Spencer Heath Archive

Item 534

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation

August 1955

Where sunshine is abundant people do not buy and sell sunshine, but they buy and sell the use or occupancy of the place where the sun shines. And if the sun can be made to shine more beautifully or more beneficently, the people who own that place are likely to do something about it. For instance the sun doesn’t shine all night long, but only in the daytime, and in places more desirable to have light at night they will put up electric lights, and so on — floodlights and what not — because it makes the place more serviceable to those who occupy it. But there is no charge for the floodlights, either, any more than there is for the sunlight.

The amenities and advantages, improvements and benefits that are /peculiar to/ any place, whether by nature or by artifice — any improvements to a location — increase the usefulness of that location to many persons, and those who occupy it will pay for that occupancy. This payment is called the ground rent. It is called ground rent because the ground is the only specific thing that people see and know that they are paying rent on. It is the thing that is written down in the contract by metes and bounds.