Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3167

Typed and titled by Heath

No date

 

 

 

PROPERTY IN LAND

Its Modern and Its Future Evolution

 

 

The mediaeval land baron, each in his own domain, was the sovereign State. He was the tax taker and the war maker, and the inhabitants were dependent on his bounty out of what he seized at home or abroad.

 

The modern system of land ownership is not something to be destroyed, but rather to be understood. It is a separation of powers. For the coercive power to tax and give bounties, to seize properties and conduct wars, has departed from land ownership and devolved upon the popular government, the poli­tical State.

 

The modern system provides for the contractual and social, the non-coercive and non-political distribution of sites and resources, of the land. It establishes a contractual instead of a coercive authority. It is the only alternative to expropriation and the evils of political or State allocation and control. It is freedom under the Golden Rule of contract as against slavery to the State.

 

Society is the evolution of contract in place of status, freedom out of slavery. It sustains the right of property against expropriation by the State. Through its process of competition and free contract, modern society awards to its proprietary officers — land owners — the true value of their services to it, in proportion as they allocate possession of sites and resources selectively to those members of the society who can make them most productive and thus will bid the highest rent or price. This contractual distribution is the basic community service for which the ground rent or price is paid. The better this service is performed, the greater is the productivity of all, and the greater is the private reward. So much for property in land as so far evolved.

 

Until recent decades, there was a general tendency towards smaller and smaller units of ownership, the owner himself being usually the occupant or user. The present trend is definitely towards forming larger and larger ownerships administratively in syndicate or corporate form. As these large ownerships increase and combine and take on the providing of common and community-wide services, including protection of their tenants and inhabitants against excessive taxation and political administration, land values will be correspondingly created and increased, and proprietary in place of political adminis­tration of communities will evolve. Taxation will become obso­lete as being destructive of community values and the Golden Rule of contract without coercion then can prevail in the public as well as it does now prevail in all non-political private and profitable affairs.

 

On the further and future evolution of proprietary instead of political public administration depends the emancipation, rests the high hopes and destiny of mankind.