Individual Liberty - Evernote

of his income, exclaimed, on learning that I believe in payment for wear and tear:
"Oh! well, you believe in rent, after all; it's only a question of how much rent;" after
which he would settle back, satisfied. I have always found that the only way to give
such a man's conscience a chance to get a hold upon his thought and conduct was to
insist on the narrower use of the word rent. It calls the attention much more vividly to
the distinction between justice and injustice.
More from "Edgeworth" about "unearned increment," "judgment and skill,"
"employer the appraiser of work," etc. Then a few more remarks from Mr. Tucker:
This smacks of Henry George. If the municipality is an organization to which every
person residing within a given territory must belong and pay tribute, it is not a bit
more defensible than the State itself, - in fact, is nothing but a small State; and to vest
in it a title to any part of the value of real estate is simply land nationalization on a
small scale, which no Anarchist can look upon with favor. If the municipality is a
voluntary organization, it can have no titles except what it gets from the individuals
composing it. If they choose to transfer their "unearned increments" to the
municipality, well and good; but any individual not choosing to do so ought to be able
to hold his "unearned increment" against the world. If, it is unearned, certainly his
neighbors did not earn it. The advent of Liberty will reduce all unearned increments to
a harmless minimum.
I have never maintained that judgment and skill are less important than labor; I have
only maintained that neither judgment nor skill can be charged for in equity except so
far as they have been acquired. Even then the payment is not for the judgment or skill,
but for the labor of acquiring; and, in estimating the price, one hour of labor in
acquiring judgement is to be considered equal, - not, as now, to one day, or week, or
perhaps year of manual toil, - but to one hour of manual toil. The claim for judgment
and skill is usually a mere pretext made to deceive the people into paying exorbitant
prices, and will not bear analysis for a moment.
On the contrary, the employee, the one who does the work, is naturally and ethically
the appraiser of work, and all that the employer has to say is whether he will pay the
price or not. Into his answer enters the estimate of the value of the result. Under the
present system he offers less than cost, and the employee is forced to accept. But
Liberty and competition will create such an enormous market for labor that no
workman will be forced by his incompetency to work for less than cost, as he will
always be in a position to resort to some simpler work for which he is competent and
can obtain adequate pay.
Economic Rent
Mr. Steven T. Byington, who at that time was a supporter of the Single Tax, asked the
editor of Liberty to explain some phases of economic rent, especially as to the hope
for its disappearance under Anarchism. Mr. Tucker gave him this answer:
Liberty has never stood with those who profess to show on strictly economic grounds
that economic rent must disappear or even decrease as a result of the application of