In part one of this two-part series of essays we explored the utility, value, profits and losses that are associated with a single human’s action in relation to land and natural resources. In this second part we will now turn to a consideration of the same in a world where there are multiple humans and the economy is a complex one of trade and exchange of these resources.
Land Settlement in the Complex Economy
Where we have a world of many humans each of them are, at birth, in the same position as our lone human at his birth. They are gifted their own bodies, their standing room and a set of free goods that they do not need to make the object of their action in order to derive utility from. Every action thereafter will be taken at a cost with the object of receiving a gain that will outweigh that cost. To reiterate again these costs and gains must be estimated in advance and so every action is only speculative; there is no certainty that an action will, in fact, yield a gain. In a world of trade and exchange land and its product will trade for money and so these gains and costs will, likewise, be estimated not in terms of land’s physical product but in terms of the money that they will fetch in exchange. Now, therefore, leaving aside mental appreciations such as aesthetics or personal value attached to specific areas of land such as one’s home, we are not talking about merely psychic profits and losses but the actual revenue and outflow of money from operations with natural resources. In other words, how can one make money from using natural resources and how can we categorise the components of this income?
The first, if seemingly trite, observation concerning an unsettled plot of land is that no one has estimated the land as being valuable. In other words no one yet believes that the revenue to be gained from settling this land will outweigh the cost of doing so. Existing settlements or other prospects are deemed to be more valuable than settling the plot in question. The prices of the scarce resources that will be devoted towards settling the plot are being bid up by other potential uses and people estimate that the yield from the land will not be sufficient to cover these costs. Where, therefore, one human decides to settle land it will be because he, uniquely, decides that this land will, in fact, yield a definite gain and that everyone else is in error in leaving the land fallow. Let us again take the example of Plot A, demonstrating now the gains and costs not in terms of physical product but in terms of money. There are only three possibilities:
- Plot A will make a profit;
- Plot A will break even;
- Plot A will make a loss.
Let us examine each of these possibilities in turn, assuming again that the prevailing rate of interest will apply a 10% discount to the gross yield in each year. In scenario 1, we will take the gross yield to be £200K per year with the costs amounting to £100K per year. We can illustrate the net gain as follows in Figure A:
Figure A
Year Gross Yield Costs Gross Gain (Discount) Net
1 £200K £100K £100K (£10K) £90K
2 £200K £100K £100K (£20K) £80K
3 £200K £100K £100K (£30K) £70K
4 £200K £100K £100K (£40K) £60K
5 £200K £100K £100K (£50K) £50K
6 £200K £100K £100K (£60K) £40K
7 £200K £100K £100K (£70K) £30K
8 £200K £100K £100K (£80K) £20K
9 £200K £100K £100K (£90K) £10K
10 £200K £100K £100K (£100K) £0K
The result of this has been a net profit for the land settlor. The land has actually turned out to yield more monetary income than was estimated by everyone else. In other words, everybody else was incorrect in estimating that the land would not produce an end that is more highly valued than some alternative. Rather, the product of the land is more highly valued than other ends to which the scarce factors of production could have been allocated and this value will be imputed back to the land itself so we can say that the land will have a capitalised value equal to the sum of the final column which, in this instance, is £450K. We will return to this again shortly but before that we shall examine scenarios two and three. In the former, it should be obvious that there will be no net gain at all. Let us illustrate this by assuming that the land will still yield £200K per year but now costs have risen to an equal amount:
Figure B
Year Gross Yield Costs Gross Gain (Discount) Net
1 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
2 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
3 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
4 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
5 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
6 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
7 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
8 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
9 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
10 £200K £200K £0K (£0K) £0K
In this instance what is produced is exactly what is paid out in costs and there was, therefore, absolutely no point in settling the land. While there has not been a loss and the settlor is not in any worse position than he was before, there has also been no gain and the entire operation has been pointless. What about scenario three? Now let’s assume that costs remain at £200K but that now the land only yields £100K of gross income:
Figure C
Year Gross Yield Costs Gross Gain (Discount) Net
1 £100K £200K (£100K) £10K (£90K)
2 £100K £200K (£100K) £20K (£80K)
3 £100K £200K (£100K) £30K (£70K)
4 £100K £200K (£100K) £40K (£60K)
5 £100K £200K (£100K) £50K (£50K)
6 £100K £200K (£100K) £60K (£40K)
7 £100K £200K (£100K) £70K (£30K)
8 £100K £200K (£100K) £80K (£20K)
9 £100K £200K (£100K) £90K (£10K)
10 £100K £200K (£100K) £100K (£0K)
Here the settlement was entirely erroneous and will result in year after year of net losses for the settlor. He estimated incorrectly that the yield from the land would be sufficient to cover the costs and, in fact, there were more valuable uses to which these costs could have been devoted. The entire operation has been a waste and the land will simply be abandoned1.
Let us now turn back to scenario one where the land yielded a profit. We noted that the settlor realises a gain upon the realisation that the land will produce a yield the value of which exceeds that of its costs. Once again, as in part one, we must emphasise that this gain is earned not by the “productivity of the land” or its “natural powers”. The land was only doing that which it is under the orders of the laws of physics to do. Rather the earnings, the net income, are wholly the reward of the decision of the settlor to turn that land into productive use, a decision that resulted from his judgment that the land would yield more than its costs, an outcome that was, furthermore, clouded with uncertainty. Everyone else was free to make the same decision and to settle the land first but nobody did. To the extent, therefore, that a person earns a net income from productive use on the land it is only because this person, uniquely, has realised that devoting scarce resources to its settlement and use will yield a stream of utility that is more valuable to consumers than that which existed before. It was his decision that created the increase in value with the resulting flow of productive services, and it is to this aspect that the net income flows.
