states of civilization,
their demand for consumption determines the direction of Labor
in production.67 That is the law. Considered in connection with
a solitary individual, like Robinson Crusoe upon his island, it
is obvious. What he demanded for consumption he was obliged to
produce. Even as to the goods he collected from stranded ships — desiring
to consume them, he was obliged to labor to produce them to places
of safety. His demand for consumption always determined the direction
of his labor in production.68 And when we remember that what Robinson
Crusoe was to his island in the sea, civilized man as a whole is
to this island in space, we may readily understand the application
of the same simple law to the great body of labor in the civilized
world.69 Nevertheless, the complexities of civilized life are so
likely to obscure its operation and disguise its relations to social
questions like that of the persistence of poverty as to make illustration
desirable.
68. It is highly significant that while Robinson
Crusoe had unsatisfied wants he was never out of a job.
d. Effect of Confiscating Rent to Private Use.
By giving Rent to individuals society ignores this most just law,
99 thereby creating social disorder and inviting social disease.
Upon society alone, therefore, and not upon divine Providence which
has provided bountifully, nor upon the disinherited poor, rests
the responsibility for poverty and fear of poverty.
99. "Whatever dispute arouses the passions
of men, the conflict is sure to rage, not so much as to the
question 'Is it wise?' as to the question 'Is it right?'
"This tendency of popular discussions to
take an ethical form has a cause. It springs from a law of
the human mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive recognition
of what is probably the deepest truth we can grasp. That alone
is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which is right.
In the narrow scale of individual actions and individual life
this truth may be often obscured, but in the wider field of
national life it everywhere stands out.
"I bow to this arbitrament, and accept
this test." — Progress and Poverty, book vii, ch.
i.
The reader who has been deceived into believing
that Mr. George's proposition is in any respect unjust, will
find profit in a perusal of the entire chapter from which the
foregoing extract is taken.
Let us try to trace the connection by means of a chart, beginning
with the white spaces on page 68. As before, the first-comers take
possession of the best land. But instead of leaving for others
what they do not themselves need for use, as in the previous illustrations,
they appropriate the whole space, using only part, but claiming
ownership of the rest. We may distinguish the used part with red
color, and that which is appropriated without use with blue. Thus:
[chart]
But what motive is there for appropriating more of the space than
is used? Simply that the appropriators may secure the pecuniary
benefit of future social growth. What will enable them to secure
that? Our system of confiscating Rent from the community that earns
it, and giving it to land-owners who, as such, earn nothing.100
100. It is reported from Iowa that a few years
ago a workman in that State saw a meteorite fall, and. securing
possession of it after much digging, he was offered $105 by
a college for his "find." But the owner of the land
on which the meteorite fell claimed the money, and the two
went to law about it. After an appeal to the highest court
of the State, it was finally decided that neither by right
of discovery, nor by right of labor, could the workman have
the money, because the title to the meteorite was in the man
who owned the land upon which it fell.
Observe the effect now upon Rent and Wages. When other men come,
instead of finding half of the best land still common and free,
as in the corresponding chart on page 68, they find all of it owned,
and are obliged either to go upon poorer land or to buy or rent
from owners of the best. How much will they pay for the best? Not
more than 1, if they want it for use and not to hold for a higher
price in the future, for that represents the full difference between
its productiveness and the productiveness of the next best. But
if the first-comers, reasoning that the next best land will soon
be scarce and theirs will then rise in value, refuse to sell or
to rent at that valuation, the newcomers must resort to land of
the second grade, though the best be as yet only partly used. Consequently
land of the first grade commands Rent before it otherwise would.
