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Hierarchy of monopolies
- Money
- Land
- Tariffs
- Patents
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Libertarian views of land
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Non-proviso Lockean
- Anarcho-capitalists
- Original appropriation creates perpetual property right
- Rent would not be a problem if all state owned land were homesteadable.
- Some places (countries conquered and run under latifundia) may require some kind of one off redistribution of historically dubiously acquired land.
- Land indistinguishable from other types of property.
- A properly free market will solve any other problems related to scarcity
- But propty owners are not entitled to the value of their property, just its utility
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Criticisms
- Does not recognise the fundamental importance of rent in exploitation
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Proviso Lockean
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Georgists
- Henry George himself
- Albert Jay Nock
- Frank Chodorov?
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UK Liberal Party
- Lloyd George
- Churchill
- JS Mill
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Original appropriation (mixing one's labour) creates property right
- BUT: "leaving as much, and as good, for others" So called Lockean Proviso (Robert Nozick)
- Land belongs to mankind in common
- Rent arises only when Lockean Proviso is broken - I.e when more people want to be in a particular place than there is additional land available for them
- Rent therefore is created by the "community" through agglomeration and should be collected by that community.
- Rent is also created because of infrastructure spending. Therefore collected rent should finance such public goods or, if these are privately provided, returned as citizen's dividend.
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Criticisms
- Essentially denies private property
- Rothbardians dismiss it as communism because of fundamental importance of land as the first appropriated scarce good
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Possession and use
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Individualist anarchists/mutualists
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
- Benjamin Tucker
- Absentee landlordism creates unfair rent and is inherently a state created privilege.
- Absent this state privilege rent would all but disappear, except for rent caused by advantages such as soil fertility
- Access to cheap capital once the money monopoly was abolished would also reduce rent to around the cost of "free money"
- Real property becomes abandoned when owner no longer occupies it.
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Criticisms
- Rothbardians say that "abandonment" by not occupying land could be applied to other property and makes this a thieve's charter.
- Georgists say that it still does not recognise rent's all pervasive nature.
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Rent
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Where does it come from?
- Land attracts rent as soon as it is scarce. When there are more people needing land than is available and homesteadable within the "margin of production".
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BUT the "margin of production" also approximates the extent of agglomeration benefits. So everyone inside that area "benefits" each other.
- Thus scarcity of land is actually necessary under division of labour
- Infrastructure also creates rent, unless the costs of the infrastructure are fully recovered separately e.g. Through user fees etc.
- Is it a bad thing?
- Options for rent recovery