Rescuing Henry George

Harold Hotelling’s work, from natural resources economics to optimal taxation, from spatial to welfare economics was deeply influenced by his Georgist affiliation and by a Georgist game that we nowadays call the Monopoly game but that was at the time known as the Landlord’s game. We explore this influence, its history and the role it played in Hotelling’s work and ideas. We show that political beliefs deeply shaped Hotelling’s approach to economics, and that the rules of the Landlord’s Game helped him thinking about economic mechanisms.

Boden, der vergessene Produktionsfaktor

ZusammenfassungIn der seit 2009 andauernden Niedrigzinsphase ging der Anteil der Kapitaleinkommen am Volkseinkommen zurück. Da sich der Anteil des Faktors Arbeit nicht wesentlich veränderte, gewann der Produktionsfaktor Boden an Bedeutung. In der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung spiegelt sich dies jedoch nicht wider, da der Boden dort nicht gesondert ausgewiesen wird. Mithilfe des Henry-George-Theorems wird versucht, eine Methode zu entwickeln, die den Anteil des Faktors Boden quantifiziert. Der explizite Ausweis des Bodeneinkommens in der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung könnte dazu beitragen, die Rolle dieses vernachlässigten Faktors zu korrigieren.

Introduction

According to John Locke, all people are morally equal self-owners. This commitment introduces a tension at the heart of Locke’s property theory. Since all people own themselves and, consequently, their labor, individuals have the moral power to acquire private property from the common world. But the use of this moral power threatens to generate concentrations of economic power capable of subjecting some people to others’ wills, in violation of equal moral standing. The thesis of this book is that four largely forgotten nineteenth-century Lockeans developed two distinct, internally consistent, and mutually incompatible resolutions to this tension within Lockean property theory. In one camp, Thomas Hodgskin and Lysander Spooner—the libertarian radicals—argued that although we each hold an equal negative liberty to claim pieces of the world, there is no positive common right to the world. Consequently, the demands of moral equality can be satisfied under conditions of enormous economic inequalities. In the other camp, John Bray and Henry George—the egalitarian radicals—argued that since all people are morally equal, each of us has a positive right to share the world with everyone else. Consequently, the demands of moral equality cannot be met except under substantially (though not totally) egalitarian economic conditions. It is important to work through the argumentative successes and failures of these relatively unknown thinkers in order to understand how contemporary arguments about equality and property developed and, consequently, how we might apply them to contemporary problems.

Locke Among the Radicals

During the nineteenth century, the Lockean radicals—Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, John Bray, and Henry George—picked up the loose ends of Locke’s property theory and wove them into two competing strands. Each strand addressed problems of liberty and equality that were emerging with industrial capitalism, but each did so in a different way. In one camp, Hodgskin and Spooner—the libertarian radicals—argued that the world of resources is common to all people only in the negative sense of being originally unowned by anyone. According to them, there are no just grounds for state redistribution except to correct past injustices, and governments are typically little more than thieving and oppressive gangs. In the other camp, Bray and George—the egalitarian radicals—held that all people have a positive claim to share equally in the world’s resources. According to them, states should ensure, through redistributive taxation and other progressive policies, that our institutions respect this common right. Locke Among the Radicals tells the forgotten story of the Lockean radicals and the role they played in addressing problems latent in Locke’s theory. In addition, it argues that some of the radicals’ insights can provide a blueprint for a form of liberal distributive justice that is applicable today.