Does Land Matter?
Many people in developed countries think that land is no longer important. The control and allocation of land is rarely mentioned in media discussions of economics. Yet people everywhere are as dependent on the natural environment for survival as ever they were. The importance of land to technologically advanced communities is demonstrated by the fact that when inner city land is sold, it fetches a vastly higher price than farmland.
Failure to make the relationship of people to land the starting point for the study of modern economics has led to a proliferation of complicated, contradictory theories and to an imprecise use of terms. The confusion between ‘land’ and ‘capital’ is particularly damaging to clear thought, because the two entities behave in utterly different ways in the process of wealth production:
1. Land is not produced by human beings at all, while capital is produced entirely by human activity (labour) operating on land.
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Land: The Forgotten Factor by Henry George Foundation
Image: Archigram: Sea Bubbles
