LONDON 2006: The Economics of Abundance

TheIU’s International Conference number 25 - LONDON 2006:=

The Economics of Abundance

Dr. Paradise & Dr. Doom Debate Wealth under the “London Eye”<= /span>

Report by Karry Skanda - printed in The Georgist Journal, #105, Autumn= 2006.

THE conference site and the accommod= ations could not have been more felicitous: the South Bank Campus of Kings College, London University. Sleeping and living qu= arters were right across the street. London’s new impressive landmark, the London Eye, aka “Millennium Wheel” sponsored by British Airways, can be spotted behind Victoria Station. It is literally just a stroll away = from the conference center. So is the Right Bank of the T= hames with its many relaxed shore-side restaurants and cafes. Big Ben is nearby (= you never have an excuse to be late there), Parliament (one cradle of world democracy), the Tate Museum (catch up on culture), Downing Street (t= alk to Tony about WMDs), and the Lond= on Aquarium (want to feel subversive or at least submersible)? All this vacati= on atmosphere gets punctured by policemen patrolling the shores of the Thames with bullet-proof vests and machine-guns. But neither they nor the armed police around control scanning every bag and passenger to go onto the “Millennium Ferris Wheel” ever raises = an eyebrow: Life in the age of Terrorism. There is a life-size metal-relief monument on the other side of the Thames inaugurated a year ago by Prince Charles. It is dedicated to the RAF aviato= rs who so heroically fought of the London Blitz: “Never in the history of mankind have so many owed so much to = so few!” in the words of Winston Churchill.

On Monday, July 3^rd , the 25^th conference of the International = Union for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade started with a bang. We were welcome= d by IU President Dr. Tatiana Roskoshnaya, who now works for the UN Habitat in <= st1:City w:st=3D"on">Nairobi. Fred Harrison’s opening address set out the “Terms for a New Society” in which he further elaborated themes that he had outlined in his recent book which predicts the “Depression of 2010”. Harrison has been accused of journalistic sensation= alism. Many mainstream economists, however, agree that we are in for a big economic crisis in the future, given the built-in structural disharmonies of the glo= bal economy. Harrison has the ability to put= into words what most experts think, but dare not say.

Dr. Rana Roy, Senior Economics Advis= er of the British Prime Minister, then gave the first keynote paper defining the theme of the ‘economics of abundance’, and in fact playing the = part of “Dr. Paradise”: If we only use economic insights and technological advances well - including a prudent, socially just tax policy= - then we as humankind are in for a cornucopia period! The presentation wasn’t quite Georgist, but “New-Labor-Think” as formulate= d by Anthony Giddins. In Dr. Roy’s neo-Keynesian/Galbrathian analysis, if = we only improve our bureaucracy-based poverty management, all shall be well. Y= et, as the progressive French writer Jules Romains observed, British ‘soc= ial democracy really is a misnomer; it should be called ‘social bureaucracy’. Dr. Roy’s analysis was not Georgist, but it offer= ed Georgists hope. If a mainstream economist who advises national governments = can envision such a rosy future growing from the soil of today’s economy,= how much more easily could a Georgist do so?

Lest all this millennial optimism ma= ke us dizzy, Dr. Michael Hudson was called upon next to present the viewpoint of “Dr. Doom”. In Britain, millennial enthusiasm was dampened by the financial debacle surrounding the= London Millennium= Dome - built with considerable fanfare and public support - and hailed as a cure to economic malaise in the late 1990s. The only downside seems to have been th= at nobody apparently sat down to figure out who would be able to buy all the n= ew products offered in it. As it turned out, the much heralded millennium busi= ness boost had to quietly close its doors. Economic miracles don’t happen = out of the blue, they happen if current ills are properly addressed and genuine= new opportunities are created. Dr. Hudson was able to paint a more realistic picture. He has recently become an advisor to the Latvian government (and i= n London, he did hi= s part to shore up its currency). He also now holds a position as economics profes= sor at the University of Missouri. Hudson= , as expected, skilfully turned down our expectations from Roy’s economic paradise into something more nearly resembling Dante’s circles of hel= l - if, as is all too likely, Georgist policies are not applied on a large scal= e.

