Reaping What Others Sow

The "others" might be individuals, but more frequently, "others" is the community as a whole. Why should some of us be permitted to privatize that which we all create together? Is that the definition of a meritocracy: smart guys win, even if it is by stealing — legally! — from the community?

Why should some grandchildren reap the increases in land value on property their grandparents bought? Their grandparents didn't create that land value: the community around them did. The community is entitled to that economic value. The estate tax takes a small fraction of it. Capital gains taxes take a small portion of it. Property taxes take a tiny fraction of it. But the bulk of it is left in the pockets of the lucky grandchildren, just as if their grandparents had actually contributed more than others did to that land value. A very impolite fiction!

Arthur J. Ogilvy: A Colonist's Plea for Land Nationalization (about 1890)

If I sell goods or perform work for another, then no matter how high I may charge for the goods or the work, I am rendering goods for goods, service for service, earnings for earnings. What I offer is my labour, or the fruits of it, and as the public are free to get the same goods or services elsewhere if my terms don't suit, or to go without them, the fact of their accepting my terms shows that the thing I offer is, under the circumstances, worth the money.

But in the case of this unearned increment on land there is no pretence of any exchange. I offer for it neither labour nor the produce of labour. All I do is to place my hand on a certain portion of the earth's surface, and say, "No one shall use this without paying me for the mere permission to use it." I am rendering no more service in return for this extra pound, either to the purchaser or to society, than if I had acquired exclusive title to the air, and charged people for permission to breathe. And if, instead of selling my land for an additional pound, I let it at a proportionately additional rent the principle would be the same.

The increase of value in my land has arisen from the execution of public works and increase of population, causing an increased demand for the land; in other words, it has arisen from the national progress; and I, so far from aiding in this progress have actually hindered it, by keeping my property locked up and so forcing on intending producers to inferior or less accessible lands; and by holding so much land back have helped to make land so much scarcer, and, therefore, so much dearer, and so have helped to increase the tribute which industry has to pay to monopoly for the mere privilege of exerting itself. ...

If Government, with the full consent of the governed, issued licenses authorising to rob on the highway, the robbers, I suppose, would be justified in acting on their privilege; but their gains, all the same, would be appropriation and not earnings, no matter how high they paid for their license or how honestly they came by the money to pay for it. And if the public, disgusted with the system, demanded its immediate abolition, the robbers would have a claim to compensation but their compensation would have to be assessed, not by the amount of plunder they had expected to make, but by the fee they had paid for their license and the actual loss to which, in one way or another, they had been put by the sudden abolition of a privilege they had honestly paid for. ...

Whether the value of land and the value of the improvements can be separated or not, they are quite distinct elements, just as in a glass of grog, the brandy is brandy and the water water, each with its own distinctive properties and effects, notwithstanding their indistinguishable com-mixture; and he therefore who lets land levies blackmail upon industry by charging for something which represents no service at all, none the less that at the same time he charges for something else that does represent service.

No doubt there are many other things besides land in which a monopoly of the article will enable the possessor to levy something resembling blackmail; but there are points of difference that distinguish them all from the pure and simple appropriation of land monopoly....

Rent devours wages.

Suppose the labourer to ask for a rise and the farmer to refuse, on the ground that he cannot afford it.

But presently something happens. A railway is made or a mine opened in the neighbourhood, or some improved process enables a greater yield to be obtained at the same cost, and there is now an appreciable surplus. The labourer comes forward again and says, "You can afford it now."

"Unfortunately, no," replies his employer. "I might have done so, but my lease is nearly up, and these advantages you refer to having made the land more valuable, my landlord has notified that he means to raise the rent; and as there certainly is a greater surplus available for rent than there was, I must give it, for if I don't someone else will; and so, as far as I am concerned, the surplus you calculate upon has vanished."

In short, whenever there is an increase in the productiveness of industry creating an additional surplus, and the labourer stretches forth his hand for a share of it, the landlord pushes him aside, and takes it all himself; but as he keeps well out of sight in doing so, using the employer as his instrument, his action is not perceived. And as it is in the present so it has been in the past. Inventions and discoveries have within the last century doubled the productiveness of industry over and over again, but the labourer has no more benefited by them than the employer has. The increase has been enormous, but, in the primary industries at any rate, the landlord has taken it all.

But some will say, "The labourer's exertion is a fixed quantity. The increased productiveness of his industry is in no degree due to himself, but to the improved appliances he works with, and, that being so, the person who supplies these appliances that is, the employer has a right to the increase.

There is enough prima facie appearance of reason in this to have made it worth discussing if the employer really got it, but he does not. He gets interest, no doubt, on the additional expense he has incurred in procuring the appliance, but he gets none of the increase of wealth due to the increased efficiency of labour when aided by the appliance, (once the appliance has come into general use); that, as we have seen, goes to increase the value of land and raise rents, and while the employer does not gain, the labourer in most cases actually loses; for the usual result of labour-saving inventions, in the primary industries at any rate, is not that the employer retains the same hands to do more work, but that he discharges some of his men and does the old amount of work with fewer hands.

It is the landlord, who has neither invented, nor supplied, nor put to use the appliances, who gets the whole benefit of them. ... read the whole paper.