A person with insufficient access to natural resources (such as land) has no way to survive. In order to survive by independent means a person must have access to sufficient land. If we do not have enough land then we can only survive if someone with land (ultimately) is willing to either support us charitably or if they are willing to trade... We can only survive if someone else (in the market) has given permission for us to do so. And from this we can deduce that someone in such a position (unable to survive independently) is a slave to those who control the natural resources, such as land...
With insufficient land we are at the mercy of other market participants trading with us, so that we can survive. If we have no land we can only offer our labour... If the landed population have a sufficiency of cheap labour we cannot survive without charity (forced or otherwise).
The way to mitigate against "land slavery" is to introduce measures which act against the accumulation of land (and perhaps other resources) into the hands of a small number of people. This could be achieved by introducing a (State-imposed) Land Value Ceiling. This would prevent any one single person from owning more than a prescribed quantity (measured by market value) of land... The State would withdraw their protection from land which is deemed (to be of a quantity) in excess of what is reasonable. The "discarded" land would then fall into the hands of the State (since otherwise it would belong to whomever claimed it first, which is mob-rule). The State would then dispose of the land as appropriate (perhaps selling it to raise funds, reducing taxation).
It can be argued that the State is not violating the NAP (non aggression principle) in this process. We can say that ownership of "an excess" of land is aggressive since it has occurred as a consequence of prior aggression, either by seizing the land privately or by seizing it with the assistance of the State (spoils of war).
If someone has acquired an excess of land privately without coercion, such as a businessperson then they have not acted aggressively and it is regrettable that they would have to "lose" land in this way... However, there are not many circumstances where wealth has been acquired this way, usually monopolies (or copyright) are involved in some way.
The Land Value Ceiling (by removing State protection of land deemed to be in excess of that which a person can reasonably claim to "own") would mean that, because land would be easier to acquire, land slavery is diminished since people would have easier access to land.
Someone with an excess of land is able to rent land to the unlanded (for a profit) and yet lose none of their wealth (their land remains in place). They can then survive by doing nothing from one year to the next... And yet the unlanded farm the land but still most of the proceeds "belong" (according to the State) to the landowner. The slave is owned not because they are restricted from escaping, but instead because they do not have access to that which gives life. A person needs to "work" (in this situation) only because they do not have sufficient land of their own...
If a person chooses to farm their own land to provide for themselves, can this be said to be "work"? Surely only those who are a slave to someone else do work... the rest is not work, but something else (another word), "survival" perhaps, farming, grazing, gardening, harvesting (harvesting still involves a degree of effort, but it is different from "work" if the land is your own), tending (to the land)?
The landowner harvests their own crop (on their own land) but the unlanded must harvest the land of the landowner. The payment to the "land slave" (for doing the harvesting) is as little as the landowner can afford (according to the market) to give. Unless the landowner wants to acquire more land, they can easily survive by harvesting their own land without assistance from the unlanded and by doing so the "land slave" would have no means of survival. So we end up with a situation where the landed have no need to "work" (as distinct from harvesting, or a more suitable word) and the unlanded do nothing but the "harvesting" for the landowners (receiving no land in return). And if there is no harvesting left to do, they will be forced to rely on (either forced or unforced) charity.
Land (natural resources) sustains life but it is at the whim of the landowner... since access to the land can be denied, so too can life.
Thursday 9 April 2009
Update: To clarify the true meaning of the word "harvest" in this context, we need to understand that it is characterised as being distinct from other types of action because it does not require the permission of another person to engage in the activity... The landowner can live and feed themselves according to their own whims and they do not rely on the say-so of another person. The "Land Slave" can only survive if another person (or group) behaves in a way which enables them to survive... No one can legitimately deny your "right" to harvest the crop, to do so is considered part of your rights as landowner. However, they (the authority) do deny the "right" of another person to farm and cultivate your land (or to live on it) without your permission (which may be given in exchange for something in return such as a share of the harvested crop, or a cash payment for renting the land). Hence the unlanded need the permission of the landed to grow crops to survive, even if to deny that permission would be financially detrimental for the landowner (since they would no longer be receiving rent...) it (permission) would still be required.
To harvest your own land you don't need the permission of someone else. And if a person must pay rent to have fundamental access to a reasonable quantity of the natural resources (such as land) required to sustain life, they can only be described as a slave (if they are innocent), or if they are a criminal, a prisoner... (13 April'09)
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