Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!

From: jmh (j_m_h_at_cox.net)
Date: 09/13/04 

Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:33:14 -0400

royls@telus.net wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 11:07:23 -0400, jmh <j_m_h@cox.net> wrote:
>
>
>>royls@telus.net wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 12:48:24 -0400, jmh <j_m_h@cox.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>royls@telus.net wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 22:29:54 -0400, jmh <j_m_h@cox.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>royls@telus.net wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 18:43:36 -0500, Albert <alwagner@tcac.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>jmh wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>What the
>>>>>>>>>owner of Land of Capital is contributing is the
>>>>>>>>>specific instance of that Land or Capital item which
>>>>>>>>>has a direct effect on the total quantity of output,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>No, the owner of land contributes nothing. All he does is charge a
>>>>>>>fee for what was already there with no help from him.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Yes but since the context was land ownership that means
>>>>>>he has that right and access to the land has economic
>>>>>>value so a price.
>>>>>
>>>>>The landowner has a legally recognized privilege of collecting rents
>>>>>created by government and the community. Not a right.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>The land input is still a productive
>>>>>>factor input for which the owner wants some compensation.
>>>>>
>>>>>Simply _wanting_ something for nothing is not the same as earning
>>>>>something by making a contribution. There is no doubt that land is a
>>>>>production factor. The point is, the landowner's only function is to
>>>>>collect money in return for not interfering with production. It's
>>>>>morally and economically equivalent to a protection racket.
>>>>
>>>>Which implies that all Georgists are racketeers.
>>>
>>>??? Nonsense. Unlike the private landowner, the community _does_
>>>have a function other than collecting the rent: to provide the
>>>services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities that create it.
>>
>>The fact that the community then takes the money and spends
>>it elsewhere, which may or may not be valuable expenditures
>>for everyone, is beside the point.
>
>
> No, it is not. We are assuming a responsible, democratic government
> that acts on behalf of and in the interest of the community, not a
> despot that takes the land rent and spends it on foreign wars. The
> services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities the community
> provides are what create the land rent.

What the rent is spent on does not matter, and I'll remind
you the context was not about taxes but able a private
person expecting to get some share in the production
output of some activity to which that person's
contribution was the factor of production Land.

The "responsible, democratic government" acting "on behalf"
of the community still has no more rights to claim any
rent for access to nature when the basis for rejecting
such an action by an individual is the claim that
no one produced the land. Don't try to shift the topic.

>
>>Your claim was that
>>charging for access to land was the same as a protection
>>racket.
>
>
> No. My claim was that for a _private_ landowner who does nothing to
> create the value he demands from the land's user to nevertheless

Neither does the community at large contribute anything
by allowing the producer to produce on the particular
location. At best they simply consume the output, a
separate activy from producing.

Finally, the owner of capital, assuming they only
contribute capital (finicial or real) personally
contribute to production--their assets do. That's
why the contribution alienable input factors of
Land and Capital can be treated similarly: owners
get to claim on the basis of the productivity of
their assets in the production process.

> capture and retain that value is morally and economically equivalent
> to a protection racket. Look up about 25 lines and you will see what
> I actually wrote, rather than what you want to claim I wrote.
>
> The distinguishing feature of a protection racket, what makes it
> different from a security provider, is that the racketeer doesn't
> provide any value: he only threatens to remove value. It is rightful
> for a security provider to charge a payment for his services because
> like the community charging land rent, he provides a valuable service
> that includes securing possession against violations by third parties.

Protection or security wasn't the topic, was it Roy. The
issues were a) are input factors productive or is only Labor
productive and b) if the input factor is distinctly separate
from the owner, i.e., capital and land, does ownership
grant some claim to a share in the total output to which
that alienable property contributes to producing.

Please try stay with the topic if you're going to
argue against what I was saying.

>
>>The fact that the some public authority does this
>>doesn change anything;
>
>
> Yes, it does. See above.
>
>
>>where did the right to charge for
>>access to nature come from?
>
>
> From the need to secure private individuals' rightful property in the
> products of their labor that are inseparable from the land, and to
> appropriately repay the contributions of those who make access to
> nature more valuable.

Either we all have free access to nature and any barrier
in the way of our free access to nature is not just or
there is some mechanism by which nature becomes private
and therefore some (or just one) my exclude others from
any access--including allowing access for a fee. That
proposition must logically preceed the issue you mention
above.

So what is it, does man have the right to appropriate
nature and make it private or not. If not then the
community cannot make any more demand for access to
nature than a person can. If yes then you need to
show some argument why that appropriation of nature
can only occur at the community level and not at
the individual level.

Note, appropriation of nature has nothing to do with the
level of land value, though it probably is the source of
the existance of land value.

>
>>You are being selective in your concerns about why
>>ownership grants a claim to output.
>
>
> Exactly! Ownership per se is a matter of (more or less arbitrary)
> law, not of moral right or economic efficiency. At one time a slave
> owner owned his slaves' output as a matter of law. Are you claiming
> that that claim to output based on ownership had the same moral and
> economic status as a worker's claim to the fruits of his own labor?

Which doesn't quite address the problem. WHy is it any
better that the "community" is now the slave owner--using
your analogy--than a bunch of separate people? The Land
isn't theirs to charge a fee to access that land.

