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Property Rights
"The neoclassical economists' view of their proper role is rather like that in The Realtor's Oath, which includes a vow 'To protect the individual right of real estate ownership.' The word 'individual' is construed broadly to include corporations, estates, trusts, anonymous offshore funds, schools, government agencies, institutions, partnerships, cooperatives, the Duke of Westminster, the Sultan of Brunei, the Medellin Cartel, Saddam Hussein, congregations, Archbishops, families (including criminal families) and so on, but 'individual' sounds more all-American and subsumes them all. This is a potent chant that stirs people to extremes of self-righteousness and siege mentality when challenged." Mason Gaffney: Economics in Support of Environmentalism Seems to me that a “right” is something everyone should have, like life, liberty, free speech, rewards of working and saving. A privilege is something "A" can only have by depriving "B" et al. Those with privileges have sought to expand the meaning of “right” to include their privileges. — Mason Gaffney (May 2006 correspondence)
Is it not but yesterday that in the freest and
greatest republic on earth, among the people who boast
that they lead the very van of civilization, this
doctrine of vested rights was deemed a sufficient
justification for all the cruel wrongs of human
slavery? Is it not but yesterday when whoever dared to
say that the rights of property did not justly attach
to human beings; when whoever dared to deny that human
beings could be rightfully bought and sold like
cattle–the husband torn from the wife and the
child from the mother; when whoever denied the right of
whoever had paid his money for him to work or whip his
own nigger was looked upon as a wicked assailant of the
rights of property? Is it not but yesterday when in the
South whoever whispered such a thought took his life in
his hands; when in the North the abolitionist was held
by the churches as worse than an infidel, was denounced
by the politicians and rotten-egged by the mob? I was
born in a Northern State, I have never lived in the
South, I am not yet gray; but I well remember, as every
American of middle age must remember, how over and over
again I have heard all questionings of slavery silenced
by the declaration that the negroes were the property
of their masters, and that to take
away a man's slave without payment was as much a crime
as to take away his horse without payment. And whoever
does not remember that far back, let him look over
American literature previous to the war, and say
whether, if the business of piracy had been a
flourishing business, it would have lacked defenders?
Let him say whether any proposal to stop the business
of piracy without compensating the pirates would not
have been denounced at first as a proposal to set aside
vested rights? ... read
the whole article
Henry George: Thou Shalt Not Steal (1887 speech)
We propose to abolish poverty, to tear it up by
the roots, to open free and abundant employment for
every person. We propose to disturb no
just right of property. We are defenders and upholders
of the sacred right of property — that right of
property which justly attaches to everything that is
produced by labor; that right which gives to all people
a just right of property in what they have
produced — that makes it theirs to give,
to sell, to bequeath, to do whatever they please with,
as long as in using it they do not injure any one else.
That right of property we insist upon; that, we would
uphold against all the world.
To a house, a coat, a book — anything produced by labor — there is a clear individual title, which goes back to the person who made it. That is the foundation of the just, the sacred right of property. It rests on the right of people to the use of their own powers, on their right to profit by the exertion of their own labor; but who can carry the right of property in land that far? Who can claim a title of absolute ownership in land? Until one who claims the exclusive ownership of a piece of this planet can show a title originating with the Maker of this planet; until that one can produce a decree from the Creator declaring that this city lot, or that great tract of agricultural or coal land, or that gas well, was made for that one person alone — until then we have a right to hold that the land was intended for all of us. Natural religion and revealed religion alike tell us that God is no respecter of persons; that He did not make this planet for a few individuals; that He did not give it to one generation in preference to other generations, but that He made it for the use during their lives of all the people that His providence brings into the world. If this be true, the child that is born tonight in the humblest tenement in the most squalid quarter of New York, comes into life seized with as good a title to the land of this city as any Astor or Rhinelander. ... People do not have a natural right to demand employment of another, but they have a natural right, an inalienable right, a right given by their Creator, to demand opportunity to employ themselves. And whenever that right is acknowledged, whenever the people who want to go to work can find natural opportunities to work upon, then there will be as much competition among employers who are anxious to get people to work for them, as there will be among people who are anxious to get work. Wages will rise in every vocation to the true rate of wages — the full, honest earnings of labor. That done, with this ever increasing social fund to draw upon, poverty will be abolished, and in a little while will come to be looked upon — as we are now beginning to look upon slavery — as the relic of a darker and more ignorant age. I remember — this man here remembers (turning to Mr. Redpath, who was on the platform) even better than I, for he was one of the men who brought the atrocities of human slavery home to the heart and conscience of the north — I well remember, as he well knows, and all the older men and women in this audience will remember, how property in human flesh and blood was defended just as private property in land is now defended; how the same charges were hurled upon the men and women who protested against human slavery as are now made against the men and women who are intending to abolish industrial slavery. We remember how some dignitaries and rich members of the churches branded as a disturber, almost as a reviler of religion, any priest or any minister who dared to get up and assert God’s truth — that there never was and there never could be rightful property in human flesh and blood. So, it is now said that people who protest against this system, which is simply another form of slavery, are people who propose robbery. Thus the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," they have made "Thou shalt not object to stealing." When we propose to resume our own again, when we propose to secure its natural right to every child that comes into being, such people talk of us as advocating confiscation — charge us with being deniers of the rights of property. The real truth is that we wish to assert the just rights of property, that we wish to prevent theft. Chattel slavery was incarnate theft of the worst kind. That system which made property of human beings, which allowed one person to sell another, which allowed one person to take away the proceeds of another’s toil, which permitted the tearing of the child from the mother, and which permitted the so-called owner to hunt with bloodhounds the person who escaped from the owner’s tyranny — that form of slavery is abolished. To that extent, the command, "Thou shalt not steal," has been vindicated; but there is another form of slavery. ... read the whole article Henry George: The Condition of Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
Henry George: The Wages of Labor
Being the equal creatures of the Creator,
equally entitled under His providence to live their
lives and satisfy their needs, men are equally entitled
to the use of land, and any adjustment that denies this
equal right to the use of land is morally
wrong.