As the sellers' price, under these circumstances, is arbitrary
it cannot be stated in the chart; but the buyers' price is limited
by the superiority of the best land over that which can be had
for nothing, and the chart may be made to show it: [chart]
And now, owing to the success of the appropriators of the best
land in securing more than their fellows for the same expenditure
of labor force, a rush is made for unappropriated land. It is not
to use it that it is wanted, but to enable its appropriators to
put Rent into their own pockets as soon as growing demand for land
makes it valuable.101 We may, for illustration, suppose that all
the remainder of the second space and the whole of the third are
thus appropriated, and note the effect: [chart]
At this point Rent does not increase nor Wages fall, because there
is no increased demand for land for use. The holding of inferior
land for higher prices, when demand for use is at a standstill,
is like owning lots in the moon — entertaining, perhaps,
but not profitable. But let more land be needed for use, and matters
promptly assume a different appearance. The new labor must either
go to the space that yields but 1, or buy or rent from owners of
better grades, or hire out. The effect would be the same in any
case. Nobody for the given expenditure of labor force would get
more than 1; the surplus of products would go to landowners as
Rent, either directly in rent payments, or indirectly through lower
Wages. Thus: [chart]
101. The text speaks of Rent only as a periodical
or continuous payment — what would be called "ground
rent." But actual or potential Rent may always be, and
frequently is, capitalized for the purpose of selling the right
to enjoy it, and it is to selling value that we usually refer
when dealing in land.
Land which has the power of yielding Rent to
its owner will have a selling value, whether it be used or
not, and whether Rent is actually derived from it or not. This
selling value will be the capitalization of its present or
prospective power of producing Rent. In fact, much the larger
proportion of laud that has a selling value is wholly or partly
unused, producing no Rent at all, or less than it would if
fully used. This condition is expressed in the chart by the
blue color.
"The capitalized value of land is the actuarial
'discounted' value of all the net incomes which it is likely
to afford, allowance being made on the one hand for all incidental
expenses, including those of collecting the rents, and on the
other for its mineral wealth, its capabilities of development
for any kind of business, and its advantages, material, social,
and aesthetic, for the purposes of residence." — Marshall's
Prin., book vi, ch. ix, sec. 9.
"The value of land is commonly expressed
as a certain number of times the current money rental, or in
other words, a certain 'number of years' purchase' of that
rental; and other things being equal, it will be the higher
the more important these direct gratifications are, as well
as the greater the chance that they and the money income afforded
by the land will rise." — Id., note.
"Value . . . means not utility, not any
quality inhering in the thing itself, but a quality which gives
to the possession of a thing the power of obtaining other things,
in return for it or for its use. . . Value in this sense — the
usual sense — is purely relative. It exists from and
is measured by the power of obtaining things for things by
exchanging them. . . Utility is necessary to value, for nothing
can be valuable unless it has the quality of gratifying some
physical or mental desire of man, though it be but a fancy
or whim. But utility of itself does not give value. . . If
we ask ourselves the reason of . . . variations in . . . value
. . . we see that things having some form of utility or desirability,
are valuable or not valuable, as they are hard or easy to get.
And if we ask further, we may see that with most of the things
that have value this difficulty or ease of getting them, which
determines value, depends on the amount of labor which must
be expended in producing them ; i.e., bringing them into the
place, form and condition in which they are desired. . . Value
is simply an expression of the labor required for the production
of such a thing. But there are some things as to which this
is not so clear. Land is not produced by labor, yet land, irrespective
of any improvements that labor has made on it, often has value.
. . Yet a little examination will show that such facts are
but exemplifications of the general principle, just as the
rise of a balloon and the fall of a stone both exemplify the
universal law of gravitation. . . The value of everything produced
by labor, from a pound of chalk or a paper of pins to the elaborate
structure and appurtenances of a first-class ocean steamer,
is resolvable on analysis into an equivalent of the labor required
to produce such a thing in form and place; while the value
of things not produced by labor, but nevertheless susceptible
of ownership, is in the same way resolvable into an equivalent
of the labor which the ownership of such a thing enables the
owner to obtain or save." — Perplexed Philosopher,
ch. v.
The figure 1 in parenthesis, as an item of Rent, indicates potential
Rent. Labor would give that much for the privilege of using the
space, but the owners hold out for better terms; therefore neither
Rent nor Wages is actually produced, though but for this both might
be.
In this chart, notwithstanding that but little space is used,
indicated with red, Wages are reduced to the same low point by
the mere appropriation of space, indicated with blue, that they
would reach if all the space above the poorest were fully used.
It thereby appears that under a system which confiscates Rent to
private uses, the demand for land for speculative purposes becomes
so great that Wages fall to a minimum long before they would if
land were appropriated only for use.