If this is doubted then we should consider the situation of the evenly rotating economy where all revenues equal cost. In other words there is trade and activity but all the utility of what is received from an action equals exactly the utility of that which is foregone. So if the produce of land yields £200K per year then the landowner will have to pay precisely £200K per year in costs2. If this was the way the world worked then it should be clear that there is no room at all for uncertainty and for decision making. If it is certain that there is no realisation of value, that nothing could ever be made better, then there is no premium to be put on the making of judgments that results in decisions. Net income disappears precisely because there is no need for these aspects. It is only because we live in a world where things can be made better and that this betterment is shrouded in uncertainty that a judgment must be exercised in order to realise it. Good judgments that direct the scarce resources available to a stream of utility that is more preferable than that given up are rewarded with net income. Bad judgments which waste those resources on ends that are not preferred are penalised with losses.
What about, for the sake of completion, a world where things could be made better but that the improvement is certain? That if we made a decision we would know for sure that the outcome would exactly be as intended so that, in other words, everyone’s judgment would exactly predict what would happen. If this was so then everyone’s judgment and everyone’s decisions would be exactly the same. A person can only profit from a decision because everyone else has underestimated the value of the yield from a productive activity, this underestimation resulting in an underbidding for the productive resources that are devoted to that activity. If, however, everyone knew the outcome then there would be no underbidding at all and all costs of production would be bid up fully to the height of the revenue of the resulting product. Hence, there would be no net income.
Therefore our conclusion can only be that the realisation of value is a product of superior human judgment.
Going back to our landowner does he now realise a constant, year on year net income from his ownership of the land? Unfortunately for him he does not. For the £450K worth of net income, representing the capitalised value of the land, is was he earns now and correspondingly takes its place in his rank of values now. It must therefore be ranked alongside other actions which could be more or less valuable now and while he hangs onto the land he always bears the opportunity cost of foregoing other actions. In the case of our lone human in part one this was the result of having to decide whether to continue to produce on the current plot of land or whether to stop and move to an alternative piece of land. In the complex economy, however, the decision that must constantly be assessed and remade is whether to hang onto the land or to sell it to a purchaser. Let us examine the ramifications of this necessity.
Trade of Land
In the first place, let us assume that the net present value of the land – £450K – is not only correct but that also all entrepreneurs know that it is correct and that this is certain. In other words the precise yields from and costs of production on the land are as they are in Figure A above and everyone knows that there will be no deviation from this schedule. What this means is that the purchase price will be bid up to exactly this net present value – £450K – with all potential suitors offering not a penny more and not a penny less. The decision for the landowner is a very simple one – to carry on with production of the land and wait for the fruits of its productivity; or to sell and to accept the present value of this future yield now in cash. The result of this is to impose upon our landowner an opportunity cost that completely wipes out any continuing net gains in income. As he can take the present value of the yield in cash the foregoing of this opportunity through holding onto the land will leave him only with interest from the future yields, i.e. the difference in value of the future yields when they mature and the capitalised value of the land now.
In reality, however, the situation is much different. Rather than everyone knowing the future yields of land they constantly have to be estimated. As we said in part one there are at least four factors that affect this:
a) Direct costs of farming a plot will change from year after year and must be estimated in advance of their occurrence;
b) Opportunity costs will change from year after year and, likewise, must be estimated;
c) The gross yield of a plot of land is not certain in advance; rather, factors such as the weather, seed quality and soil deterioration will intervene;
d) The discount to be applied to future gains is dependent upon the individual’s time preference rate which is subject to change.
To this we may add one more:
e) The precise end to which the land is devoted also has to be decided. Should it be used for farming, for the building of a factory, or for building houses? Which of these streams of utility is most valuable to the customers who will provide the revenue?
Every entrepreneur, therefore, including the present land owner must constantly assess and estimate the effect on the productivity of the land by these aspects and this list is not necessarily exhaustive. Having estimated the future yield, each entrepreneur will discount it to a net present value resulting in a price that he is willing to pay for the land now3. Let us look at the mechanics of this fact in situations that lead to a profitable outcome for our landowner. Let’s say that there are three entrepreneurs, A, B and C, of whom our current landowner is entrepreneur A. Each engages in his estimation and calculates the following net present values of the land:
A £450K
B £350K
C £250K
In this instance every other entrepreneur estimates the net present value of the land as being lower than the estimate of A. As A estimates that there is more to be gained from holding onto the land and selling its produce at a later period in time than from selling the land now then he will refuse to sell the land to the highest bidder which is B. If A is correct and the land yields a produce that is more than the estimate of the next highest bidding entrepreneur (let’s say that A’s estimate is precisely correct) then what is the analysis of A’s income? As his opportunity cost was to sell the land for £350K and earn interest on this sum, his actual outcome has been to hold onto the land and earn interest on a sum of £450K. The difference between these two will therefore form a net income – an income that A received solely because he estimated the produce of the land as being higher than that of rival entrepreneurs. Examining each of our criteria a) through to e) above he could have done this a number of ways and, in practice, a combination of them will always be active:
a) A more accurately estimated the costs of farming the land as being lower than the estimates of B or C; or the methods that A chose in farming the land were less costly than those that B or C would have employed. A’s economy therefore conserved scarce resources to be released for employment towards the fulfilment of other ends.
b) A accurately estimated that the other opportunities available to him would yield a lower (if any) net income than holding onto the land;
c) A more accurately predicted the conditions of farming than B or C; the latter might have erroneously predicted more unfavourable farming conditions which led to their lower estimates;
d) This is a little more complex and will be examined when we discuss land hoarding and speculation (below). Suffice it to say that A may have more accurately estimated the future societal rate of time preference than B or C and hence the discount to be applied to the future yields;
e) And finally, A might have devoted the land to an end that is more valuable in the eyes of consumers than B or C would have done and thus the consumers were willing to pay a higher amount for its produce than for the produce that B or C might have churned out from the same land4.
