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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.”

Quote by Martin Adams

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

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Martin Adams

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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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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