| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Demand effective | | Date: | Sunday, March 5, 2006 18:00:08 (-0800) | | From: | Joe Thomson <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
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| In reply to: | Message 3548 (written by Jeffery Smith) |
(Jeff Smith:-) (land) Wasn't exactly scare before then, just hoarded.
> >
(Joe comments:-) Yes, and look at HOW it was hoarded. By the imposition
of a 'tax' on the LAND ITSELF
>
(Jeff Smith replies:-) Please cite a time and place.
(Joe responds:-) The various land 'clearances' in parts of the British
Isles around the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, for one. Bill
McGunnigle, a regular contributor to this List, gave us a short history of
those just recently. The ''land-LORD'' felt he could receive more 'rents'
in money from his land by raising sheep on a large scale and selling the
wool clip to the new 'power driven' textile mills than he could by
continuing to 'tax' the crofters that had previously occupied it. Could
those 'crofters' have paid him the equivalent revenue per acre from the
production and sale of product from their hand powered looms and other
'cottage industries'? What was done, was done by a form of 'tax' on land
itself.
(Jeff continues:-) Typically, hoarding land occurs where
taxing land is absent.
(Joe responds:-) Did the peasantry of ancient Egypt 'hoard' land before the
time of Joseph? I don't think so. Each used what he could use. But the tax
imposed on them by Joseph certainly had the ultimate effect of hoarding
'their' land right into the hands of he who operated ''in the name of"
Pharaoh. Maybe you think that was a 'good' thing?
(Jeff continues:-) The introduction of a tax on land value has always
broken up latifundia.
(Joe responds:-) I disagree. It often concentrates it further. Go back to
'feudal' England after the Norman conquest of 1066. Starting with William
the Conqueror's 'Domesday Book', we began to see a 'tax' imposed on land
value. The King had ultimate 'sovereignty' over all the land, and dispensed
grants of title to it primarily to descending orders of the nobility in
return for continued fealty and a 'tax' on it.
Dukes, Earls, Viscounts, Marquis, Barons, and so on. These were the
''land-LORDS'', temporal, who along with the 'land-Lord, spiritual' ~ the
Church and its clergy ~ that originally provided what we might view today as
being ''government services" to much of the peasantry, in return for that
peasantry's continuing payment of a 'tax' or ground rent on land they didn't
own.
They held the land at the pleasure of their Lord, who fortunately needed
them to work it. Just as much as they needed him for organising defense,
arbitrating disputes, administering the 'law', managing forests and game,
etc., at that particular point in time. In turn, their Lord held land at
the pleasure of the King. (And often lost both lands, and head, when he
incurred that King's displeasure!.)
But what began as somewhat of an equitable arrangement, since the
'land-LORDS', both temporal and spiritual DID originally provide many
genuine services in return for the 'tax' or 'tithe', eventually evolved into
a tyranny in many instances. Interestingly, first for the Barons
themselves.
For was it not King John's attempt to further 'tax' the Baron's lands on
threat of dispossession that led to their mass revolt, and the Magna Carta?
The first instance of a long struggle against arbitrary 'taxation'.
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned 'Clearances' were a later, more
successful attempt by a higher authority to exercise the power of
'ownership' over land in an effort to consolidate control for a monopoly
benefit. Fortunately, as the feudal system broke down, private land
ownership became much more widespread. But a 'tax' on it, threatening
dispossession if not paid, is still a tyranny.
And what some of the 'Georgists' propose looks to me like something that
could easily evolve into that ultimate tyranny. For instead of a "King", or
some other "land-LORD" who is an entirely visible tyrant against which
protest can be mounted, now you're going to vest title to ALL real property
in an abstraction called ''the STATE'', or "the GOVERNMENT', or "the
PUBLIC". A perfect smokescreen for the operation of the 'will-to-power',
and the imposition of external 'control' by one, or very few, hidden
individuals over a great many other individuals.
If one can't be totally as 'secure' as possible on one's 'OWN' land, held
under the form of title that is most 'common' (known), and commonly desired
by most of us~ as individual OWNERS of individual properties with
tenancy-for-life and statutory rights of disposition to our heirs, just
where can we be secure?
>
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