Let us say that having witnessed A’s burst of productivity, B and C revise their estimations of the land’s capabilities. For argument’s sake, A maintains his estimate at the previous level:
A £450K
B £550K
C £350K
Here what should be clear is that A now has the opportunity to sell the land for a net present value that is greater than his estimate of the same. He believes that B has overestimated its productivity and will incur a loss if he purchases for that sum. A therefore cashes in by selling to B and earns interest on the sum of £550K. To his horror, however, B finds that the land only yields a present value of £450K and hence he earns interest on this lower sum. It would have been better for B to have foregone the purchase and held onto the cash, earning interest on £550K instead of £450K. The difference between these two therefore represents B’s loss and A’s profit. The loss of B has accrued to a bad decision, a decision to devote the scarce resources available to an end that was less productive than that estimated. The reader can examine our criteria a) – e) above in order to speculate upon the source of B’s error, but the important point is this: where there is a net income it results from diverting the scarce resources to an end more highly valued than that estimated by other entrepreneurs. A loss is made when resources are devoted to an end that is less highly valued than that estimated by the same. Good decisions and beneficial use of scarce resources therefore yield a reward – a net income, a profit. Bad decisions and the waste of resources are punished with losses. Net income therefore flows to good decision-making ability and it is this ability alone – not any productive power of the land or any virtue of its ownership – that commands a premium in the marketplace5.
Now we shall turn to situations in which A’s decisions make a loss. Let us return to the first set of estimations:
A £450K
B £350K
C £250K
A, obviously, will again choose to hold onto the land. But let’s say that in this scenario the land only yields £300K’s worth of income. It would have been better to have sold to B and made a presently valued profit of £50K rather than hold onto to the land and lose that opportunity. A’s decision was erroneous and this error was met with a loss. What about the second set of valuations?
A £450K
B £550K
C £350K
Again A will sell to B in this scenario. A thinks that B is a fool in this scenario for thinking that he (B) can ever ring out £550K’s worth of productivity from the land and A congratulates himself for having made a handsome profit. But what if the land actually yields a presently valued income of £650K? In this instance, therefore, it would have been better for A to have held onto the land and carried on production. Instead he sold it and the passing up of this opportunity imposes a loss upon him.
What we realise, therefore, is that all present and prospective landowners constantly bear the burden of having to assess the future income from land. Present landowners have to determine whether the future income will outweigh the purchase prices offered by prospective buyers. The latter have to determine whether they can offer a purchase price that is outweighed by the future income. Those that make the most accurate decisions in this challenge are those that devote the scarce resources available to their most highly valued ends. They took the decision to direct their resources in this way in the face of uncertainty while nobody else did. The result is a net profit.
We should also add here that good decisions and good decision-making ability are determined relatively not absolutely – the profitable entrepreneur only has to be more accurate than the next entrepreneur. For example, let’s say that the land would yield a net present income of £650K and the following entrepreneurs estimate it as follows:
A £450K
B £350K
C £250K
In this case it is obvious that A will hold onto the land and earn a net income when the yield of the land turns out to be worth a present value of £650K. But what if the estimations were as follows?
A £450K (same as before)
B £550K
C £250K (same as before)
Here A will make the choice to sell to B. Yet even though his choice was derived from the same estimation as in the previous scenario, he now incurs a loss as it would have been better for him to have held onto the land and earn interest on £650K than to have taken £550K in cash. Looking at that same scenario from the buyer’s perspective, B now earns the profit. But what if there was a third set of valuations as follows?
A £450K (same as before)
B £550K (same as before)
C £600K
Now, the profit maker is C. Therefore, even though the judgments that underpinned the decisions of A and B remained constant, the entry of a more accurate entrepreneur meant that the latter earned the profit and they did not. It is, therefore, the most relatively accurate decision in directing scarce resources to their ends that is rewarded. Clearly the same will also be true from the loss-maker’s point of view – a judgment that once was loss-making will become profitable if other entrepreneurs lose their accurate foresight.
Profit, therefore, can only be made when a person renders a valuable service that no one else is able to do. If entrepreneurial foresight becomes more prevalent and accurate its supply increases and, just like any other good, as supply increases then, all else being equal, the price it can command must diminish. If a piece of land yields £650K per year and the most accurate prospective purchaser bids £450K for it that he will earn a net present income of £200K. If, however, the market is suddenly flooded with entrepreneurial talent then each entrepreneur will bid up the land successively towards its mark of £650K. If an entrepreneur would bid £630K for the land then there is a chance for another, more accurate one, to bid, say, £640K. But the entry of a further, still more accurate entrepreneur could raise the purchase price to £645K with profit diminishing to a mere £5K. The extension of this situation would obviously be where every entrepreneur values the land exactly correctly and everyone would bid precisely £650K for it, with any chance of net income disappearing entirely. The existence of net income is therefore negatively correlated with the prevalence of good decision-making ability and as soon as the latter is abundant it ceases to command a high premium and profit comes close to disappearing.
In part one we questioned whether it was possible for luck to influence a person’s net gain. Could, for example, one buy or sell a piece of land having absolutely no idea whether it will yield a net income ahead of the purchase price? Or, alternatively, could one sell a piece of land without a single clue as to whether he is selling it for more than it is worth? In other words couldn’t someone just yield a profit by gambling rather than through any special entrepreneurial talent? If one makes a net income on these occasions then it states one of two things. First, as we said in part one, to consign one’s fate to luck is itself a decision and to the extent that it is more profitable than a carefully considered decision then it is the best decision. Secondly, if one makes a profit from gambling then it is still the case that resources were directed to an end that was more highly valued by consumers than that estimated by other entrepreneurs. In short, the gambler’s guess was better than anyone else’s decision and in its absence the economy would be worse off. It is the realisation of value that is rewarded, whatever the method through which it is achieved. It is just that in our world luck plays a very minor role in reaching this goal whereas good decision-making ability is most often needed.