Of the many distinguished speakers w= ho followed, Phil Anderson, the Australian Georgist, director of Economic Indicator Service, was outstanding. He spoke on Tuesday morning and made credible economic cycle forecasts from extensive financial data based rough= ly on the 18 years cycle first explored by Sergei Pervushin, the maverick Russ= ian economist who was sentenced to death in the 1930s, because his research, identifying an 18-year real estate cycle, embarrassed Stalinist ideology. We wish Phil Anderson all the best for his theories and hope he need not succu= mb to his mentor’s fate.

Dr. Nicolaus Tideman spoke on “= ;LVT and Eminent Domain”, following Anderson, Tuesday morning, July 4^th. The ‘eminent domain̵= 7; issue is timely, as it is being invoked in New York<= /st1:State> and the New England states at this very = moment to force private real estate owners to hand their land over to developers. = This process, which seems inimical to the legal concept of ‘eminent domain’ (and the very opposite of what Georgists advocate) has nevertheless been adopted by local officials desperate to bring some sort of development to stagnant downtowns.

It is quite instructive to experienc= e how the US Independence Day is (not) observed abroad. One would not expect fireworks a= nd long speeches on the Founding Fathers - but some attention, perhaps, to this pivotal event of the world history. This International Union conference was preponderantly attended by our British brethren; a handful of Danish stalwa= rts, three additional Yankees, namely William Batt, Anne Goeke, and Dr. Cay Hehn= er, and Dr. Frank Peddle from Canada made up a rather modest ‘international’ section. The 4^th of July might have provided the Georgist gathering with some food for thought. There was this small matter of ‘no taxation without representation’. It is a h= eady thought to imagine that had Henry George lived contemporaneous to Thomas Pa= ine and had the US begun its history with a Georgist public revenue policy, the= US may have never left the empire - and we all would live in a happy world Uni= on today under the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

On Wednesday, July 5^th= David Wetzel discussed the impressive progress that has been made under his aegis with London public transport and the implementation of congestion charges on sections of the inner city of London. Shouldn&#= 8217;t Manhattan, we wer= e asked, adopt such a system as well? It seems inconceivable, but there are still so-called civilized countries in the world that do not charge any highway tolls. There are even so-called civilized countries in this world that do not charge tuition for colleges or universities. In other words whether you go to university or not depends solely on your intellectual abilities and aptitudes. Undeniably efficient as congestion charges are, we should remember the paramount Georg= ist goal of reconciling efficiency with justice.

Wednesday evening The School of Econ= omic Science held a reception for all conference attendees, presenting its new quarters. Ian Mason, the headmaster of the school, welcomed the IU guests. Mason gave a moving thank you and farewell speech to the two long-standing London volunteers, Barbara Sobrielo and Jose Mernane, without whom the succ= ess and progress of IU conferences in the past decades would have been unthinka= ble. Anthony Werner, the head of Shephead-Walwyn Publishers, saw admirably to everyone’s need for refreshment.

On Friday, July 7^th, the cosmopolitan Spanish Georgist and lawyer Fernando Scornik Gerstein gave an impressive analysis of contemporary China’s way to “Capitalism without private land property”. Michael Hudson co-presented. While Gerstein confined himself to practical observations and= the sharing of personal experiences with legal and tax practices in contemporar= y China, = Dr. Hudson gave a theoretical analysis of economic realities under post-Communi= sm. During the discussion period, Dr. Frank Peddle, who recently toured China w= ith Clifford Cobb, concurred that the Georgist heritage of the Sun Yat-Sen peri= od between the two World Wars still is perceived as more of a liability than an asset. Sun Yat-Sen still is persona= non grata in the still-totalitarian post-communist mindset. Unlike Taiwan, China has not yet rediscovere= d what treasures of social reform its own history contains.<= /p>

Peter Gibb closed the conference, fo= rmally picking up where Fred Harrison had left off in his opening address in givin= g an outlook of what he perceived to be the “Agenda for the 21^st Century”. Not implementing it might entail not having a 22^{nd
one. Friday, July 7^th was dedicated to the General Business meet=
ing
of the IU. To recuperate from bureaucratic work, the organisers wisely offe=
red
an evening banquet floating on the Thames with
music and humorous interludes by several participants, much appreciated by =
all.}

Much also was made of the sweltering= days that London was suffering this summer, as people endured temperatures above 100º Fahrenheit. New Yorkers, however, found the weather rather pleasa= nt. Vive la difference! Another reason= to support international conferences in the future.