as long as wealth comes from accumulation by force, i.e. by forcing the market/finance economy into the indigenous and subsistence economy, it is achieved by scarcity and precarity creation. I don't see how "redistributing wealth" solves the problem -- it becomes ouroborean very fast, like "waging war for peace."
redistributing land maybe -- now we're talking. but that would vitiate the most essential operating requirement of the wealth-accumulating system: the utter dependence on the money economy of all persons below the elite, so that their labour and obedience can be commanded.
btw, can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture, both of which were practised with high sophistication by many non-imperial type people? it would make discourse a bit easier if we could separate these two practises which have very different impacts on surrounding biomes. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Thanks for pointing out the obvious, that land ownership is wealth.
I'd venture that more blood has been spilled over land reform than over anything else since the invention of agriculture.
the whole point of the Linebaugh review was that the wealth of the affluent British anti-slavery philanthropist was generated by the very system of slavery and expropriation that he deplored
The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of conquest and violence: and notwithstanding what industry has been doing for many centuries to modify the work of force, the system still retains many and large traces of its origin. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantage to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race.
I know someone whose father (now brother) owns a very impressive country estate in Norfolk. His family, ancestral pile and thousands of acres and all, are as worried about paying repair bills as anyone else is.
Some slight exaggeration there, for sure, but the pile and land aren't quite the meal ticket they used to be. And don't forget most of these piles were built using slave money, based on the remote ownership not just of plantations but of people to work them.
The same is true today, where wealth is created by corporate quasi-slavery. Owning a corporate tower block means nothing unless you can rent it out, or - better - fill it with productive workers who will do your accumulation for you, in return for wage payments that can be as nominal as you can make them.
But if you don't own the corporate tower block you can't enslave the productive workers... And the productive workers are only productive when enslaved, presumably?
What, then, are sources of wealth? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
What, then, are sources of wealth?
Power.
But that was my point. Owning huge swathes of land does not produce income automatically.
In fact the source of income of most landowners wasn't land - it was the exploitation of physical and intellectual labour.
The idea that land ownership is inherently productive is a feudal throwback, when ownership really meant a right to tithes from the productive work performed on the land.
Now we've moved on to symbolic feudalism, where being a CEO or a shareholder means that tithes are paid symbolically, in the form of credits which can be bartered, rather than in terms of cattle that can be slaughtered and roasted and wheat that can be turned into bread.
Effectively, symbolic capital has replaced land as the primary form marker of social dominance. But the model is very similar - 'growth' and 'profit' are what happens when you add labour to capital, just as much as when you add them to land.
Agreed that the estate has ceased to be used productively with a tangible "usufruct" but lots of people are prepared to pay NOW very large sums of money for the permanent rights of exclusive use of the estate for whatever use they wish (subject to planning permisissio! ;-))
So to the extent that someone is prepared to pay a large rental value in exchange for use this land REMAINS "productive". "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
The access rights are a cost, paid for with a one-off payment in fee simple and supported with continuing maintenance outgoings.
It's true that exclusive access has some market value, which possibly increases over time, but unless that value is realised (with the disbenefit of losing somewhere to live) it remains a cost, not a benefit.
Even with rocketing real-estate prices, the inherent profitability of an ancient pile with landscaped gardens is much lower than other kinds of real estate investment.
I'd suggest reading them anyway, because they're entertaining. But there's one memorable scene where he's looking at a wall of water coming down one of his interior walls during a storm and thinking 'I really can't afford to fix this.'
It's true that it's hard to be sympathetic when people are - by most people's standards - really very rich.
But the original argument was that land is inherently a source of power. And while there's some legacy traditional value associated with it, my point is that if you have £x million to spend and want to make a good return on it, buying a big country house may possibly not be the best way to do it.
If people insist in keeping the symbols of wealth when the sources of wealth has passed, they might find it hard to do. If reformed from symbols of wealth to productively used assets, the former symbols (land, gold, money) can be very productive, but that includes giving up the status of the symbol.
Land is not inherently a source of power, it has to be used as well. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Or you can sell the house to a hotel developer, or for a conference centre, or to someone who will turn the manicured gardens into an organic farm. In any case, if the house and land are wealth they can be turned into economic power. If they can't, they're not wealth to begin with.
Or if the house really has sentimental value for you and you want to die in it you can take a reverse mortgage on the damn thing. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
And use an LLC or LLP wrapper to do so.
Then when the time comes to go into sheltered accommodation, you still have a (100-x)% share of the ownership and of the market rental, and have the option of selling the property conventionally, or bringing in another "Occupier" into the property and selling some or part of your share of the rentals he pays over time.
Or to minimise your Inheritance Tax liability when you die in the house you love, you can pass over some of your Equity Shares over time to your kids and pay them a rental in cash or even in more equity shares instead of cash.
Infinitely configurable, (and you don't need a Will cos the LLP agreement says what happens when you die). You won't read much about it because simple models like this don't appeal to professional advisers paid by the hour, rather than by the outcome. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Sorry, I can't think on a full stomach. Why does the investor give you the money, what is the "agreed market rental" and who lives in the house? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture
I am talking about something more radical.
You are talking about what to do with the surplus output of economic activity, economic activity that currently is driven primarily by an assumption of scarcity and a conditioned impulsion to acquire and accumulate -- in a word, a primarily self-interest based economy.
What I am talking about is changing the pimary basis/motive power of the economic activity itself from self-interest to giving/sharing. In other words, one will not work primarily to gain wealth or status or power for oneself, or even for one's kin, but rather primarily for the benefit of others in general, with the understanding that others will help the individual achieve their own physical, psychological, intellectual, social and even spiritual needs.
I guess this is a sort of blown up extrapolation of some recent psych findings that have given a lot of press in the media that people obtain a lot of "happiness" through giving to others. (Though it's always dangerous to build castles in their based on pop-media interpretations of feel good psychology!)
There is a dark side to such a model: The crushing of the individual and individualism for the sake of the group. See communism, see certain aspects of Japanese culture.
But I think a healthy balance can be achieved. I think social democracy (as far as I understand it) is a huge step in that direction. But I want to find out if it is possible to go further and deeper. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
In this participative model the individual may remain individual while still benefiting from the "common bond" to which he has - consensually (not by imposed government fiat) - agreed.
Moreover this is not a RE-distributive model but a PRE-distributive model.
Within an "Open Corporate" there is no Profit and no Loss: and it is in members' interests to cooperate, rather than to compete.
It opens up the possibility of a model neither Private nor Public but both/ and - where investment may be obtained for developing public assets by selling not the assets themselves, but merely a proportional "Equity Share" of their production (or the revenues from the sale of production). "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
But the more I know about cooperatives, the more I know I don't know about them, so would like to impose a moratorium on myself for mentioning them until I do some more homework.
Actually, that goes for a lot of subjects discussed here! Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
