Life on a Small Island

News that 13 Uighurs, confined to the camp at Guantanamo for a number of years, are being sent to Palau and 4 others to Bermuda, on guest worker status, intrigued me, particularly in light of two short videos I watched last night.

I've visited Bermuda perhaps a dozen times over the past 35 years, and virtually every trip has been an opportunity to think about life in community, about how to run and finance government, etc.  (Riding a scooter from one end to the other provides a lot of time to observe and think!  Bermuda is perhaps 17 miles from tip to tip, and consists of many islands.  One crosses a few small bridges and one major causeway.

Last night, I visited the new IU website at http://www.theiu.org/.  The International Union is a Georgist group whose mission statement is as follows:

The International Union was founded to promote permanent peace and prosperity for everyone by re-establishing mankind’s natural relationship with land.

The two films to which I refer both feature my friend Dave Wetzel of the Labour Land Campaign, and a third one of them is a visual version of a piece I've had on the wealthandwant website for several years.

• Robinson Crusoe: Land, Labor, Capital - the bits that Robert Louis Stevenson missed [5:16 minutes]
  
• The Desert Island: A clean slate -- the architecture of raising public revenue in a moral economy [2:37 minutes]
• Victoria Coach Station: The Duke of Westminster has fingers in many pies. [2:18 minutes]  See also Who should Get the Land Rent? 

Also on the wealthandwant website are some other pages which the Uighurs story brought to mind, some related to Robinson Crusoe, some related to tenancy and sharecropping:

Henry George: The Crime of Poverty  (1885 speech)

Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said, "O man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and independent citizen, with just as much to say as I have except that this island is mine, and of course, as I can do as I please with my own property, you must not use it save upon my terms." Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's slave as though he had called him one. Friday was not a fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly off through the air; if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through life to death.... read the whole speech

Henry George: Social Problems

ROBINSON CRUSOE, as we all know, took Friday as his slave. Suppose, however, that instead of taking Friday as his slave, Robinson Crusoe had welcomed him as a man and a brother; had read him a Declaration of Independence, an Emancipation Proclamation and a Fifteenth Amendment, and informed him that he was a free and independent citizen, entitled to vote and hold office; but had at the same time also informed him that that particular island was his (Robinson Crusoe's) private and exclusive property. What would have been the difference? Since Friday could not fly up into the air nor swim off through the sea, since if he lived at all he must live on the island, he would have been in one case as much a slave as in the other. Crusoe's ownership of the island would be equivalent of his ownership of Friday. — Social Problems — Chapter 15, Slavery and Slavery

Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)

Note 56: The ownership of the land is essentially the ownership of the men who must use it.

"Let the circumstances be what they may — the ownership of land will always give the ownership of men to a degree measured by the necessity (real or artificial) for the use of land. Place one hundred men on an island from which there is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the absolute owner of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner of the soil of the island, will make no difference either to him or to them." — Progress and Poverty, book vii, ch. ii.

Let us imagine a shipwrecked sailor who, after battling with the waves, touches land upon an uninhabited but fertile island. Though hungry and naked and shelterless, he soon has food and clothing and a house — all of them rude, to be sure, but comfortable. How does he get them? By applying his Labor to the Land of the island. In a little while he lives as comfortably as an isolated man can.

Now let another shipwrecked sailor be washed ashore. As he is about to step out of the water the first man accosts him:

"Hello, there! If you want to come ashore you must agree to be my slave."

The second replies: "I can't. I come from the United States, where they don't believe in slavery."

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn't know you came from the United States. I had no intention of hurting your feelings, you know. But say, they believe in owning land in the United States, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Very well; you just agree that this island is mine, and you may come ashore a free man."

"But how does the island happen to be yours? Did you make it?"

"No, I didn't make it."

"Have you a title from its maker?"

"No, I haven't any title from its maker."

"Well, what is your title, anyhow?"

"Oh, my title is good enough. I got here first."

Of course he got there first. But he didn't mean to, and he wouldn't have done it if he could have helped it. But the newcomer is satisfied, and says:

"Well, that's a good United States title, so I guess I'll recognize it and come ashore. But remember, I am to be a free man."

"Certainly you are. Come right along up to my cabin."