Speculation and Hoarding
With all of this in mind let us now turn our attention to the speculation and hoarding of land. Land owners are often accused of sitting on fallow land and earning year on year profits while this land could be used for the fulfilment of vitally needed ends6. Can we square these facts?
The first question we have to address is why does fallow land have any capitalised value at all? If it isn’t being used for anything then how is it generating any value whatsoever? The answer to this can only be that, in the estimations of entrepreneurs, the land will not yield any valuable utility from a stream of production now but will, rather, yield the same from production that is begun in the future. Say, for example, that if entrepreneurs estimate that additional housing capacity is not required now but will be required in, say, ten years then the land’s ability to meet this end at that point in the future will be imputed back to the land itself and it will trade for a capitalised value. Obviously the discount applied to a utility only taking effect at such a far off point will impose a cumulatively heavy toll, but there would still be a capitalised value. Entrepreneurs therefore have to decide not only what to devote land towards but precisely when to do it and it is the differences of these estimations that permit one to earn a net income from the hoarding of land.
Let us say that A purchases a plot of land now with the intention to hold onto it without development and is able to earn a net income on this operation. There are two aspects to the explanation of this outcome. First, if all entrepreneurs are agreed as to when is the most suitable time to develop the land is then A can only make a profit if he more accurately estimates the value of the yields that result once this time is reached and the land is developed. This is essentially no different from what we discussed above – the only difference is that the first act of production will not be now but at some point in the future. But secondly, if entrepreneurs are not in agreement over when the most suitable time to develop the land is then A can make a profit by more accurately estimating this suitable time. Let’s say, for example, that the five entrepreneurs would develop the land after the respective intervals have elapsed following purchase and their estimations of the present value of the yields are as follows. Let us also assume, for simplicity’s sake, that each is correct in the estimation of what the land would yield after these intervals:
A 5 years £600K
B 4 years £500K
C 3 years £450K
D 2 years £210K
E 1 year £130K
What this means is that E believes that the most productive use of the land will arrive after only one year and that he won’t, therefore, gain more than a present value of £130K by waiting either longer or shorter. D believes that two years is the correct period to wait and any longer or shorter will never achieve as high an income as £210K, presently valued. And so on for C, B and A. The latter, however, is the most accurate and he is the one who will purchase the land (in this case, offering only slightly more than the discounted value of B’s estimate in order to price B out of the market) and he will earn a profit. The effect of A’s action is to withhold the land from development that would otherwise occur too early and thus its direction to an end that is less valuable to consumers is prevented; rather the land is released for development right at the precise time when it is needed for fulfilling the most pressing end. A of course might be “incorrect” in an absolute sense – perhaps had he waited another year still (so six years in total) the land might have yielded a present value of £700K. But as the relatively most accurate entrepreneur he is the one who yielded the profit. Had another person, F, come along and bid £650K then A would not have earned that profit.
Related to this is the height of the societal time preference rate which determines the interest rate. As we said earlier, all future utility from land is discounted according to the prevailing rate of interest. But this too is subject to fluctuation and must be estimated, a point we noted earlier. If time preference lowers then the discount to be applied to future yields of land will diminish and hence the capitalised value of land will rise. On the other hand if time preference rises then the discount will be increased and the capitalised value of land will fall, its promise of future utility being less valuable to consumers. In practice this phenomenon tends to go hand in hand with the fact that land may yield its most valuable end not now but sometime in the future. For land is the ultimate remote good out of which capital goods must be furnished and increased demand for it is almost synonymous with a lowering of the societal time preference rate and a desire to engage in more roundabout methods of production and the creation of economic growth. The estimation, therefore, by entrepreneurs that land will yield a more valuable use not now but in the future also translates into estimating that the societal rate of time preference will be lower.
The allocation of resources across time is also one of the most difficult activities which must be faced by the present landowner, let alone a prospective purchaser. A failure to estimate how much to produce and when to do so has the potential to cause serious losses. The capitalised value of a copper mine, for example, will, as we know, represent the discounted value of all of the future copper that will be extracted from that mine. The choice of how much copper to mine this year is made not only in the face of current costs such as labour, equipment etc. but also the mine owner must consider the fact that any extraction of copper now will mean that there is less copper to be had in the future. If the mine owner extracts copper now then this will cause a write down in the capitalised value of the land as, the copper having been extracted, a portion of it is no longer there to provide for future utility. Whether or not the mine owner successfully allocates copper to the present or to the future depends on the relationship of the revenue from selling copper now on the one hand to the height of the write down on the other. If, having accounted for all other costs, the revenue he receives from selling a portion of the copper today is higher than the write down then this means that the present value of copper sold has a higher value than the same copper would have done had it been left under the ground. Therefore the quantity of copper that the mine owner brought to market was in line with the preferences of consumers and copper was not wasted by being mined too soon. On the other hand, if the value of the write down is higher than the revenue that is received then this means that the copper that is brought to market would have had a higher present value had it been left under the ground to be preserved for a future use. The copper was brought to market and supplied too early and consumers were not willing to devote it to an end today that is more valuable than an end at some point in the future. In short, the copper has been wasted and the resulting loss will penalise the mine owner for this oversight. It is for this reason why capitalism and free exchange provides the best method of conserving resources as the profit and loss system entices entrepreneurs to deploy them precisely when they can meet their most valuable ends.
Taxation of Land
It follows from the analysis in both parts of this series of essays that any attempt by the government to tax the proceeds from land must fall upon one of the three streams of income:
- Costs;
- Interest;
- Entrepreneurial Profit and Loss.
