Spencer Heath Archive

Item 143

Pencil notes by an unidentified person (Heath’s daughter, Beatrice Heath O’Connell?) at a talk to Single Taxers given at the Roerich Library, New York City

Thursday, September 24, 1942 (year ascertained from a perpetual calendar)

 

 

 

SOCIETY

Units

Functions through interchange of services between units and groups formed structurally.

Approaches

1. Wishes — customary, primitive (fear).
2. Curiosity — scientific

Rights correlative of violence — have rights because of fears of deprivation.

Development of all of value in human life comes from association in groups. Primitive man has no civilization because he has no association — lives to himself like amoeba.

Animals have no vision but men have. Singly they do not progress toward visions but through association especially over generations.

Associative effort

Cause of everything of value to men. These things only possible because of associative effort and therefore division of labor and interchange of services.

Human – definition

That which distinguishes man from animals.

Society has many vestiges of functions which have lost their utility in this stage of racial existence though of value in more primitive stages.

Conflicting tendencies in psychology

1. As animals — conflicts — retrogressions
2. As human beings

Achievements

Advance our

Animal nature is equipped for conditions of scarcity. Cannot create subsistence, so some eat others when there are too many for the subsistence

Human – more they multiply the more they have power to create subsistence — two men create more than twice what one man produces. Also men can evaluate services rendered to each other

 

General Principles of Scientific Study

George says men must associate, and men must have freedom, so they can exchange services

No definition given by George of “Land Values,” though he defines land.

Man can, through putting forth energy in his structure, change his environment to his liking and at the same time improve the capacities of his own structure

Administration as related to Ownership

Wage worker is not responsible, has nothing to lose — stipendiary workers.

Administrative workers have responsibility of ownership — respond with a loss if they perform inefficiently.

Life, growth, progress — integrative change Violence, force — disintegration

Picture of a society in which men were free to exchange services

Great abundance possible only if people freely exchange

Servants in society seize property and payment themselves when their function is just to prevent such disservice. So government defeats itself. Primary disservice is taxation:

1.  Breaks up groups producing

Liquidates, sells out, takes tools and materials out of use, causing disemployment of labor and capital.

Nature establishes proprietors or public owners whenever it establishes public servants.

Society is dissolved when proprietorship is destroyed

Services depend upon reward

Human Society

     Proprietors                           Public Servants

Jurisdiction

Over non-public                       over public

territory served                      territory or

by public part                        right of way

      Landowner’s Function

1. Find appropriate occupants for your territory (to give most service and create most wealth)
2. Establish him there and collect market value of public services rendered, or rent.

(Market and competition in market enables us to settle our accounts and establish value of services or materials)

Rent is market value of public service.

Now — occupants cannot pay rent or carry on business (use public services) because half of their production is seized — restrictions on business.

Value of services

Depend not only on quality and quantity of services but on

Everything in course of exchange is capital. Landowner cannot collect goods and services unless land occupier is permitted to create goods and services. Survivors in business are monopolists because taxation and restrictions force all competitors out of business.

Idle land causes idle men.

Landowners as harmless pressure group and administrators (human interest of helping.)

Lift burden from land occupiers by going after indirect taxes