Progress 1121
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1121st SHARING THE EARTH SO ALL MAY PROSPER EDITION SPRING 2017 PROPERTY ANOTHER NAME FOR MONOPOLY? Spring 2017 Progress is supported by a grant from the Number 1121 Henry George Foundation of Australia - www.hgfa.org.au First published 1904 ABOUT Editor Prosper Australia is a 126 year old advocacy group. It seeks to move the Karl Fitzgerald base of government revenues from taxing individuals and enterprise to capturing the economic rents of the natural endowment, notably through Publisher land tax and mining tax. Prosper Australia Inc JOIN US Send contributions to: [email protected] Please join our organisation, Prosper Australia. Membership costs PROGRESS is the journal of $30.00. This includes a subscription to Progress. Prosper Australia www.prosper.org.au/join Earthsharing Australia Land Values Research Group Progress subscription only $15 – overseas subscriptions $35.00. Printed by The Print Press - (03) 9569 4412 Contact Prosper Australia ProsperAustraliaInc @Prosper_Oz 64 Harcourt Street, North Melbourne Vic 3051 Earthsharing @earthsharing Tel: +61 (0)3 9328 4792 - [email protected] Realestate4ransom @property4ransom Contact Information Related Organisations: ACT TAS Association for Good Government Prosper Australia (Tas branch) www.associationforgoodgov.com.au [email protected] [email protected] 03 6228 6486 02 6254 1897 8 Rosina Court, Mt Stuart TAS 7000 NSW Useful Websites Association for Good Government www.prosper.org.au [email protected] www.earthsharing.org.au 02 9698 2436 www.lvrg.org.au 122 Little Everleigh Street, Redfern NSW 2016 www.realestate4ransom.com PO Box 251 Ulladulla NSW 2539 www.3cr.org.au/economists www.youtube.com/earthsharing QLD www.grputland.com Site Revenue Society www.thedepression.org.au [email protected] www.hgfa.org.au 07 5574 0755 www.associationforgoodgov.org.au PO Box 8115 www.henrygeorge.org Gold Coast Mail Centre QLD 9726 www.theIU.org www.savingcommunities.org WA www.cooperativeindividualism.org Georgist Education Association www.earthrights.net www.gea.org.au www.progress.org [email protected] www.schalkenback.org 08 9279 5590 www.earthsharing.org 5/20 Old Perth Road, Bassendean WA 6934 PO Box 472 Bassendean WA 6934 Cover image: Matteo Catanese @ unsplash.com Contents Editorial by Karl Fitzgerald ........................................................................................................................4 Who Owns the Earth? by Antonia Malchik .................................................................................5 Clause for Concern by William Payze ..........................................................................................12 The Inquisitive Boy by Spokeshave.............................................................................................14 Property is Another Name for Monopoly by Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl.........16 On Monopoly Labor and Capital - Henry George at the US Senate ............................18 Geoists in History by Karl Williams ...............................................................................................22 “This being the case, in what manner are the Irish people to subsist in future? There is the land and there is labor enough to bring it into cultivation. But such is the state in which the land is placed, that capital cannot be employed upon it. You have tied up the raw material in such a manner -- you have created such a monopoly of land by your laws and by your mode of dealing with it -- as to render it alike a curse to the people and to the owners of it” John Bright, MP [From a Speech in the House of Commons, 2 April, 1849, Speeches, Vol.I, pp. 332 (Edition of 1868)] Editorial by Karl Fitzgerald We’re privatising our way to a real life version of In the past this could have funded two people for Monopoly - the board game we all love to hate. a week to clear ten drains. But few are discussing The irony of the popular game’s history is con- the privatised rents that consultants, multi-na- fronting for many Progress readers. ‘Monopoly’ tionals and insiders bidding for government was originally called The Landlord’s Game. It was contracts can claim. The market is one-eyed designed to teach us about the danger of priva- under today’s neoliberal mantra. tising natural monopolies into a tollbooth society. Quite simply, we have replaced a few pubic Today’s leaders are quite simply puppets for their servants leaning on shovels with executives on a campaign contributors. long Friday lunch. This edition addresses these concerns, beginning The good news is that Prosper is more involved with a storytelling piece on the importance of the than ever in lobbying government for the commons, of the land in our lives. If a place to necessary policy changes. The more our sup- lay down our roots really is so important, why porters write letters, phone into callback radio has society allowed such a Game of Mates to or contact their MP (the core essentials of civic thrive? ‘Who Owns the Earth’ raises awareness of behaviour), the closer we get to meaningful the Charter of the Forest, which is celebrating it’s reform. 