Creation and public revenue

[Marnie]

the land DOES belong to the people of Israel, and regardless of what time may bring.

Note again, he said from the Nile to Euphrates. Meaning the vast majority of the middle east, including nearly half of Iraq, by God given right, belongs to Israel. Not the "palestinians", not the entireity of the human race, not the arabs, not the egyptians or the japethits or the hamites, but ISRAEL.

You're not that blind!

[Marnie]

So, I can't be owning my 100 acres of High Desert in your world, David? Being of Jewish heritage, I am somewhat...obsessed with owning land. I see land ownership, though, as an illusion, as a person really never "owns" it, even if they don't "owe money" on it. Just try not paying your taxes on your land and see how long it stays in your name! It's not so much owning land, as it is having assets that is important. Owning this land gives me more bargaining power if I want to, say, buy more land or a chalet in TN or whatever. But, you would say that is wrong, no?

[David Giesen]

Marnie,

I fully support holding private title to land. The sticky issue is who does one pay rent to in use of the earth? Should one pay the bank or other entity which neither made land nor made its market rent value? Or should one pay society that market rent in recognition that the earth is the birthright of all of God's people? I argue that the latter conforms both with secular economic dynamics (the creator of value ought properly to enjoy that value) and with theological economics (Creation is the equal opportunity for all people and not an instrument for private economic gain).

The gain in value of your home and improvements in and upon land is certainly rightfully yours, but I suggest that any rise in the value of land itself is a rise in value attributable to aggregte community interest in land. In short, rising land values are social equity, not properly privatable equity. I do not deny that land rent is and has been treated as privatable, but that tradition is injurious to the proper social functioning of society, not least because it trespasses upon the natural relationship between all people and Creation.

Edited August 7, 2006 by David Giesen

[David Giesen]

Why so blind,

How far north runs the land given to the Hebrews? And, for that matter, how far south? To the headwaters of the Nile to the tippy-top of the Euphrates (into Armenia?)?

What do you think of treating the rent of land/Creation as a commonwealth?

[Smalcald]

But we don't really own land or anything else, we own the right to use things exclusively, this is what a deed is.

So all land ownership is just another property right. Private land ownership is critical to the functioning of a free market system; there has never really been a successful economic system, which did not include the right to own property. Certainly we can look to providing more people with the ability to buy property and I think we should do that. I think you are making a false distinction between land and non-land, all are assets and have value. For an efficient market system you should be able to trade and own them freely.

What happens to land that is not owned by anyone, or conversely is owned by everyone? Well unless the government protects it with expensive measures, such as the case with National Park

[David Giesen]

Smalcald,

What is proposed is not the eliimination of private title to land but that the terms of ownership of land be payment of land's rent to society. This would end land speculation (adding field to field in Biblical language). Because there is an existential difference between land and things made by human beings--land existing anterior to humanity, while human-made stuff, obviously, comes into existence as it is fashioned by humanity--it is meaningful to recognize that until gifts of nature/Creation cease being a source of private income, there can be no genuine free market respecting human made goods and services. To illustrate: A man who owns valuable land need not produce anything at all, but can, rather, merely live off the rent of land paid him by those who rent the land and build a business there. Or again, to illustrate: where one man owns land but with a mortagage payment contracted years ago is making a land payment based upon past market value of land rather than the current value of land, that man has an advantage (past rent vs current market rent) over another man conducting an identical business who has to pay current market land rent. In such a case there is not a genuine competition between producers of goods and services because the fellow not paying currnt market rent can be less efficient in production and yet subsidize that relative inefficiency with actual or putative rent from land rent (which is unearned).

In short, until Creation ceases being a source of private income there will be little true market competition between producers of stuff that has value added to Creation (buildings made out of earth, tools made out of earth, consumer goods made out of land, etc.)