Harry wrote: > 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.
But who owns the land, and who collects the rent? If there is a land "market" among private owners, you'll end up with concentrating most of the land ownership into a few hands -- a few billionaires own almost all the land. This is very bad and injust and leads to wide-spread poverty and high levels of inequality. Even if the state would collect a Georgist tax on land, it would have more money, but the basic problems of inequality and racketeering remain. In a commons system, all land is basically owned by the community (or state) and leased or lent in small pieces to those who are able to work the land, i.e. use it as a productive resource. There is no space for racketeering or speculation, because every piece of land is actually used by Producers. Note that this system is not just a pipe dream or a failed experiment like Georgism or Marxism -- the commons system (Allmendrecht) has actually worked for centuries in Europe, until one big Predator re-introduced the Roman land law with private land ownership. > 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. On the contrary: The market leads to speculation and corruption (think Soros) whereas the commons system ensures the optimum use of land for the community. It is NOT "_politically_ allocating" the land, but according to ability (ability to work the land, not ability to speculate and rip off!). > It was not the financial collapse: it was a land-value collapse -- as it > always is. The Wall Street casino gamblers will collapse ANY market -- it's not important which commodity it is. They even gambled with food, leading to starvation and a public insurrection in Mexico, after the staple food price tripled. The mistake is to make land (or food) a commodity at all, open for speculation. Raising a tax on it, is just an ineffective band-aid. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
