Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1117

Pencil notes by Heath on notepad paper for a letter evidently to someone connected with Fortune Magazine. Good explanation of the distributive function of ownership of land.

No date

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Geer:

 

FORTUNE stands for riches — the creation of values.

All riches come from using property to do things for others, thus inducing income. This income capitalized (headed up), is the value as capital of the property so used.

Land is the basic property. Until owned, possession is precarious, holding for others impossible, income absent.

Possession for self-use is self-service, without income, without value — no exchange.

Possession without ownership is altered only by force. Possession with ownership is changed by agreement, contract, consent. Such change — redistribution — is a service, a sales or leasing service, inducing income.

Ownership is not merely possession. It is /social/ authority to make changes of possession — to distribute — peaceably without violence by a sales process, a sales service, and for this to receive the income called rent or, capitalized, called price.

Ownership, in practice, is distribution (non-violent, non-compulsory) of the advantages, natural and/or artificial, appurtenant to sites.

/Aside:/ Imagine Galileo or Darwin or Mendel being asked to summarize his ideas in a short letter.

Through these services of distribution, and not without them, annual values — rents — and selling values — sales prices — arise. These values are the recompenses for these fundamental social services, services that displace, supersede, distribution (change of possession) by force.

Possessing sites for self-service brings no income.

Owning sites for others — service by sales service — peaceable distribution of advantages appurtenant— makes land productive, brings rent or price.

Public, political, “services” are based not on services but on force, hence bring no voluntary income. Political authority (non-proprietary) serves itself only, therefore has no voluntary income but must seize the incomes of those who serve others.