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No; so far as I know all of economics ( eru covered Henry George ) considers land, capital and labor as three independent elements of production. "Independent"

No; so far as I know all of economics ( eru covered Henry George ) considers land, capital and labor as three independent elements of production. "Independent" in the sense of orthogonal, as if they were x,y and z planes in a coordinate system. One of the things that's interesting about this - if you can substitute capital for it, it's not really land. "Land" also means something abstract, in a manner similar to the ellipsoid used in GPS calculations in aviation. Its a "where", less a "what". But then again, we tend to conflate rents and profits, which creates a lot of confusion.

pyrale 10y ago
Could it be that these people you think of as conflating capital and "land" simply don't accept the definition you take for granted ? In Marx's definition, for instance, capital is defined by currency, and by the liquidity of one's assets. Therefore, considering land as capital would make sense. Microeconomics analysis is another realm where separating land and capital does not necessarily make sense : because of the liquidity effect described above, it may be useless to distinguish land and capital when you have no macro concern. My point here is that the definition of capital, and the classification of land related to capital is intimately related to the analysis you're making, and, therefore, to the position you're defending. As a consequence, what you understand as a person building a strawman is related not to that person building that strawman, but to that person's analysis being in conflict with semantics you take for granted. And ironically, when you try to establish a distinction that makes no sense in that person's logical framework, they may think that you're trying to drown the matter. In fact, they may even be right, in the context of the analysis of social capital, because you're in fact struggling to establish your capital as more legitimate than theirs. This kind of problematic is why it is so important for the one of us which build products for our clients, to take the time to understand their domain, their vocabulary and the context limits to this vocabulary.
- eru 10y ago
  In some sense, yes. ArkyBeagle and my implied argument is that the distinction between capital and land is a useful one. (And that always talking about capital+land is confusing matters.) You can of course express the original observation in Marxist terms as well: it's not just any capital owners that are getting a bigger slice of the pie, but especially land owners. Thanks to the existence of market prices, we can even abstract away from the specific owners and say that the factors of production themselves get different slices of the pie. That works because even when some piece of capital is bought and sold, the new owner gets roughly the same amount of return on them as the old one. (If it wasn't so, we would classify whatever the new owner is doing differently as having input their own labour into the process.)
eru 10y ago
Oh, even in a Henry George and other economists sense you can substitute different factors of production. The distinction is a bit more subtle. Ie building a multi-story building swaps capital for land. Georgism is (among other things) about untaxing capital and labour, so that such substitutions can work out better.

pyrale 10y ago

Could it be that these people you think of as conflating capital and "land" simply don't accept the definition you take for granted ? In Marx's definition, for instance, capital is defined by currency, and by the liquidity of one's assets. Therefore, considering land as capital would make sense. Microeconomics analysis is another realm where separating land and capital does not necessarily make sense : because of the liquidity effect described above, it may be useless to distinguish land and capital when you have no macro concern. My point here is that the definition of capital, and the classification of land related to capital is intimately related to the analysis you're making, and, therefore, to the position you're defending. As a consequence, what you understand as a person building a strawman is related not to that person building that strawman, but to that person's analysis being in conflict with semantics you take for granted. And ironically, when you try to establish a distinction that makes no sense in that person's logical framework, they may think that you're trying to drown the matter. In fact, they may even be right, in the context of the analysis of social capital, because you're in fact struggling to establish your capital as more legitimate than theirs. This kind of problematic is why it is so important for the one of us which build products for our clients, to take the time to understand their domain, their vocabulary and the context limits to this vocabulary.

eru 10y ago
In some sense, yes. ArkyBeagle and my implied argument is that the distinction between capital and land is a useful one. (And that always talking about capital+land is confusing matters.) You can of course express the original observation in Marxist terms as well: it's not just any capital owners that are getting a bigger slice of the pie, but especially land owners. Thanks to the existence of market prices, we can even abstract away from the specific owners and say that the factors of production themselves get different slices of the pie. That works because even when some piece of capital is bought and sold, the new owner gets roughly the same amount of return on them as the old one. (If it wasn't so, we would classify whatever the new owner is doing differently as having input their own labour into the process.)

eru 10y ago

Oh, even in a Henry George and other economists sense you can substitute different factors of production. The distinction is a bit more subtle. Ie building a multi-story building swaps capital for land. Georgism is (among other things) about untaxing capital and labour, so that such substitutions can work out better.