Being created individuals, with individual wants and powers, men are individually entitled (subject of course to the moral obligations that arise from such relations as that of the family) to the use of their own powers and the enjoyment of the results. There thus arises, anterior to human law, and deriving its validity from the law of God, a right of private ownership in things produced by labor – a right that the possessor may transfer, but of which to deprive him without his will is theft. This right of property, originating in the right of the individual to himself, is the only full and complete right of property. It attaches to things produced by labor, but cannot attach to things created by God. ... To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always to become involved in other wrongs! Those who defend private property in land, and thereby deny the first and most important of all human rights, the equal right to the material substratum of life, are compelled to one of two courses. Either they must, as do those whose gospel is “Devil take the hindmost,” deny the equal right to life, and, by some theory like that to which Malthus has given his name, assert that Nature brings into the world more men than there is provision for; or, they must, as do the Socialists, assert as rights what in themselves are wrongs.... read the whole article Henry George: The Land for the People (1889 speech)
NOW, as to the rights of ownership -- as to that
principle which enables a man to say of any certain
thing --"This is mine; it is my property" -- where does
that come from? If you look you will see that it comes
from the right of the producer to the thing which he
produces. What a man makes he can
justly claim to be his. Whatever any individual,
by the exercise of his powers, takes from the
reservoirs of nature, molds into shapes fitted to
satisfy human needs, that is his; to that a just and
sacred right of property attaches. That is a right
based on the right of the individual to improvement,
the right to the enjoyment of his own powers, to the
possession of the fruits of his exertions. That is a
sacred right, to violate which is to violate the sacred
command, "Thou shalt not steal." There is the right of
ownership. Now that right, which gives
by natural and Divine laws, the thing produced to him
whose exertion has produced it, which gives to
the man who builds a house the right to that house, to
the man who raises a crop the right to that crop, to
the man who raises a domestic animal a right to that
domestic animal -- how can that right
attach to the reservoirs of nature? How can that right
attach to the earth itself?
WE start out with these two principles, which I think are clear and self-evident:
We start out with this clear principle that as
all men are here by the equal permission of the
Creator, as they are all here under His laws equally
requiring the use of land, as they are all here with
equal right to live, so they are all here with equal
right to the enjoyment of His bounty. ... Read the whole speech
Henry George: Salutatory, from the first issue of The Standard (1887)
Henry George: The
Single Tax: What It Is and Why We Urge It
(1890)
The right of property does not rest upon human
laws; they have often ignored and violated it. It rests
on natural laws -- that is to say, the law of God. It
is clear and absolute, and every violation of it,
whether committed by a man or a nation, is a violation
of the command, "Thou shalt not
steal."
The man who catches a fish, grows an apple, raises a calf, builds a house, makes a coat, paints a picture, constructs a machine, has, as to any such thing, an exclusive right of ownership which carries with it the right to give, to sell or bequeath that thing. But who made the earth that any man can claim such ownership of it, or any part of it, or the right to give, sell or bequeath it? Since the earth was not made by us, but is only a temporary dwelling place on which one generation of men follow another; since we find ourselves here, are manifestly here with equal permission of the Creator, it is manifest that no one can have any exclusive right of ownership in land, and that the rights of all men to land must be equal and inalienable. There must be exclusive right of possession of land, for the man who uses it must have secure possession of land in order to reap the products of his labor. But his right of possession must be limited by the equal right of all, and should therefore be conditioned upon the payment to the community by the possessor of an equivalent for any special valuable privilege thus accorded him.
When we tax houses, crops, money, furniture,
capital or wealth in any of its forms, we take from
individuals what rightfully belongs to them. We
violate the right of property, and in the name of the
State commit robbery. But when we tax ground values,
we take from individuals what does not belong to them,
but belongs to the community, and which cannot be
left to individuals without robbery of other
individuals. ... read the whole
article
Henry George: This World is the Creation of God (1891) -- Appendix to The Condition of Labor: An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII
This right of private possession in things
created by God is however very different from the right
of private ownership in things produced by labor. The
one is limited, the other unlimited, save in cases when
the dictate of self-preservation terminates all other
rights. The purpose of the one, the exclusive
possession of land, is merely to secure the other, the
exclusive ownership of the products of labor; and it
can never rightfully be carried so far as to impair or
deny this. While any one may hold exclusive possession
of land so far as it does not interfere with the equal
rights of others, he can rightfully hold it no
further.
To combine the advantages of private possession with the justice of common ownership it is only necessarily therefore to take for common uses what value attaches to land irrespective of any exertion of labor on it. ... We propose -- leaving land in the private possession of individuals, with full liberty on their part to give, sell or bequeath it -- simply to levy on it for public uses a tax that shall equal the annual value of the land itself, irrespective of the use made of it or the improvements on it. And since this would provide amply for the need of public revenues, we would accompany this tax on land values with the repeal of all taxes new levied on the products and processes of industry -- which taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be infringements of the right of property. read the entire article The Most Rev. Dr Thomas Nulty, Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath (Ireland): Back to the Land (1881)
...Human Slavery Once Generally
Accepted.
Slavery is found to have existed, as a social institution, in almost all nations, civilised as well as barbarous, and in every age of the world, up almost to our own times. We hardly ever find it in the state of a merely passing phenomenon, or as a purely temporary result of conquest or of war, but always as a settled, established and recognised state of social existence, in which generation followed generation in unbroken succession, and in which thousands upon thousands of human beings lived and died. Hardly anyone had the public spirit to question its character or to denounce its excesses; it had no struggle to make for its existence, and the degradation in which it held its unhappy victims was universally regarded as nothing worse than a mere sentimental grievance. On the other hand, the justice of the right of property which a master claimed in his slaves was universally accepted in the light of a first principle of morality. His slaves were either born on his estate, and he had to submit to the labour and the cost of rearing and maintaining them to manhood, or he acquired them by inheritance or by free gift, or, failing these, he acquired them by the right of purchase -- having paid in exchange for them what, according to the usages of society and the common estimation of his countrymen, was regarded as their full pecuniary value. Property, therefore, in slaves was regarded as sacred, and as inviolable as any other species of property.
Even Christians Recognised
Slavery.
So deeply rooted and so universally received was this conviction that the Christian religion itself, though it recognised no distinction between Jew and Gentile, between slave or freeman, cautiously abstained from denouncing slavery itself as an injustice or a wrong. It prudently tolerated this crying evil, because in the state of public feeling then existing, and at the low standard of enlightenment and intelligence then prevailing, it was simply impossible to remedy it. Thus then had slavery come down almost to our own time as an established social institution, carrying with it the practical sanction and approval of ages and nations, and surrounded with a prestige of standing and general acceptance well calculated to recommend it to men's feelings and sympathies. And yet it was the embodiment of the most odious and cruel injustice that ever afflicted humanity. To claim a right of property in man was to lower a rational creature to the level of the beast of the field; it was a revolting and an unnatural degradation of the nobility of human nature itself. That thousands upon thousands of human beings who had committed no crime, who had violated no law, and who had done no wrong to anyone, should be wantonly robbed of their liberty and freedom; should be deprived of the sacred and inalienable moral rights, which they could not voluntarily abdicate themselves; should be bought and sold, like cattle in the markets; and should be worked to death, or allowed to live on at the whim or caprice of their owner, was the last and most galling injustice which human nature could be called on to endure.