In illustrating the effect of confiscating Rent to private use
we have as yet ignored the element of social growth. Let us now
assume as before (page 73), that social growth increases the productive
power of the given expenditure of labor force to 100 when applied
to the best land, 50 when applied to the next best, 10 to the next,
3 to the next, and 1 to the poorest. Labor would not be benefited
now, as it appeared to be when on page 73 we illustrated the appropriation
of land for use only, although much less land is actually used.
The prizes which expectation of future social growth dangles before
men as the rewards of owning land, would raise demand so as to
make it more than ever difficult to get land. All of the fourth
grade would be taken up in expectation of future demand; and "surplus
labor" would be crowded out to the open space that originally
yielded nothing, but which in consequence of increased labor power
now yields as much as the poorest closed space originally yielded,
namely, 1 to the given expenditure of labor force.102 Wages would
then be reduced to the present productiveness of the open space.
Thus: [chart]
102. The paradise to which the youth of our
country have so long been directed in the advice, "Go
West, young man, go West," is truthfully described in "Progress
and Poverty," book iv, ch. iv, as follows :
"The man who sets out from the eastern
seaboard in search of the margin of cultivation, where he
may obtain land without paying rent, must, like the man who
swam the river to get a drink, pass for long distances through
half-titled farms, and traverse vast areas of virgin soil,
before he reaches the point where land can be had free of
rent — i.e., by homestead entry or preemption."
If we assume that 1 for the given expenditure of labor force is
the least that labor can take while exerting the same force, the
downward movement of Wages will be here held in equilibrium. They
cannot fall below 1; but neither can they rise above it, no matter
how much productive power may increase, so long as it pays to hold
land for higher values. Some laborers would continually be pushed
back to land which increased productive power would have brought
up in productiveness from 0 to 1, and by perpetual competition
for work would so regulate the labor market that the given expenditure
of labor force, however much it produced, could nowhere secure
more than 1 in Wages.103 And this tendency would persist until
some labor was forced upon land which, despite increase in productive
power, would not yield the accustomed living without increase of
labor force. Competition for work would then compel all laborers
to increase their expenditure of labor force, and to do it over
and over again as progress went on and lower and lower grades of
land were monopolized, until human endurance could go no further.104
Either that, or they would be obliged to adapt themselves to a
lower scale of living.105
103. Henry Fawcett, in his work on "Political
Economy," book ii, ch. iii, observes with reference to
improvements in agricultural implements which diminish the
expense of cultivation, that they do not increase the profits
of the farmer or the wages of his laborers, but that "the
landlord will receive in addition to the rent already paid
to him, all that is saved in the expense of cultivation." This
is true not alone of improvements in agriculture, but also
of improvements in all other branches of industry.
104. "The cause which limits speculation
in commodities, the tendency of increasing price to draw forth
additional supplies, cannot limit the speculative advance in
land values, as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency
can neither increase nor diminish; but there is nevertheless
a limit to the price of land, in the minimum required by labor
and capital as the condition of engaging in production. If
it were possible to continuously reduce wages until zero were
reached, it would be possible to continuously increase rent
until it swallowed up the whole produce. But as wages cannot
be permanently reduced below the point at which laborers will
consent to work and reproduce, nor interest below the point
at which capital will be devoted to production, there is a
limit which restrains the speculative advance of rent. Hence,
speculation cannot have the same scope to advance rent in countries
where wages and interest are already near the minimum, as in
countries where they are considerably above it. Yet that there
is in all progressive countries a constant tendency in the
speculative advance of rent to overpass the limit where production
would cease, is, I think, shown by recurring seasons of industrial
paralysis." — Progress and Poverty, book iv, ch.
iv.
105. As Puck once put it, "the man who
makes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before,
must not be surprised when ordered to 'keep off the grass.' "
They in fact do both, and the incidental disturbances of general
readjustment are what we call "hard times." 106 These
culminate in forcing unused land into the market, thereby reducing
Rent and reviving industry. Thus increase of labor force, a lowering
of the scale of living, and depression of Rent, co-operate to bring
on what we call "good times." But no sooner do "good
times" return than renewed demands for land set in, Rent rises
again, Wages fall again, and "hard times" duly reappear.
