Re: Smith: ground rents and land rents

>As I can no longer post to Usenet directly, I will have to do it through
>Google, which is a joke.

Welcome to my world. As a traveling consultant, I cannot access my
ISP's Usenet server while on the road and am forced to use Google's
newsgroup service which appears to lose functionality and usability
with each release. A simple quoting feature would be nice.

>IMO opportunity cost is nothing but a red herring, and probably a bogus
>concept altogether. Defining rent as a return in excess of opportunity
>cost has the absurd effect of making a doctor's or other highly
>specialized worker's earnings almost all rent, even in the absence of
>licensure or other barriers to entry. This dishonest neoclassical
>redefinition of rent can only be understood as part of the sustained
>effort to prevent economic science from exposing the evil of landowner
>privilege.

>Economic rent is more accurately and informatively defined as an
>economic benefit obtained by being privileged to deny others access to
>what would otherwise be accessible. It differs morally and
>economically from the proceeds of robbery or extortion only in being
>socially accepted.

Please note that I intentionally said opportunity costs _AND_ barriers
to entry. Without the barriers to entry part, neoclassical economics'
attempt to define rent as any return in excess of opportunity cost is
bogus, I agree. However, taken together, they provide a reasonable
definition of rent - a return in excess of opportunity costs due to
barriers to entry.

.

Relevant Pages

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