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Martin Adams Biography

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“Markets are free when human beings have equal opportunities to influence the production and trade of desirable goods and services... Some people attain market control and set market prices due to favourable natural, social or political conditions: They attain a monopoly. The problem with monopolies is that they enable those who have attained them to extract money from society without providing goods or services of corresponding value. Apart from abolute monopolies, monopolies can also occur when the market is simply closed to new participants because overall supply can't be increased; these are known as entry monopolies.”

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“Land ownership is an entry monopoly: Land is naturally scarce for each location since its supply can't be increased... When people buy a piece of land, their ownership gives them the right to exclude the rest of society from the benefits afforded to them by their land, even though those benefits only arise from nature and from the presence of goods and services that have been provided by that same society in the first place. Buyers pay for exclusive access rights to land and pay only to the previous landowner instead of to all the people who are now excluded from the location privileges that this one particular piece of land provides.”

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“In theory, capitalism is an economic system that allows people to freely trade goods and services in a competitive free market. But since the outright ownership of land creates an entry monopoly, it restricts the operation of the free market... Consequently, our current implementation of capitalism is deeply responsible for the exploitation of nature and the decline of social well-being.”

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“Economists Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison claim in their work The Corruption of Economics that industrialists toward the end of the 19th century may have intentionally created and promoted a new brand of economics (neoclassical) to divert public attention from the monopolization of nature. Neoclassical economics treats nature as capital - a resource to be exploited.”

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“Our inability to share the gifts of nature causes much suffering in the world today... We mistakenly believe that a free market should allow people and corporations to profit from nature, yet we've failed to consider the immense cost to life that occurs whenever people are allowed to reap what they haven't sown at the expense of others. While the privatization of capital can lead to production efficiencies that benefit the entire market, the same can't be said for privatization of nature. Whenever the income stream from nature is privatized, human beings take for themselves the gifts that would better be freely shared with everyone.”

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“We may wonder how the ability to profit from land fosters social dysfunction, but once we realize the extent to which community wealth is privatized for personal gain, we also come to realize just how corrupt most societies actually are. Many social problems exist as a result of how our system misallocates wealth, not as a result of an unalterable human condition.”

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“It's important to distinguish the value of raw land from the value of improvements made to land. Land values are socially generated and belong to the communities that have created them. The irony is that while improvements such as buildings don't affect the underlying value of the land upon which they are located, they do have the ability to indirectly affect the properties that surround them.”

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“Since people can only be paid for their goods and services or extract rent from society, less income is available to service the payment of goods and services when proportionally more income is used to pay monopolized rent for land. Essentially, whenever property owners collect rent from rising land values, fewer financial resources are left over for wages and capital investments, and this dynamic can effectively put society on the fast track toward social decline and wealth inequality.”

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“The ability of individuals to extract wealth from society by profiting from land also leads to cultural degeneration and a loss of social cohesion over time... In general, as the value of land increases, the return on capital tends to decrease comparatively, which discourages business owners from investing in capital goods and private enterprise... Resources flow away from endeavours that can create jobs, produce wealth, and enliven society, and instead flow into land speculation.”

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“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root," Henry David Thoreau famously remarked. Conventional approaches that seek to remedy many of our social problems are often only hacking away at the "branches of evil." Every time we address a social issue by making a place more livable, such as through charitable acts or increasing the availability of social services, society's wealth invariably increases; as a result, those who are able to profit from land eventually stand to remove more wealth from society at the expense of those who are not.”

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“What causes recessions? Many economists talk about the need for a consumer economy, but we can't have a consumer economy if people can't afford to consume, and the only way they can afford to consume over the long run is if they create new wealth to either consume at that time or to defer as investments for later consumption. Simply put, the best way to have a functioning economy is to focus on having a wealth-producing economy. But when wealth can't be created in spite of the need for such, the production of wealth has been artificially limited, and this artificial limitation is the root cause of business recessions.”

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“Fred Harrison explains in The Power in the Land how land values over time become so expensive that too little wealth is left to pay for goods and services. Real estate speculation allows property owners to demand tomorrow's wealth output today, because they have the power to withhold land from use in expectation of future gains. Artificial constrictions in the supply of land make the price increase at a rate the economy can't sustain. Land eventually becomes unaffordable and recession follows leading to a bust before the next boom commences.”

