Towards a Political Theory of Natural Equality

This project will study land rights in relationship to political equality, using a combination of political and economic theory.

Within much of philosophy and economics, land tends to be treated as another form of capital, and hence rarely emphasized as a unique factor of production. However, land differs interestingly from capital, especially since land is inelastic. No one can claim to have created land, and no one can create more land.

This is an important normative and economic feature of land.

In particular, since the supply of land is fixed, its distribution is a zero-sum rather than a positive-sum game, making it more politically contentious.

Thus, the project would explore land rights as a question of political equality.This over-arching issue will be studied within three interrelated sub-projects.

The first sub-project would investigate land rights in relationship to the “dollar voting” analogy, according to which we can understand purchasing decisions on a market in analogy with votes within an election. The second sub-project will investigate land rights in relationship to consent theory.

Since we must always use some land, being landless removes one’s ability to dissent to interact with others. The third sub-project will investigate land rights in relationship to distributive justice.

If we understand land rents as analogous to votes, this seems to suggest that they should be shared on an equal per capita basis.N