Who Owns the Earth?
Alanna Hartzok
[Reprinted from News & Views, 15 June,
1989. At the time of this writing,
Alanna Hartzok served as President of the Northern California Land
Trust]
The task of conservation,
restoration, and rational use of the earth is vitally linked to the
question of "Who should own this Earth?" The ever-widening
gap between rich and poor, both within and among nations is a
primary source of conflict and violence, a trigger mechanism for
warfare. The root cause of this local to global maldistribution of
wealth problem is the inequitable ownership and control of the
planet's land and natural resources.
The ownership of land resources and valuable landsites ultimately
determines the social, the political and consequently the mental and
physical condition of a people. Attaining an ethic of wise and careful
stewardship of the Earth is likewise inseparable from the task of
securing the well-being of individuals. The health of the human being
and the health of the Earth in interrelated. It is unlikely that
environmental degradation will cease until the exploitation of the
human being is alleviated. The pressures upon those who are themselves
exploited to exploit in turn each other and the environment is great.
WHOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE
These issues are not separate. They can NOT be ordered in a linear
progression of steps one, two, three -- disarm, restore the
environment, then work on economic justice issues. Human survival must
be secured on all fronts simultaneously if it is to be secured at all.
The causes and conditions of warfare, environmental exploitation, and
human degradation cannot be considered apart from each other but are
woven into the institutionalized fabric of the current state of the
world. The WHOLE cloth must be woven anew.
Peace is not only the ability to resolve conflicts non-violently but
to ascertain condition of bask justice and fairness in human
interactions. Force has most often predominated over fairness in the
long history of human affairs. Territorial conflict has for millennium
been a root cause of war. The price of peace has too of ten been the
cost of continued injustice and conditions of economic servitude.
Veterans of war, little more than mercenaries to begin with in many
cases, come home to want and poverty. Fifty percent of the homeless in
America today are estimated to be veterans, and fifty percent of those
served in the Vietnam War. Military induction has been the only way to
"be all you can be" for millions of America's lower class
people.
They risked their life for "their homeland" yet had no
inherent right to any part of that land when they returned home.
BASIS FOR JUSTICE
Can a safe and secure planet be inhabited by a few masters and many
slaves? The various states and cities comprising the USA many be "safe"
from invasion from each other because of the initial agreements of
confederation which created the nation state two hundred years ago.
Yet there is ever mounting death and violence among the underclass who
find survival increasingly more difficult while the middle class is
being steadily taxed into oblivion. An enduring peace MUST secure
justice, yet the actual basis for justice lies in affirming and
restoring economic rights, a subject about which there is not yet
enough consensus for the kind of unity of purpose and action essential
to the task.
For instance, peace advocates recommend that a department of peace be
established in order to teach strategies of non-violent conflict
resolution.
But from what established ethic can a conflict be resolved between
a landowner with 1000 acres of land and 1000 landless peasants? Do
we divide the land in half and give each of the landless a small
parcel so that the large landowner now holds 50%? Do we equally
distribute all the land so that each peasant has one acre? But some
acres will surely be better located or have richer soil than others.
And what about the children? MALDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH The cry of "Land
and Liberty" of the Russian revolutionaries led to a
Marxist-Leninist, state-bureaucratic socialist remedy, but with
curtailment of individual freedoms and with an economic elite emerging
nonetheless a few decades down the road. The American Revolution
proclaimed "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but
adopted Europe's Roman-based land law system. In the USA today, 3
percent of the population owns 95 percent of the private land, land
values rise faster than wages, and the resulting maldistribution of
wealth is securing the very conditions that our forefathers and
mothers had hoped to escape.
The paucity of real non-violent solutions to the problem of the
concentration of land and resource ownership has led by default to
violent upheavals and poorly conceived arrangements that are often
short-lived. The landlord is killed but the peasants fight and compete
against each other only to have once again the powerful and ruthless
few emerge to control the many.
EQUAL RIGHT TO EARTH
No, these are crude attempts at solving the problem.
Just as every human being strong and weak is considered of
inherent equal value as a person with right to self-expression, so
every human must have a fair and equal right to the Earth itself.
The right to the Earth cannot be vulnerable to the whim of partisan
politics. The right to the Earth must be vested in the people
themselves, in a way that can be understood and monitored by the
average individual.
THE NEED FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS
hose of good will who would improve the conditions of the poor and
the people as a whole are polarized into the right/left,
Democrat/Republican traditional camps. While their good intentions may
be similar, their means are in direct opposition, leading not to
balanced progress but to barren compromise, resulting in stagflation
and increased human and environmental degradation.
No matter how grand the goal, without a consensus of means and method
well-intentioned and progressive people on both sides of the political
seesaw will just keep bouncing up and down, ultimately going nowhere
except deeper into the hole in the ground at the middle. Meanwhile,
the institutionalized Roman land tenure system continues to make rot
out of our political democracy and a mockery of deals of human freedom
as the underclasses are the first to be strangled by the unidentified
and invisible hand of creeping land rent.
