Re: Venture Communism Draft IV -- Request for Comments.

From: Quirk (quirk_at_syntac.net)
Date: 02/24/05 

Date: 24 Feb 2005 05:01:15 -0800

[alt.anarchy.rules removed, sci.econ added]

Pleasantly surprised to see this thread come back to life.

Michael Price wrote:

> Quirk wrote:

> > A lack of coercion.

> Which is a prerequisite of a market system.

Yes, I agree.

> > By reducing coercion based on alienation from nature and poverty,
> > increasing the general wealth of its participants.

> But people have to be "alienated" from nature if anyone is to
> use it. The person using it alienates that part of nature from
> everyone else's use.

Not if the use is governed by mutual agreement and the others are
compensated.

When you rent an apartment from a private landlord you are not
alienating him from his property, neither do you alientate the
community from their property when you rent it from them.

You do however alienate them when you claim that what is in reality
community property, is your own private property and then force them to
compensate you for using it.

> > Yes. Because inorder to become a new seller you must first acquire
> > some from an existing holder, there can be no new suppliers, it is
> > therefore considered a monopoly. This is simple enough.

> It's simply wrong.

No, AFAIK, that is the canonical economic definition of monoploy,
perhaps someothers in sci.econ can clarify this.

> > This is the canonical definition, it is the Austrian Libertarians
> > that seem to be your reference point, that hold the marginal view
in this
> > case.

> Since when has the veuw that "monopoly" doesn't include situations
> of over a million sellers been "marginal"?

IMO, since always, in cases when new sellers can not enter a market
without first purchasing supply from existing sellers.

> > They have no rational justification for the private ownership of
land,

> Firstly that if land is not privately owned it is publically owned
and
> therefore the plan for it's use must be a public plan, which never
works
> because of the calculation problem.

However, the community can offer land for rent and accept the offer of
the highest bidder in exactly the same way a private landlord can, so
this argument is baseless.

> Secondly that the first person to bring
> a natural resource into use is performing a service and deserves
> to be rewarded for it.

Certainly, they are rewarded when they bring that service to the
market, this does not in anyway justify giving exclusive ownership of
that which they did not produce, that would in fact exist even if that
person never had, namely, the land.

> You can't produce more capital in the "short term", that's what
> the "short term" means.

So what? Does this mean that no new capital can be produced and that
the existing stock is thus also a monopoly? No. It does not.

> > Yes, there is only ONE group of existing seller, which no one can
> > join except by dealing with an existing member.

> Which is not a monopoly.

It is, but as I've said, if you prefer another term, we can use that
instead, the semantics are not worth discussing for ever

> > Anyway, can we simply agree to disagree here and move one, we can
use
> > the term "land oligarchy" if you dislike the classic term. As I
said,
> > I'm not really interested in getting bogged down in semantics.

> Oligarchy is technically "rule by the few" and 170 million in
> the US alone is not "few".

170 million people in the states *do not own productive land* just some
near submarginal, residential land for personal use, how many people
own productive land, and what does the distribution curve look like?

> > > They're "pretty effective" are they? So then they make returns
> > > above the market average?

> > Arbitrary measure, they produce the largest gross revenues on
earth,
> > peruse the fortune 500 if you like.

> It's not arbitrary it's the central measure of whether it's
> worth going into the business or not. Producing large revenues
> is no great achievement if you use enough value in resources, the
> aim of business is to use as little resources as possible for the
> same amount of revenue.

Ridiculous, wealth accumulation is the standard measure of wealth, not
marginal profitability.

And it being "not a great achievement" is exactly the point, in fact
unearned income derived from the privilege of employing great value in
resources you did not produce is exactly the exploitation we are
talking about.

> > High marginal returns are the domain of risk and venture, not
> > Rent seeking,

> High marginal returns are the domain of well managed business.
> If the rest of the market is so "risky" then why don't those
> who took failed risks bring the average market return down belong
> that of the oil companies?

