The Interdependence of Economic Rights and Responsibilities

Abstract

In order to eliminate any possible doubt that Concordian economics might be a theoretical construction unable to sustain a close encounter with daily reality, we will focus a bit of our attention on a few key aspects of the central components of Concordian economics: economic rights and economic responsibilities. We will observe some of the relations that they establish: 1. Between individual human beings and thus in relation to the opponents of rights; the forces of privilege, 2. Their position in relation to society as a whole, namely how did they evolve over time, and 3. In relation to economic theory as well as the theory of economic justice. Economic rights and economic responsibilities are not dislocated entities, some belonging to individual human beings and some to society, for instance. We shall see that they are both lodged in the same human being. This is the chain established by the responsibilities: my responsibilities establish my rights and make your rights possible; your responsibilities establish your rights and make my rights possible. It is this set of interrelationships that determines their potential to create Social Renewal through Economic Justice for All, as a fundamental aspiration of civilized society. This was the title of the first presentation of the issues. Theoretically, economic rights and responsibilities are born out of this sequence: Concordian economic theory, Concordian economic policy, and Theory of Economic Justice. Hence they are born through the transformation of the millenarian Doctrine of Economic Justice into the Theory of Economic Justice. This transformation, so far, has only been accomplished within the realm of Concordian economics.

Appendix: Some Nuances of Land Tax Values

There are so many nuances to a program of land tax values, the policy advocated most warmly by our lovely Henry Gorge. They are all lovely. They are all important. An excellent report with a rather silly title to the business section of the New York Times, Dougherty (2023) presents quite a few of them.⁸

Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit puts it starkly, in the absence of taxes on land “Blight is rewarded, building is punished.” He explains that after the Great Recession, tens of thousands of Detroit properties were bought by absentee landlords and faceless LLCs. The owners are so negligent and hard to find as to let weeds and rubbish grow on their lots. [How much of this money was public money? Remember, in Concordian monetary policy public money is not allocated for such ventures.]

Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at the real-estate brokerage Redfin and one of the most widely quoted voices on the housing market, extols the land-value taxation as “the tax policy that can fix housing.” Taxes on land values encourage housing development instead of discouraging it, she notes. They don’t discourage work or investment, like taxes on income and capital gains. They’re also hard to dodge since land is hard to move. “It’s like there’s this tool in our toolbox that could help solve a lot of our problems, and we refuse to pick it up,” Ms. Fairweather said in an interview. “If more people understood how useful this was, they would advocate it.”

Dougherty goes to the core of the argument, he points out that “George’s argument was that since land derives most of its worth from its location and the surrounding community, that community, and not the owner, should realize most of the benefits when values rise. His fix might sound wonky—tax the value of land but not improvements atop it—but it made him a celebrity in the 1890s.” In fact, he ran twice as a Mayor of New York City. Further, “There used to be Georgist newspapers. There are still Georgist foundations, Georgist conferences, and Georgist schools. If you’ve ever played Monopoly, you have been unwittingly George-pilled: A Henry George fan invented the board game, in hopes of spreading his teachings.”

For a complex number of reasons linked by Dougherty to access to cheaper lands thanks to the automobile, there has been a lull of interest in land-value taxation since the 1920s. The interest is reviving now since, if we were to tax the land its price would fall and an overall positive result would affect the cost of living. Hence, many “who are angry about the cost of living have discovered Georgism. Suddenly there are organizations like Young Georgists of America, modern-day pamphlets like the Henry George podcast and the Progress and Poverty Substack, and an agreement that the shoshinsha emoji (which looks like a shield) is how Georgists will identify themselves online.”

What, on the whole, tends to hold land-value taxation down, Dougherty points out, are two factors: the insistence by some pure Georgists on the conception of the single tax and the other is the permission by state legislation.