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“We've come to understand that all land not explicitly designated for public use is privately owned, regardless of whether it's put to use or not. The next time you pass by a property that's only minimally used but nonetheless owned, consider how harmless it seems. You might even think that the private ownership may have preserved a little piece of nature from human contact... However, this perspective only arises because of the scarcity we have collectively created; such a situation would not occur if we only used as much land as we actually needed. If our exclusive use of land came with an ongoing responsibility to our local community, nature would no longer be exploited: Most people would tend to use no more land than absolutely necessary,”

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“As long as people and institutions are allowed to profit from land at the expense of other people, we're enabling a system that incentivizes the destruction of our own habitat. This happens in three ways: First, since human beings are allowed to profit not only from their goods and services but also from nature, we encourage the pillaging of nature. Second, because our ability to profit from land at the expense of our communities is firmly entrenched in our economic system, and as a result existing land is priced far above its actual value, the cost of living is significantly higher than it should be. This forces human beings to extend themselves and their economic activities far beyond levels actually necessary to support their ongoing existence. Third, our current model of land ownership encourages a sprawl of human civilization as populations seek out land that's still available at a lesser cost. In the areas where rainforest destruction is epidemic, wealth inequality and land ownership rates are particularly disproportionate; millions of acres of prime farmland are owned by a few, while the many are forced to slash and burn large areas of rainforest just to make a living by other means.”

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“The equal and sustainable right of access to the Earth's bounty seems one of the most transcendent truths a human being can contemplate. Yet, this right is missing from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that this single principle is violated on an ongoing basis is quite possibly the root cause of many, if not most, other human rights violations.”

Land Economics
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“How can we share the gifts of nature? By sharing the monetary value that human beings assign to nature. The fundamental thing we need to abolish is the mechanism by which people unfairly profit from land. The solution is simple: Property owners merely need to pay the communities from which they receive benefits through their exclusive use of land the exact market value of the benefits they receive. When land users pay significant proportions of the rental value of land to their local communities, they rightfully reimburse their communities. These can be called Community Land Contributions. Unlike, land value taxes, CLCs relate to the rental value (which subsumes all natural and social benefits) not land price. Also, a tax implies land users are being taxed on their land values while CLCs emphasize that land is a community good.”

Land Economics
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“Tax systems are essentially the mechanisms by which societies decide what people have to share with each other versus what they can keep for themselves. Instead of taxing production and consumption, we can simply capture land value instead. Maxim: Keep what you earn, pay for what you use. In such a system, employees, consumers, business owners, business investors, homeowners, farmers and even retirees would be better off. Only those who use land inefficiently or seek to profit from it directly would lose - land speculators, banks, mining companies, extractive industries.”

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“Fred Harrison claimed in his book Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback System that property owners are generally able to clawback their cumulative income tax payments through gains made from land values, while renters are financially penalized by income taxes. Thus, the progressive income tax is a scam by which the poor subsidize the rich.”

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“One way for communities to create affordable housing is for local communities to adopt land-use rights. Local governments or community land trusts would provide financing to homebuyers, who would then make land contributions on their properties in perpetuity. As a result, communities would get reimbursed for the goods and services they provide to homeowners, while property buyers would primarily become home buyers not land buyers.”

Land Economics
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“Whenever land is bought and sold, three stakeholders automatically vie for a cut from the revenue that can be had from land: the community, the property owner, and the institutions that finance property ownership. With land-use rights, the revenue from land value increases is primarily recycled back to the community rather than captured by banks and property owners.”

Land Economics
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“In order for our land contribution model to be complete, we have to consider two more aspects of affordable housing. First, we have to minimise the inequality between tenants and landowners, and second, we have to provide the homeless with guaranteed access to land. Because higher rents are a byproduct of increasing community affluence, tenants get priced out (gentrification). The option of rent control results in a shortage of housing and lower quality housing. What's required is a new mechanism by which higher rents are equally shared with all residents - a Universal Basic Income, financed entirely by community land contributions. The homeless should receive free public housing with the cost deducted from their Universal Basic Income.”

Land Economics
Book:Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
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“Property taxes - particularly those which tax only or primarily the land and not the improvements - are the closest approximations we have today to community land contributions. For this reason, property taxes and home affordability rates - which is to say, land affordability rates - are inversely correlated. Land contributions are necessary for the vitality of every community and city. For example, urban sprawl is a consequence of not capturing sufficient land contributions and thus enabling inefficient land use. Community land contributions lead to a more intensive use of land and encourage the greening of a city's surroundings, as the existing population will tend to cluster closer together. Land contributions also encourage the restoration of blighted areas.”

Land Economics
Book:Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
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“In our current distorted reality, land is often held speculatively without being put to productive use. Because people are able to profit from land and use it inefficiently, sprawl is an issue and farmland is constantly at risk of rezoning, thus forcing up the cost of all farmland. Land contributions would remove the profit from land speculation and inefficient use, releasing more farmland and also ensuring existing farmland wasn't constantly under the shadow of rezoning. Labour and capital taxes would reduce and thus also farming costs. Overall, farming costs would reduce and farmland would be sustainably available for agriculture.”

Land Economics
Book:Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World
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