The World's Approval Cannot Justify
Injustice.
To arrest public attention, and fix its gaze effectively on the intrinsic character and constitution of slavery, was to seal its doom; and its death knell was sounded in the indignant cry of the great statesman who "denied that man could hold property in man." Twenty millions of British money were paid over to the slave owners as compensation for the loss of property to which they had no just title, and slavery was abolished forever. The practical approval, therefore, which the world has bestowed on a social institution that has lasted for centuries is no proof that it ought to be allowed to live on longer, if, on close examination, it be found to be intrinsically unjust and cruel, and mischievous and injurious besides to the general good of mankind. No amount of sanction or approval that the world can give to a social institution can alter its intrinsic constitution and nature; and the fact of the world's having thus approved of an institution which was essentially unjust, cruel and degrading to human nature, only proves that the world was wrong: it furnishes no arguments or justification for allowing it to live on a moment longer. ...
Justice, Not Vested Right, Should
Prevail.
Some wise and thoughtful men can see no longer objections to the abolition of Landlordism now than were alleged not so long ago against the abolition of slavery. If the public good demanded the summary dismissal of landlords from an important position of trust, which as a class, they have so grievously abused, and, on the other hand, that they had been compensated for the real or fictitious property which it is assumed they possess in their lands, the justice of such a course could not for a moment be questioned. Yet I am afraid that few prudent, practical and experienced men could be found who would advocate the policy of a measure of so sweeping and radical a character. Undoubtedly a universal or a general peasant proprietary; not, however, the result of a sudden, hasty and unnatural change, but the gradual and natural growth of years -- may probably be found to be the final settlement of the question of the land. Hence the great majority of those who have thought the question out thoroughly regard the measure known as the "three F's," accompanied with largely increased facilities, and largely increased pecuniary encouragement, for the gradual establishment of a peasant proprietary, as the fullest measure of justice which the nation can just now expect from an Act of Parliament. But on whatever line the "new departure" may start, it is essential that the eternal and immutable principles of justice which determine the character of property in land shall in no instance be departed from by the people. Ours is a struggle for justice and for right, and we must not furnish our enemies even with a pretext to reproach us with dishonest or unfair dealing.
Justice of Private Property in the
Results of Labour.
The following are the acknowledged principles of justice that have a practical bearing on the question: -- Every man (and woman, too) has a natural right to the free exercise of his mental and corporal faculties; and whatever useful thing anyone has produced by his toil and his labour, of that he is the rightful owner -- in that he has in strict justice a right of property. Any useful thing that satisfies any of our necessities, relieves any of our wants, ministers to our comforts or enjoyments, or increases our material happiness or contentment, may be an object of property, and the person whose toil and labour has produced that thing possesses in it a strict right of property. The two essential characteristics of property therefore are:
Now, the effort or exertion demanded by labour
is irksome, distasteful and repulsive to the indolence
and self-indulgence that is natural to us and,
therefore, no one will voluntarily subject himself to
the painful inconvenience of labour who is not
stimulated by the prospect of the remuneration and
enjoyment which the fruit of his labour will return
him.
Whoever, then, has voluntarily subjected himself to the painful operations of labour has, in strict justice, a right of property in the product or result of that labour; that is to say, he, and he alone, has a right to all the advantages, enjoyments, pleasures and comforts that are derivable from the results of his labour. Others cannot complain of having been excluded from the enjoyment of a thing whose production cost them nothing; which be was not bound to produce for their use, and which, were it not for his efforts, would not have existed at all.
Producer's Right of
Disposal.
Use and exclusion are, therefore, the two essential peculiarities of the enjoyment of a right of property. The power to dispose of legitimate property is almost absolute. Property may be devoted by its owner to any purpose he pleases that is not inconsistent with the public good and does not interfere with the rights of others. He may keep it for his own use and enjoyment if he wishes, or he may exchange it by barter or sale for an equivalent in value of the property of others; he may alienate it by free gift when living, or bequeath it to anyone he pleases, as a voluntary legacy, when dying. He might even destroy it and do no wrong to anyone. ... The Land of Every Country the Common Property of Its People. 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 means 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, would be an impious resistance to the benevolent intentions of his Creator. Read the whole letter Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894) — Appendix: FAQ
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation (1917)
Ted Gwartney: Estimating Land Values
LIMITATIONS ON LAND OWNERSHIP AND
USE
While land is the gift of nature, certain legal, political and social constraints have been imposed in most societies throughout the years. Every nation imposes certain public limitations on land ownership and use for the common good of all citizens. Four forms of governmental control include: 1. Taxation -- Power to tax the land to provide public revenue and to return to the community the costs incurred to pay for the various public benefits, services and environmental protection, which are provided by the government;
What are the factors that cause land to have
market value and to whom does this market revenue
advantage properly belong? Land has market value for
three reasons:
Land rent is the price that people and
businesses are willing to pay for the exclusive right
to possess and use a good land site for a period of
time. For example, people prefer to use sites of good
location because it gives them an advantage of spending
less time in travel by being near what they choose to
do and where they work. A businessman can sell more
goods at a site where many people pass each day,
compared to a site where only a few people would
pass.
The collection of land rent should be used as revenue, by the community for supplying public needs. This returns the advantage an individual land possessor receives from the exclusive use of a land site, to the balance of the people who live within the community and have allowed the land possessor the exclusive use of the land site for the period of time. ... Read the whole article 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
Mason Gaffney: The
Taxable Capacity of Land
Those getting the cold shower, meantime, may
resist it. In California, the land of extremes, we
got Howard Jarvis and Prop. 13. This
Constitutional Amendment capped the property tax rate
at 1%, and virtually froze assessed values until land
sold. Then the boom really went wild. I myself,
after campaigning hard against Jarvis, unexpectedly
made $200,000 in a few months after it passed. Buyers
were chasing me around the block, just to buy a scrap
of land I happened to have in the right place at the
right time. It was blind luck, but the money was as
good as though I had earned it honestly: better, in
fact, because 60% of the gain was not even reportable
as taxable income. It was a once-in-a-lifetime
experience, but buyers and sellers came to regard it
as normal, and only fair. They saw regular annual
increments as a divine right of property. For a few
mad years, they were. ...