The end of every period of "hard times" finds Rent higher
and Wages lower than at the end of the previous period.107
106. "That a speculative advance in rent
or land values invariably precedes each of these seasons of
industrial depression is everywhere clear. That they bear to
each other the relation of cause and effect, is obvious to
whoever considers the necessary relation between land and labor." — Progress
and Poverty, book v, ch. i.
107. What are called "good times" reach
a point at which an upward land market sets in. From that point
there is a downward tendency of wages (or a rise in the cost
of living, which is the same thing) in all departments of labor
and with all grades of laborers. This tendency continues until
the fictitious values of land give way. So long as the tendency
is felt only by that class which is hired for wages, it is
poverty merely; when the same tendency is felt by the class
of labor that is distinguished as "the business interests
of the country," it is "hard times." And "hard
times" are periodical because land values, by falling,
allow "good times" to set it, and by rising with "good
times" bring "hard times" on again. The effect
of "hard times" may be overcome, without much, if
any, fall in land values, by sufficient increase in productive
power to overtake the fictitious value of land.
The dishonest and disorderly system under which society confiscates
Rent from common to individual uses, produces this result. That
maladjustment is the fundamental cause of poverty. And progress,
so long as the maladjustment continues, instead of tending to remove
poverty as naturally it should, actually generates and intensifies
it. Poverty persists with increase of productive power because
land values, when Rent is privately appropriated, tend to even
greater increase. There can be but one outcome if this continues:
for individuals suffering and degradation, and for society destruction.
... read the book
Clarence Darrow: The
Land Belongs To The People (1916)
This earth is a little raft moving in the
endless sea of space, and the mass of its human inhabitants are hanging
on as best they can.
It is as if some raft filled with shipwrecked sailors should
be floating on the ocean, and a few of the strongest and most powerful
would
take all the raft they could get and leave the most of the people,
especially the ones who did the work, hanging to the edges by their eyebrows.
These men who have taken possession of this raft, this little
planet
in this endless space, are not even content with taking all
there is
and leaving the rest barely enough to hold onto, but they think
so much of themselves and their brief day that while they live they
must make rules and laws and regulations that parcel out the earth
for thousands
of years after they are dead and, gone, so that their descendants
and others of their kind may do in the tenth generation exactly
what they
are doing today — keeping the earth and all the good
things of the earth and compelling the great mass of mankind
to toil for
them. ... read the whole article
Nic
Tideman: The Case for
Taxing Land
I. Taxing Land as Ethics
and Efficiency
II. What is Land?
III. The simple efficiency argument for taxing land
IV. Taxing Land is Better Than Neutral
V. Measuring the Economic Gains from Shifting Taxes to Land
VI. The Ethical Case for Taxing Land
VII. Answer to Arguments against Taxing Land
There is a case for taxing land based on ethical principles and
a case
for taxing land based on efficiency principles. As a matter of
logic, these two cases are separate. Ethical conclusions
follow from ethical premises and efficiency conclusions from efficiency
principles. However, it is natural for human minds to conflate
the two cases. It is easier to believe that something is good if
one knows that it is efficient, and it is easier to see that something
is efficient if one believes that it is good. Therefore it is
important for a discussion of land taxation to address both question of
efficiency and questions of ethics.
This monograph will first address the efficiency case for taxing land,
because that is the less controversial case. The efficiency case
for taxing land has two main parts. ...
To estimate the magnitudes of the impacts that additional taxes
on land
would have on an economy, one must have a model of the economy. I
report on estimates of the magnitudes of impacts on the U.S. economy of
shifting taxes to land, based on a mathematical model that is outlined
in the Appendix.
The ethical case for
taxing land is based on two ethical premises: ...
The ethical case for taxing land ends with a discussion of the
reasons
why recognition of the equal rights of all to land may be essential for
world peace.