800th anniversary this November 6. I’m hoping to bring more academic articles to The satire of the ABC’s popular Utopia series is Progress, and in Property is Only Another Name for raising awareness of the dangers of privatisa- Monopoly, two young academics in Posner and tions. Bloomberg has also been busy on this front, Weyl attempt to describe the need for both alloc- finding recent NSW privatisations dwarfed the ative and investment efficiencies. Whilst raising state’s entire history of sell-offs. With east coast some interesting points, I must ask you to identify states also awash with stamp duty revenues, this their mistake. The next article - a testimony by could be as good as public services get. Henry George to the US Senate, answers their shortcomings. Victoria’s Andrews administration is no different, with the Victorian Land Titles Office tragically up Karl Williams’ Geoists in History takes us into the for sale, so soon after the Port of Melbourne. heart of the zionist movement with a biographi- cal take on Chaim Weizmann, the catalyst behind This same government has placed a ratings cap the creation of Israel. Weizmann too agreed that on local councils, further choking their sovereign- the Palestinians have ‘the same rights to their ty. With so much focus on council revenues, little homes as we have to our national home’. analysis has occurred on the role that 30+ years of privatisations have placed on cost structures. How good intentions turn sour without some form of rent-sharing. Melbourne City Council employs Serco, the world’s largest prison operator, to run our We hope this selection of articles illuminates parks and gardens services. So blind are the the role that unearned incomes play in dividing public that Serco even have the gall to use the society and the necessary reforms needed to slogan ‘bringing service to life’ on their vehicles. harmonise the growth of society with nature, of Meanwhile, Halliburton’s KKR are in charge of incomes with prices, of natural monopolies with tree planting in Adelaide. lowest operating costs. The Maribyrnong City Council pays a private con- tractor $2000 for each and every drain clearance. 4 PROGRESS Spring 2017 PROGRESS Spring 2017 5 Photo by Andrew Loke on Unsplash Who Owns the Earth? by Antonia Malchik Is our attachment to private property the root of our roots are real, and they become stronger and environmental problems? Private land ownership deeper the more closely we belong to a place. is a beautiful dream gone badly wrong. It’s time to reinstate the forgotten ideal of the commons. For people like my great-great-grandparents and Reprinted with permission from Aeon. so many others who had lived under the yoke of tenuous tenancy rights in Europe, the US’s 1862 My mother likes to say she was born out of the Homestead Act promised a sense of freedom back of a ’39 Ford. She wasn’t, actually. She that these days is almost unimaginable: the was born in a hospital in Chicago. But less than freedom to own the land that you worked on, the a year later she and her parents returned to the farm that sustained you, the riverbank where you Montana ranch that her family had homestead- stood to catch your dinner, the trees that shaded ed in the early 1900s, and where they still lived. your house. You could lose it through bankrupt- That is where my mother counts her birth, when cy or by giving up – pioneer life was less the de- she got out of the back of that ’39 Ford and came lightful, rich adventure depicted in Little House home to the prairie, full of meadowlarks and on the Prairie than a stark, cold, lonely, and harsh fragrant soil and a big golden willow. ‘I count how life that drove many off the land within a few God and nature do things,’ she says of her birth. short years – but no capricious lord or absentee ‘People have a home, and they know when they owner could take it from you or demand a per- get there.’ centage of your labour. White Americans who benefited from the opening of the West and the If there is a greater thrill of belonging, of home, brutal, deeply unjust Indian Removal Act, would than turning the key in your first house, it’s land never again be subject to the equivalent of the ownership. The ranch my mother grew up on Highland Clearances. still smells of sweet soil. Its acres roll out under Montana’s big sky, harbouring the prairie’s native For me, like my ancestors, the Montana landscape yellow bells and buttercups. To belong to a place is part of who I am. It’s beyond price. Love is the like that, to know it’s yours to care for and live on, one thing about land that cannot be measured is a powerful and steadying force.