Spencer Heath Archive

Item 146

Pencil by Heath on notepad paper.

No date

CHARTER OF FREEDOM AND ABUNDANCE

No person shall pay any taxes, direct or indirect, except in proportion to the amount of ground rent collected by him during the preceding calendar year in exchange for the location value of land without respect to the value of any improvements on or in the land.

No person shall vote in any election except those who have paid taxes during the preceding year, and such persons shall have one vote for each ten dollars taxes paid.

1. The proper conduct of all the public services shall be the sole responsibility of the proprietors of the territory to which these services are supplied.
2. No person shall vote except in proportion to the amount of rent collected by him in the preceding calendar year for the location value of land without respect to the value of any improvements.
3. No person (or corporation) shall be required to pay any taxes, except in proportion to his right to vote.

The getting of profitable tenants has so far been left almost entirely to the accidents of circumstance. Chance has been the arbiter of prosperity. Good administration must rise above mere wishful thinking into intelligent action. — the highest service to self through the best service to others.

Any realistic view of customary political administration reveals that it never has any general and conscious policy of public service. In all national, state and even in local government the social power is exercised largely at the behest or dictation of pressure groups and special interests, each seeking advantages to itself through measures detrimental to other interests and injurious to the public as a whole. A catalog of these groups would extend from the manufacturers’ associations to the grocers’ or the publishers’ /?/ local unions; from national farm organizations to local spinach growers; professional societies to organized barbers and chiropodists, not forgetting the endless seekers of subsidies, pensions and doles. The multiplicity of their diverse interests, their clamor for privilege and the demands of each group for the burdening and restricting of the others turns the process of government into an orgy of conflict instead of the performance of public services.