Chris, The way to bring land prices and rents under control the market is to collect Rent. The effect of this is to reduce present rack-rents and to force speculators to get rid of unused and underused land, or use it. The effect of large amounts of land coming onto the market will enable production to zoom (and take us out of the present depression).
The market is impartial, whereas such things as politically allocating "small pieces of land" is asking for all kinds of problems -- the kind that accompany governmental control of anything, such as ineptitude, chicanery, and outright corruption. Harry ******************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 9104 818 352-4141 ******************************** -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Christoph Reuss Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 5:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: paper on technology manias and gullibility Harry Pollard wrote: > Chris, > > We cannot survive without access to land -- one of the three Factors > of Production. > > The principal characteristic of all land is location. Locations are by > their nature monopolies. > > Necessary to the efficient operation of the market price mechanism is > no restriction on the production of goods, and no restriction on > movement of goods. Yet, no more land can be produced -- as said Will > Rogers "They ain't making no more dirt." Also land cannot be moved. We > cannot move some Mojave desert land into downtown Los Angeles to compete with high priced sites. > > So the market cannot control land prices as it does with eggs and > bacon and other goods. Further land is all taken up. If you found a > little bit of apparently useless land and decided to put up the cabin > it is likely that before long someone would come running up waving a piece of paper. > > When land rents and prices rise, the market price mechanism cannot > bring them down by drawing land to the market so the prices keep rising. ... Your whole posting is based on the wrong assumption that land rents & prices must be exposed to a "free market". But that's just another factor of the boom-bust cycle BY AND FOR Predators. What I wrote before, also applies to your "18-years land bust cycle": >> Within a boom-bust cycle system, the crash may be "an inevitability" >> (and even a cyclic one). But the boom-bust cycle system is not >> inevitable at all >> -- it is made and perpetuated by those who gain from it in every cycle. The alternative doesn't have to be Marxist nationalization of land either. It could be a system of land commons, where small pieces of land are allocated to families according to ability to work the land. But Predators have actively destroyed the remains of that, also in America (Volcker in the 1980s). Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
