Kevin Cahill on Georgism
- From: w_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 19 Oct 2006 14:44:36 -0700
These interesting comments are from
Kevin Cahill, the distinguished author
of *Who Owns Britain* and *Who Owns the
World.* He is responding to an essay I
circulated recently, entitled 'Critique
of Georgism' by Paul Birch, dated and
copyrighted 2002.
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10-16-06
Dear Bill,
This is very interesting. Glad you
circulated it. I will respond in due
course but ultimately my response is
called 'Who Owns the World' (Nov 2nd).
In relation to landownership the book
does a 100% sample; all the countries of
the world, all 197, and the 66 major
territories. This in itself may begin to
show a far more central problem with
Georgism in its broadest sense, than is
here discussed.
The population and planetary sample HG
had to work on was limited in scope and
severely limited in time. The time
limitation has partly been addressed in
Jack Powelson's book 'The Story of
Land'. and I have stood on Jack's
shoulders to get a better view. What I
saw, mainly with Jack's help, were two
things. The planet and the race that
occupies it. Those are the only possible
parameters to work with, since together
they define, especially with time as a
clear, separate factor, what land is
for, in the sense of observable
function. Peter Birch states it in his
critique. Without land we could not
exist. We have to have some land 'to
stand on' or we perish. So its a given,
land. But who gave it? I reject
absolutely, the idea of a god, any god
donating land to the race, based on a
very simple fact I discovered while
working with Jack's book.
For all of known history, until about
the early 19th century, about 1% of the
race claimed ownership of all land. The
other 99% had no secure possession of
land ever, owned in fact not so much as
a blade of grass. Livi Bacci tells us
that 82,000 million people have been
born since homo sapiens stepped out of
the bushes. What this means, and the
known facts bear it out (and sadly,
continue to bear it out) is that 99% of
the race, about 81,180 million souls,
died in total poverty, prematurely, of
disease or were murdered. This
eliminates as a matter of fact the idea
that any god who caused this to happen
could have the attribute "good" applied
to him, her or it. If there is a god,
good he, it or she, aint, and the
history of how the race as a whole lived
and died proves it as fact. So god in
any conventional sense has to be
eliminated in relation to the actual
race. We proceed only with observable
facts, nothing else.
The next fact is the scale of land on
the earth and the relationship between
land and the individuals in the race.
There are 36,000 million acres of land
on planet earth. About 18,000 million
acres are arable and habitable.
Strangely, for a planet that is
currently touted by the fashionable
elite as 'crowded' there are only 6,500
million men, women and children on the
planet. This gives each of those men,
women and children 2.76 acres a piece,
on an arithmetical distribution. In
practice half the current race, 3,250
million people, are living in urban
areas that occupy less than 1,000
million acres, leaving about 17,000
million acres for the remaining 3,250
million, giving each of them a notional
5 acres. You do not need to be a rocket
scientist to be able to work out what
this means. It means that the natural
state of land, in relation to people, is
that it is plentiful. This is a land
poor race on a land rich planet. Put
another way, the greatest lie ever told
is the lie that land is scarce. Land is
not naturally scarce. It is naturally
plentiful. It's artificially scarce. In
other words any apparent scarcity of
land is not the result of god or nature.
It is man made. It is artificial. And
why do we believe land is scarce then?
Because we have been told its scarce.
But who by? By those who preempted
ownership in the first place. By the 1%
who have claimed ownership of the planet
as far back as records go.
Jack Powelson noted something that he
could not explain. This is that at a
time when there was about 250 acres per
person on the planet, in early
Mesopotamia, groups of people were
constantly attacking each other, in
order to steal land. What for? There was
more land available than anyone could
ever till or use. I don't know why they
did it, but what is clearly visible in
the historic time line is another trend,
related to what Jack observed. This is
the one that shows that as the race
expanded, violence declined.
Take the 20th century which is supposed
to have been the most violent in
history, and the myth that we live in
violent times. According to Gill Elliot
in his 20th Century Book of the Dead
about 120 million people died violently
in the 20th Century. He called it the
most violent ever. But he did so because
he didn't know the figures for the 1st
quarter of the 13th Century, when the
Mongols killed about 66 million people
in East Asia and China. The world
population at the time was around 400
million. And the Mongols killed about
16% of the world population at the time
- in 27 years. The world population rose
from 1,600 million in 1900, to 6,000
million in 2000. 120 million is only
7.5% of the startline population. If we
lived in truly violent times, say
comparable with the 13th century, we
would have to consider a death toll of
about 330 million in order to equal the
13th century.
We live in quiet times. And we live on
land that is plentiful, not scarce. I
think I'll leave the Georgists to ponder
this while I get some kip. Good night
all.
