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The Education Challenge for the
Henry George Schools |
| [Originally appeared
in The Freeman, November, 1939, under the title "This
Is Our Job"] |
Most of us will agree that education is such training as will enable
the mind to perceive the actual relations behind or below what is
apparent. A good many of our educational institutions do not act on this
definition because they graduate their students on the record of
examinations which are largely memory tests.
We will all agree that the encyclopedia contains more knowledge than
any one person ever had, 'but no one would say that the encyclopedia was
educated. To illustrate, it requires no education to say that the world
is flat because all we have to do is look at it and it looks flat, but
when we see that the top sails of a ship are seen before the hull, which
is very much larger, we begin to have some question as to whether the
world is actually flat. Further education convinces us that the world is
round.
It requires no education to say that the sun revolves around the earth
because all we have to do is look at it and we see that the sun rises in
the East and sets in the West, but when we study further we find out
that what is apparently true is not actually true and that astronomical
facts can only be explained on the assumption that the earth revolves
around the sun.
It requires no education to say that an employer lessens his capital
when he pays wages because every Saturday night the wages are paid in
money and the capital that the employer had in the shape of money before
Saturday has been paid out to the employees. It requires some education
to see that what actually happened is that the employer has not
decreased his capital but has simply changed its form and that actually
wages are paid from the products of labor.
It requires no education to say that there are apparently too many
people on earth and that numbers can only be held down by war,
starvation, disease, in accordance with the Malthusian doctrine. It
requires some education to see that what is apparently true is not true
at all and that on the contrary given conditions in which individuals
can have access to land, that 1000 people working together can produce a
good deal more than 1000 times what a single individual can produce and
that, therefore, under proper conditions the more people there are the
more wealth each one should have.
It requires no education to assume that there is no difference in
property in a building and property in the ground on which the building
rests. The law declares that both are private property and one is just
as much private property as the other.
It is the job of the Henry George School of Social Science to make
clear to people in general that the law in this respect is quite blind
and mistaken. A little education will show that the building is natural
property and that private property in the site on which a building rests
la unnatural property created by a special legal privilege. It is
apparent that when the building was erected that it was produced by
labor and capital and wealth appeared which did not exist before. When
we examine the title to the ground on which the building rests we see
that it is not natural property in the same sense that the building is
because the ground has always existed, and is part of the gift of the
Creator to mankind in general. Value of the land is created because the
presence and activity of the community has produced ground rent which
capitalized Is its selling value. What one actually sells when he sells
a piece of ground is the privilege of collecting community created
ground rent -- in other words, he sells something which does not -belong
to him. Most of us are quite convinced that a hundred years ago the law
was quite mistaken when it regarded a black slave and a bale of cotton
both as private property. It took the education of the Civil War to
convince the people in this country that there was a fundamental
difference between private property in slaves and private property in
bales of cotton.
It is our job to try and make the public see that unemployment and
poverty spring directly from the fact that we do not recognize the
fundamental difference -between natural property which is wealth and
unnatural property which enables the holder of the deed to collect part
of the community created ground rent. It all comes back to obeying the
fundamental Command: "Thou shall not steal."
At the present time the government takes by taxation from private
individuals individually created wealth to which it has no moral right.
We can all see that fining-people heavily for doing things which create
wealth, which our present taxation laws do, greatly decreases employment
and increases poverty. The ethical thing to do is to recognize that the
community has no right to individually created wealth because it has an
ample fund to take care of its requirements in community created ground
rent. At the present time we allow individuals to collect this community
created ground rent which is, from an ethical standpoint, stealing from
the community. We will never be rid of our unemployment problem until we
get a clearer idea of the difference between natural and unnatural
property and change our laws to get rid of unnatural property.
The object of the Henry George School of Social Science is to educate
the public on the natural laws governing the distribution of wealth and
once these relations are generally perceived, a change in our man made
law to correspond to natural law will quickly follow.
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