I an not clear on where you are going with this.

> > however great accumulations of wealth are usualy
> > the result of Rent seeking.

> But if the Rent Seeking doesn't achieve high returns how is
> wealth accumulated?

Because the rent seekers, especially in the case of land, absorb
unearned income from pretty much all other enterprises and a low return
on a high base amount is still better that a higher return on a much
lower base amount, especially when the former is unearned and the
latter is earned.

> It can only be by putting in slightly less
> huge amounts of wealth that could accumulate more if put into
> other areas.

However, rent-seeking requires no effort, the other areas do. It is
simply easier for the wealthy to collect rent from the productive.

> > will use "land oligarchy," as I am interested in your feedback
> > regarding the logic, not the language, of my proposal, I will
happily
> > use any terminology you like.

> Land oligarchy is only slightly more accurate. It's still about
> a thousand miles from the truth.

Ok, well since I've clearly describe the phenomenon, you suggest a term
that describes a condition where no new supply can enter a market
except by purchasing existing supply from an existing supplier.

> > This is akin to looking at the cost of physically collecting taxes
as
> > their total economic costs.

> The total cost of private property in land and capital would be
> rent, profit and the cost of protecting private property.

Well, profit is only partially rent as it also contains the differed
wages of risk, but the most important thing you are missing is the
economic consequence of forcing the productive to pay tax to the
privileged, by way of Rent, this has the same economic consequences as
income and consumption taxation, namely it reduces productivity.

Also, private ownership of land leads to suboptimal usage, since an
owner can sit on it for its speculative value rather than put it to
productive use. This also is an economic cost.

> Compared to government, which even in the US takes over 40% of the
economy,
> this aint that much.

Rent alone is estimated to be around 20%, add property protection and
the economic disefficiencies and you certainly have a competitive
figure.

However you have not distributed this 40%, thus you are comparing a
portion to the whole, and not two portions.

> > The war on drugs is a class war, it's benificiaries are the Rent
> > seekers in the prison-industrial complex, exploiters of unskilled
> > labour and slumlords, all of which require an underclass to
exploit,
> > there misery also serves as psychological warfare against the
middle
> > class.

> Now you're just delusional. The prision-industrial complex isn't
> a "class" it's a small part of a larger class. While it no doubt
> gains significant benefits from the drug war these are more than
> made up for with losses by the rest of the entrepenurial and
> landowning classes. The slumlords lose by reduced demand for low
> quality housing and the "exploiters of unskilled labour lose because
> their labour becomes property of the State.

I disagree, that harsh conditions faced by the poor in the USA, of
which the "war on drugs" is a great factor, increases their
exploitability and utility to the elite.

If I am delusional, then please provide an alternative hypothosis, if
the elite do not benefit from the war on drugs, who does?

> > Wars are conducted in the interest of the property owning elite.

> Bull***. The property owning elite pay most of the taxes for
> them and their customers pay the rest, reducing what they can
> buy from them. Small sections of the property owning elite benefit,
> not the whole.

It is exactly privileged "Small sections" than the word "Elite" refers
to.

> > The interests of property do not include protecting the property
> > of others.
>
> Actually they do. If property rights of others aren't protected
> then neither are theirs.

That is not true, it assumes that laws and rights need to implemented
fairly, when of course believing my property need protecting, does not
mean that by extension I believe yours should be too. My paid thugs can
easily protect my property while at the same time help me steal yours.

> > AND IN ANYCASE, this is all well covered by many writers and not
> > relevant to my proposal.

> It is very relevent to your contention that private property costs
> a lot to maintain.

My contention is not that private property costs a lot to maintain,
that is just the inverse of your contention.

My contention is that that there is no moral or economic advantage to
treating land, which is not created by any individual, as private
property, but rather that there is great moral and economic advantage
in treating it as mutual property, particularly as I propose in my
Venture Communist model, but I also believe the Georgist Land Value
Taxation/Single Tax model is superior to the current practice.

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