Kevin Cahill
------------------------------
10-16-06
Dear Ed,
Again, thank you for this response. I
find myself in a peculiar position. I
admire HG immensely. He was a
journalist. I am a journalist. I feel I
should have some kind of basic insight
into what he was trying to say.
But the way that what he wrote has
become a kind of secular ideology scares
me. All ideologists scare me. The ones I
met when I was in the army tried to kill
me - of course I tried to kill them too,
but that is known as self defence (!?)
The Thatcher secular ideologists
destroyed half the businesses of the
country by ignoring facts, and
concentrating on policy (i.e. ideology).
So when they are not actually killing
people, ideologists are destroying
something else. But all ideologists
share a common characteristic. They
proceed without the facts, often in
defiance of them.
Take Hitler. He wanted all of Russia, a
country of 4,200 million acres, minus
its population, for just 60 million
Germans. He said there wasn't room in
Germany. Room for what, exactly? What
were 60 million Germans going to do with
4,200 million acres? (Germany is about
88 million acres, so each pre-war German
had about 1.4 acres apiece). Hitler was
the perfect ideologist in that he had
total contempt for facts. They had no
meaning for him. Hitler is of course an
extreme case but should not blind us to
the lesser ideologists, who also proceed
without facts.
Which brings me to the key question,
again in relation to Georgists. What is
wrong with using facts? Why not drop
this 'god' or 'nature' thing and start
by saying that there are 36,000 million
acres of land and 6,500 million people,
which are observable facts. We can
believe in god privately, just don't
substitute him, she or it, for facts,
when facts are available.
Which takes me to another Georgist
factless concept, that of community or
society. If 70% of a community are
landholders, as they are in the UK and
the USA, then on whose behalf exactly
are you collecting land value tax?
HG lived at a time when 95% of the UK
population and of most other
populations, had no stake in land, at
all. The change I mention should make
those proposing LVT at least rethink
some basics. I am not against LVT. I am
very interested in how it works in
Harrisburg, because it does appear to
work. But so far it seems to work
because parts of the LVT concept are
applied selectively, and do work. It is
not because this notional concept of
'economic rent' works. It seems to me
Harrisburg works precisely because this
concept has been dropped.
But what if HG had possession of the
facts I have, gained by assembling the
land ownership facts for every single
country in the world, and had the
perspective given those facts by Jack
Powelson in 'The Story of Land'? What
would he have done? I think he'd have
campaigned for a rational distribution
of land. Given the number of people and
the volume of land available, there is
no point in proceeding to devise tax
systems to tax the majority, when the
majority had no land. He devised LVT to
meet the perceived situation of his
time, which was that of all land being
owned by very few people. That has
changed in the developed world.
An average of 70% of the population have
a stake in land, if not ownership, and
any tax system that is based on land
will hit them disproportionately when
that system is based on value. There is
an inherent danger that a system devised
to meet a particular condition of his
time, will be wrong when the situation
facing him reverses itself and land
holding becomes a characteristic of most
of the population.
I have suggested that the best way to
know what to do with land is to find out
how much there is, where it is, and how
the population in general are using it.
What the facts on the ground tell us is
that most people require some land, but
very little, to have a secure home.
(Peter Birch is correct) Most usable
land in most countries will be devoted
to agriculture, which shows us a very
different set of facts, with 69% of the
UK owned by just .26% of the population.
The housing shortage in the UK has been
generated by a failure to take a very
small quantity of this agricultural
land, just 200,000 acres out of
41,000,000 acres, which would be enough
to supply the land needs of the urban
population for the next ten years in the
UK.
More later. Good night.
Kevin Cahill.
----------------------------------------
--
10-17-06
Dear Shann,
Thank you for replying. You and I are
agreed that CLB's are an important and a
useful way forward. Where we disagree is
on the idea of CLB's as a universal
solution to the problem of equitable
use/ownership of land.
Underlying the idea of CLB's is
ownership of the land or the structure
on it - for many folk they are a unity
and not two separate things- by a trust,
institution or other body, thus
excluding private ownership of even a
small portion of land by an individual
or family.
There is always the implication in CLB's
that land is scarce. You know my
position on that. Land is not scarce.
Going back to Peter Birch he correctly
states the most fundamental point, that
we have to have some land or perish.
After the individual it is not
community, it is family. It is from an
analysis of the individual/family
requirement that all analysis must
proceed, not from a later arrangement
called a community.
To surive we need shelter, as well as
food and water. It is the nature of that
shelter that really indicates what has
to be provided or obtained at a most
fundamental level. Basically, the
personal/family shelter must be secure
and as free from outside interference as
is possible. Nowadays, that basic
requirement is met by the capacity of
individuals and families to secure
ownership of their 'shelter' more or
less absolutely, via a mortgage and fee
simple or other possessory ownership.
Because we are embedded in a capitalist-
market system, shelters have acquired a
commodity value in the market place. So
long as the market does not generally
threaten the basic security of the
individual/family in the shelter, the
market can be tolerated. In practice,
the market has had several unpredicted
effects, few if any of which have been
taken into formal account by economists.
The first is the effect the possession
of a shelter has on the place of an
individual or family in the capitalist
market place. The shelter gives them a
capital asset for a start, something the
mass of humanity has never had. It
leaves them with total discretion as to
whether they stay in one 'shelter' or
move about the place, aided by the
market. So, what nature and accident has
delivered seems to me much less complex
than the CLB structures, and delivers
more basic realities than any
administrative structure ever could. To
me a CLB is a way of assisting those not
in possession of a basic shelter, into
possession of one.
This is about 30% of the population in
most developed countries (18% in the
Irish Republic and higher in some former
communist states where social housing
was dumped on the tenants to avoid the
cost of repairs) The maximum number of
people who could make practical use the
CLB approach is currently the ownerless
30% of the population. But pushing CLB
as a universal solution seems to me
futile in developed countries. By
accident rather than design, most people
meaning, about 70% of the community have
got what they need, which is a secure
basic shelter. Would you want to
deconvert the 70%?
And why is the issue of the status of
the 70% not addressed by proponents of
alternatives? It leads to the making of
universal proposals that are based on
minority situations.
Kevin
----------------
10-17-06
Ed, neither your sincerity nor that of
the other Georgists is in doubt. What is
in doubt is whether an economic analysis
produced by a journalist 150 years ago,
is wholly relevant, or relevant at all,
in the modern world.
You go on about large scale, macro,
economic issues which may or may not be
correct but fail to ever address the
issue of land availability which is
surely a key constituent of the
equation. Nothing you say tells me why
there is a shortage of building land in
America.
The country is over 2,400 million acres
in extent. The entire urban area is 60
million acres, and developed land 90
million acres. That leaves over 2,300
million acres of land. You use words all
the time, but almost never use figures
at all, about anything. Your solution to
everything is tax. That appears to be
it. LVT it and everything will be all
right. I do not think so, somehow.
Apart from anything else the Federal
Government owns 730 million acres of the
USA, and could pay down the Federal debt
anytime by selling some of this land
off. Why not go after this huge
landholding, about 33% of the US.
Why have Georgists no solution to
anything save LVT, and then deliver that
on the basis of a theoretical model that
never incorporates real world facts and
data? I think there are elements of LVT
that work - Harrisburg proves it - but
you cannot unravel the home ownership
model, and any reforms you propose will
only be accepted when you show you know
what the facts relating to this
essential feature of modern life.
Not one of the Georgist commentators in
this dialogue has stepped outside the
Georgist box so far. All reaction to my
points seems to be to advance Georgist
ideology, because that is what it is,
but never address new data or current
facts. It is very hard to deal with
people who cannot get outside their own
locked down frame of reference, one that
is 150 years old. And this is very
important.
My book is a book almost entirely of
facts, and does not advance an ideology.
Fond regards.
Kevin
-----------------------------
10-17-06
Kevin here.
Ed, let me take you up on two quick
points. You say million of Americans
have little hope of ever affording a
home. What you don't say is that
American economic success has enabled
67% of Americans to own a home - the
first time in history that anything like
this has ever happened.
Your critique is hugely biased in the
sense that you (and a lot of Georgists)
always want to look at the downside.
Why? Why not at least give a balanced
picture? Taking the relentlessly
downbeat and minority oriented approach
lessens the credibility of any
proposition you might make, because,
factually you are speaking from a
minority standpoint.
Failure seems to excite you far more
than success. Why? A better world is
built on success, despite failure,
because success breeds hope. Could it be
you don't like hope and success so you
must wallow in failure?
--------------------------
Kevin again. Again, you are splitting an
essentially conjoined concept.
Clearly economic security is important.
For many people losing a job means
losing a home. But a home addresses a
more fundamental need than a job does,
this is for basic shelter.
As more and more homes in America and
elsewhere come out of mortgage debt and
into complete possession, the near
absolute security a home confers becomes
ever more evident. What the present
structure does is create the opportunity
to move to complete possession.
However, one of the huge injustices in
the present system is that people who
lose jobs, and who have paid their taxes
and social security money, do not get
mortgage payment cover for those
payments. The state cheats, and renders
insecure that which should be as near
absolutely secure as possible.
That is something that needs to be
addressed but while attempting a
universal solution to human living, from
a minority position, that of those not
yet in a home, you will never achieve
any workable solution.
Regards
Kevin
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