The Important Trial of Thomas Spence

The Important Trial of Thomas Spence by Thomas Spence

Thomas Spence was tried and convicted for publishing "revolutionary" texts. Today, we would hardly bat an eye at most of his concepts. He supported divorce (as a way in making marriage better.) He also advocated land reform. He would have local government units own the land. The revenue of the units would be from the rent paid by those who worked the land. The book includes his complete constitution. It included a form of representation as well as speech protection and law enforcement. His radical texts were too much for 200 years ago. Today, the work can be found on Marxist web sites. Conditions have changed today. However, if you consider the rents to be "property tax", it is not too far from what we have today. (Though without restrictions on multiple ownership.)

The Pioneers of Land Reform: Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine

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.