Or suppose that, instead of finding a diamond, I buy tin, and that next week the price goes up to double here there is an additional distinction between my gains and the land speculator's for not only are the public under no compulsion to buy tin (while they are to rent land), and not only does tin represent the results of labour, and so represent earnings (which land does not), but the magnitude of my gain in most cases represents compensation for great risk. My finding a diamond does not prevent other people from looking for diamonds with as much chance of finding them as I had, and, if they don't think they are likely to find any by looking for them they can go without, and be none the worse.īut every piece of land appropriated shuts out so many other people from that land, and as all the land (practically speaking) is appropriated, or in one way or another out of reach of the masses, they are at the mercy of the landholders, and have no choice but either to rent it from them as tenants or work for them as labourers on the hardest terms to which competition can drive them which means that the landowner has the power of appropriating the greater part of their earnings in return for the mere permission to them to earn anything. If by a day's labour or by pure accident I find a diamond, I may ask a price entirely disproportionate to the value of my labour but then the public need not buy my diamond unless they like. The first is that none of them excludes other people from making a living or from making earnings to any extent by other means than the article monopolised. 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. 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. 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. Ogilvy: A Colonist's Plea for Land Nationalization (about 1890) Of every nation of their natural inheritance." [Thomas Paine, AgrarianĪrthur J. Monopoly that began with it has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants Is one of the greatest natural improvements ever made.But the landed I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds. Therefore, of cultivated land owes to the community a ground-rent, for Not the earth itself, that is individual property. It is nevertheless true that it is value of the improvement only, and The idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection but And impossible to separate the improvement made byĬultivation from the earth itself upon which that improvement is made, Number of inhabitants, compared with what it is capable of doing in aĬultivated state. "The earth, in its natural state … is supporting but a small Thomas Paine, quoted by James Dundas White in a pamphlet As Walt Rybeck puts it, most of us "don't know what'sĮating us." Read on, and you'll begin to understand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |