Is Ed Dodson a Georgist or a Malthusian?

Harry Pollard

[Responding to John Kromkowski; reprinted from a Land-Theory online discussion, 21 March, 2002]

With regard to Ed, I don't think that Georgism is a dogmatic mantra -- to be learned and repeated to anyone who will listen. It's a live philosophy, continually brought up to date.

So Ed is afraid that overpopulation is a major issue -- perhaps the most important issue. To be selfish about it, global problems are the result either of a terrible land tenure system, or the human proclivity to breed. (Desmond Morris told me that it wasn't our intelligence that won us the position of number one on earth -- it was out genitalia. Other species couldn't compete with ability to breed anywhere, at any time and place, and in quantity. I added -- and while enjoying the experience!)

So, pretty obviously, while some kind of land reform is worthwhile, there is an overwhelming urgency to stopping population growth before the Pale Rider does it for us.

So overpopulation must come first.

The ZeePoppers dilemma difficulty rests in the insolubility of their perceived problem. They haven't a clue as to what to do to handle the situation. They play with condom distribution and suchlike, but every 20 minutes an additional 3,500 newbies join the human family.

(Just to be pessimistic, perhaps condoms will lower the incidence of AIDS and cause a population increase. Oh well!)

Anyway, the increase is about 1.5 million every week. And they worry about the "YouthQuake" -- baby-boomers reaching breeding age pretty soon.

If all their gigantic efforts lower the weekly increase to say 1 million a week (not a chance) -- the game will still have been lost. It's a ZeePoppers nightmare.

Our principal advantage in this debate is that while their palliatives stress the negative (stop 'em breeding) the Georgist solution emphasizes the positive.

Our three assumptions are that:

"The root of the problem and also its solution are to be found in the poverty and deprivation of billions of peasants around the world."

and

"If we can release the full productive capacities of these several billion peasants, production of food, clothing and the other needed things will soar and poverty will disappear"

and

"As the standards of living of these billions of peasants rise they will be less inclined to have large families."

Arguments:

Second Assumption

The successful Taiwanese land reform was the basis of the "Miracle of Taiwan" (The London Economist). It was based on several pieces of legislation in the late forties. First came the "Lease Limitation" law. This prevented landlords from evicting their peasants for 8 years. This provided a breathing period.

The second was a Rent Reduction law that reduced Rents by 25%. Rents dropped from 50% of the crop to 37.5%.

Then the land was distributed to the farmers. Some was purchased. Much had been taken by the Japanese invaders. This was simply confiscated.

The size of each farm was 5 hectares - about 12.5 acres. This is different to other and less successful land reforms, where the peasants are given a postage stamp to fail on. The Taiwanese had enough to support a family.

Then the valuation began.

The land was not valued directly. Its valuation was based on "the expected yield of the main crop".

This meant that if you used new techniques, got in a few machines, used better seed, worked twice as hard -- your land tax remained the same.

Also, no land tax was levied on other production, so farmers worked as many as five crops. My favorite is fish imported from Indonesia that thrived in the paddy fields, while the farmers were waiting for the rice harvest.

The theory is that if you are working for yourself, you will work harder and better than you would working for others (particularly if half your production is being taken). The results were impressive.

These dirt farmers produced so much that Taiwan with a population density of more than 1,300 to the square mile produced a net export of food.

Not now, though. The lure of high paid factory jobs has intervened and many farms are now worked part-time by farm workers turned factory workers.

Third Assumption

With regard to the third assumption, it does appear that child-bearing does diminish with a better standard of living. A hardened cynic like myself would point out that when the sun goes down in a village without electricity - what else is there to do?

There again, security means less incentive to have extra children to take care of aging parents.

And most of all, a better standard of living brings with it education -- an effective path to fewer children.

So, in true Georgist fashion, we don't demand that the First World help out the Third World. We say, let people provide their own welfare. The enthusiastic efforts of several billion people can far out perform a bunch of people deciding the amounts of money to be given to local politicians in the Third World.