Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3171

Three typed transcriptions and one recollection by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

No date

 

 

A new person comes into a business, he doesn’t go where there is no competition; he goes where there is the most. Every business encourages every other business. But in government, there is never room for but one, and it has to defeat or destroy all rivals in order to stay in business — in order to stay in power. All government is coercive, all business cooperative.

 

 

In our relations to nature, other than man, we are interested in land. In our relation to one another, we are interested in land value, or rent — what we give one another for administering and distributing land. Almost everybody confuses the two — land and land value. Land is a physical creation, land value a social creation. (That’s a pretty good point).

A constitution is a very weak and pallid makeshift. No constitution can stand the interpretation of those it is supposed to restrain.

 

/Recalled:/

Efficiency in business is synonymous with ethics. Its enforcement is self-interest. Coercion is the impact of one man’s will upon another. Self-interest is not a coercive enforcement; an action is not coercive if it is done with a person’s consent — his continuing consent.