For a time the two get along well enough together. But on some fine morning the proprietor concludes that he would rather lie abed than scurry around for his breakfast and not being in a good humor, perhaps, he somewhat roughly commands his "brother man" to cook him a bird.

"What?" exclaims the brother.

"I tell you to go and kill a bird and cook it for my breakfast."

"That sounds big," sneers the second free and equal member of the little community; "but what am I to get for doing this?"

"Oh," the first replies languidly, "if you kill me a fat bird and cook it nicely, then after I have had my breakfast off the bird you may cook the gizzard for your own breakfast. That's pay enough. The work is easy."

"But I want you to understand that I am not your slave, and I won't do that work for that pay. I'll do as much work for you as you do for me, and no more."

"Then, sir," the first comer shouts in virtuous wrath, "I want you to understand that my charity is at an end. I have treated you better than you deserved in the past, and this is your gratitude. Now I don't propose to have any loafers on my property. You will work for the wages I offer or get off my land! You are perfectly free. Take the wages or leave them. Do the work or let it alone. There is no slavery here. But if you are not satisfied with my terms, leave my island!"

The second man, if accustomed to the usages of the labor unions, would probably go out and, to the music of his own violent language about the "greed of capital," destroy as many bows and arrows as he could, so as to paralyze the bird-shooting industry; and this proceeding he would call a strike for honest wages and the dignity of labor. If he were accustomed to social reform notions of the namby-pamby variety, he would propose an arbitration, and be mildly indignant when told that there was nothing to arbitrate — that he had only to accept the other's offer or get off his property. But if a sensible man, he would notify his comrade that the privilege of owning islands in that latitude had expired. ...

Karl Williams:  Social Justice In Australia: INTERMEDIATE KIT

We've just seen how returns from land are, by nature, monopolistic and, by rights, should be returned to the community. But how do we calculate this amount?

WHO GETS THE COCONUTS?
It's perhaps best illustrated by the Robinson Crusoe scenario, where he finds himself alone on a desert island. Rob naturally settles on the best available land which, for argument's sake, can produce 20 coconuts per acre per month. Along comes Man Friday, who gets the second-best land producing 18 coconuts per acre. This best, freely-available land of Friday is called the marginal land and, as we'll see, determines both the level of wages and that of rent.

For how much could Rob rent out his land - 2 coconuts or 20 coconuts per acre? Friday would only be prepared to pay 2, because he can already get 18 from his. So here's our first definition, that of the Law of Rent: The application of labour and capital equipment being equal, the rent of land is determined by the difference between the value of its produce and that of the least productive land in use. So if Man Saturday comes along (the next day?!) and finds that the best available land can only produce 15 coconuts per acre, Rob could rent his land out to Saturday for 5 coconuts per acre, and Friday for 2.

What then determines the level of wages? When Friday came along and could work land yielding 18 coconuts per acre in a month, then he wouldn't accept wages offered by Rob for less than 18 coconuts. But when Saturday arrived, suddenly Friday could only command 15 per month, because Rob knows that the going rate (that applicable to Saturday at the margin) is only 15. So here we have the Law of Wages, which is the corollary of the law of rent: Wages are the reward that labour can obtain on marginal land, i.e. the most productive land available to it without paying rent.

Of course it all gets more complicated by technology, trade unions, immigration, the existence of a pool of unemployed, personal preferences, levels of education etc., but these strong underlying laws always hold. But let's now tie up the factors of production. Rent is the return to land, wages are the return to labour, and interest is the return to capital. The law of interest can be stated thus: Interest is the return that the use of capital equipment can obtain on marginal land, i.e. the most productive land available to it without paying rent.

PROGRESS AND POVERTY, SIDE BY SIDE
So here's the alarming paradox of progress marching side by side with poverty. Those who have grabbed the best land get richer and richer (from increasing rent) while the tenants and wage-earners get poorer and poorer for having to accept lower and lower wages as the margin is pushed out to less productive land). Henry George, in his classic Progress and Poverty drove home this point, but took about 600 pages to deal with all the complications and fine details not examined here. It's no wonder that the unmasking of this great paradox - the title of his book - hit the 19th century world like a great revelation. And it's no wonder that vested interests, through the neoclassical economics that they fostered, knew they had to shut him up. And, by successfully silencing him, it's no wonder that, despite all efforts, increasing and ever more alarming disparities of wealth are the norm world-wide.