If costs are the target then clearly this just raises the cost per unit of productivity from the land. Within this category will fall all taxes on labour, direct taxes on the costs such as sales taxes, and the taxes that must be borne by suppliers. If, though, interest is the target then this has the effect of increasing the discount from future yields of land. The relative attractiveness of future goods will therefore decline and so too will any engagement in roundabout methods of production that lead to economic growth. Finally, a tax on entrepreneurial profit and loss will penalise the decision-making ability that directs resources to their most highly valued ends. There will, therefore be relatively less inclination to seek out the most valuable ends coupled with relatively more wasting of land as the lack of scrupulousness means that the land ends up being devoted to less urgent ends7.
All taxation on land will simply magnify the costs and reduce the gains. But it is important to stress its effect on our third category of income above, which relates to the entrepreneurial aspect of land ownership. The purpose of the analysis in these two essays has been to demonstrate that regardless of any natural qualities of the land or resource in question every decision and every action – even just holding onto the land – entails a cost that may outweigh its gain. Net gains from land ownership can only be had by demonstrating a relative entrepreneurial talent. They cannot be gained simply by owning land and sitting on one’s backside – there is no category of “unearned” or free income from land ownership that is ripe for taxation and there is no form of taxation that will be neutral on productivity.
At the beginning of part one, we stated that every action has a cost and a gain, the magnitude of each being uncertain. The only free or unearned “income” that a person ever has is his own body and standing room at the moment that he is born. Not only did we indicate in part one that these cannot be considered as “gains” as such but if one is adamant that unearned income should be taxed away then it follows that the only logical proposal to enact that policy is to tax birth. Is any advocate of the taxation of unearned income expecting to be able to propose such levy and, at the same time, to be taken seriously?
Conclusion
What we have sought to demonstrate in this two part series of essays is how an acting human can realise utility, gains, benefits, profits, losses and value from his actions in relation to land, including its use and its trade. We have concluded that the gross yield is directed to three sources – compensation for costs, interest, and entrepreneurial profit and loss. Finally we concluded that attempt to levy a tax on any one of these must have the effect of raising costs and decreasing gains, leading to a relative wasting of land.
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1Alternatively, if the landowner was locked into the operation and had to suffer the repeated losses, the only way he could escape would be to transfer the land to someone else. But who would want to do this? Who would want to take on the burden of a loss-bearing piece of land? The only way that it could happen is if the current land owner was to compensate the purchaser for the future losses – in other words he would have to pay someone the net present value of each year’s loss, the sum of which is that of the last column in figure C – £450K. The interest earned on this sum will compensate the new landowner for the maturity value of the losses (£100K) as each year comes round. This situation is not unusual if you consider the possibility of an enthusiastic entrepreneur taking on burdensome and lengthy obligations to third parties in relation to the operation on the land.
2In most descriptions of the evenly rotating economy there would still be discounting as the costs are incurred at a period of time before the vending of the final product. Indeed one of the advantages of this imaginary construction is that it is able to explain the phenomenon of interest as being distinct from entrepreneurial profit and loss. If the land yields £200K then, applying a discount rate of 10% per annum, costs that are incurred one year earlier will amount to £180K.
3For the sake of simplicity we will ignore the effects upon price of bartering and assume that each purchaser would pay a purchase price equal to his valuation of the land.
4It might also be the case, of course, that A is simply a more productive labourer than B or C and can farm more produce per acre. But any gain in income from this aspect accrues not to A’s entrepreneurial decision-making ability but rather to the remuneration for his labour and this additional income would be categorised in the “costs” column of an analysis of the gross income from the land rather than in the “net income” column.
5We are not intending the words “good”, “bad”, “reward” and “punishment” to imply any moral evaluation of an entrepreneur’s actions; rather, the terms should be appreciated only to the extent that people prefer making profits to losses.
6The recent accusations of the leader of the UK Labour Party, Ed Miliband, were of precisely that.
7In practice, taxes on interest and profit and loss amount to the same thing as it is not possible to separate them from an accounting point of view.
Regulation
November 12, 2016
Duncan Whitmore Commentary/Review, Economics, Essays Bureaucracy, Business, Capitalism, Cost of Compliance, Product Information, Product Liability, Product Quality, Product Safety, Product Standards, Products, Regulation, Regulatory Burden, Trade, Warning Labels Leave a comment
It is accepted by the mainstream that state regulation of the free market is a necessary feature of the so-called “mixed economy”, the supposed halfway house that allows us to benefit from capitalism without succumbing to its alleged excesses while, at the same time, avoiding the catastrophe of all-out socialisation and state control. This essay will subject this view to a critique and will reveal that, in fact, regulation of markets does nothing more than substitute arbitrary government preferences for the preferences of freely acting individuals, is a cause of the very “excesses” (such as oversized firms) which are blamed on capitalism, and that the best regulator is, in fact, the free market itself.
In examining “regulation” we should first be clear about precisely what it means, which is that the state will use the force of law in order to, compel, prohibit, restrict or otherwise subject to control some targeted behaviour of its citizens. In other words, it is a violent, physical intervention into people’s lives in order to produce one outcome while preventing another. This seems perfectly justifiable in instances when the behaviour that is subject to regulation is neither peaceful nor voluntary and is in fact invasive and predatory – in other words the particular behaviour under consideration constitutes a crime, such as murder and theft. However much libertarians may dispute either the legitimacy or effectiveness of the state in preventing and/or responding to such acts, we can at least understand the need for this kind of regulation – to protect people from the violent, invasive and uninvited actions of others, actions which are, of course, unjustifiable in libertarian theory. But what do we mean by state regulation of the free market? The very phrase “free market” is an abstraction used deliberately by commentators to deflect attention away from what it actually is and to create, instead, the impression that it is some kind of self-aware, self-controlling entity that can indulge in all of its irrational flights of fancy while being subject to neither rule nor reason when it seemingly appears out of nowhere to inflict grave harm upon us in the same way that a criminal might. The free market, however, is nothing more than individual people and institutions trading goods and services voluntarily on terms which they agree amongst themselves. It is a diffuse, decentralised network of people striving to meet their own needs as they perceive them and to seek others to provide the wherewithal to better their lives. It is an entirely peaceful, voluntary operation and no one is forced to participate in any exchange with another individual if he does not believe that he will be better off as a result of the exchange. For the state to regulate the market, then, means that the state will use force in order to diminish, control or otherwise outlaw certain transactions which otherwise may have been undertaken voluntarily had the regulation not been present. For the state to regulate is to introduce a code of violent compulsion into otherwise peaceful and voluntary relationships.
