The landless in Brazil, murdered and enslaved by landowner privilege and greed.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/06/braz...te-property-of-landowners-using-slave-labour/


This part is very telling: "“sectors of the Congress who represent agricultural interests, and who maintain that slave labour does not exist, since no one is working in chains, or that it is poorly defined in Brazilian legislation, despite the fact that this country is an international reference on this subject.”

That reminds me of some fools on forums who say that you cannot compare landowning to slavery because land is not a human being! Duh, it's not the land that's being enslaved the more good land becomes private property, it is humans who are enslaved to a higher degree the more good land becomes private property! The chains are this: work for the profit of a landowner because you've been deprived of the means to sustain yourself, or go starve.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...ndowners-have-far-too-much-power-8490451.html



Landowning is really just organized crime, and it becomes evident the more you let it go it's natural course without good barriers in place, like in Brazil.

 

Thanks for posting this, AfS. Brazil is a good example of how landowner privilege makes its beneficiaries into vicious, evil, enslaving, murdering filth. People call me a drama queen for identifying the fact that landowning is evil, but the proof is indisputable in places like Brazil (also the Philippines, Pakistan, Guatemala, etc.): when you assassinate political activists on the other side, you have proved that your cause is evil.

Yep. Slavery removes people's rights to liberty one person at a time, landowning removes them one right at a time. The landowner can't help knowing, deep down, that he owns the landless's rights to liberty, so it's natural for him to assume he owns their rights to life, too.

 

Sounds like an issue of slavery, not private ownership of land. So tell me, what system do you prefer to allow humans to use land? If we cannot own it then who does and who decides who is allowed to do what with it?

 

From the article: "Plassat highlighted the fierce resistance to the amendment on the part of “sectors of the Congress who represent agricultural interests, and who maintain that slave labour does not exist, since no one is working in chains,"

The victims are not the private property of the landed interests and they even used it as an argument. You know, like they could leave at any time. So why exactly do they work under slave like conditions: THE LAW OF RENT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent#Wages

"Wages

This law has a number of important implications, perhaps the most important being its implication for wages. The Law of Rent implies that wages bear no systematic relationship to the productivity of labor, and are instead determined solely by the productive capacity of marginal land,[3] as all production in excess of that amount will be appropriated by landowners in rent.

This is not the notorious iron law of wages, which predated Ricardo and is most commonly associated with the writings of Thomas Malthus. Indeed, Ricardo was an intellectual rival of Malthus on this point. The law of rent explains why the iron law of wages consistently fails to predict actual wages: if there are highly productive land sites available free, wages will tend to be high, all things else being the same; if the only available free land yields little, wages will tend to be lower.

In contrast to Malthus's hypothesis of overpopulation, Ricardo explains mass poverty using deductive logic by noting that when there is no rent-free land, subsistence becomes the effective margin of production."

The privilege to exclude others from a piece of land under the condition that the rental value of the land be paid for this privilege. This will become the primary source of all government spending as income tax is cut, sales tax is cut, and so on. Also, every person gets an exemption on this to use a certain amount of land, by value, for free without having to pay anything for it. You could also have a citizen's dividend instead of such an exemption.

"There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue." - Thomas Paine

 

Are the workers paid?

 

Landowning itself isn't the issue, the cronyism between the landowners and the government is.

 

Probably around a wage that represents the value of what a chattel slave would get for his work in form of food, and so on. Maybe even less, but I don't have the details.

 

So they also live in company housing?

 

I don't know, it doesn't say that in the article, but I assume not. Why do you ask?

 

http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=about

And it seems that a lot of that land is not even put to use by the landowners. Not even. Just legally occupied. Uh, but, but, but, it's an investment. Those landowners take so much risk they deserve to get a return on it. Who cares about the the conditions they force upon the landless? Respecting such morally perverted legal property rights is more important than people's natural right to sustain themselves using what nature put there, right? It's all about dem holy property rights.

 

Legally occupying good land to drive down the margin of production so that they can get landless laborers for as close to subsistence wages as possible.

 

Of course: enough to survive, just like any other slaves. They wouldn't produce much wealth for the landowner while dead of starvation, now, would they?