After developing the efficiency argument and the ethical
argument for
taxing land, I consider a variety of counter-arguments that have been
offered against taxing land. For a given level of other taxes, a
rise in the rate at which land is taxed causes a fall in the selling
price of land. It is sometimes argued that only modest taxes on
land are therefore feasible, because as the rate of taxation on land
increases and the selling price of land falls, market transactions
become increasingly less reliable as indicators of the value of
land. ...
Another basis on which it is argued that greatly increased taxes
on
land are infeasible is that if land values were to fall precipitously,
the financial system would collapse. ...
Apart from questions of feasibility, it is sometimes argued that
erosion of land values from taxing land would harm economic efficiency,
because it would reduce opportunities for entrepreneurs to use land as
collateral for loans to finance their ideas. ...
.
Another ethical argument that is made against taxing land is
that the
return to unusual ability is “rent” just as the return to land is
rent. ...
But before developing any of these arguments, I must discuss
what land
is. ...
The Ethical Case for
Taxing Land
The ethical case for taxing land is
based on two premises. The
first is that people have rights to themselves. This has not been
controversial since the end of slavery, so I will simply assume that
this is agreed. The second premise is that all people have equal
rights to natural opportunities. This is not so widely agreed.
Natural opportunities include not only land, but also water,
fish in
oceans and rivers, the frequency spectrum, minerals, virgin forests,
and geosynchronous orbits. Some natural opportunities, such as
the opportunity to use the oceans for transport, are most valuable to
people when all are allowed to use them as they wish. (This does
not imply that their value is greatest when all can pollute as they
wish.) Other natural opportunities, such as most plots of land,
are most valuable when one person has exclusive use of them.
The processes that humans employ to determine who shall have
exclusive
use of natural opportunities are complex. To some extent,
opportunities are assigned to those who first make use of them.
However, another important component of the
natural-opportunity-assignment process is the ability and willingness
to use deadly force to exclude others. Americans from Europe
undertook some negotiations with the native American Indians, but
primarily they threatened to kill the Indians if they did not agree to
move into smaller territories. All over the world, nations
emerged when war-minded leaders imposed their rule where they
could. We have built a relatively humane world on this violent
foundation, but the origins of the assignment of natural opportunities
cannot be characterized as just.
Nor would have been just (or efficient) to adhere to a rule of
initial
assignment based on first use. It would not be just because a
person who arrives later than another is not inherently less
deserving. (It would not be efficient because a rule of
assignment based on first use promotes inefficient, excessive
investment in being first. Still, to motivate efficient
discovery, it pays to provide some reward for discoverers.) Read the
whole article
Nic Tideman: The
Ethics of Coercion in Public Finance
Utilitarian and Contractarian
theories of justice share the feature that they do not acknowledge
self-ownership. Under Utilitarianism, persons are inputs into the
generation of aggregate utility. Under Contractarianism, persons
might have owned themselves in the contractual setting, but there
they sold themselves. The rights of real people are gone. Theories
in these classes can be contrasted with a class of theories that
justify power with direct responses to those who question power,
treating them as individuals who own themselves. There are two
theories in this class: Liberalism and Libertarianism. The two theories
share the idea of self-ownership, the idea that each person is free
to decide the purpose of his or her life, provided that the rights
of others to do the same are respected.
The fundamental difference between
Libertarianism and Liberalism concerns the basis for claims to
own things. The Libertarian axiom (Rothbard, 1982, pp. 29-43) is
that everything in nature is the property of the first person who
transforms it. This contrasts with the Liberal axiom (Ackerman,
1980, pp. 11, 31- 68) that the claims that people make on natural
opportunities are respectable only if the person making the claim
leaves as much for others as she takes for herself.
When a Libertarian is asked, "Why
should you have that opportunity instead of me?" he can reply, within
his own theory, "Because I got here first and did something." The
Liberal says that any appropriation of natural opportunities that
leaves less for those who come later fails to satisfy the condition
of evenhandedness that is required for justice.
The Libertarian and Liberal theories
both have limitations in terms of efficiency. Acceptance of the Libertarian
theory promotes a land rush, in which people waste resources doing
the minimal work necessary to establish claims to land, so that they
can later sell it to others. (Whoever burns down the most rain forest
gets the most land.) This first inefficiency is compounded by a continuing
inefficient use of land, arising from the inability of people to
manage all that they have claimed. If the Liberal theory is accepted,
an opposite inefficiency occurs. There is no incentive for people
to seek to discover opportunities hidden in nature, because whatever
is discovered belongs equally to all.
