Progress and Poverty

Would land be taken care of equally well if its rent went to the government as compared to private land ownership? The answer is “yes.” The use of land as common property would in no way “interfere with the proper use and improvement of land” (396). What is truly important for land is its improvement and security, not its private ownership. Common rights to land will not interfere with the individual right to its products or improvement. In fact, it is private landed property that prevents its proper application, as “[w]ere land treated as public property it would be used and improved as soon as there was need for its use or improvement” (399). For example, cities have valuable vacant lots because their owner prevents their appropriate usage.

There is no solution to “the recurring paroxysms of industrial depression, the scarcity of employment, the stagnation of capital, the tendency of wages to the starvation point” than to abolish private land ownership (401). Private land ownership denies natural rights and prevents true social progress. However, abolition can be accomplished without “formally confiscating all the land” to avoid using “a needless extension of government machinery” (402).