 

It's landowning, explicitly, but that is equivalent to slavery.

Just (i.e., market) compensation made by those who abrogate others' rights to life and liberty by depriving them of access to land, and to those whose rights are thus abrogated.

Land can never rightly be owned, any more than the sea, the sky, or the atmosphere. But as government's job is to secure the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor, government rightly administers possession and use of land so as to secure those rights to its citizens.

The community, through democratic process, decides what uses of each land parcel are compatible with security of the rights of all, and the market (via the high bidder) then decides who gets to use it and what he thinks it would most productively be used for.

 

Landowning is always inherently cronyism between the landowners and the government. See any civic government in the world for proof.

 

Possibly. They have no land of their own, therefore no right to exist anywhere, and they have to sleep somewhere, so they probably live several to a room in squalid conditions on their masters' plantations, just like any other slaves.

 

The Great God Property demands regular human sacrifices be laid upon his altar....

 

Better question. What system do you prefer?

 

True that. I must have had a mental lapse when I wrote "I assume not".

 

I agree somewhat, although I view private land sales as a necessary evil.

What Brazil is experiencing isn't a mark against landowning. It's a mark against extreme corruption in government and vast wealth disparity.

 

We don't have to make that evil so profitable.

No, it is definitely a mark against landowning, as the vicious, evil scum are explicitly and exclusively landowners. You just don't want to understand how both extreme corruption and vast wealth disparity are directly caused by landowning.

 

I don't see that as sustainable; giving everyone free land. We have a system similar to what you propose in place; property taxes are based on property value. While I'm not a fan of property taxes as they amount to the fact that no one can actually own land, you simply rent it from the government, I can see how they allow the individual to still buy land. I think the system as it stands is just fine.

 

So your solution, if I'm understanding this correctly, is to allow the people in a neighborhood rather than city planners to decide zoning and then use the same system we have now to sell the land. I'm not opposed, city planners have proven themselves to be idiots, especially here. I think it would be a good experiment. It would also filter the corruption to the masses rather than the few. I'd much rather be paid $100 to vote for a commercial property that Walmart wants than some politician to be paid $100k.

 

Honestly as things stand now is fine with me. I haven't given the property issue a great deal of thought and was curious as to what others think. I'm not opposed to change, but when I hear about "land owner privilege" and such it doesn't help me join the side. It actually makes me opposed because it sounds like bull(*)(*)(*)(*). As far as I'm concerned "land owner privilege" is what my landlord has, and why I have worked to get my own house. I'll still be under the bank and the government (even when I pay off the bank) but at least I can do what I want (so long as the government allows it.). If anything I'd be for loosening laws so that the city was less of a home owners association. The way I see it if you want to live in a HOA that's fine, but if you live in the city, much like in everyday personal dealings, what you do is your own business. So long as you don't directly harm others who cares?

 

No. My solution is to require just compensation from those who deprive others of land, to those who are thus deprived. And the people in a neighborhood have too parochial a view to be deciding permitted land uses. You need a perspective on infrastructure, geography, amenities, water and sewer systems, etc. over the whole metropolitan area.

It's not so much that planners are idiots as that the planning system is totally corrupted by the welfare subsidy giveaway to landowners, who buy the politicians in order to get zoning favors. Virtually every successful civic election campaign is paid for by landlords, land developers, and land speculators. The planners aren't planning, they're just trying to satisfy the demands of elected politicians (i.e., in fact, the landowners who paid for their election campaigns) that unearned wealth be shoveled into landowners' pockets.

It would do much better than that. It would align government's financial incentives with the public interest in efficient spending.

The worst of it is, politicians can typically be bought for much less.

 

It is the exorbitant welfare subsidy giveaway to landowners that is not sustainable. It has destroyed many great civilizations.

The proposal is not to give everyone free land, but to secure their free tenure on enough good land to have adequate access to opportunity. They would be getting their rights to liberty back, not ownership of land.

The systems are about as similar as chalk and cheese.

That's why they are the best tax we have.

As you should, because it is the government that is making it valuable for you.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis didn't cure you of that, huh? Not much hope that mere fact and logic will, then...