Libertarian Land Philosophy:
Man's Eternal Dilemma
Oscar B. Johannsen, Ph.D.
An unpublished manuscript written by Oscar B.
Johannsen. The author was born in New York City in 1912 and
earned a Ph.D. in economics at New York University. This present
represented his attempt to give a down-to-earth analysis of the
problems of society and their solution in the interest of the
individual.
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This work has three themes:
First: Fundamental principles dealing with man's
activities in the production of wealth and services, depicting the
relationship which exists among rent, wages and interest.
Second: Essentially deals with monetary phenomena. This involves an
analysis of exchange, money, banking, and the marketplace with a
critical study of inflation and depressions.
Third: A critique of government and society with a study of the
ethical principles involving the criteria of a just society.
This association of
poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the
central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political
difficulties that perplexes the world, and with which statesmanship
and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it come the
clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive and
self--reliant nations. It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate
puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be
destroyed. So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress
brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and
make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of
Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction
must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new story
hut hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who must be
condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive; to base on a
state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under
which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its
apex.- [Henry George - Progress and Poverty]
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Preface
No thoughtful man who will take the time to survey the world in this
half of the 20th century can help being appalled.
Despite advances in the physical sciences so awe-inspiring that man
has actually circumnavigated the world in space capsules and has
landed on the moon, men and women everywhere look to the future with
ever greater uncertainty. Wherever they turn, they see violence
increasing. Almost daily, the newspapers report riots, wars and
threats of wars in all parts of the globe. Violence seems to break out
at the slightest provocation.
Hate, venom, envy and fear are on the increase despite the teachings
of the great religions. Men have produced means of communication
whereby they can literally speak to each other though situated at the
opposite ends of the earth, yet in understanding one another they are
moving further and further apart.
Associations and organizations, such as the United Nations, succeed
one another for the purpose of eliminating mistrust and
misunderstanding but each new one only adds to the problems.
Poverty blights every land. Even amidst the wealth of the United
States, the mass of the people live in fear of unemployment and
poverty, Only a gigantic armament industry, make-work programs and
monetary tinkering keep unemployment from reaching to every corner of
the land, but at a great price -- a price probably not perceived by
most people -- that of the steady erosion of individual initiative,
integrity and freedom.
Men probe the intricacies of the atom, they soar into outer space,
they plumb the depths of the oceans but they still have not solved the
problem of living peacefully together.
It is possible for men to live in peace and harmony. More than that,
they must if civilization is to attain the dizzying heights of which
men dream. Unless men live peacefully together, the sciences will
gradually decline and much of the knowledge of the universe which men
have so laboriously and painfully gained will be lost. The earth will
be plunged once again into a new and frighteningly more terrible Dark
Age.
Many, if not most, of the social, economic and moral problems, though
seemingly unrelated, actually have their roots in the distortions of
certain man-made institutions, policies, and programs. Corrective
action must be taken or else, sooner or later, barbarism will again
stalk the earth.
But In rectifying these institutions men must use greater acuity and
skill and better perception of the fundamental problems involved than
they have in the past. For ages men have attempted to reform many of
these institutions. In doing so, however, time and again, as though in
a fit of exasperated despair -- probably due to lack of understanding
-- they feel compelled to resort to force, even though every fiber of
their being denies the use of coercion against their fellowman.
Men can determine how to live harmoniously with one another, and
there are many doors through which they may pass to arrive at this
determination. The keys to individualism --land and money, freedom and
justice -- unlock many of these doors when skillfully turned.
To arrive at this understanding is not a mundane, dry one. It is as
exciting as a work of art. Indeed, possibly its recital should be the
work of a poet. With his finely attuned sense of the artistic, he can
readily appreciate and depict the beautiful unifying relationships,
which permeate it.
In this study, just as a poet will ignore minor aspects and stress
the major highlights, so the minor details as well as the complex
techniques surrounding money and land will be left to the textbooks.
