Placed within the right context of protecting labour as well as the environment, a workable system of price equalization that allowed the cost of externalities to be calculated into the cost of a good and with the surplus going to national governments, such a system could be progressive. It removes artificial comparative advantage. The type that comes from wage and regulatory arbitrage.
You know, the old if you don't allow us to beat our workers and pour poison into local streams, we'll be "forced" to move abroad. Ultimately, like it or not, I think that a workable international regime centered around the North Atlantic is going to either come into being, the walls are going to go back up, or we're going to end up with a lassiez faire international system in which there is no social state.
I've been reading a great deal of Gramsci recently, and I'm finding that much of what he has to say is deeply relevant to the modern world. The difference is that today national industrial elites who are politically (and economically) liberal battling old feudal elites whose wealth was in the land, have been replaced by a cosmopolitan transnational capitalist class that is at war with the remnants of the old, national, industrial elites.
The transnational capitalist class likes the idea of globalization because it makes it more difficult for any one government to control them. And by forcing so much of the economic infrastructure that affects people's lives into the private sector, they are able to remove much of the economy from democratic control by national governments into the autocracy of the global market (where one person may equal several million votes.) And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Placed within the right context of protecting labour as well as the environment, a workable system of price equalization that allowed the cost of externalities to be calculated into the cost of a good and with the surplus going to national governments,
All incomes from land and natural resources goes to freeloaders. No labour nor private entrepreneurship involved. According to Michael Hudson these externalities are over 33% of GDP. Even by taxing only these, we would not need to collect any other taxes. However taxing landlords instead of productive labour and capital is (has been) politically impossible.
Throughout history, popular discontent with land-related institutions has been one of the most common factors in provoking revolutionary movements and other social upheavals. To those who labor upon the land, the landowner's privilege of appropriating a substantial portion --in some cases half or even more-- of production without making a commensurate contribution to production may seem a rank injustice. Consequently, land reform most often refers to transfer from ownership by a relatively small number of wealthy (or noble) owners with extensive land holdings (e.g. plantations, large ranches, or agribusiness plots) to individual ownership by those who work the land. Such transfer of ownership may be with or without consent or compensation; compensation may vary from token amounts to the full value of the land. The land value tax advocated by Georgists is a moderate, market-based version of land reform."
All incomes from land and natural resources goes to freeloaders.
Look at the rental rates for "hot" retail space in any well-known shopping area. Loook at the price fetched by natural resources rights when they are properly auctioned off by governments to the private sector instead of being given away (see the sales of 3G licenses in 2000, or sales of exploration rights in oil countries that run these in the public interest, as occasionally happens: oil majors will pay billions just for the right to drill a hole in a promising area, with no certainty of success)
In other words, most of the entrepreneurship of farmers, foresteirs, etc, will be taken away from them in the form of higher rents. It's not an insult to their entrepreneurship to say so.
By taxing rent (in its other meaning, but it's no mistake it's the same word), you would not modify economic activity one iota, but would ensure that the profit from these activities goes to the publix purse instead of to the owners of these resources - an ownership that rarely has anythign to do with entrepreneurship... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Since location/land is a Commons, the Georgist principle that those who have the privilege of exclusive use of it should compensate those they exclude is pretty much unanswerable IMHO.
Private investment in the location should not be taxed on the other hand.
The same applies to intellectual property (ie the Creative Commons) as well: I would impose a levy on the gross revenues accruing from it. There are also energy Commons. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
For that reason use of the physical commons normally requires exclusivity, but not so use of the creative commons. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Collective IQ includes the ability to make and build useful stuff. It also includes the ability to do the right thing when planning for the future.
Non-Georgist approaches don't just steal value, they also diminish collective IQ by making intelligent foresight less likely.
As a farner you want to own your own house and land, right? Anything else would be seen as... I don't know... communism?
Of course, everybody should own their own house and land. But should people also own other people's houses and lands? And tax their labour and invested capital? That is what rents, according to theory, do..
But there's often an immense amount of labour involved in use.
It's the different rights and obligations that together comprise the property relationship (property is not an object) that we are talking about here. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Saying that there is no labour or entrepeneurship involved is... quite an extraordinary pronouncement.
... and it's exactly what I did not say!
I said that the value of that labor and entrepreneurship is largely captured by the owner of the underlying land, who can extract rent. If the farmer and forester does own the land, then (s)he can keep that value - otherwise (s)he'll have to pay out most of the value to the landowner.
I don't even understand what you're arguing about. Capturing value has very little to do with generating value (well, it needs it to happen, but nowhere does it say that it's the same people that do both...) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I don't even understand what you're arguing about.
the people who farm the land are often the same as those who own it
The issue is complex, though. Sharecropping
is still used in many rural poor areas today, notably in Pakistan and in India. Although there is a perception that sharecropping was exploitative, "Evidence from around the world suggests that sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to pool resources to mutual benefit, overcoming credit restraints and helping to manage risk." [6] It can have more than a passing similarity to serfdom or indenture, and it has therefore been seen as an issue of land reform in contexts such as the Mexican Revolution. However, Nyambara states that Eurocentric historiographical devices like `feudalism' or `slavery' often qualified by weak prefixes like `semi-' or `quasi-' are not helpful in understanding the antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa. [7] Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly, as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has a variable rental payment, paid in arrears.
Although there is a perception that sharecropping was exploitative, "Evidence from around the world suggests that sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to pool resources to mutual benefit, overcoming credit restraints and helping to manage risk." [6]
It can have more than a passing similarity to serfdom or indenture, and it has therefore been seen as an issue of land reform in contexts such as the Mexican Revolution. However, Nyambara states that Eurocentric historiographical devices like `feudalism' or `slavery' often qualified by weak prefixes like `semi-' or `quasi-' are not helpful in understanding the antecedents and functions of sharecropping in Africa. [7]
Sharecropping agreements can however be made fairly, as a form of tenant farming or sharefarming that has a variable rental payment, paid in arrears.
Although there is a perception that sharecropping was exploitative, "Evidence from around the world suggests that sharecropping is often a way for differently endowed enterprises to pool resources to mutual benefit,
that's what help-x is like. people want to travel further, cheaper, and are willing to trade half a day's work for board and lodging in different countries, enabling them to stretch their money, and see new situations, meet new people, and learn by doing.
i have checked myself out to feel whether i feel like i'm exploiting them, because it's MY place, and i don't feel i am, because they are happy, and because i did similar things at their age, 30 years younger than i am.
seems like a win-win, the only better one being to give them a part-ownership in trade for their commitment beyond the simple relationship of manual worker.
unless we do away with ownership completely (could conceivably happen, but not much positive track record of success with this form of society, so far), then this is the next fairest solution.
it's fun too... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
My point was that the people who farm the land are often the same as those who own it. kj63 implied, or rather said straightforwardly, that these people are freeloaders.
I did not. I was talking about rents.
Returning to present day, if the farmers have loans on the property, then they do pay rent (in the form of interest) on the land. A (smaller or bigger) portion of the land value is thus captured by someone else. 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!
And additionally if we talk about loans, we are talking about something else than extracting rent from natural resources, we are talking about extracting rent from financial capital. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
And additionally if we talk about loans, we are talking about something else than extracting rent from natural resources, we are talking about extracting rent from financial capital.
But financial capital - as opposed to capital in the forms of machines and other means of production - is simply a relationship. As is leasing. And in both cases the person who puts in labor and real capital pays part of the produce of the land to the rentiers that allows said person to use the land.
Those rentiers would be the freeloaders in question. 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!