But, anyway, how many coconut-basketsful of LVT should we collect? Chuck away all those calculators, guys, for the answer is simple: Collect the rent, the whole rent, and nothing but the rent. Assuming that everyone has to do the same amount of work to produce their differing yields of coconuts, when Friday came along then we'd collect 2 coconuts per acre from Rob. This would leave 18 coconuts in each of their hands, and 2 coconuts of rent or LVT collected. When Saturday arrived we'd collect 5 from Rob and 3 from Friday, which would leave 15 coconuts in everyone's hands and 8 coconuts of rent collected. Result: everybody effectively shares equally in the bounty of Our One Earth, and we have a natural, non-punitive form of revenue raising with which to fund infrastructure.

We've already seen how speculators can presently hold on to idle parcels of land, waiting for unearned increases in their value to accrue to them. But here's another curse of land speculation: by locking up productive land, it forces newcomers out to less productive land. By "pushing back the margin", the evil of speculation simultaneously raises rents and lowers wages. LVT makes it impossible for speculators to enjoy unearned income.  Read the entire article

Henry George: The Land for the People (1889 speech)

On this island that I have supposed we go and settle on, under the plan we have proposed each man should pay annually to the special fund in accordance with the special privilege the peculiar value of the piece of land he held, and those who had land of no peculiar value should pay nothing. That rent that would be payable by the individual to the community would only amount to the value of the special privilege that he enjoyed from the community. But if one man owned the island, and if we went there and you people were fools enough to allow me to lay claim to the ownership of the island and say it belonged to me, then I could charge a monopoly rent; I could make you pay me every penny that you earned, save just enough for you to live; and the reason I could not make you pay more is simply this, that if you would pay more you would die. 

THE power to exact that monopoly rent comes from the power to hold land idle -- comes from the power to keep labor off the land. Tax up land to its full value and that power would be gone; the richest landowners could not afford to hold valuable land idle. Everywhere that simple plan would compel the landowner either to use his land or to sell out to some one who would; and the rent of land would then fall to its true economic rate--the value of the special privilege it gave would go not to individuals, but to the general community, to be used for the benefit of the whole community. Read the whole speech

Henry George:  The Land Question (1881)

IMAGINE an island girt with ocean; imagine a little world swimming in space. Put on it, in imagination, human beings. Let them divide the land, share and share alike, as individual property. At first, while population is sparse and industrial processes rude and primitive, this will work well enough.

Turn away the eyes of the mind for a moment, let time pass, and look again. Some families will have died out, some have greatly multiplied; on the whole, population will have largely increased, and even supposing there have been no important inventions or improvements in the productive arts, the increase in population, by causing the division of labor, will have made industry more complex. During this time some of these people will have been careless, generous, improvident; some will have been thrifty and grasping. Some of them will have devoted much of their powers to thinking of how they themselves and the things they see around them came to be, to inquiries and speculations as to what there is in the universe beyond their little island or their little world, to making poems, painting pictures, or writing books; to noting the differences in rocks and trees and shrubs and grasses; to classifying beasts and birds and fishes and insects – to the doing, in short, of all the many things which add so largely to the sum of human knowledge and human happiness, without much or any gain of wealth to the doer. Others again will have devoted all their energies to the extending of their possessions. What, then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated as private property? Clearly, we shall see that the primitive equality has given way to inequality. Some will have very much more than one of the original shares into which the land was divided; very many will have no land at all. Suppose that, in all things save this, our little island or our little world is Utopia – that there are no wars or robberies; that the government is absolutely pure and taxes nominal; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a currency; imagine, if you can imagine such a world or island, that interest is utterly abolished; yet inequality in the ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual slavery.

For the people we have supposed are human beings – that is to say, in their physical natures at least, they are animals who can live only on land and by the aid of the products of land. They may make machines which will enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the air, but to build and equip these machines they must have land and the products of land, and must constantly come back to land. Therefore those who own the land must be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come to own all the land, he is their absolute master even to life or death. If they can live on the land only on his terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without land they cannot live. They are his absolute slaves, and so long as his ownership is acknowledged, if they want to live, they must do in everything as he wills.