No matter how grand the goal, without a consensus of means and method
well-intentioned and progressive people on both sides of the political
seesaw will just keep bouncing up and down, ultimately going nowhere
except deeper into the hole in the ground at the middle. Meanwhile,
the institutionalized Roman land tenure system continues to make rot
out of our political democracy and a mockery of deals of human freedom
as the underclasses are the first to be strangled by the unidentified
and invisible hand of creeping land rent.
CAPITALIST-SOCIALIST DILEMMA
Socialist type solutions to the problem have resulted in unwieldy and
inefficient bureaucracies that, while more evenly distributing
produced wealth, depress productive powers by inhibiting individual
freedom and incentives. Capitalist arrangements, while maximizing
efficiency in production through competition and reward far individual
incentive, cannot resolve the maldistribution of wealth problem
because of the basic flaw of putting the land base in the same market
category as labor- produced wealth.
SYNTHESIS
The real power in any new political grouping such as the "Peace
and Environmental Coalition" and other "green" efforts
will emerge firmly when the right/left. Republican/Democrat tension is
resolved not through compromise but through the articulation and
actualization of a solid and dynamic SYNTHESIS. Such a higher middle
ground must arise from an appreciation and unification of the highest
values of both sides. Namely, concern for fairness in the distribution
of wealth and collective societal needs as emphasized by the left and
individual freedom and incentive with maximum efficiency in production
valued by the right.
THE KEYSTONE OF SYNTHESIS
There is a way to attain BOTH fairness in distribution AND maximum
efficiency in wealth production, of securing collective needs AND
furthering individual freedom. The approach is based on the equal
right of all to the land and natural resources and the right of the
individual to the products of labor. The method based on this ethic is
to collect a percentage of the value of land and natural resources and
to remove taxes on labor. A condition of "ownership" of any
particular landsite or natural resource is payment of this "ground
rent" back to the community as a whole. Ground rent once
collected is the proper source of public finance for the collective
needs of the community as a whole. The "commonwealth" is
thus supported by the "common wealth." Alternatively, ground
rent can be redistributed in direct payment back to all individuals,
much as a company returns dividends to its stockholders.
It is not necessary for each person to own land outright in order
thereby to secure their fair share of the Earth. Persons "owning"
land or resource rights would profit through their labor, which is
untaxed, not through the privilege of exclusive ownership. If they
have a better located land site or richer mineral lands, they pay
higher ground rents back to the community, thus equalizing results of
labor applied to greater or lesser valuable natural resources.
There is no need to forcefully confiscate land titles in order to
secure the equal right of all to the Earth. With ground rent the
source of public finance the people as a whole become the "owner"
and a title deed functions as a "tease" agreement. The
community "allows" individual private use of sites on the
condition that its fair rental value is paid to the community. If a
particular land site is misused or abused, then the community must
charge a higher rate to pay for damages and cost of restoration. Thus
there is individual incentive for proper care of the Earth.
THE NECESSITY OF GROUND RENT AS FINANCE SOURCE
Public finance on all levels -- local to global - must be collected
from that which is the "commonwealth" -- the ground rents of
the land and resource base. Taxes from any other source raised for
whatever worthy goal of peace or environmental needs, food, jobs or
medicine, ultimately depresses wages and capital formation necessary
to secure basic human needs white the inevitable increase in land
values is pocketed by the few who own the land. We must always ask the
bottom line question when proposing ideas for a safe and restored
planet: "Who benefits and who pays?"
The SOURCE of public finance is every bit as important as the purpose
to which public funds are directed. Just as the health of the roots of
a tree is crucial to the production of abundant fruit, so must public
funding come from the proper base in order to procure a healthy
wholesome society. Advocating the redirection of tax dollars away from
armaments and toward peace education and conflict resolution, away
from environmentally damaging activities and toward restoration and
stewardship will NOT automatically better conditions of life for the
majority of people. Ending the arms race will NOT in itself free
resources which will then feed the hungry and house the homeless.
Whatever immediate advantage might be wrought from a redirection
atone of tax dollars will in due time be annulled by increase in land
values to the benefit of those few - holding title. Financing
redirected from the military budget and into food stamps or subsidized
housing or rent supplements will again be to the ultimate advantage of
landholders who can charge just that much more for agricultural -and
residential lands, and we're back again at square one or worse.
GREENS" ARE ON THE RIGHT TRACK
Fortunately "Green" efforts in several countries have
included platform planks that do advocate ground rent as the basis of
public finance even though other parts of their agendas are sometimes
contradictory in terms of means and methods.
On the global level the "Law of the Seas Covenant" is an
example of a ground rent basis for public needs as it has affirmed
that ocean resources are the common heritage of all and a proper
source of funding for global institutions.
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