While it may be difficult to avoid
having these inefficiencies color our evaluations of the theories,
we should remember that the pursuit of justice does not guarantee
efficiency. It is possible that a commitment to justice will entail
accepting some inefficiency.
The basic problem with the justice
of Libertarian theory is that it allows the first arrivers to deprive
those who come later of any natural opportunities that it suits the
first arrivers to claim and transform. To permit this is inconsistent
with the evenhandedness that justice requires.
A Libertarian might allege that
it would never be possible for the first arrivers to leave as much
for all later arrivers as they take for themselves, because there
may be an endless stream of generations, and each person would be
unable to claim even enough land to stand on. This objection presumes
that any claims would be made on the stock of land, rather than on
the flow of land services. Under Liberalism, each person may respectably
claim the use of an amount of land during her lifetime that leaves
as much land rent per person for others who are alive at the same
time as the rent of the land that the claimant reserves for herself.
People may also respectably reserve more for themselves, if they
compensate those who therefore have less. There will be plenty of
room for everyone to stand.
Libertarianism is an excellent framework
for analyzing justice when there is no scarcity of natural opportunities.
But when natural opportunities are scarce it denies the equal rights
of those who come later. ... Read the whole article
Karl Williams: Social Justice In Australia: INTRODUCTORY
KIT
How do you react to this scenario? You
are star-trekking through space and come upon a planet with many promising
conditions which might support life. And there is life down there - intelligent
life at that! And the planetary inhabitants possess a physical form not unlike
humans, and are grouped into organised communities.
But then you discover something curious. A small minority of these ET's
claim that the very surface of the planets is theirs, and either charge the
other helpless inhabitants rent for its use or extortionate prices for the
outright purchase of certain parts.
WHOSE PLANET?
What a planet, eh?! Here we are with an arrangement somehow foisted
on us whereby land, which should be our equal and common inheritance, has been
privately misappropriated. Or put it this way: we're born on to a planet where "all
the seats are taken", and we have to pay someone else for permission to live!
There's no way of escaping it for, as long as the Law of Gravity holds, we
need something to stand on. And to compound the land problem - they're not
making any more of it !
And this most important part of the Global Commons, land, usually "belongs" to
somebody in perpetuity, so that they can pass on this "commodity" of theirs
to their descendants ad infinitum, no matter how much this all-too-scarce resource
might appreciate in value over time. And how did they come to own the Earth
in the first place? Read the entire article
Karl Williams: Social Justice In
Australia: ADVANCED KIT - Part 2
INDIGENOUS
LAND RIGHTS
"When
the white man came we had the land and they had the Bible. They taught
us to pray with our eyes closed and when we opened them, they had the
land and we had the Bible." - Jomo Kenyatta, (1889 - 1978),
prime minister of Kenya
Before European settlement/invasion, Aboriginals generally, we
are
told, had a beautiful thing going - they really knew how to share. Each
tribal group was a custodian of a traditional area, and all were taught
how to look after and respect their ancestral land. They belonged to
the Earth, and not the other way around. No individual owned any land,
and none could personally profit from Nature's gifts.
These are Geonomic principles, pure and simple. However,
Geonomics has
developed things such that each person is, in effect, the co-owner of
the entire country. Geonomics further allows for those wishing to live
in fixed abodes to take advantage of infrastructure, allocating land of
greatly unequal value in an elegantly fair manner. ...
"I SAW IT FIRST!"
And what, if anything, is the basis for the race-based privilege
of
indigenous land rights? "Prior occupancy", no less! So because
someone's distant ancestors, whom he never knew, got to a continent
first, they claim ownership! The logic of this declaration is certainly
worth examining. So then, what if new archeological evidence came to
light which revealed that a certain Aboriginal clan are the sole
descendants of the very first guy who crossed the Torres Strait? Could
this clan then say, "OK all you whitefellas and blackfellas descended
from the later arrivals ….. you all have to pay us the rent for living
in Australia, or clear out!"