Examples and analogies will be utilized which are possibly far too
simplistic for the sophisticated reader. But, the purpose is to
inculcate a general understanding and not to present an absolutely
rigorous scientific proof.
This book is only the crudest of attempts to probe some of the deeper
philosophical implications involved so that the reader will have a
view of the forest and will not he lost in a study of the trees. The
facts upon which this analysis is made are those which are available
to all from common observation and knowledge.
What is money? Who created it? How is it related to freedom, to the
exchange of wealth and services, to Land? How is it related to the
ills of society, to unemployment and depressions? What is man's
relationship to land? How is a society's system of land tenure related
to equality of opportunity, to freedom, to the rise and fall of
civilization? It is hoped that the suggested answers to these and
other questions will stimulate further thought and consideration of
the relationship of land and money to freedom and justice, and the
grave problems perplexing man.
As we study this fascinating subject, we must not be careless. The
methodology adopted must be sufficiently rigorous to insure that in
our analysis we may detect wherein we err as some inconsistency
develops.
A major postulate of this study is that man lives in a world of
order. Therefore, any inharmonious relationships which occur are the
result of man not using the means at his disposal in harmony with the
order he finds.
Though scientific principles will be adhered to in studying the
nature of money and land, as well as freedom and justice, for the sake
of simplicity hypothetical illustrations will be used, but ordinarily
with reference to some historical facts.
Is it possible to acquire an understanding of money, land and freedom
and yet not be a scientist? Certainly, and men must, for in large
measure their happiness depends on their correct understanding of such
matters. Without a knowledge of the simple but basic underlying
principles, it is hardly likely that mankind will make wise use of
those fundamentals. History is the sad record of man's misuse of them.
Today, despite tremendous strides in knowledge, it is difficult to
find any place on the face of the globe where land, money or freedom
is being used wisely or well.
It is hoped that from this study the reader will acquire an
understanding analogous to that which the average man has of the
principles of the physical sciences.
Just as he can have some grasp of the fundamentals underlying the
motions of the heavenly bodies, and leave the minutiae to the
astronomers, so he can have some grasp of the fundamentals of money,
land and freedom and leave the details to the social scientists. While
it matters little if he has a sound basic understanding of astronomy
as there is no point in astronomers beclouding the facts, it is of the
greatest importance that he understands freedom, money and land, for
such matters deal with the most important facets of his life, and at
times it may appear advantageous to some men to confuse the issues.
The methodology adopted in this book will primarily be a deductive
one, with a step by step analysis of how men have created institutions
to attain the ends they seek and how these institutions develop a
cancer-like growth which eventually destroys the civilization which
has been so painstakingly erected.
Aristotle stated that the end for which all men strive is to be
happy. I believe that this is true. To attain happiness, men attempt
to satisfy as many of their desires as they can in a lifetime. To
illustrate how they may accomplish this end, a brief description of
the fundamental nature of men's activities is given. There are two and
only two primary factors involved -- men, themselves and the universe,
that is, land. To satisfy their desires, men must utilize their mental
and physical energy on the land, for land is the cornucopia from which
men draw the things they desire.
Two principles actuate them. The first is that men seek to satisfy
their desires with the least effort. The second is that men's desires
are limitless.
In attaining their desires, men are constrained by two additional
principles, one physical, the other that of justice. The physical
constraint is that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same
time. The commandment of justice grants to all men equal rights to
life. From this principle flow the equal rights of all men to land,
for it is from the land, and only from the land, that men can acquire
the means to sustain their lives. But as two men cannot occupy the
same land at the same time, and yet as both have equal rights to it, a
life and death problem faces men which must be resolved with justice.
Whether he recognizes it or not, it is this great problem with which
man has wrestled down through the ages.
To labor most efficiently men discovered that if they divide up the
work they can produce much more than if each man worked independently.
They discovered the principle of the division of labor. Division of
labor. however, is impossible unless men can exchange their products.
