Land (as a factor of production) Defined

Harry Pollard

[Reprinted from a Land-Theory online discussion, 20 July, 2001]

I use the term Natural Resources for natural resources. I use the term Land for a "location with an address".

None of us can do anything significant with Natural Resources. We can't drill oil in Natural Resources, we can't dig for gold in Natural Resources. We don't watch television programs on the Natural Resources. We can't even build a house on Natural Resources.

To do anything, we need a "location with an address". We drill oil in a particular oil field, we mine gold 20 feet on the north wall of Silver Canyon. We watch television of Channel 2. We build a house on lot 12 of the Sandal parcel on Map Book page 134.

The way man makes sense of this totality called Natural Resources is to carve it up into chunks, give the chunks an address, then dole out the "locations with an address". This is how we handle the problem of "who does what, where".

For the moment, let's not be side-tracked by the force, fraud, corruption, and theft that marked the doling out,

(Using "lot-lines" is also the way we could handle the areas that are under contention now and all the time - namely the oceans and particularly the fishing grounds and whale habitats.)

So, we get our chunk, but before we do anything, we want to be sure we won't be kicked off out "location with an address". We want to be sure that no-one can touch our products on this Land without our permission, whether they be potatoes or townhouses. So, we get a title deed that confirms we own the chunk

Georgists make a lot of the fact we don't need to own these bits of Natural Resources. All we need is security of tenure and security of our production. Well that's what a title deed gives us - or is supposed to give us. When we finish up with our explanations of security, we find we have ownership.

From one end of the globe to the other, we find ownership of land confirmed by title deed. So, why knock it? You want to tell hundreds of millions of people they don't own their land any more. Instead they have been granted security of tenure by - whom?

Perhaps by people who would take their "secure" land for failure to pay a small bill?

This whole bit lacks common sense. It achieves nothing, but can bring with it a lot of grief.

It is easily argued that we own the earth in common. For who can argue that one person has more right than another. Common ownership means that each of us owns the whole earth. We don't own a piece of it. We each own it all.

As I've argued above, we common owners need to provide each of us with whatever is necessary to accomplish our ideas. Yet, in doing so, our common ownership rights must not be diminished.

Most things to be accomplished above the primitive require possession of Land. Further the possessor must be able to do whatever he wishes with this Land and keep entirely all of his production. In addition, his tenure should be as permanent as he wishes.

In other words, he owns his Land - this particular "location with an address". Yet, in establishing his private right - we must also maintain our common right.

This is accomplished elegantly by collecting Economic Rent and royalties. As George said:

"I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent."

Maybe, that's a good place to start.