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Samizdata quote of the day – Creating a property-owning democracy To achieve a similar transition today would require us to introduce ways to help people acquire property. Most UK people are much richer than the statistics tell us. That is because they typically do not include the right to free healthcare, to free education for their children, and to the right to receive a state pension upon retirement. These are wealth, but they are not property, in that they cannot be alienated, given away or bequeathed to heirs. They die with the person.
The pathway to a property-owning democracy lies along two parallel routes: access to home ownership and to an investment portfolio. Both of these are property that belongs to the owner, and can be passed on to heirs and successors.
Home ownership can be made more accessible by a massive increase in the supply of housing. This means we have to streamline and liberalize planning laws, particularly in high-demand areas like London and the South East. We must simplify the process for obtaining planning permission and reduce local opposition barriers. The Town and Country Planning Act has passed its sell-by date.
– Madsen Pirie
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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You can give out as many planning permissions as you like, there isn’t enough power, water and sewage capacity (especially in the SE of England) to service all the extra houses anyway.
From the same work:
His home-ownership program aside, I have to question his government-supervised investment-account ideas.
We’ll all own shares in solar power and windmill companies, orgs with the proper DEI programs, fake-meat distributors, competitors to TESLA, and probably a few companies structured by Nancy Pelosi. We’ll be steered away from shares in ICE autos, media companies who have run the “wrong” articles, and firearm manufacturers.
Cool way to channel massive investment into a More Progressive Economy!
Or maybe I’m just cynical.
Bobby: I have a little private pension for when I’m doing a contract and the agency insists on signing me up to a pension scheme (my main pension provision is other stuff). Unfortunately, none of them have had the intelligence to actually use my existing scheme and three have them have auto-enrolled me in the UK Gov’s Nest scheme. I have a grand total of £5.46 in my Nest pot.
@bobby b:You are insufficiently cynical.
But also identifiable as targets for rapacious governments to raise more money to feed the governmental beast. Particularly from heirs and successors
bobby b,
Please STOP. You’re giving them ideas!!!
Planning rules on extant properties are hideous. I speak as someone who lives in a Grade II listed building in a “Conservation” Area. Even replacing the gutters was a nightmare (I was actually threatened with jail if I got plastic gutters). There are many fine buildings around here such as pubs and banks that could be re-purposed but the law that allegedly “preserves” old buildings means they are falling into wrack and ruin. The fact that the planning department (at least in Cheshire – I suspect this is generally the case) is staffed entirely with the spiritual descendents of Walter Peck doesn’t help.
Democracy is just another name for the tyranny of the masses. It’s a system by which 50.00001% can vote to enslave the other 49.99999%.
What you really mean is a representative Republic, like the United States used to be until they destroyed the function of the Constitution with the 16th and 17th amendments (unlimited taxation and direct election of senators), which should have been ruled unconstitutional at the time “pro(re)gressive” Wilson rammed them through, since they directly contravene the meaning and function of the US Constitution.
“massive increase in the supply of housing”.
We keep hearing this from people who have no idea what conditions are like in ordinary English towns – contrary to the “planning laws prevent….” mantra, there are endless housing estates and flats going up all over the place – destroying what is left of England. I am sorry if the figures down in London do not show this – but, if so, the figures down in London are WRONG as anyone with eyes to see knows.
There has been mass immigration, many millions of people, if you really want much less expensive housing – then those people would have to leave, “massive increase in the supply of housing” has been tried (see above) and it has not worked.
As for an “investment portfolio” – the stock exchange is going to collapse over the next few years, as the British economy collapses. So whilst there may (perhaps) be a case for buying gold – investing in the British economy would be insane.
People are going to get a lot poorer of the next few years – so talk of a “property owning democracy” does not fit reality.
As for the “wealth” of “free education” for your children – well it is better than the, utterly dreadful, education in major American (Democrat) cities, but it is not very good.
The “free health care” comes with a lethal (literally lethal) “waiting list”.
And the “pensions” are very small – and are dependent on having full “National Insurance” records – which more and more people do not have.
So the post is not very accurate.
And, I repeat, most people in Britain are going to get a lot poorer over the next few years – so talk of buying XYZ is not realistic.
There is no real foundation to the economy – we import food and raw materials and have done for a long time, but we used to export manufactured goods to counter balance that – and now we import manufactured goods as well.
So the economy is going to decline – most people are going to get poorer and poorer – so even if the immigrants leave (or are made to leave) and housing becomes less expensive, more and more people will not be able to afford it.
What may, perhaps, happen is that more and more people will avail themselves of the “assisted dying” option that the government is pushing – presently it is only available to people with terminal illness, but I expect that will be liberalized so that people with mental health issues (more and more people – as more and more people come to the conclusion that the situation is hopeless – and so are “diagnosed with depression”) can avail themselves of this option.