If, however, the concentration of landownership has not gone so far as to make one or a very few men the owners of all the land – if there are still so many landowners that there is competition between them as well as between those who have only their labor – then the terms on which these non-landholders can live will seem more like free contract. But it will not be free contract. Land can yield no wealth without the application of labor; labor can produce no wealth without land. These are the two equally necessary factors of production. Yet, to say that they are equally necessary factors of production is not to say that, in the making of contracts as to how the results of production are divided, the possessors of these two meet on equal terms. For the nature of these two factors is very different. Land is a natural element; the human being must have his stomach filled every few hours. Land can exist without labor, but labor cannot exist without land. If I own a piece of land, I can let it lie idle for a year or for years, and it will eat nothing. But the laborer must eat every day, and his family must eat. And so, in the making of terms between them, the landowner has an immense advantage over the laborer. It is on the side of the laborer that the intense pressure of competition comes, for in his case it is competition urged by hunger. And, further than this: As population increases, as the competition for the use of land becomes more and more intense, so are the owners of land enabled to get for the use of their land a larger and larger part of the wealth which labor exerted upon it produces. That is to say, the value of land steadily rises. Now, this steady rise in the value of land brings about a confident expectation of future increase of value, which produces among landowners all the effects of a combination to hold for higher prices. Thus there is a constant tendency to force mere laborers to take less and less or to give more and more (put it which way you please, it amounts to the same thing) of the products of their work for the opportunity to work. And thus, in the very nature of things, we should see on our little island or our little world that, after a time had passed, some of the people would be able to take and enjoy a superabundance of all the fruits of labor without doing any labor at all, while others would be forced to work the livelong day for a pitiful living.

But let us introduce another element into the supposition. Let us suppose great discoveries and inventions – such as the steam-engine, the power-loom, the Bessemer process, the reaping-machine, and the thousand and one labor-saving devices that are such a marked feature of our era. What would be the result?

Manifestly, the effect of all such discoveries and inventions is to increase the power of labor in producing wealth – to enable the same amount of wealth to be produced by less labor, or a greater amount with the same labor. But none of them lessen, or can lessen the necessity for land. Until we can discover some way of making something out of nothing – and that is so far beyond our powers as to be absolutely unthinkable – there is no possible discovery or invention which can lessen the dependence of labor upon land. And, this being the case, the effect of these labor-saving devices, land being the private property of some, would simply be to increase the proportion of the wealth produced that landowners could demand for the use of their land. The ultimate effect of these discoveries and inventions would be not to benefit the laborer, but to make him more dependent.

And, since we are imagining conditions, imagine laborsaving inventions to go to the farthest imaginable point, that is to say, to perfection. What then? Why then, the necessity for labor being done away with, all the wealth that the land could produce would go entire to the landowners. None of it whatever could be claimed by any one else. For the laborers there would be no use at all. If they continued to exist, it would be merely as paupers on the bounty of the landowners!  ... read the whole article

Fred Foldvary: A Geoist Robinson Crusoe Story

Once upon a time, Robinson G. Crusoe was the only survivor of a ship that sunk. He floated on a piece of wood to an unpopulated island. Robinson was an absolute geoist. He believed with his mind, heart, and soul that everyone should have an equal share of land rent.

Since he was the only person on this island, it was all his. He surveyed the island and found that the only crop available for cultivation was alfalfa sprouts. The land was divided into 5 grades that could grow 8, 6, 4, 2, and zero bushels of alfalfa sprouts per month. There was one acre each for 8, 6, and 4, and 100 acres of 2-bushel land. For 8 hours per day of labor, he could work 4 acres. So he could grow, per month, 8+6+4+2 = 20 bushels of alfalfa sprouts, much more than enough to feed on.

One day another survivor of a sunken ship floated to the island. His name was Friday George. Friday was a boring talker and kept chattering about trivialities, which greatly irritated Robinson. "I possess the whole island. You may only have this rocky area," said Robinson. ... Read the whole piece

In Bermuda, all the land is taken, and my observations suggest that little is idle, with the possible exception of the Tucker Town area with its large residential lots.  Housing is expensive, and the cost of living is generally quite high.

The pictures of Palau suggest lots of small potentially habitable islands.

I'm happy for the Uighurs, and hope all this works out for them.