There is something distinctly odd when state “protection” through regulation is extended beyond crimes into the arena of voluntary relations. For what is it that people are really being protected from here? Voluntary transactions do not come out of nowhere to surprise us like an armed robber might do. Rather, they must be chosen freely and consciously by each individual person. So if every transaction in the free market requires a voluntary choice then the only purpose of regulation must be to “protect” us from the results of our own choices and to prevent us from entering certain transactions which we may otherwise like to enter if the terms are attractive to us. People often think that those being regulated are unscrupulous vendors who may try to sell us some kind of snake oil solution to a problem we may have. It is true, of course, that crooked businessmen may try to sell us something that doesn’t really work, is a fake, or causes some kind of fire or damage. However, these instances constitute a fraud or a tort and are already governed by the area of the law that regulates involuntary or invasive acts. Regulation of the free market, on the other hand, is solely concerned with restricting the transactions that people may be happy to undertake voluntarily with no force or fraud. As it takes two to complete a transaction – the purchaser and the vendor – if businesses are prevented from choosing to sell then you are equally prevented from choosing to buy. Our choices are therefore constricted by state regulation as much as those of businesses selling to us are and it is us who are regulated as much as businesses are. It is for this reason that an excessively regulatory and bureaucratic jurisdiction is often nicknamed “the nanny state” – a persistent and seemingly omnipresent matriarch who never ceases to stop interfering in your life in order to make sure that you make the “right” choices, choices that it believes are better for your life regardless of the maturity and sophistication of your own decision-making process.
There are several mantras or excuses that the state uses to justify its regulation of voluntary transactions – the prevention of rash, impulsive or short sighted behaviour; imperfect or otherwise flawed knowledge on the part of one of the parties to the transaction; maintaining standards of quality; and finally, the great all-encompassing excuse that seems to validate the state’s wading into anything it pleases, which is maintaining standards of safety. Doubtless there are other categories of state regulation also (such as environmental regulation and control of so-called “essential” industries) but these four form the backbone of the state’s regulatory bodies. We will proceed now to examine each of them in turn and in doing so we will reveal the damaging effects of state regulation while demonstrating how, in fact, the free market itself is the best regulator.
First, then, is the prevention of rash, impulsive, or short sighted behaviour. The implication here is that people may enter a transaction which provides, or has a chance of providing, benefits in the short term while providing a high likelihood of burdens in the future – possibly severely detrimental burdens such as economic ruin, ill health or early mortality. So in other words, people may choose to use tobacco, alcohol or narcotic products to achieve an immediate sense of pleasure without considering the longer term effects, or they may choose to gamble, bet, or otherwise enter some kind of financial arrangement that promises untold wealth if it is successful, but may result in economic ruin if it is not. In economic jargon the complaint here is that people’s time preferences are too high and that the inducement towards the present good is so strong in people’s minds that they heavily discount the possibility of the future bad. People discard prudence, foresight, and good judgment in favour of emotional, impulsive and irrational motives, and so the state should step in, so the argument goes, in order to prevent people from falling victim to their own lack of patience. In the first place we might as well mention that, while it is true that some or, indeed, many decisions may be regretted after the fact, it is the case that all actions can result in consequences that are either detrimental or not as favourable as those that were intended. Prior to an action, costs and benefits are only hypothetical and it is always easy to judge an action with the benefit of a retrospective view. However, as it is also true that some actions are more likely or are guaranteed to produce a longer term detriment in spite of an immediate gain, the more important point is that people’s time preferences are no business of the state’s and it is dubious to assert that people should, in all instances, prefer the longer term to the shorter term – at least not to the extent that the force of law is used to compel such a preference. There is no reason, for instance, why someone should not value the immediate pleasure from a cigarette instead of a longer, healthier lifespan and it is quite possible for an individual to regard a longer life as duller if it is devoid of short term pleasantries. The regulation of an action may stop, restrict, or otherwise control the action but it does not stop the motivating desires behind the action itself which are imbedded wholly within people’s minds. The preferences that influenced them still exist and have not been eradicated, and people are, instead, forced to embrace an outcome which they do not regard as preferable. So in other words, while the individual may have to forego a benefit today, in his own mind the pain of having done so in order to wait for another benefit to come sometime in the future (such as a longer, healthier life) may be worse to that individual. That person, from his point of view, suffered a loss rather than a gain. Regulation doesn’t, therefore, make benefits appear and costs disappear; rather, it simply forces people to endure what are, in their minds, heavier costs.
