• Land, Liberty & Economy

• Corporate Statism in late Twentieth-Century America

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by Mike O'Mara

They want to issue welfare permits, so that whoever has a welfare permit is allowed to collect welfare payments from other people within a given area - even if that person is able-bodied, and even if that person has a high income. The welfare permits can also be bought and sold.

Those welfare permits sound absurd, don't they? Yet that is exactly what many libertarians advocate.

Instead of calling it a "welfare permit", they call it a "land title", allowing the landowner to receive welfare payments from anyone living within the land area claimed by that landowner - so a landlord can live off of others' work, collecting welfare payments by charging other people for merely using the land (the spatial location), which the landlord did not produce.

And the landlord can receive those welfare payments even if he has a considerable separate income, from renting buildings or selling buildings.

It's one thing for a landowner to receive a legitimate income by renting buildings, providing building maintenance, or selling buildings - those are products of human effort.

But it is an entirely different matter for a landowner to have a welfare permit, allowing him to live off of other's work, receiving welfare payments by charging other people for merely using the land, which the landowner did not produce.

Worst of all, the more land a landlord claims, the larger the welfare payments he can collect, by charging others merely for using the land that he claims.

Buying and selling those absurd welfare permits certainly does not make them somehow become legitimate - it is not legitimate for any landowner to have a welfare permit.

The only kind of legitimate land title is one that gives a landowner the right to control the use of that land, the right to own buildings and improvements, or to rent buildings, or sell them to other people, if he wants - but not to collect welfare payments from people, by charging them for merely using the land, which the landowner did not produce.

Other libertarians, such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Henry George, have made specific proposals for how to address that problem of welfare permits for landowners:

Under their proposals, a landowner would have a right to purchase land and use it, but any landowner who claims large amounts of land would be prevented from collecting welfare payments for merely letting others use that land, which the landowner did not produce (as opposed to renting buildings, or selling them).

The proposals of Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and Henry George, or modified versions of their proposals, would offer an alternative to our current welfare payments to landowners.

Why in the world do so many libertarians endorse our current system of welfare permits for landowners?

To that end The Thomas Paine Network has been established to help this dialogue. The Thomas Paine Network was started by libertarians who wish to engage in a dialogue with: a) open-minded people in the Libertarian Party (in which there is a Thomas Paine Caucus); b) open-minded people on the left, such as open-minded people in the Georgist movement (in which there is a geo-libertarian network), as well as open-minded people in the Democratic Party (in where there is a Democratic Freedom Caucus); and c) open-minded people on the right, including open-minded people in the Republican Party.