On Tue, 5 Aug 2003 13:11:05 +0100, "IMM" wrote:


"Andy Hall" wrote in message
.. .

Andy I don't duck issues. The situation has
changed little over 100s of years and little
since 1947.

This was really my point. Clearly you've
done a lot of looking into this,

I have.

and I don't doubt that you hold your
views on the subject sincerely.

I do.

Whether or not it's desirable or
even practical to make
the changes that you suggest is
another matter.

It is clearly desirable to make changes as other countries clearly indicate
in their economies, cost of housing, etc.

As in the former USSR, DDR and Cuba? These are all places that have
experimented with the type of socio-economic engineering that you are
talking about and all have failed. The problem is that ultimately
human nature is of animal origin. We are territorial predators
separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by a relatively narrow
divide.


I don't happen to agree with the
basic tenet that it is acceptable to
take away people's property and
give to other people, either directly
or indirectly and even if their ancestors
did acquire it by means that
we might view today as dubious.

If the land was stolen then it should be taken back. The current owners are
living the life of Reilly on ill gotten gains. Theft is theft.

That depends on whether somebody owned it in the first place. If you
want to subscribe to the idea that land acquired centuries ago having
been "owned" by the common people is theft then you are at liberty to
take that position. Present day law does not support that premise
and neither do I.



The problem is that once you start
on that principle it is a slippery slope.

More like an uphill slope.

It is a downhill slope to anarchy because there is no way to define
what is "legitimate" and what is not. Do you do it on who the owner
is, how much land they own, the value, how long they have owned it,
whether they have a title? It's all very arbitrary and where would
one draw the line?


No need to take it away. re-distribute land and they have to sell, or
introduce LVT.

That's doing exactly the same thing by stealth.



I also don't believe that the risk to the
perturbation of the economy
by such measures as Land taxes
are justified.

LVT will improve the economy and not be just moving the furniture around.

It has never been done in a macro economy so would be a huge and
unjustifiable risk.


In terms of the impact
to the man in the street for whom you
are seeking a more equitable
piece of the cake, would not benefit
from a completely wrecked economy.

You clearly don't understand. LVT fans:

"The vast majority of the British people have no right whatsoever to their
native land save to walk the streets or trudge the roads. To them may be
fittingly applied the words of a Tribune of the Roman people, Tiberius
Gracchus: "Men of Rome you are the lords of the world, yet have no right to
a square foot of its soil. the wild beasts have their dens, but the soldiers
of Italy have only air and water.
- Henry George

"And so the tendency has been to assimilate the idea of property in land
with that of property of things of human production, and steps backwards
have even hailed as steps in advance".
- Henry George

"Men like Henry George are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more
beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form, and fervent
love of justice."
- Albert Einstein

"Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land got hold of it. They
simply seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with
title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure of the common lands, which was
going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have the
excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the
heritage of their own countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they
had the power to do so."
- George Orwell.


All eminent people no doubt. It's easy to pontificate when you
don't have responsibility for your actions.

Stop babbling about dismantling the economy for God's sake.

OK, so would you be prepared to put your money where your mouth is?

Let's say that we put you in charge of implementing these reforms that
you think are so important. If you can demonstrate an improvement
to the economy and the lot of the family on the national average
salary in a 5 or 10 year period you receive a large bonus.

OTOH, if the economy or the lot of the average salary family is
negatively affected you get nothing and moreover forfeit all of your
personal assets.

Would you take the job?



The only recent change has made matters worse
for us. Johnny Two Jags has said that 3
houses per hectare must be built
instead of two. So we are now more into each
others faces than before. Again we all get screwed,
and by a Labour government.

Are you really surprised by this?

No. The land owners have a very effective propaganda machine in the form of
organisations like the Countryside Alliance and some pseudo green movements.
The government did not counter this.

They obviously decided that there was no capital to be made from it
and no upsides. That should tell us something.

If it relaxed planning and allowed us
not the 92.5% of the land the greenies would should from the high heavens
without the government having made any prior counter.

Did you honestly believe that it
would be any different? I feel very
sorry for the large number of
people who were taken in by the
plausible story that was presented in
1997 and are now realising that it has
all been a big marketing game.

The government did not give any story on land in 1997. They are heavy, by
UK standards, on constitutional change, and rightly so. The kicking out of
hereditary peers is a great thing and the thin edge of the edge for land
reform.

I think that it's spite and dogma for its own sake.

We will get there eventually. But in land we need revolution not
evolution.


I think that this last sentence summarises your position completely.

The problem, to quote George Orwell as you have done, is that

"Some animals are more equal than others"



..andy

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