Read
the whole
article
Mason Gaffney: Bottling the Air Times have caught up with Ingersoll. Ronald Coase, prominent Chicago economist, says polluters (whom he calls emitters, to avoid bias) have as much right to emit as victims (he says receptors) have to breathe clean air. It doesn’t matter, says Coase, how we assign property rights originally: as long as property is firm, the market will sort it all out. However, since emitters have invested in costly facilities, and property is sacred... you see whither this unbiased science is tending. Was he laughed to scorn? Au contraire, he was raised on the shoulders of his adulatory peers and anointed a demi-god (which tells you something about his peers). Having risen on wings of theory the idea found its way into practice, and today The South Coast Air Quality Management District awards "offset rights" to those with worthy track records of emitting. New emitters must buy "property rights" from old ones. ... read the whole article Mason Gaffney: Economics in Support of EnvironmentalismAnd yet, the urban price influence of Los Angeles extends over 89 miles east-south-east clear to Temecula and Murrieta and beyond, at which point, however, it meets demand pushing north from San Diego. Urban valuation fever thus affects much more land than can ever actually be developed for urban use. Regardless, most owners come to imagine they might cash in at a high price, with high zoning, at their own convenience, with public services supplied by "the public," meaning other taxpayers. This is the meaning of "floating value." If their land is downzoned for farming, open space, or habitat, they regard it as a "taking," and plead the 14th Amendment. Once we buy into the Sanctity (Holiness, Sacredness) of private property, we owe them. If we think of the public's buying large quantities of it to preserve habitat or open space, the price is already high above its aggregate value, and the new demand will push the price higher yet. Here is a case showing how this works. The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) needed the old Union Station, northeast of downtown in a run-down neighborhood, as the centerpiece of its new, integrated mass transit system. With the decline of interurban passenger rail traffic, the old station was unused. The owners, mainly Southern Pacific, asked more than MTA offered, so MTA invoked its power of eminent domain and condemned the land. The case went to judgement, and in 1984 the court awarded SP an amount about twice the going price for land in the area. The court's reason was that the coming of mass transit would raise values around the new central station, and SP should be paid as much as neighboring landowners would be able to get after the station was built. Thus, land originally granted to SP to help subsidize mass transit was used instead to obstruct and penalize mass transit. Private property had become an end in itself, Holy and Sacred, a welfare entitlement, rather than a means to an end. MTA (the taxpayers) had to pay a price for land based on the unearned increment that its own construction and operation was expected to create in the future. Later, MTA was to stint on subway construction, resulting in subsidence on Hollywood Boulevard, but there was no stinting on paying off SP for doing nothing: the award came to $84.7 millions. This is how the 14th Amendment works in practice, making private property an end, sanctified for its own sake, rather than a means to a higher end. It makes landowners the spoiled children of the national family, inflating the cost of every program that entails acquiring land. It means there is no chance that the public, whether through government or the Nature Conservancy, can preserve more than token areas of habitat by buying it: it would bankrupt us.... read the whole article Mason Gaffney: Nonpoint Pollution: Tractable Solutions to Intractable Problems
The Special Challenge to Economic
Thinking Brendan Hennigan: Comparison of George's
Economic Theory of Justice with the Catholic Church's
Social Teachings Concerning the Right to Private Property
in LandThe Search for Surrogates Sources of Nonpoint Pollution What Problems are Created? What Problems are Unsolved by Excise Taxes on Surrogates? The Case of Forestry The Case of Urban Settlement The Case of Agriculture The Common Theme from Forest, City and Farm Solutions Lindy Davies: The Top Ten Reasons Why Land is More Important than Ever
The Georgist economic
proposal insists on the primary importance of land as
a factor in the economy. Many people dismiss that as a
quaint, agrarian notion. "Perhaps," they scoff, "land was
that significant back when most people had to work the
soil for a living, but modern agriculture has moved far
past that! Nowadays we deal with modern issues of
technology, global markets, information -- land is no
longer a big deal." 10. There's no place to dump your trash for free. ... 9. Scratch a financial crisis, find a real estate bubble. ... 8. Information (like railroads) needs routes. ... 7. Cities can no longer afford to be inefficient. ... 6. Global climate change is too likely to ignore. ... 5. The loss of biological diversity cannot be reversed. ... 4. Two out of every five people lack a safe and dependable source of drinking water. ... 3. The myth of overpopulation causes cultural sickness. ... 2. We have forgotten what nations are. ... 1. "The land shall not be sold forever, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me." ... Nic Tideman: The Constitutional Conflict Between Protecting Expectations and Moral Evolution
Constitutions must be amendable, to allow for the
possibility of incorporating new moral insights into
them. This impinges on the protection of expectations,
including those regarded as property. Protection of
property rights is achieved by constitutional
restrictions on the ability of voters and legislators to
reduce the value of property by regulation, taxation or
expropriation. But such restrictions also prevent voters
and legislatures from reflecting new moral insights in
legislation, if those insights would reduce the value of
property. There have been times in the past when moral
development has compelled societies to change laws in
ways that reduced the value of property (e.g.,
elimination of slavery). We cannot guarantee that there
will be no future advances in our moral evolution that
would require similar changes in laws, reducing or
eliminating the value of what we now consider property.
Looking forward to the possibility of such moral
advances, we should design constitutions that permit
amendments to reflect new moral insights, while
prohibiting legislators (or voters in referenda) from
passing laws that redistribute in ways not explicitly
sanctioned by the constitution.
1. The Possibility of New Moral
Insights that Necessitate Redistribution Jeff Smith and Kris Nelson: Giving Life to the Property Tax Shift (PTS)
John Muir is right. "Tug on any one thing and find
it connected to everything else in the universe." Tug on
the property tax and find it connected to urban slums,
farmland loss, political favoritism, and unearned equity
with disrupted neighborhood tenure. Echoing Thoreau, the
more familiar reforms have failed to address this
many-headed hydra at its root. To think that the root
could be chopped by a mere shift in the property tax base
-- from buildings to land -- must seem like the epitome
of unfounded faith. Yet the evidence shows that state and
local tax activists do have a powerful, if subtle, tool
at their disposal. The "stick" spurring efficient use of
land is a higher tax rate upon land, up to even the
site's full annual value. The "carrot" rewarding
efficient use of land is a lower or zero tax rate upon
improvements. ...
