Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1051

 

 

 

 

SOCIETY

Individuals acting with reference to each other in such manner as to achieve mutual satisfactions constitute by their activities a SOCIETY.

Such activities are called Social or creative. Contrary activities with reference to each other are called anti-social or destructive.

Social activities, taken altogether, manifest the working of the essential nature of mankind which is Creative and hence Divine.

Social activities originate in the individual nature and by option of individual will without coercion or compulsion — with one important exception. They are therefore, in chief part, optional and voluntary.

Voluntary Social Activities:  These include all industry and all cultural activity including education, religion, the fine arts, the practice of professions, recreations and social activities in the narrow sense referring to the mere agreeable and pleasant association of persons.

Involuntary Social Activities: These include all activities growing out of enforced contributions from individuals generally to a particular class of political administrators under arrangements presupposing general advantages and satisfactions.

Such contributions are called taxes. The special activities and organization supported and maintained by taxes is called the Government or State.

The State is a subdivision of Society supported by a special fund for the performance of services necessary in order that voluntary activities may be carried on most freely and to the fullest extent. The State’s basic services are to

1. Preserve freedom from physical violence (keep the peace).
2. Set apart and maintain rights of way for the free movement of persons and effects including fixed equipment for rights of way and public services rendered through such equipment.
3. Maintain definite territorial integrity.
4. Collect taxes needed for performing the above services.

The State or Government originates usually by conquest, sometimes by general consent or non-resistance or by petition or request. The State or Government, once in being, is maintained in being and performs all its effective acts by its power of taxation enforced without option of the individual.

The State therefore is the bony skeleton of Society — the solid structure upon which all its other parts of Society are developed and supported.

The Services performed by the State or Government are delivered in varying degree throughout its territory. Delivery is immediately to the sites of those persons who exercise ownership over the territory (by owning the land). Delivery of services of government to locations increases in varying degree the advantages appertaining to different locations and of one location as compared with another.

The presence of general social activities with their satisfactions yields special advantages to locations having these activities above locations where these activities are not present or are less abundant. The services of government, being a special part of the total social activity, are a part or element in the total special advantage.

The relative advantages between locations enjoying Social activities is affected also by differences of natural advantages.

The advantage per year of possessing a location having the presence of social activities above that of a similar location but without social activities is called annual rental value. Annual rental value is created by Social (creative) activities, but such activities are more creative where there are greater natural advantages. Hence natural advantages can increase annual value but they cannot alone create it, and the annual value of a given location will attach unequally to portions having unequal natural advantages.

Annual value of a parcel of land arises from three influences:

1. Social activities in general are made up of voluntary acts and optimal conduct by individuals.
2. Social activities in particular flowing from exercise of taxing power without option by individuals and expressed as services of government.
3. Natural advantage such as exceptional fertility, mineral or other deposits, water supply.

The part of value derived from (1) has no specific or ascertainable cost. It is a by-product of activities that are in themselves wholly a gain and therefore without cost. The part of value that may be ascribed to (3) is of course due to no form of social or other activity and wholly without cost. But the part of value derived from (2) has a definite social cost in the amount of taxes consumed in providing the services. The annual value derived under this head must be greater than the annual cost of the government services. It is rational that the definite cost of a social activity which results in a value greater than its cost should be collected as taxes from the recipient of that value. The excess of value over cost, however, should not be so collected because this is a profit upon the taxes contributed by the taxpayers and they are entitled to profit on their own investment.

From the foregoing it seems that no government could rightly collect from taxpayers receiving additional land value as a result of government services anything more than the actual cost of such services. Further collection would not only be without compensation in services or other form but would create a fund that dishonest officers would waste corruptly or that honest ones might use for extending the scope of government into the field of voluntary social activities.