>
>>If it's illegit for
>>a person to own land and demand some compensation for
>>access then it's not fair for a group to attempt that
>>either
>
>
> Of course it is, if the group consists of the whole community that
> makes access to the land valuable. Are you able to understand the
> difference between A charging B for what A provides, and C charging B
> for what A provides?

Then you require a globalist approach or you're back in the
same boat as the individual owner setting. However, that
still does not explain why the community can actually
claim any land--what if could do, assuming universal
membership and presumably univeral (or near or effective)
agreement, is get agreement for everyone not to use
any land without making a contibution to the public pot.
That would not require people own any natural resources
at all, merely an agreement on how each would access
what they otherwise freely could. But the we're back with
the question about how that--other than the assumption of
agreement--differs from the protection racket. Why should
anyone agree that they need to pay another, or the entire
world, for access to nature?

>
>>--neither the person nor the group created the
>>land so neither can claim it from a producer's right
>>standpoint.
>
>
> Neither created the land, but the community produces the land's
> _value_, so it _does_ have the producer's right to recover that value.

And what was the origianl issue: an owner giving access to
Land. This is different that the issue of the Land value
and goes the to matter of ownership not value.

>
>>I realize that the georgists are really
>>interested in land value--which is a slightly differnt
>>concept the they still enforce and claim an ownership
>>right and require a person pay a fee to access the
>>land.
>
>
> Government administers possession and use of the land in any case, and
> that is ultimately the only "ownership right" over land there is, or
> ever can be. So the only real question is whether government will
> exercise its sovereign authority over the land within its borders in
> the interest of the whole community, or only in the interest of an
> idle, privileged minority of private landholders.
>
>
>>What's the real difference here in terms of charging
>>for access to land?
>
>
> The difference is in the justice and economic efficiency of the
> distribution of rent.

You keep asserting that some how as a group some
people can demand that others pay to access land
that group makes some collective claim on is
just but that the same actions by a person is not
just. Saying so doesn't make it so.

As for the efficiency claim, is that based on
some social welfare function? Also, is that
an implicit refutation of the Coase Therom?

>
>>>>My statements have been made in the context of *given*
>>>>ownership and not in the context of "why* or *how*
>>>>ownership. I don't deny that that those are not important
>>>>or interesting questions, only that they were not part
>>>>of the inital claims about what is and is not productive
>>>>and the follow claim that only that which is productive
>>>>can claim a share of the output.
>>>
>>>
>>>The issue then is to define what is a "contribution to" production,
>>>and the matter should be disputed on that basis, not on the basis of
>>>who has a legal right to claim a share of it.
>>
>>Which should have been pretty clear from the discussion:
>>the productivity of the factor included in the production
>>process.
>
>
> Fine. Based on the productivity of the production factor owned, the
> private landowner has just as much right to the land rent as the slave
> owner has to his slaves' products.

Or, as the discussion was actually being conducted,
as the worker providing Labor or the investor
providing Capital.

Exactly why you felt the need to take this side track
and confuse the issue with one that is orthoganally
related I have no idea but thanks for finally conceeding
the obvious. In a world of input factor ownership those
owners will expect and receive a share in the output because
the input factor is productive. Were the input not
productive it would not be needed and so not used--resulting
in the owner not getting any share of the output.

>
>>But even here we're still moving away from the
>>origianl point I was making. The argument being made that
>>only Labor is productive was invalid and the disproof was
>>to apply the claim to Labor and prove that Labor was
>>not productive. Recall, the claim was that Capital on
>>it's own doesn't do anything, it needs to be combined
>>with Labor. Well, Labor in isolation from other inputs
>>also has an output of 0; therefore Labor is unproductive.
>>The argument was then shifted to Labor is the only
>>"active agent" to shich I pointed out being active was not
>>the same a productive and was never part of the definition
>>of "productive".
>
>
> I agree, the claim that "only labor is productive" is either unclear,
> unwarranted, or too broad to be meaningful.

Which is why I am surprised at difficulty I had with
you on this basic point and the resultant detour
into the echange we had.

jmh

Relevant Pages

  • Re: More Anarchism with Roy L
    ... >>Land is an input to production, as such, it's value is part of the ... >>center housing on a polluted lot, thus the community has lost Rent. ... I mean that in the Anachist mode of production, ... And they can't afford to buy it because the price of their labour is ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Dont Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!
    ... >> despot that takes the land rent and spends it on foreign wars. ... >> services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities the community ... >contribution was the factor of production Land. ... private landowner nor any previous owner whom he may have paid for the ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Dont Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!
    ... The community, through government, administers possession and use ... of the land in any case, and is thus the ultimate landowner. ... there does not make one a contributor to production. ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Dont Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!
    ... he is not compensating the community for the benefits he ... The community, through government, administers possession and use ... >> of the land in any case, and is thus the ultimate landowner. ... The owner does not contribute a natural resource to production, ...
    (sci.econ)
  • Re: Would you leave Britain if you could afford to?
    ... production is by nature far less efficient, ... land to produce the same quantity of food. ... Etc Etc why farmers get it escapes me, any other business just takes their ...
    (uk.legal)
Quantcast