The vanguard group for tax shifters, the broad environmental movement, conflicts with two American values: private property (altho' why absentee owners need privacy is unclear) and land speculation. The land tax in particular directly confronts these two values left over from the days of westward expansion. As the PTS wins adherents and looms as a threat to speculators, mortgagors, et al, the potential losers become vocal. While the PTS may seem to pit land sellers versus land buyers, it need not. Coupled with an untaxing of homes, sales, and income, and with a Housing Voucher, the PTS could benefit both sellers and buyers. Sellers, usually of higher income, would benefit more from untaxing capital. Buyers, usually of lower income, would benefit more from a tax upon never-produced land, which would lower the price. ... A big problem needs a big solution which in turn needs a matching shift of our prevailing paradigm. Geonomics -- advocating that we share the social value of sites and natural resources and untax earnings -- does just that. Read the whole article Jeff Smith Share Rent, Transform Society
If society decided to share among its members all
the annual value of society's sites and resources and air
space, what would happen?
...
It doesn't matter who owns what. What matters is who gets the rent. We have millions of acres of forest we Americans own together, and we are losing rent on it. ...
What other social relations might change? Increase
land ownership participation in community and it benefits
community, with town hall meetings and block parties.
Those kinds of communities have less crime.
Read the whole
article
Jeff Smith: Sharing Natural Rents to Sustain Human Society
To get rich, or more likely to stay rich, some of
us can develop land, especially sprawling shopping
centers, and extract resources, especially oil. While
sprawl and oil depletion are not necessary, they are more
profitable than a car-free functionally integrated city.
Under the current rules of doing business, waste returns
more than efficiency. We let a few privatize rent --
ground rent and resource rent -- although rent is a
social surplus. As if rent were not profit enough,
winners of rent have also won further state favors -- tax
breaks, liability limits, subsidies, and a host of others
designed to impel growth (20 major ones follow
herein).
If we are to sustain our selves, our civilization, and our eco-system, we must make some hard choices about property. What we decide to do with rent, whether we let it reward our exploiting or our attaining eco-librium, matters. Imagine society waking up to the public nature of rent. Then it would collect and share its surplus that manifests as the market value of sites, resources, the spectrum, and government-granted privileges. Then we could forego taxing labor and capital. On such a level playing field, this freed market would favor efficiency -- the compact city -- not waste -- the mall and automobile. ...
Drawing their cue from the public,
governments tolerate "rentention", the private
retention of publicly-generated land values.
Lacking this Rent, states turn to taxes. But to grow the
economy, all governments -- left, right, or undecided --
hustle to stimulate development; they cut taxes and slop
subsidies. Going beyond the call of duty, the state
excuses producers' their routine pollution and limit
liability, thereby cutting the cost of insurance.
Companies that don't impose on nature, worker, or
customer are not benefited at all but lose a competitive
advantage. On this tilted playing field, one with the
lumps of subsidies and the tilts of taxes, technologies
lean and clean have a hard time competing as suppliers of
materials, homes, food, rides, and
energy. ... To sustain that which we love, we must transform our relationships to nature, to government, and to each other. We need to become geonomists in worldview, theory, discipline, and policy. Geonomics creates an economy that's not at war with but aligned with the natural world.... Read the whole article Bill Batt: How Our Towns Got That Way (1996 speech) Just over a week from now, right here in Albany, the Property Rights Foundation of America will hold its second annual conference. These are the people who are the core of the so-called "wise use" movement, that is those who believe that the rights of ownership of real property stand above just about all other values in political negotiation, and that rights to private property are gravely threatened by a government that today seeks to encroach on the foundations of our forefathers' vision of society. In the American west it is better known as the "sagebrush rebellion." I won't talk much about whether or not these rights are soundly framed or well grounded. I will talk, however, about some changes that took place about a century ago that have had profound consequences for the directions of American society in the interim. Had those changes not taken place, it is doubtful whether the groundswell of anger over the place of private landownership would be as intense as it is today. One must start by looking at how the meaning of the word property has changed over the course of centuries. In most societies of the world, as was true in classic western thought, property typically meant personal property - clothing, household goods, bodily adornments and armor, and similar such items. Land was typically owned by society in common, or perhaps belonged to God or nature. Roman law made some effort to allot land titles to private individuals and families, but it was honored more in theory than in fact. Indeed, it was not until the now well-documented "enclosure movement" in early Tudor England that land titles began their long transformation from what has been termed "leasehold" to "freehold." Against the will of the King and his Council, noblemen seized the land for themselves, marking it into defined units, fenced off in their names only, even when they had no use for it. Karl Polanyi noted that:
Enclosures have appropriately been called a
revolution of the rich against the poor.
...
