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As maxerickson said, that land is not free. And the question is not the amount of land, but the amount of valuable land. Land that is near jobs, near markets, n
by nwah1 9y ago
As maxerickson said, that land is not free. And the question is not the amount of land, but the amount of valuable land. Land that is near jobs, near markets, near ports, or near decent hospitals or schools.
Sure there's loads of terrible land in West Texas, which could possibly provide for a lifestyle of subsistence farming, but the US standard of living is such that it would be wiser to live on welfare in a city.
But in theory, if someone could covertly farm some crops on one of the numerous vacant sites in Manhattan, and not have to pay any rent, then that same amount of subsistence labor could provide for a potentially decent lifestyle.
Same amount of effort would bring in a much greater return, just through the better location.
My point about farming was to ask why we can't all share in the fruits of rising productivity. Why can't we just keep doing what we had been doing, and still take advantage of fancy new gizmos? And the answer is that progress causes land values to rise, but the valuable land is generally owned by a subset of the populace who demand a greater and greater rent just because they can.
So really the question is: how can we all share the value of land, without it just funneling back to higher rents? My suggestion is to look at land value taxation.
- neilwilson 9y agoYour suggestion would be wrong because your analysis is faulty. The land is useless without skilled people to operate it. What the skilled people have done is divide the labour which has created machines that farmers can use. The trouble is they can produce enough for themselves and their machine makers by the end of Tuesday. The challenge for the rest of us is to provide something of value to the farmer so they will work the rest of the week and create an exchange surplus. Rentiers are just the current solution that forces farmers to work til Friday. The problem is that trickle down doesn't work. Land value tax just makes everybody rentiers and racks off the farmers because they get nothing of exchange value in return for their week of labour.
- nwah1 9y agoLabor is the active force, and land is the passive force. Production cannot happen without both. As for everyone being rentiers, I'm not sure I see the problem. Everyone being rentiers ensures a minimum standard of living, allowing us all to share in the progress of civilization. But really, land value taxation itself raises the "margin of production" even without any kind of redistribution. The mention of trickle-down seems like a non sequitur.