Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of WealthRyan, John A. (John Augustine)
PhilosophyChristian
Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth
Ryan, John A. (John Augustine)
Economic history; Income distribution -- Moral and ethical aspects; Wealth -- Religious aspects
As now existing and as commonly understood, private landownership
comprises four elements which are not found together in either
Socialism or the Single Tax. They are: security of possession combined
with the power to transfer and transmit; the use of land combined with
the power to let the use to others; the receipt of revenue from
improvements in or upon the land; and the receipt of economic rent,
the revenue due to the land itself, apart from improvements. In its
extreme form, and as formerly understood by the majority of its
authoritative exponents, Socialism would take from the individual all
of these elements or powers. The State, or the Collectivity, would own
and manage all productive land and land-capital, and would receive and
distribute the product. Consequently the cultivators of the land would
be deprived of even that limited degree of control which is now
possessed by the tenant on a rented farm; for the latter, though not a
landowner, is the owner of a farming business, and of agricultural
instruments of production. Under Socialism the users of the land would
not receive the revenue either from improvements or from the land
itself. They would be substantially employés of the community,
receiving a share of the product according to some plan of
distribution established by public authority. Land occupied by
dwellings would likewise be owned and managed by the State, although
its product, the benefit of its use, would necessarily go in the first
instance to the occupier. In return for this benefit he would
undoubtedly be required to pay some kind of rent to the State.
Now the majority of persons believe that this system of land tenure
would be inferior to private ownership, both as regards individual
welfare and social welfare. The reasons for this belief will be given
in detail in the chapter on "The Socialist Scheme of Industry." For
the present it will be sufficient to point out in a summary way that
Socialism would be unable to organise and carry on efficiently all
agricultural and extractive industries, either under one central
direction or under many provincial authorities; that it could not
adjust wages and salaries satisfactorily, nor give the individual
worker an incentive as effective as the self interest that goes with
private ownership; that it would deprive the worker of a great part of
the freedom that he now enjoys in the matters of occupation and
residence; that it would leave to the consumer less choice in the
demand for the products of land; that it would place all the people in
a position of dependence upon a single agency for all these products;
and that it would make all land users, whether as workers or as
residents, tenants-at-will on the property of the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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