It is very unfortunate (to put the matter mildly) and I hope that other countries learn by our mistakes and do NOT go down the road of mass immigration, endless welfare benefits (or at least endless welfare spending – much of it goes to pay officials rather than actually getting to the poor), cripplingly high taxes, insanely high energy costs, and labour market regulations – dressed up as “rights” and “Collective Bargaining”.
One can not even be a nightwatchman now – as that now depends on getting a “license” and getting a license is expensive and involves successfully pretending to have DEI beliefs – it really does, the test is full of political and cultural questions, and it is not just the test, there are assessment officials (and so on).
I’m sure that The Town and Country Planning Act has some flaws. I’m even more sure that the Adam Smith Institute’s regular focus on that as a major reason home ownership today is increasingly expensive is only comprehendible if they’re keen to avoid talking about much more obvious factors, such as crazy monetary policy for best part of three decades or even crazier immigration policy for at least two decades.
Mandatory pension funds is a curious idea. I do suspect that rather than make Britain a more free market economy, it will make Britain a more too big to fail corporatist economy. The political costs of letting one of these funds fail following a stock market collapse would likely be far too egregious.
By the way – if the post had been written in the mid to late 1950s, when Anthony Eden first started talking about a “property owning democracy” the post would have made a lot of sense.
The Planning Laws were stricter then – they really did (sometimes) restrict the supply of housing (although they did not, alas, restrict the truly horrible tower blocks that were being built), anyone who knows anything about Planning Committees in 2025 knows they are, basically, powerless now. Also mass immigration had not really happened in the mid to late 1950s – the “elephant in the room” (which out of date institutes down in London carefully avoid seeing) was NOT in the room then. The many millions of immigrants and their descendants (who form their own communities – hostile to the “natives”) did not exist back then.
Also energy costs were a lot lower, the productive economy was a lot less regulated (far fewer “licensing” laws and “Quangos”), and taxes were a lot lower overall (for example Value Added Tax did not exist), as was government spending – Lord Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch and Enoch Powell resigned in the late 1950s because government spending was too high, and it was too, high – but it was a small fraction of what it is now.
Investing in the British economy made sense then – it would be crazy to invest money in British industry now.
I repeat Lord Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch and Enoch Powell resigned in the late 1950s because they, quite rightly, believed that government spending was too high – and it was indeed too high, but it was also a small fraction of what it now is.
Unless government spending is dramatically reduced, mass immigration reversed (who wants to invest in a place where there are rival population groups who will end up fighting each other – and it has to be “reversed” not just “stopped”, because natural increase has taken over – as Mr Powell warned it eventually would, if nothing was done), high energy costs dramatically cut, and deregulation of the labour market is undertaken, then it does not make sense for people to invest here.
And “high wages” are not really the problem – after all little Liechtenstein has the highest industrial wages in the world – and is a much better place to invest in than here.
The United States became the leading industrial power on Earth in about 1890 – when it had the highest wages of any independent nation in the world. By 1913 (i.e. before the First World War – so it was not the war that changed things) American industry dwarfed industry in Britain and Germany.
@bobby b
His home-ownership program aside, I have to question his government-supervised investment-account ideas.
The government already does this. The retirement fund is called Social Security or, in the UK, National Insurance, the government forces you to invest in this retirement fund and then they literally steal all the money.
However, I see some justification, to prevent people falling on the public welfare systems, in insisting that say 10% of income is invested in a retirement fund. I also think it is not unreasonable for the government to make RECOMMENDATIONS as to what is a safe fund, or perhaps better make recommendations as to some organizations that can make recommendations. But certainly not mandatory.
The problem though is that government recommendations very quickly become mandatory when organizations buy their “commissions” and show themselves inadequate, so use the power of government to prevent competition. And they are going to be inadequate because they have the extra cost of bribing the politicians and civil service. All it takes is one fund outside the government mandate to do something crazy and the government will find this as justification for locking it down, “for our own protection”.
I have heard they have a better system in Australia, but I don’t know much about it.
Can longstanding “historical realities” be reversed – well yes they can.
Most of Hungary was occupied by the Turks for over 150 years – there are few such people there now (unlike Vienna which these forces failed to conquer in 1529 and 1683 and are now conquering via births), in Bulgaria the occupation lasted from the late 1300s to the late 1800s (some 500 years) – but was eventually defeated, although at terrible cost – see Gladstone’s speeches on this subject.
In Spain in the early 700s Pelagius, in his mountain stronghold, refused to accept to defeat – the fighting would go on for “as long as it takes” to defeat the forces of Islam.
