How land is different from other "free gifts of nature"

1. The value that land has is independent of what men can do with it.

The argument that "land is only as valuable as what can be done with it" is nonsense. The same argument has ample merit, however, with near every other metaphysically-given form of wealth.

People often try to insist that since land has man-made goods "mixed" with it, it thus is a man-made good. This is erroneous and people who advocate this are failing to make the divide between metaphysical and man-made wealth. Land, on its own, is a metaphysical good, and more importantly -- the value that land has is strictly metaphysically given. The value that land offers is space. Space has value to humans -- to all humans who wish to exist on the earth -- and space is not a man-made form of wealth. Land may have labor "mixed" with it, but the value that land has is independent of what men do on it.

However other metaphysical forms of wealth such as iron, coal, oil etc., are "only as valuable as what one can do with them." The value that iron has is entirely *dependent* on what a person can do with it.

Ayn Rand once said that "a spirit without a body is a ghost; a body without a spirit is a zombie." (paraphrase). The same can be applied to the free gifts of nature besides land. What man can do with these free gifts (excluding land) is nothing but a "ghost" without those gifts; and those gifts are nothing but "zombies" without what man can do to them. The same, however, distinctly does not apply to land.

To draw this point out clearly, imagine a coffee cup made of stirofoam, a "free gift of nature"(kind of, ignoring the processing to make the stirofoam just to make a point). As described in the previous article, note the difference between the metaphysical wealth of that coffee cup (the stirofoam) and the man-made wealth of that coffee cup. Now, try to separate the "man-made" wealth of the coffee cup from the "metaphysical" wealth. You can't do it without destroying the coffee cup. The metaphysical wealth and the man-made wealth of the coffee cup are entirely dependent on each other. Both would be powerless without the other.

Now imagine a house and garage, man-made forms of wealth, on land, a metaphysical form of wealth. Now seperate the metaphysical wealth from the man-made wealth. One can do this. One can pick up and move the house, and the value of that land remains the same -- unlike when we removed the man-made wealth from the stirofoam. The house may be nothing without the land, but the land is something without the house. The value that land has, which is space, is entirely independent of what one does on it.

A hunk of plastic, iron, or coal only has value to the engineer who can do something with it. The savage has no desire for a hunk of plastic. It is of no value to him because he cannot do anything with it. Land, however, has value to both the stellar engineer and the savage. Land is even valuable to monkeys, cows, dogs, and every type of animal. Land, on its own right, regardless of human improvement, has value. It's because of this, because the value that land offers people is completely metaphysically-given, that land should have a rent on it.

And it is for the opposite reason, that every other form of metaphysically-given wealth (besides oxygen, sun etc.) is dependent on man's mind that they should not have a rent on them.

It doesn't matter who takes land, a great industrialist or a bum -- only that they pay the land rent that they owe on it for the duration that they are on it. Automatically giving the industrialist the land "because he can use it better" is unfair. It isn't up to anyone to dictate who should and should not do what with their wealth. It only matters that they pay an honest sum for it. Indeed, the farmer is much more likely to gain access to the land as he is more likely to be able to afford the land rent. However, that is for the market to decide. By "market" I mean for the market-driven rent that will be placed on the land to decide. The "market" in this case works slightly different than what is traditionally thought of as how the "market" works, nonetheless, it is still the market that will decide who does and does not have access to land.

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2. Other free gifts are inherently distributed more equally

A tax on other metaphysically-given forms of wealth is not only impractical, but not needed. Coal, iron etc., are frequently bought and sold. Because these goods exchange hands so frequently, it thus happens that people pay their "fair share" of what they should for these things. People don't do this with land. People gain land and hold on to it for as long as 75 years. In that 75 years time, their land value likely increased a lot. The longer they wait to sell it, the more the profit they are going to get. To be more exact -- the more of an unearned profit they will get. They will get a profit for having gotten to the land first and then making latecomers pay for the land that they happened to get to first. If, however, they could not hold land and land were sold every 5 minutes, it would not be such that they would get as much of an unearned profit. Indeed, what a "land rent" does is merely compacts what would be the price of a piece of land if it was continuously being bought and sold.

The more frequently a metaphysically-given form of wealth is bought and sold, the more "fair" a price people pay for it. The less frequently a metaphysically-given form of wealth is bought and sold, the more unfair the price becomes. Because coal, oil etc are bought and sold frequently -- as people don't hold on to oil for 75 years in the way they do land -- it becomes increasingly unnecessary to put any sort of "tax" on them.

3. In order to gain access to other "free gifts," ambitious men had to dig for it.

And, no, it distinctly does *not* matter that men 200 years ago sailed an ocean to find this particular piece of land.