AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Should I believe in Polly Toybee? I have never met her. I know her only through what she has written in the Guardian. The opinions she expresses are consistent, usually almost to the point of being predictably stereotypical. Occasionally she comes out with something especially perceptive and sometimes there are touches of brilliance. More usually I find her irritating. But for all I know she could be a nom-de-plume for a group of journalists who take turns to write the pieces. Or even a textbot. I have no evidence to the contrary, even though I have seen advertisements announcing meetings to be addressed by someone purporting to be a "Polly Toynbee". On Sundays I go to church. It is a Catholic church and I am expected to believe that when the priest carries out certain actions and pronounces certain words, ordinary bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, that is, God. Her Christmas message , in the Guardian on 23 December, is "There's probab...

The concept of the fee market is coming under continued attack. But neither its attackers or its defenders seem to grasp the fundamental point that "The market" does not exist in the abstract - it is conducted within a particular framework of property rights, in particular land rights. Within the present framework, periodic boombusts have turned out to be inevitable. Within other frameworks, there would be other outcomes. The principal and fatal defect with our present system of property rights is that land is held almost free of obligations. This situation arose gradually, gaining its full force in the UK during the Enclosure period from 1760 to 1840. One result is that land titles are traded increasingly feverishly, using borrowed money, as economic cycles proceed. Another is that moneylenders have undue power. Another is that everyone who is not a land owner is obliged to pay rent or work for wages. Most damagingly of all, this system of land tenure ensures that some peopl...

There area reports that the main political parties are running short of funds again. People will not contribute. I wonder why? The collapse of the present political parties could be the best thing that could happen in British politics. Good riddance to them. The people who get to lead the parties are those who are least suited to do so - at their higher levels they are a magnet for the ambitious and unflective. The disastrous handling of the economy by Labour throughout its period in office and the inadequate critiques of government economic policy by the opposition parties appear to be an inevitable outcome of the system. A curious feature of the British party political alignments is that they do not reflect genuine economic or social interests. The Conservatives are an uncomfortable alliance of landowning and business interests which are inherently in a state of mutual opposition - most businesses are rent payers and get screwed by their landlords. Labour is an uncomfortable alliance...

The editors of the Oxford Junior Dictionary have brought it up to date by leaving out words relating to the natural world, Christianity, and even some common foods and things you can see in the local park. Supposedly this is meant to reflect the multicultural nature of British society but I can't help suspecting that it is part of the agenda to turn the British into a race of morons, an enterprise at which those responsible are achieving complete success. The words missed out are Carol, cracker, holly, ivy, mistletoe Dwarf, elf, goblin Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, vicar Coronation, duchess, duke, emperor, empire, monarch, decade adder, ass, beaver, boar, budgerigar, bullock, cheetah, colt, corgi, cygnet, doe, drake, ferret, gerbil, goldfish, guinea pig, hamster, heron, herring, kingfisher, lark, leopard, lobster, magpie, minnow, mussel, newt, otter, ox, oyster, panthe...

Humvees and Clouds Originally uploaded by Jayel Aheram I saw a train parked at Didcot the other day, loaded with vehicles something like the ones in the picture, in desert sand colour. This made me very angry. This stretch of railway is one of the busiest in Europe yet it is still not electrified. The right sort of train I would want to here is the one loaded with cables and other gear for putting up the long-overdue electrification.

The relentless slide of the UK pound continues. Commentators try to explain it away by suggesting that it will make exports cheaper but our manufacturing capacity is a shadow of what it was. Britain's biggest "industry" of recent years - making money by moving it around - is no longer an effective means of livelihood. And with most of the world in a similar mess, though not, seemingly, to such an extend, there is not going to be a rush of visitors coming to spend all their money in Britain. The economic "experts" assure us that there is a danger of deflation, but the falling exchange rate will soon enough translate into higher prices in the shops, and the growing body of government debt will unleash a tidal wave of inflation around 2011. The interest rate cuts are proving useless except as a means of driving down the value of the £, whilst hitting the thrifty and provident, and since the recession will continue for at least three years longer than the Chancellor...

There never was a free market. A free market cannot exist if land is enclosed and monopolised, which has been the case since the early nineteenth century. In that situation the landowner is always bargaining from a position of strength vis a vis both the capitalist and the labourer. Governments must collect the rent of land and use it as public revenue instead of taxes on wealth production. Otherwise there will be another boombust around 2025. There is no free bargaining when potential tenants have the option of starving or coughing up whatever was asked. So the right sort of land reform is key. In Zimbawe, we have a classic example of the wrong sort of land reform. Mugabe identified that there was a genuine problem and then did exactly the opposite of what was required and the country ended up with land monopolised by his cronies instead of former colonialists. What Mugabe ought to have done was to leave the white farmers free to continue on their land but to introduce a tax on the re...

There is just one flaw in the libertarian argument but it is fatal. It fails on the question of land rights. Nozick, one of the prophets of modern libertarianism, skirts over this key issue. There is a powerful critique of the position by Hillel Steiner, who wrote a piece called "The Libertarian Dilemma" It can be illustrated by a couple of parables. A boatload of people lands on a fertile island. In the middle of the island is a chest containing the title deeds to all the land on the island. They share it out equally between them. A few minutes later another boatload arrives. Now that all the land is owned, there is nowhere they can go. Those who came on the first boat approach the newcomers with labour contracts. The latter have no option but to accept whatever terms are offered. In the second parable, four people sit down and play Monopoly. When all the squares have been bought by one or other of the players, a fifth player joins the game and is given an allocation of mone...

It is being suggested that President-Elect Obama should appoint a "Poverty Czar". But the root cause of poverty is lack of access to land. Those who do not have it are forced to pay rent and work for wages. Rents rise to the maximum that people can afford and it is only the exceptional individuals who can get out of that trap. If everyone is educated or works harder, the effect is merely to raise the levels of rent. It is as simple as that. The Law of Rent is an iron law of economics. It was described by, amongst others, David Ricardo, whose name it bears. Unfortunately, modern economic theory ignores the role of land and rent, with the result that the cause of poverty is nearly always thought to be something else, and the problem is never solved. Where land has been freely available, there is no poverty, since people have the option of working their own land. This was the situation on the western side of the USA in the mid nineteeth century. This was noted by a San Francisco...

The concept of "rights" worries me because in practice they are not delivered when the need is greatest. It seems to me that rights are best achieved when it is duties that are defined, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. eg my right to walk down the street freely depends on everyone observing their duty not to molest me or arrest me without due cause. Amongst key duties which are not being observed at present are the duty not to kill another human (something itself in need of definition), the duty to care for one's children, and the duty of the state to ensure that everyone has the means of earning a livelihood.