Or what if Australia hadn't been occupied when the first
Europeans
landed? Could the king who sent the ship have personally claimed
ownership based on first occupancy, or would Australia more rightly
belong to the ship's captain? But hang on! - what if one of the oarsmen
jumped off the boat before the captain, and was first to hit the beach?
But, wait! - the oarsman was wearing boots, and his skin never touched
the soil until after the first mate slipped over on the beach and got a
face full of sand!
Steady on, guys - what about me?! Where's my share of the Earth?
Do I
have to return to England and Ireland where my ancestors had "prior
occupancy", and can I then tell those Pakistani and West Indian
immigrants to clear off or else pay me rent for standing on my
homeland? No-one stands on my spiritual motherland for nothing!
ACTUALLY, IT'S ALL PRETTY SIMPLE
The Earth and its bounty are the birthright of all humanity.
Land and
natural resources are our equal and common inheritance, regardless of
race, creed, or gender.
But it's true that culture, history, attachment to place and
arbitrary
national boundaries have complicated these straightforward principles
of human rights. And there is a clear case in Australia for studying
and acknowledging the shameful history of European invasion, saying
"Sorry" on behalf of our ancestors, and trying to make amends as best
we can. If this means special programs, roles, and grants for
Aboriginals in order to help them out of their appalling condition,
then let's do it. And we should acknowledge Aboriginals being the first
occupants, caretakers and custodians, but don't use that word
"ownership", OK?
"The
whole of the people have the right of the ownership of land and the
right to share in the value of land itself, though not to share in the
fruits of land which properly belong to the individuals by whose labour
they are produced." - Alfred Deakin, (1857 - 1919), Australia's
second prime minister ... Read the
entire article
a synopsis of Robert V. Andelson and James M. Dawsey: From
Wasteland to Promised land:
Liberation Theology for a Post-Marxist World
Does
the passenger who enters a railroad car obtain the right to scatter his
baggage over all the seats and compel the passengers who come in after
him to stand up? ... We arrive and we depart... passengers from station
to station, on an orb that whirls through space -- our rights to take
and possess cannot be exclusive; they must be bounded everywhere by the
equal rights of others. Just as the passenger in a railroad car may
spread himself and his baggage over as many seats as he pleases, until
other passengers come in, so may a settler take as much land as he
chooses, until it is needed by others -- a fact which is shown by the
land acquiring a value....
On the land we are born, from
it we
live, to it we return again -- children of the soil as truly as is the
blade of grass or the flower of the field. Take away from man all that
belongs to the land, and he is but a disembodied spirit. Material
progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land. Read the whole synopsis
Dan Sullivan: Are you a Real
Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?
... According to royal
libertarians, land becomes private property
when one mixes one's labor with it. And mixing what is yours with
what is not yours in order to own the whole thing is considered great
sport. But the notion is filled with problems. How much labor does it
take to claim land, and how much land can one claim for that labor?
And for how long can one make that claim?
According to classical liberals,
land belonged to the user for as
long as the land was being used, and no longer. But according to
royal libertarians, land belongs to the first user, forever. So, do
the oceans belong to the heirs of the first person to take a fish out
or put a boat in? Does someone who plows the same field each year own
only one field, while someone who plows a different field each year
owns dozens of fields? Should the builder of the first
transcontinental railroad own the continent? Shouldn't we at least
have to pay a toll to cross the tracks? Are there no common rights to
the earth at all? To royal libertarians there are not, but classical
liberals recognized that unlimited ownership of land never flowed
from use, but from the state:
A right of property in
movable things is admitted before
the establishment of government. A separate property in lands not till
after that establishment.... He who plants a field keeps possession of
it till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a
right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws
provided, before lands can be separately appropriated and their owner
protected in his possession. Till then the property is in the body of
the nation. --Thomas Jefferson ... Read
the whole piece
Fred Foldvary: A Geoist
Robinson Crusoe Story
Once upon a time, Robinson G.
Crusoe was the only survivor of a ship
that sunk. He floated on a piece of wood to an unpopulated island.
