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Message 3177
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| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Re: The Land Question | | Date: | Friday, December 2, 2005 11:20:19 (+1300) | | From: | W. McGunnigle <wmcgunn @.........nz>
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Replying to William B. Ryan
You have definitely grasped the
essence of what Douglas was attempting to do, but you appear to have missed
the significance of the missive on Scottish history that followed up my
statement. They don't stand alone. His comments were specifically addressed
to an audience of predominantly Scottish mentality. He was assuring the
audience that Socred Philosophy stressed the rights of individuals in a
specific region took precedence over the apparent legal rights of a property
owner either government or private to make arbitrary decisions about the way
that owner used the property. He was assuring them that an "absentee owner"
could not make decisions about the use of the property without the full and
complete cooperation of his neighbours. This is no way implies either state
or private ownership is a necessary prerequisite for property transfers. He
was simply stating that an anarchic situation that allowed owners absolute
authority to do what they liked on their property without considering the
effect on tenants or neighbours would not be permitted to take place. In
many respects his proposed safeguards are now obsolecent because in many
areas environmental laws have superceeded the situation as it existed at the
time he made the comments. In light of this the relevance of the comments
today to our modern conditions appear to me to have limited significant,
since the basic philosophy of his words have been incorporated into our
present lifestyle. Having said that we must also accept that there are still
a significant number of property owners that deliberately attempt to
circumvent environmental protection laws, particularly many multinational
companies. Douglas was correct in assuming that a watchdog was necessary to
prevent that. His other contention, the curbing of the deliberate
acquisition of property solely and only for profit making, is a laudible
aim, and I can see no other way than a government established agency to
prevent such speculation on the property market. Even such an agency would
still be fraught with difficulty, a private institution seperated from
government control would be subject to corruption, a public institution
would very likely become an heavily-staffed inert beauracracy that would
stifle property development. Neither of these options would satisfy me, and
I suspect most of the rest of us. I would appreciate further comment on
these matters because it is obvious to me that Douglas even in the early
20th century was aware of the dangers inherent in a system of property
transfer that relied on "market forces" to ensure the most effective use of
land tenure for the maximum number of people. He saw clearly that the
concentration of land and property into few hands was detrimental to the
vast bulk of the worlds population. I feel sure he did not neglect in this
analysis the senario of the state owning everything i.e. Communism or
Socialism. To Douglas this was just as much an anathema as total private
ownership by a few individuals. In reality either system reduces the control
and operation of property and land tenure to a very few individuals whose
judgement supercedes that of the local people dependant upon that property
or land for their livelihoods. Such situations cannot be stable in the long
term e.g. Soviet Union. Even our "western democracies" appear to be lurching
from financial crisis to finacial crisis. Douglas was only offering a method
of stablising property and land values.
Bill McGunnigle
----- Original Message -----
From: "William B. Ryan" <w_b_ryan@yahoo.com>
To: <socialcredit@elistas.com>
Cc: <ros@globalnet.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 5:37 AM
Subject: [socialcredit] Re: The Land Question
> "...there appears to be a marked degree of state
> interference in land transfer responsibilities either
> as an owner or a tenant/leassee of property. To many
> of us the degree of interference implied by his views
> would be totally incompatible with [what] we normally
> accept as freedom of choice."
> ------------------------------
>
> I would say it is a different way of doing things.
> All in all, I would say there is a reduction in "state
> interference" and protection for the individual in
> overall effect.
>
> 1. Property taxes are eliminated, indeed improvements
> earn dividend income from the state.
>
> 2. The state is not permitted to hold property
> transferred to it in perpetual inventory, but is
> required to offer it for sale at the very same price
> paid to the surrendering landowner.
>
> 3. I see no preclusion to the subdivision of property
> into smaller parcels.
>
> 4. "No public official shall have any right of entry
> whatsoever," etc.
> -
>
>
> --- "W. McGunnigle" <wmcgunn@maxnet.co.nz> wrote:
>
> The quote concerning Douglas's views of Land
> Ownership/Tenure in Scotland is an unusual one. On the
> face of it there appears to be a marked degree of
> state interference in land transfer responsibilities
> either as an owner or a tenant/leassee of property. To
> many of us the degree of interference implied by his
> views would be totally incompatible with we normally
> accept as freedom of choice. His statement has to be
> taken with respect to the audience to which it is
> addressed namely Scots. Scottish history involves a
> very unpleasant period after the Jacobite Rebellion of
> 1745 during which much Scottish land passed into the
> hands of English owners mainly in the Highlands where
> the clan support of the Jacoblites lay. The economy of
> that area was based around the crofter farmer
> cultivating small areas of land in a subsistance
> manner. Oats and Potatos were the main staple food
> cultivated and, outside the local area of the croft,
> the remaining land was treated as "common land" where
> each crofter maintained a small herd of cattle and/or
> sheep. This small herd provided any "cash" that the
> family may have required for purposes of taxation or
> aquisition of tools etc. Where sheep were kept there
> was a cottage industry processing the wool into home
> spun yarn (origin of "Harris Tweed"). This enabled the
> Highlands to support a remarkably large population far
> greater than that found in the same area today. From
> 1745 onwards the absentee landlords decided that the
> meagre income they were receiving from their crofter
> tenant farmers was insufficient compared to their
> comparable properties elsewhere in the UK. They looked
> for a more profitable means of exploiting the
> Highlands and they found it by converting the land
> into an area of intensive sheep farming. To do this
> efficiently required a land management style that
> "enclosed" all the common land and turned it into well
> defined large paddocks using dry stone walls. During
> this process the tenant crofters were evicted from
> their land, and most were forced into the central
> lowlands of Scotland where they were exploited in the
> developing industrial areas mainly around Glasgow. The
> crofters had no recourse to oppose this change because
> their original tenure was based on the clan
> relationship that had been destroyed on Colluddon Moor
> in 1746. The bitterness this created still existed in
> the early 20th century, and Scots have never forgiven
> the English landlords that destroyed a way of life. It
> was the use of the courts and legal system to deprive
> Highlanders of their homes and livelihoods that was
> the biggest bone of contention. Because the Lowland
> Scots supported the changes this led to the ongoing
> semihostility between Highland and Lowland Scots. The
> evictions also emphasised to both sets of Scots the
> tenuous nature of agreements only maintained by
> tradition. It made them realise that only agreements
> written out and recorded by a government agency were
> considered legally binding under either English or
> Scottish law (The two legal sytems are seperate and,
> in some cases, radically different in practice). It
> was against this background that Douglas made his
> comments. He was reassuring his audience that there
> would be a tightening of regulations concerning land
> transfer and use to ensure that the past injustices
> would not be repeated. In particular his stipulations
> about agreement by six local neighbours about
> alterations in land use were intended to avoid any
> changes that would adversly affect the ability of
> those neighbours to maintain a livelihood. How the
> scheme would work in practice may be gauged from the
> success of the local authorities in Scotland in their
> attempts to manage local developement in their areas
> using statuary powers they have been granted under the
> various local authorities acts concerning land
> management. The effect has been mixed, but cost of
> land does not seem to have stablised. It still keeps
> increasing. I hope this is assistance to you all to
> understand the circumstances surrounding the Douglas
> comments.
> -
>
>
>
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