The Pioneers of Land Reform: Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine
This is a collection of three early thoughts on land reform. In general, they advocated letting people that worked the land and added value collect the value. They wanted to limit excessive rent seeking in order to optimize economic growth. The methods that they sought about doing it differed. On one extreme, all land would be taken from the land holders and rented out to others. (Seems like there could be a lot of "ownership" issues and potential for corruption here.) On the other moderate side, there would be an inheritance tax that would be used to provide a form of universal basic income to everyone. (I wonder what would happen if the property was just transferred before the death?) It is interesting looking at these a few centuries later. There are parts of the arguments that are easy to pick apart, while other "concerns" seem to be non-issues today.
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