[extropy-chat] Redistribution of wealth

Trend Ologist trendologist at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Sep 29 05:09:51 UTC 2004


So what alternatives could Hoover have chosen after
'29 to avoid Keynesianism? What could Hoover and FDR
have done for free-market agriculture?
Incidentally, I'm one of the city peasants you refer
to. However by being miserly I've got almost enough to
purchase an urban dwelling. But doing so would merely
make one into a lumpen prole who pays property taxes
to fund public schools, correct?


> Okay, here goes: the US has such vast agricultural
> capacity that were
> it all let loose, food would be grown at such little
> profit that nobody
> would make any money at it, and consequently the
> government would earn
> no tax revinues from the activity.
> 
>  Since the 30's, in the interests of keeping the
> 'American family
> farm', a cultural icon, intact, the government
> established a system of
> land banking whereby farmers got paid to put their
> land in the land
> bank and not farm it. The money they were paid was
> supposedly paid by
> taxes paid on agricultural commerce that did
> actually take place at
> higher prices thanks to reduced supply of produce.
> This artificial
> scarcity helps create an artificial tax base that
> keeps the government
> supplied with revinues by which it can pay out
> subsidies. Confused yet?
> 
> It is a rather cynical Georgist plot, is all. Henry
> George, a 19th
> century socialist economist and philosopher
> pioneered the idea of
> lifeboat rules as socio-economic policy,
> particularly in the area of
> land ownership, use, and taxation. A firm believer
> in zero sum
> economics and agrarian mysticism, George did accept
> the concept of
> Natural Rights, but tried to claim the absurd notion
> that to be
> naturally free, you had to have some place of your
> own to be free at,
> otherwise you were on someone else's property and
> therefore unfree as
> you were subject to their rules. The idea of earning
> and saving one's
> earnings to buy a place to be free apparently never
> occured to him as a
> natural consequence, but he did acknowledge that
> while people, if they
> are free, should be able to invest their earnings in
> private property,
> but should also pay rent to the un-landed population
> for fencing that
> land off from everyone else (especially those too
> unproductive and
> parasitical to save money). This 'economic scarcity
> rent' has come to
> be known as 'property taxes'.
> 
> With agriculture, though, a totally free market
> experiences no
> scarcity, at least not within the bounds of the
> utility value of the
> collective population. This reduction to commodity
> and even fire-sale
> pricing makes for low value (i.e. peasant) economic
> activity and little
> government revinue to pay economic scarcity rent to
> those who are not
> dumb enough to get stuck working on a farm their
> entire lives. So,
> therefore, artificial scarcity and subsequently
> artificial prices, need
> to be established to enhance government revinue.
> Still with me?
> 
> Once this artificial scarcity is established, via
> land banking, land
> trusts, current use property tax rates, and other
> mechanisms, then the
> lumpen proletariat in the cities who can no longer
> afford expensive
> rural land can complain and elect politicians who
> will perpetuate the
> system while extracting more money from the
> remaining middle class to
> pay danegeld to the city peasant.
> 
> In a similar way, communities pass zoning, planning,
> and building
> ordinances in order to reduce the amount of acrage
> in a community which
> can be developed for specific uses. Again, this is
> artificially created
> scarcity that raises prices and thus inflates (er,
> 'enhances') tax
> revinues.
> 
> So, tell me something: why is it that city dwellers
> are so enamored of
> supporting environmental groups that drive people
> off the land (and
> into the cities) while rural people just believe in
> self-responsibility, i.e. stewardship, in taking
> care of the land they own?


	
	
		
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