However, even if we were to accept the premise that people should take the longer view, the irony here is that regulation and state interference into people’s lives is what causes high time preference and rash, impulsive behaviour in the first place, along with the eradication of any kind of prudence, patience, good foresight and self-responsibility. In particular, the existence of the regulatory state fosters the mind-set that if an action is dangerous, or has a high chance of producing an unfavourable outcome, then the state will ensure that it is banned or the dangerous elements are removed. In other words because an army of bureaucrats has gone through the decision-making process on your behalf you simply do not have to care or pay any attention to the possible negative results of your actions because the guiding hand of the state will ensure that only good things can flow from anything you do. Indeed, the regulatory state is little more than a giant, inflatable cushion for people to avoid having to take responsibility for the consequences of their own decisions. When, of course, a decision in an unregulated area turns sour the cry is always “why were they allowed to sell this awful thing to me!” whereas what they really mean is “why was I allowed to choose to buy this awful thing from them!” What results, therefore, is a vicious circle where the growing regulatory state induces less prudence, a lower standard of care and thus more bad decisions that need to be met by increased regulation. To make matters worse if the regulatory state fails and you do happen to suffer some negative consequences, then in comes the helping hand the welfare state to rescue you anyway. If you drink or smoke too much and fall sick then state provided healthcare will look after you; if you gamble away your life savings then state benefits will still keep you fed, watered and sheltered even if you haven’t achieved the riches that you might have had you been successful. The upside of all of these decisions remains intact – that lucky horse may still promise to pay out millions and the whiskey will taste as good – but the downside has been heavily reduced as the state has insulated you from having to realise, or pay for, the full extent of the natural penalties of your actions if they occur. Thus, these types of frivolous and imprudent actions have become more attractive rather than less, and so they will be taken more frequently rather than less, resulting in more negative consequences rather than fewer. The result of this is, of course, moral hazard – carelessness for your actions when you can preserve your gains while heaping your losses onto everyone else. And finally, of course, all of this takes place within the sphere of the state’s inducement of a high consumption, high time preference society through the illusion of prosperity brought about by the forced lowering of interest rates, monetary inflation and the smokescreen of paper wealth.
Obviously, in a society that is wholly unregulated by the state people would be responsible for their own actions, and a culture of better decision making and more prudential planning would be induced. This does not mean, however, that you are completely on your own in determining whether you should proceed with a decision – an allegation of those who believe that the free market leads to an atomistic existence. It is this aspect that we will now explore when we examine the next reason that is proffered for the supposed necessity of regulation – imperfect or otherwise flawed knowledge on the part of one of the parties to the transaction. It is usually the case, of course, that the sellers of everything we choose to buy are experts in that particular product or service they are selling. They developed the product; they know what it should be capable of; they know the science behind it; they know where its raw materials or ingredients came from, who put them all together and how; they spend all day studying and marketing to their target demographic. We, on the other hand, are not so expert in these products, of which we may buy tens or even hundreds in a given week. We do not have the time to sift through mountains of information in order to find out whether a particular product is suitable for us, or whether it is likely to end up being either a waste of money or the cause of a much steeper loss. Surely the state should step in and compel companies to provide more information about their products? Surely it is only because of state regulation that we have mandatory lists of ingredients and nutritional breakdowns on food products and surely it is only because of the mandatory inclusion of warning labels that we know not to iron clothes while we are wearing them?
The key to unlocking this is to realise that the provision of information is an end in itself, an end which consumes scarce resources. Therefore, the value of this information needs to exceed the cost of those resources. To take a ridiculous example, the time it takes to cook an egg on the sunlit body of a car is a piece of information. The vendor of the car would spend valuable resources, such as labour, eggs, a stopwatch, etc. in gathering and publishing this information. However, if this information is useless to prospective purchasers of the car – in other words, it would not affect their desire to purchase the car one way or the other – then the vendor has incurred a deadweight cost and has simply wasted resources that would have been better spent on something else. How much information should be provided is part of the market process and it is consumers themselves who will determine through their purchasing habits whether or not a given set of information is valuable and is a requirement of a purchase. If consumers happily purchase products without receiving certain information then it indicates that the provision of such information would be a waste; if they choose to abstain then it may indicate that the purchase, on its present terms, is too risky and they require extra resources to be spent on providing more information about what it is they would be buying. It is here, of course, where the market’s own key regulator – price – steps in. At a low enough price consumers may be happy to purchase the product without further information as the risk of loss is relatively low so that gathering extra information would not be worthwhile. If the price was relatively high, however, consumers may demand more information so that they are more equipped for making a better decision before committing a relatively larger sum of money. And, of course, products sold with less information will, all else being equal, usually be priced lower than products sold with more information anyway on account of the fact that the vendor of the former products has not had to incur an extra cost. The forced provision of information by the state, however, is markedly different. Because it is not subject to the profit and loss test there is no way of telling whether such information is valuable or not; it is simply an arbitrary decree that resources must be directed in a way other than that desired by consumers. Additional costs are then heaped onto suppliers which, of course, result in higher prices for products – the extra money being spent on something that consumers simply do not want. To take a another extreme example, the state could mandate that an information booklet the size of a telephone directory should be sold with every loaf of bread, detailing the precise ingredients, the transportation process used, a detailed schematic of the ovens used for baking, the life stories of the baker and the wheat farmer and so on. It is obvious that the provision of this useless information would increase enormously the cost of a loaf of bread and thus make consumers worse off than they were before. The principle remains the same when the state requires seemingly more “sensible” – but still useless for the consumer – information to be provided.
The principle is also the same for the next two reasons that the state has for increasing the scope of regulation – maintaining standards of quality and standards of safety. The quality of a product is also part of the market process and cannot be subject to arbitrary standards. At any one time a higher quality product will, all else being equal, cost more than a lower quality product – meaning that more resources must be devoted to producing the higher quality product than the lower quality product. If more resources are used in creating a higher quality product then fewer resources are left over to be devoted to other things. Consumers must choose whether they wish their resources to be spent on a few higher quality or many more lower quality products through their purchasing habits. If they prefer the latter yet the government mandates that higher quality products must be produced then consumers are made worse off than they otherwise would have been. The sustainable way to increase quality is to increase the number of resources available so that such quality can now be afforded. It is here where the free market’s own regulatory mechanisms step in. If consumers, as a result of an increase of available wealth, demand that vendors produce higher quality items then quality standards are likely to develop within each industry. If vendors have to demonstrate that their products have reached a certain standard of quality then it creates a market for reputable, third party certifiers to examine the product and declare that it has met the required standards of quality that are expected by consumers. If it does not then no such declaration is made and the business must go back to the drawing board. Such third parties will be interested in making honest and trustworthy appraisals as it is the trustworthiness of their appraisals that lead to more product sales and hence, more vendors seeking their services for quality certification. Increased quality is therefore achieved through increased wealth creation which makes more resources available for this quality to be achieved, as opposed to state regulation which simply redirects existing resources from places where they are already needed.