This gives rise to the marketplace.
The marketplace does not necessarily have to be any particular area.
Rather it is the arena in which voluntary exchanges of goods occur,
and it may be world-wide in scope. A derivative of this exchange
process is that special article of wealth, which is called money. In
civilized societies, it is an almost indispensable element in the
exchange of goods. In evolving money, men produced not only an
ingenious medium of exchange but simultaneously produced a common
denominator enabling them to set prices on goods. This assisted then
in determining those desires whose satisfaction they believe would
tend to give them the greatest happiness.
But it did more than that. It helped men decide the most efficient
means of applying their labor and tools to the land. By means of
prices on these factors, they are able to determine how much of labor
and capital should be applied to land so as to obtain the maximum
amount or wealth at the lowest cost.
But money did still more. It also aided men to determine how to
effect a just distribution of the products they produce. In this
determination will be found the means to correct many of the distorted
institutions which have led men to commit many wrongs. In a complex
society as ours, the marketplace, money and Government are required In
order to maintain justice.
Wars, revolutions, violence, poverty and unemployment are all related
to the distorted institutions which man has erected. With their
correction, men will, at least, have the possibility of living
harmoniously with one another, if they so choose.
The world in which men live is of such a design and composed of such
unity as to assure that if the laws of justice and of wisdom are
rigorously followed, the relationships of men and their institutions
will harmonize without any conscious effort on men's part to make them
mesh. In fact, the very attempt to force some of their institutions to
be in accord with one another produces distortions which snowball,
causing matters to become even worse.
Just as men have finally learned that the wisest policy in dealing
with bodily health is to let the body act and react as naturally as
possible to the environment, so men in society must learn to let their
institutions act and react with the environment naturally, with as
little interference by men as possible.
Finally, it is my firm belief that men by nature are fundamentally
good. It is, usually, primarily as a result of error that they do
wrong. Their desire is not to do evil., Probably it is through
carelessness, or as a result of circumstances, which seem
insurmountable at the time, that they engage in misdeeds.
Only under conditions of perfect freedom can men attain the maximum
growth of which they are capable. America is the outstanding example
of what men can do. Here, liberty has been far from complete., , But
it has been so much greater than has existed anywhere else on the face
of the globe for so large an area, that from it has evolved the
greatest civilization known to man. Yet this civilization is now
declining at a progressively rapid rate. It will meet the fate of all
previous ones unless men make the necessary effort to ascertain and
then correct the distortions in their institutions.
It would be a grave error, however, to assume that life is something
which can be simply ordered by man. Even if men correct their
distorted institutions so that the possibility exists of producing a
better society, it does not mean that men will do so. Since man is a
creature of tree will, he may still make an agonizing mess of his life
and the world in which he lives.
One of the most fascinating aspects of life is that it has subtle
nuances, which are not readily grasped. Probably even the most perfect
arrangement has within itself the seeds of decay. Possibly this is
because all life is birth, growth, decay and death. Nevertheless, men
must still strive to create a world based on justice.
After all, what makes for a full life if it is not the utilization of
one's talents to the maximum degree possible in living in harmony with
the environment and in fanning the spark of the Divine which resides
in each of us. Poets, playwrights, novelists and composers most
vividly portray this concept. In so doing, they have given to man
imperishable music and literature. Some of it so strikingly beautiful,
that it literally seems as though the very hand of God had a part in
it. And in creating such masterpieces, have they not grasped and held,
even if but for a moment, the meaning of life?
Man will probably never establish Utopia, but he can build a society
in which it is more likely that peace and harmony will prevail than
discord. When such a society does finally evolve, it will be found to
consist of free men living on land freely available. Private property
will be one of the pillars of such a society, but it will of be
private property only of man-made things, that is, wealth.
Private property will not consist of men (slaves) nor of Nature's
domain (land).
And crowning it all will be the two grandest means for men to attain
happiness -- justice and freedom.
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