Rutgers Professor of Urban Planning Donald Krueckeberg more recently explained how real property became for the first time a "commodity," much as the market gives personal property exchange value. Native Americans tied the concept of property not to ownership but to use. "One used it, one moved on, and use was shared with others." But the colonists took their notion of real property from evolving British legal tradition, defined largely in terms of what its owners could subdue and control against challengers. John Locke's conception of property was, in one sense, more akin to the Indian notion in as much as one owned it only to the extent that one "mixed one's labor" with it. Indeed the most widespread notion of property ownership, especially in realms where Roman law had left no legacy, was title in usufruct, meaning title to use. But that meaning has gradually given way to the prevailing conception of title in fee simple, even though legal constraints have grown to curtail abuses of such ownership and are even seen sometimes as assaults on it. Krueckeberg notes that as many as nine kinds of property rights have been distinguished:
From the first application of the land law of the
New England settlers there has been a gradual extension
of private control over land titles first to simple use,
then the right to benefit, and ultimately "to the idea of
gain made by selling. Land speculation, which was to
spread across the continent, radically transformed New
England's democratic town pattern." Concurrent with this
spreading application of titles in fee simple has come
changes in the meaning of the word property, a term
which, although employed in the Fourth and Fifth
Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, was amplified only
during the second half of the 19th century. The notion of
land as a commodity has had pernicious effects on the
course of our whole civilization. ... read the
whole article Bill Batt: The
Compatibility of Georgist Economics and Ecological
Economics
Georgists' assumptions about property
ownership rest upon premises profoundly different from
their conventional use in western society — indeed
increasingly in world society. In the discourse of legal
philosophy, the notion of property and ownership are
better understood as a collection of legal rights and
responsibilities among people; for example, the right to
possess, to use, to capitalize, to manage, and to retain
the income from such.18
If one disaggregates these rights, one has a far clearer
understanding of the potential array of socio-economic
arrangements that are possible. The primary distinction
to Georgists is that between ownership for use and
ownership for gain. More will be said about the merit of
this division at a later point, but it should be noted
even here that the distinction is
ancient,19 and
has had expression at various times in human history long
before the appearance of Henry George. Two sets of
contrasting terms are often employed to distinguish the
separate notions of ownership:
In fact compensation for land held in usufruct was
far more often in kind than it was in money. Typically,
in Middle Eastern as well as in Asian societies, a
percentage of a crop or of other products gained from the
land were accepted as just payment for its use, paid
usually to a king or nobleman in exchange for services
which they in turn were expected to provide. This usually
meant the protection against ravaging bands, arbitration
of disputes, provision of sustenance in times of
emergency, and so on. The pattern of leasehold ownership
with either in-kind services, goods, or later fees paid
to lords and kings is the hallmark feature of feudalism,
widely known not only in the European past but throughout
Asia and prehistoric Central American
civilizations. Mason Gaffney: George's Economics of
Abundance: Replacing dismal choices with practical
resolutions and synergiesIn the Georgist context a titleholder has the right to ownership of land in usufruct, but not in fee simple. As long as an owner uses land and other elements of nature in accord with the rules and laws of society, one retains a possessory interest. That interest extends to the privilege to use land for all purposes consistent with its proper maintenance and care. It extends even in some cases to the right to preclude others from any trespass at all. But what it typically does not include is the right to any speculative gain that would follow from title in freehold, or the right to use land beyond what it is capable of sustaining. Use implies that its quality is not diminished for the future availability of others, and that there is an obligation for the user to pay to society a just price in exchange for such use. One had no right, for example, to strip a forest of its trees. Enough is known now about the arrangements of land ownership and use in comparative perspective to assert with confidence that the historical practice of title in fee simple or freehold has been far more the exception than rule.20 Taking the long view of history, title in usufruct has been by far the more common pattern of ownership of natural resources, except where Roman jurisprudence and its offspring have spread throughout the world and come to dominate. ... The authors would further impose the full costs, in the form of taxes, on the depletion of natural capital resources. This in turn would both discourage the improvident use of such materials and encourage their re-use and recycling beyond what economic arrangements now provide for. They also argue strongly for tariffs and trade barriers that would foster linkages between existing local community enterprises, since they view economic globalization as a “race to the bottom” with respect to the exploitation of both resources (land) and labor. These tariffs would apply not only to protect the viability of certain social and political units but to ecological systems generally, so that their protection would be better guaranteed against the ravages of market exploitation. With respect to arrangement of property rights, their classifications follow more conventional thinking, distinguishing ownership according the degree of access and by the extent of public protection warranted. Here they fall back more on legal and regulatory approaches than upon pricing. They see a continuum that runs from individual property rights to common ownership, ignoring the fact that any title to property constitutes a “bundle of rights” which can in principle be disaggregated and charged for in various ways. The theme of economic justice runs throughout Daly’s work, evident of course in the title For the Common Good.122 But the formulations of justice are not explicit. One looks in vain for a statement of what if any entitlements people should possess by virtue of being human, or what nature or posterity is due in turn. Absent is anything that Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon calls “rights talk.” 123 But it is clear that the ecological economists are struggling mightily with these questions.... read the whole article
... Reconciles common rights to land
with private tenure
Georgist policy harmonizes collectivism and individalism; government and the market; common rights and private tenure. It has been called "commons without tragedy," because it lets common-access resources like fisheries and open ranges be closed off, without destroying common rights. The principle is simple and basic. Common lands, with open access, become overcrowded. Optimal management calls for restricting entry and usage. Entry is limited by issuing licenses (or leases, permits, concessions, possessory interests, etc.). However, instead of giving these away gratis, as is the current practice, they are leased out annually to the highest bidder. Thus, those excluded are compensated, while those included get only what they pay for. As to land already in private tenure, taxation asserts common rights to the income of that land, without impairing private tenure rights. Indeed, private tenure is strengthened when the owner can truly say "This is my land, I pay the taxes on it." Squatters, trespassers, and vandals may be evicted with a clear conscience: their common rights have been protected otherwise, through the tax system. Thus, the policy reconciles common rights and heavy taxation with the free market and strong private tenure rights. In addition, taking tax revenues from land lets capital and labor go untaxed. Private property in labor - the basic right of a person to himself, as posited by John Locke - and private property in capital, the right of a person to the full value of what he saves, are strengthened. ... read the whole article see also: Bill Batt: How the Railroads Got Us On the Wrong Economic TrackMason Gaffney: 18 Fallacies
2. "Real Property is Sacred and
Untouchable"