Robinson was an absolute geoist. He believed with his mind, heart, and
soul that everyone should have an equal share of land rent. ... Read the whole piece
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. ... read the whole article
Nic Tideman: Applications of
Land Value Taxation to Problems of Environmental Protection, Congestion,
Efficient Resource Use, Population, and Economic Growth
Thus a nation that provides the rest of the world with technology
that eases the task of providing for future generations should receive
a credit for this, although there will be difficulty in estimating the
contribution of any innovation. (If one person had not
discovered something, the chances are that eventually some else would have.) ... read
the whole article
Thomas Flavin, writing in The
Iconoclast, 1897
Now, it is quite true that all
taxes of whatever nature are paid out of the products of labor. But must
they be for that reason a tax on labor products. Let us see.
I suppose you
won't
deny that a unit of labor applies to different kinds of land will give
very different results. Suppose that a unit of labor produces on A's land 4,
on
B's 3, on C's 2 and on D's 1. A's land is the most, and D's is the least,
productive land in use in the community to which they belong. B's and C's
represent intermediate
grades. Suppose each occupies the best land that was open to him when he
entered into possession. Now, B, and C, and D have just as good a right to
the use
of the best land as A had.
Manifestly then, if this be the whole story,
there cannot be equality of opportunity where a unit of labor produces such
different
results, all other things being equal except the land.
How is this equality
to be secured? There is but one possible way. Each must surrender for
the common use of all, himself included, whatever advantages accrues to him
from
the possession
of land superior to that which falls to the lot of him who occupies the
poorest.
In the case stated, what the unit of labor produces for D, is what
it should
produce for A, B and C, if these are not to have an advantage of natural
opportunity over D.
Hence equity is secured when A pays 3, D, 2 and C,
1 into a common
fund for the common use of all--to be expended, say in digging a
well, making a road or bridge, building a school, or other public utility.
Is
it not manifest
that here the tax which A, B and C pay into a common fund, and
from which D is exempt, is not a tax on their labor products (though paid out
of them)
but
a tax on the superior advantage which they enjoy over D, and to
which
D has just as good a right as any of them.
The result of this arrangement
is that
each takes up as much of the best land open to him as he can
put to gainful use, and what he cannot so use he leaves open for the next.
Moreover,
he
is at no disadvantage with the rest who have come in ahead of him,
for
they provide
for him, in proportion to their respective advantages, those
public utilities
which invariably arise wherever men live in communities. Of course
he will in turn hold to those who come later the same relation that those
who came
earlier held to him.
Suppose now that taxes had been levied on
labor products instead of land; all that any land-holder would have to
do to avoid the
tax is to produce little or nothing. He could just squat on his
land, neither using it himself nor letting others use it, but he would not
stop
at
this,
for he
would grab to the last acre all that he could possibly get
hold of. Each of the others would do the same in turn, with the sure result
that
by
and
by,
E, F and G would find no land left for them on which they might
make a living.
So they would have to hire their labor to those who had
already monopolized the land, or else buy or rent a piece of land from them.
Behold now the
devil
of landlordism getting his hoof on God's handiwork! Exit
justice, freedom,
social peace and plenty. Enter robbery, slavery, social discontent,
consuming grief, riotous but unearned wealth, degrading pauperism,
crime
breeding, want,
the beggar's whine, and the tyrant's iron heel.
And how did
it all
come
about? By the simple expedient of taxing labor products in
order that precious landlordism
might laugh and grow fat on the bovine stupidity of the
community that contributes its own land values toward its own enslavement!
And
yet men vacuously ask, "What
difference does it make?"
O tempora! O mores! To be as plain as is necessary,
it makes this four-fold difference.
- First, it robs the
community of its land values;
- second, it robs labor of its wages in the
name of taxation;
- third,
it sustains and fosters landlordism, a
most conspicuously damnable difference;
- fourth, it exhibits willing workers in enforced
idleness; beholding their families
in want on the one hand, and unused land
that would yield them abundance on the other.
This last is a difference that
cries to heaven
for vengeance, and
if it does not always cry in vain, will
W. C. Brann
be able to draw his robe close around him and with a good conscience
exclaim, "It's
none of my fault; I am not my brother's keeper."
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