Ed Dodson responding... Daljit Dhadwal wrote: > Before the Communist revolution in Russia, around every 10 years(I think) > land was equally divided up and distributed to the peasents. Also, under > some religions debts have to be foregiven every so often. What's the > rationale for this type of periodic redistribution? Ed here: >From a moral perspective, the concentrated control over land and natural resources denies "equality of opportunity" to those who cannot access land to produce foodcrops and where socio-political circumstances do not provide for alternatives forms of employment at a livable wage. One can argue (I so argue) that access to nature is a human right and that the institutional support for private appropriation of the rental value of locations (capitalized into selling prices) is unjust. Investment in and control over locations is a rent-seeking activity by nonproducers that, if justice is served, ought to be curtailed. Adherents to state socialism have long promoted land nationalization and land redistribution programs as the solution. Unfortunately, government control merely substitutes bureaucratic inefficiency and state monopoly in the place of private rent-seeking and private monopoly. The real solution is for society to collect location rents via the tax system (and simultaneously remove the tax burden on income streams generated by the production of goods and services and on capital goods). As to the 19th century Russian experiment in land reform, the story is rather complex, but the net result was to remove the remnants of whatever feudal relations remained, exposing peasants to the demands by absentee landlords to turn over a greater and greater proportion of production. Tolstoy tried on a personal level to convey land to the peasants, and the effort merely turned a portion of the former peasants into absentee landlords. Interestingly, Kerensky was petitioned by Tolstoy to adopt the above tax system as the solution to Russia's land problem (which Tolstoy believed would stabilize Russian society and prevent the coming upheaval). > > > Daljit
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