Exactly the same is true when it comes to product safety because increasing safety also consumes valuable resources and we as consumers must determine how many resources we wish to divert from providing for other ends towards providing for more safety. With the regulation of product safety, it is important again to emphasise that we are not talking about the regulation of actions which may be defined as crimes or torts. If someone loads a child’s toy with explosives and it detonates then clearly such an action would be unlawful. Rather, what we are talking about is the regulation of safety standards that are accepted by both parties as terms of the contract – in other words, where the standards of safety sold are part of the product’s features or definition. For example, all else being equal, a car built with a thicker chassis, or a chassis constructed out of a stronger material, is likely to have greater crashworthiness than a car with a thinner chassis or a chassis constructed out of weaker material. If the latter car is purchased then the lower crashworthiness – and the resulting lower protection of the vehicle’s occupants in the event of a collision – is an accepted part of the contract and an accepted feature of the vehicle. Once again, the market’s own regulator – price – is king in this regard. All else being equal, the less safe car will be less expensive than the safer car. If consumers choose to purchase the less safe car the resources which could be spent on making the car safer are better off, from their point of view, being used somewhere else. If, however, the state steps in and mandates that, in the name of increasing safety, only the more expensive car should be sold then this would clearly lead to impoverishment. Indeed, some people may not even be able to afford the super safe car at all. They previously chose to purchase the less safe car because the value of the transportation it provided was worth the risk of being more heavily injured in the event of a crash. If state mandated “safety” standards price them out of the market so that they cannot afford a car at all then they have clearly lost very heavily. There is no such thing as a “no brainer” safety requirement that is valid in all places at all time – there is only what can be afforded. Requirements only seemingly become “no-brainer” when they can be easily afforded. And, of course, the way to increase the affordability of safety is to increase wealth creation so that more resources are available to be devoted towards increasing product safety. Just as with the increase of quality, if consumers, as a result of an increase of available wealth, demand that vendors produce safer items then industrywide standards of product safety will develop. If vendors have to demonstrate that their products have reached a certain standard of safety then, once again, the market is opened for reputable, third party certifiers to determine whether a product has achieved the standard that is expected by consumers. Underwriters Laboratories is an example of such a private, third party solution. Increased safety, like increase quality, is therefore achieved through increased wealth creation which makes more resources available for safer products to be made, as opposed to state regulation which simply confiscates existing resources from other ends.
What we have learnt from all of this is that regulation itself consumes valuable resources and so the value it produces must also take place in the societal rank of values. It cannot stand apart from the market process but must, rather, be part of it. The allegation that the markets are never “self-regulating” simply amounts to stating that people are not making the correct choices with resources that they own whereas the budding critic does. If the market is not “self-regulating” then, as we explained earlier, it means that people are not self-regulating and must be forced into making choices other than the ones that they prefer.
Earlier we explained how one of the tragic ironies of regulation is that it creates the very need for its own existence by perpetuating rash and foolish purchasing choices as people come to believe that the state is there to protect them from any possible negative consequence. Unfortunately, such a perpetuation is present on the supply side of the market as well. An increasing regulatory code heaps onto the shoulders of vendors increasing costs of compliance with that code. As well as spending money on market research, developing their products and targeting their advertising, prospective entrepreneurs not only have to hire armies of lawyers to ensure that they are complying with the regulatory code but very often the regulatory code itself will require the business to make an additional outlay – such as the requirement to publish extra information. The costs of compliance with regulation are more easily borne by large, established businesses yet they may be devastating to small start-ups or entrepreneurs with limited capital. For example, in a report for the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Nicole and Mark Crain of Lafayette University calculated that the per-employee cost of federal regulatory compliance was $10,585 for businesses with nineteen or fewer employees, but only $7,755 for companies with five hundred or more. It is for this reason why regulation is, in fact, favoured rather than opposed by large, established businesses – for it creates a cosy cartel between business and the state which shuts out most prospects of new competition while at the same time saving face when they duly comply with these regulations for the “benefit of the consumer”. However, such stifling of competition is what creates some of the very problems that regulations are supposed to solve – poor provision of information, poor quality, and poor safety features. The result, therefore, is that regulation needs to increase in order to produce standards of consumer service that the free market would have produced by itself – except now with the deduction of the enormous cost of passing, complying and monitoring the said regulations. All of the supposed pitfalls and excesses of capitalism are therefore not a product of the free market but are, in fact, spawned by the regulatory state – and the response is supposed to be more regulation and increased oversight by a growing state bureaucracy. The most complained about industries in the world today, such as utilities, public transport and healthcare, supposedly demonstrate the tragedy of allowing private actors to provide so-called “essential” goods and services. Yet it is those very industries that suffer from the heaviest state interference.
State regulation of the free market is, therefore, a truly self-perpetuating, self-growing monstrosity, creating the very problems it seeks to solve – lazy, careless, and thoughtless purchasing choices on the one hand, and an oligarchy of large, greedy, unscrupulous businesses on the other, stifling economic progress and innovation in favour of micromanagement by a faceless bureaucracy. It is also a symptom of the globalist elitist agenda to unify and harmonise state bureaucracies into international trade agreements and treaties so that the reach of control and top-down direction does not stop at the state border – an agenda that was recently rebuffed (although will probably not be solved) by both the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as the next US President. If we wish to regain economic progress and win back our liberty then destroying the regulatory state must be a high priority.
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