Wrong! Suppose this layman writer and the Oregon Chief Justice were in error, and water permits were real property. That is out of the frying pan, into the fire. What does 'real' mean, applied to property or estate? It is not the opposite of 'imaginary.' No, 'real' is an elided English form of the French 'regal' taken into English when English kings spoke their native French. Real property is The King's. We threw out kings in 1783, but not the royal powers. Rather, we transferred those powers to our State governments. By succession, real property means government property! Every landowner is a tenant of the king or his successors in interest. The very word 'own' comes from 'owe.' An owner is one who owes. What he owed historically was fealty to his sovereign. That used to mean bending the knee, kissing the royal foot, swearing allegiance, and showing up on demand to smite the enemy. It has evolved into servitudes like eminent domain, police power, the public trust doctrine, and something else that our lawyers may have glided over, but economists underline: the tax power. These concepts are basic to common law which has been brought into every U.S. state constitution (save Louisiana's). Moses was not just whistling Dixie when he quoted The Lord as saying "The land shall not be sold forever; for the land is mine, and ye are strangers and sojourners with me." Chief Seattle would have approved. So would Brigham Young, who founded the once-independent nation of Deseret on that principle. Moses was also speaking just as William the Norman spoke after conquered England, except that Moses was also a theocrat. "You hold title to this land from me; observe my rules." That's the law we have inherited; that's how the system works. In one form or another it is found around the world, except in the minds abstract economic theorists like those of the Chicago School. ... 4. "If property falls, America falls" Wrong, at least in my opinion. Property is not an end in itself; it is a means of getting resources put to their best use for the general good. To secure that end, property rights are instituted among men, deriving their just standing from the consent of the unpropertied. Whenever any form of property becomes destructive of that end, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new principles most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Consent of the unpropertied? That means property must work for the benefit of all, not just those who own property. But abolish property!? That is a red flag indeed, but note I said alter or abolish, and it is our own Declaration of Independence I am paraphrasing. Like Jefferson, I generally prefer alter to abolish: 'abolishing' something is nihilistic until we know what we want to replace it with. The point is, we have many degrees of freedom as citizens; we are not bound body and soul by decisions made, or allegedly made, in the past. ... 6. "You can't stop a landowner from pumping on his own land" Wrong! You can even control his hunting and fishing there, and apply police power. As to pumping, it depends on whether he owns what is under his land. If it is oil, we all know mineral rights are routinely severed from surface rights by sale, reservation or lease. Water can be subject to constraints, too. Limits on pumping water are not as common or severe as Huey Johnson and I think they should be, but they do exist. In coastal areas, pumping is limited and/or taxed to stop salt water intrusion. Further inland, pumping can be stopped to control movement of toxic plumes that destroy valuable aquifers: this is done in the Bunker Hill aquifer under the Santa Ana River, threatened with fouling by toxins from Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino. Pumping is routinely stopped to prevent 'export' of water from lands overlying an aquifer: California calls that the 'correlative rights' doctrine. It is not always well observed, and not often well-advised, but very well established. If that does not suffice to stop overdraft, pumping is controlled to prorate water among surface owners, and shorten pump lifts. Also, pumping wells near streams can be stopped to prevent the indirect diversion of surface water. This happens on the alluvial fans that are so common in the west. A simple solution to half our tractable water problems would be a severance tax on water withdrawals. If you can regulate it you can tax it. A tax can be viewed as nothing more than an economic price charged by the owner of water (the state) for using its property. If Chicago-School (and Rand Corporation) economists were more consistent in their ardor for the price system, and less consistent in their anarchistic mistrust of legislatures, they would seize upon this obvious application of the price system and boost it with all the considerable influence they wield. Whether one chooses taxation regulation, we must control pumping in some manner if any system of surface control is to work. While California rations and conserves surface water, landowners in the arid San Joaquin Valley just punch more and more wells into the aquifers and pump up free water the State keeps recharging at high cost. Thus they play out their destined role in The Great Water Treadmill: subsidized water supply followed by overdraft followed by State rescue projects followed by new overdrafts, etc. ad bankruptcy. This treadmill got well started in 1913 when Los Angeles tapped the Owens Valley waters to supply free water in the San Fernando Valley. The lands there were timely pre-purchased by insiders, giving a clue to the forces behind the premature seizures and diversion of water. The episode was dramatized in the film Chinatown, so the scenario is often now labelled 'the Chinatown syndrome' although the key names like Mulholland, Otis and Chandler sound distinctly occidental. It is not just history; it is the present and near future: the Great Treadmill keeps turning. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) now presides over our destinies. The MWD presses for more water sources, preaches domestic conservation, imposes rationing on its old customers -- and annexes new desert lands to water.
In similar fashion, Kern County landowners keep
irrigating desert lands and overdrafting, while
petitioning the Sacramento legislature for 'emergency'
aid. ... Read the whole article
Mason Gaffney: Megabucks for Negabucks: Solving the Water Crisis The California Constitution and Water Code, like those of most states, are explicit that “The waters of California belong to the people of California.” Water is not private property, evidenced by its not being taxed as such (except indirectly, as it adds to the value of fee simple land). Water is not, therefore, subject to the limits that Prop. 13 (and cognate laws in other states) impose on property tax rates. The State, as owner, can presumably charge whatever the legislature decides, without its being considered a tax at all. Water claimants would of course resist strenuously, with all the lawyers and pawns and media that money can buy, and social pressure sway, but the public has a strong case. It’s not just water per se, but also the lands under what were originally shallow waters. Most coastal cities have increased their areas greatly by filling in shallow waters. The surface of San Francisco Bay is about half of what it was before filling began. Boston has doubled its area by filling. Just who owns the original seabed is a complex legal tangle, but in many areas the public has basic ownership rights for which it usually fails to claim market rents. The “Public Trust Doctrine” applies to some shallow waters. In 1983 the California Supreme Court resurrected it from the dead letter office (Mono Lake Case), and many cities, with a little positive thinking, could enhance their shriveled revenues greatly by moving aggressively on these rents. There are four major ways that individuals and corporations acquire the use of waters. One is by riparian rights. To own the bank of a lake or stream is to have a right to the water, theoretically “undiminished and unpolluted,” that nature put there - subject to the equal rights of other riparians, but not of anyone else. When waters must be prorated it is in proportion to the area of backlying land in the smallest undivided parcel that has ever existed - a penalty for selling off any land. Some riparians have succeeded in dominating large areas by virtue of owning the banks of streams. The Miller and Lux empire on the lower San Joaquin River was a classic case of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Consiglieri for riparians encourage us to believe that these rights are “part and parcel” of the land title, hence untouchable, but in fact voters have breached and limited them severely when they became too obnoxious. In 1928 Californians amended their Constitution to limit riparians to “reasonable use” (now article 2 of section 10). Oh, yes, it was a big monopoly power company, Southern Cal Edison, that financed the amendment, to abet its own heist of a power drop, but still the legal point was made. When thieves fall out, the public has an entrée. A second way to claim water is by owning land overlying ground water, and the aquifers that store it. For generations, overlying landowners could pump at will (usually with subsidized power). Most of them still may, and do, heedless of overdrafts and falling water tables. When pumping costs rise, the common answer has been to photograph a wilted field or dying grove for publicity, and get state or federal governments to pay for “rescue projects,” importing water to recharge the aquifers, as in the Coachella Valley and the southern San Joaquin Valley. These in turn lead to more pumping and another rescue project: a “treadmill effect” of long standing. It worked in the San Fernando Valley in 1913, and it keeps working. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWDSC), its Board dominated by land speculators, is now a big agent. In a leading case of 1949 (Pasadena v. Alhambra) the California Supreme Court did limit pumping from the Raymond Basin. It based allocations on histories of past use. This led to a statewide “race to the pump house” to establish histories of waste as bases for future prorationing. It is hard to devise anything so counterproductive, but that’s what the judges did (and then some people blame overpopulation and natural scarcity). The point is, though, that the State can manage aquifers, and what the State can manage it can tax. With the current movement toward water marketing, landowners may now “export” water from lands overlying the basin being pumped. This has moved some giant speculators to buy up vast areas with a view to exporting the groundwater and renting out space in the aquifers. Some publicized examples are PG&E Properties in northern California, Peter Hensen and John Huston near Denver, BCE (Bell Canada), Cadiz Land in Riverside County, Tenneco in Kern County, a few major oil firms, and the Maurice Strong consortium in New Mexico. Where natural resources are on the auction block, and taxes are zero, big money rushes in. A third way to claim water is by “prior appropriation.” The key rules are “first in time, first in right”; “due diligence”; “beneficial use”; and “history of use.” The precondition for putting water to “beneficial use” is owning land on which to spread it. The “beneficial” part is a joke. “Use” is what counts, and “use” in practice means “taking” (by withdrawing or diverting). The State charges nothing for taking its water, and often subsidizes the appropriators. So the scarce and priceless waters of the west have been allocated mainly in proportion to prior ownership of land. Part of appropriating water is securing sites for dams and reservoirs and rights of way, either from public domain or from private owners by use of eminent domain. A major case is San Francisco’s seizure of the site of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir inside Yosemite National Park. This scenic site on the Tuolumne River once rivaled Yosemite Valley itself, on the neighboring Merced River. Rent has been $30,000 a year, fixed since the 1920s. The Administration is now proposing $8 million a year. However this case goes, the charge is for the site alone, not for the water or the power drop. San Francisco seized so much more than its own needs that it sells 2/3 of what it takes to other cities, for a fat profit that helps keep land values in San Francisco nearly the highest in the U.S.A., and its housing the least affordable. A fourth way to claim water is by getting “sweetheart” contracts from large supply systems: Federal water from the Bureau of Reclamation; State water from the State Department of Water Resources; and mixed-source waters from the giant MWDSC. No sooner are these contracts inked than learned counselors go to work to convert them into perpetual obligations of the taxpayers and other ratepayers. The original 40-year contracts that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation executed on the 1950s at giveaway prices came up for renegotiation in the 1990s, and only a few old timers even remembered their origins. Meantime the once-surplus water had multiplied many times in value, and the contractors were busy securing rights to resell water that they buy for some $10 per acre-foot to coastal cities for $200-$500 per acre foot. A rather shocking decision by Senior Judge John Wiese, December 31, 2003, requires the Feds to compensate the Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District for withholding some of “their” water to comply with the Endangered Species Act to save fish downstream. Said District is a front for the J.G. Boswell Company, owner of 200,000 (sic) acres in the Basin.
What’s the moral? We can turn
“Negabucks into Megabucks” for state and
Federal treasuries by charging water takers a market
price for what they get, instead of subsidizing them to
get it, as now. The stakes are huge; the barriers are
surmountable. Besides raising revenues we would institute
a regime of “demand management,” promoting
water conservation in the most economical way. We would
solve our factitious “water crisis” and
“revenue crisis” in one stroke. ...
Read
the whole article
Alanna Hartzok:Ethical Land Tenure
I want to tell you the story of Charles Avilla. A
while back I came across a book called Ownership, Early Christian Teachings. Avilla
was a divinity student in the Phillipines. One of his
professors had a great concern about poverty conditions
in the Phillipines, and was taking students out to
prisons where the cooks were the land rights
revolutionaries in the Phillipines. Because they kept
pushing for land reform for the people, they had ended up
in jail. So they were political prisoners who were
reading the Bible and were asking the question,
who did God give this earth to? Who does
it belong to? It isn't in the
Bible that so few should have so much and so many have so
little. In the theological world in this upscale
seminary he was trying to put this together about poverty
and what the biblical teachings were. He had a thesis to
write and he was thinking he would do something about
economic justice. One of his professors thought there
would be a wealth of information from the church's early
history, the first 300 years after Jesus. So he actually
went back to read the Latin and Greek about land
ownership and found a wealth of information about the
prophetic railings of the people in that early time on
the rights of the land. ...The Talmudic
rabinical discussion is of interest to Georgists because
they tried to allocate the land according to the richness
of the soil for agriculture. For better soil, richer for
agriculture, maybe an acre of that would be allocated. On
the poorer soil, these tribes could get five
acres.
The other thing was some lands were closer to the market. Some land was closer to Jerusalem. That is an advantage over those who would have to travel a longer distance to get to the market. How do you have an equal rights distribution of land allocation with reference to the market problem? For those more advantageously situated, the adjustment was to be made by money. Those holding land nearer the city should pay in to the common treasury the estimated excess of value attaining to it by reason of superior situation. While those holding land of less value by reason of distance from the city would receive from the treasury a money compensation. On the more valuable holdings would be imposed a tax or a lease fee, the measure of which was the excess of their respective values over a given standard, and the fund thus created was to be paid out in due proportion to those whose holdings were in less favorable locations. In this, then, we see affirmed the doctrine that natural advantages are common property and may not be diverted to private gain. Throughout the ages when wisdom is applied to land problems, we see this emerge. ... Read the whole article Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
Weld Carter: An Introduction to Henry George
The Ethics of Taxation
It was but a short step from the ethics of property to the ethics of taxation. George's position here was that as labor and capital rightfully and unconditionally own what they produce, no one can rightfully appropriate any of their earnings; nor can the State. On the other hand, land value is always a socially created value, never the result of action by the owner of the land. Therefore this is a value that must be taken by society; otherwise, those who comprise the social whole are deprived of what is rightfully theirs. Furthermore, to charge the owner for this value, in the form of taxation, is only to collect from him the precise value of the benefit he receives from society. As to the justice of taxes on products, George spoke of "...all taxes now levied on the products and processes of industry -- which taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we hold to be infringements of the right of property." Of the justice of taxes on land values, he said, "Adam Smith speaks of incomes as 'enjoyed under the protection of the state'; and this is the ground upon which the equal taxation of all species of property is commonly insisted upon -- that it is equally protected by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the enjoyment of property is made possible by the state -- that there is a value created and maintained by the community, which is justly called upon to meet community expenses. Now of what values is this true? Only of the value of land. This is a value that does not arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike other values, grows with the growth of the community. It exists only as the community exists. Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would have no value at all. With every increase of population the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls. ... "The tax upon land values is,
therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls
only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and
valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the
benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community,
for the use of the community, that value which is the
creation of the community. It is the application the common
property to common uses." ...read the
whole article Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 2: A Short History of Capitalism (pages 15-32)
Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 5: Reinventing the Commons (pages 65-78)
Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 6: Trusteeship of Creation (pages 79-100)
Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 10: What You Can Do (pages 155-166)
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