It took 700 years – seven centuries. As for the lie of peaceful, tolerant, Islamic Spain – see “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise” – Jihad was declared every year (just as the Spartans had formally declared war on the Helots – every year) and was acted upon.
For the Jews it was even longer – the Emperor Hadrian drove out the Jews renaming Judea “Palestine” (he choose that name as an insult) – there were various efforts over the centuries to return, always ending in massacre (like Balin in Moria – Tolkien made no secret of the fact that the Dwarves were inspired by the Jews – both vices and virtues, even the Dwarvish language is based upon Hebrew) – but in modern times Israel was restored. So many centuries of saying “next year in Jerusalem”.
“And if this effort ends in massacre as the previous efforts did?” – well then as the old French “Flashing Blade” had it, “it is better to have fought and lost, than not to have fought at all” for all men die, seeking to avoid death at the price of honour, does NOT avoid death – such people die anyway, as everyone does.
As long as family structure is strong – married husbands and wives with the women (the wives) giving birth (high fertility is essential) and raising children and being the Queen of the home, as Aristotle maintained in opposition to the madness of Plato, and as long as people (men and women) keep their beliefs strong in their hearts – never accepting defeat, then hope does not die.
Not even for England – which is not dead till people give up.
Fraser Orr.
Few nations are honest about government welfare for the old – there is normally a pretense of “national insurance” even though there are no “investments” and NEVER WERE.
It is a Chain Letter, Pyramid Scheme, or “Ponzi Scheme” – but it just upsets people to tell them that, indeed they become angry “but I paid into the system” – as if “the system” exists, or ever did exist.
Denmark is an exception (and there are others) – there is no lie about “National Insurance”, welfare for the old “pensions” is paid for from income tax, as it is in some other countries, not from a different tax called “National Insurance” even though it is in no way insurance.
Australia is like New Zealand – only more so.
It has very large natural resources in relation to its relatively small population.
Britain does not – Britain is horribly over populated in relation to its farm land and natural resources.
This is why the future of Australia (and New Zealand) will be a lot less cruel than the future of the United Kingdom.
In Britain we hear a lot about a “service economy” – as if Credit Bubble antics were an economy.
In spite of his very real faults, President Trump does at least know what an economy is – and what an economy is not.
No one with any influence in Britain has a clue about this basic matter.
Sadly true.
Martin – yes “mandatory” means compulsory, a tax.
Just a tax paid to corporations (corporations backed by the government – they depend on the government and are joined at the hip with it) rather than directly to the government.
As for the institutes down in London downplaying the harm done by mass immigration, and pretending that money-from-nothing (“money” that just appears – as if by magic) is just fine.
I have given up on them – they are not going to start telling the truth now, their corporate funding would dry up if they started to tell the truth.
The “free market historians” (there are some historians who CLAIM to be free market) are much the same.
For example, they will not praise Napoleon for restoring gold coinage (a real achievement – ending the paper money inflation of the Revolution) – they praise him for “creating the Bank of France” as if creating a piece of bureaucracy was an achievement.
1. All dwelling structures and/or dwelling units must be owned by named persons, not by corporations or other legal entities.
2. No person may own more than five structures which contain dwelling units.
3. No person may own more than twelve dwelling units in structures which he does not own.
4. No person may have a security interest in more than the totals described in 2 and 3 above.
Fiddle with the numbers until problem solved.
Historians of the United States do not praise President Grant for ending the Income Tax (it did not return for 40 years) – they praise him for “being sympathetic to the idea of a Civil Service” (created some years after his time) – as if people with power should neither be elected, nor appointed (and subject to dismissal) by people who are elected – opposition to the creation of a Civil Service is about the only matter of policy that Disraeli was correct about, yet modern historians think it was a wonderful idea.
The same historians who think “laissez faire” was practiced in Ireland in the 1840s, when what was actually practiced was crushing taxation. From the start of the 19th century Ireland was used as lab for statist experiments – national (armed) police force, system of state schools (from the 1830s – no such system existed in England and Wales till the 1870s), Poor Law tax from 1838 – and in the late 1840s drag down areas of Ireland that were NOT bankrupt to pay for statist failure in areas that were bankrupt – so that all of Ireland was smashed (a quarter of the population either dying or fleeing the country). Anyone who calls all this “laissez faire” should have their words turn to ashes in their mouth and choke them.
Or the historians who think that the squalid thief Franklin Roosevelt, who stole all monetary gold (by threat of violence) and violated all contracts, public and private, in order to aid his Credit Bubble banker friends (only those bankers who supported him – other banks were allowed to fail) was a “good President”, even a “good man” – in spite of his indifference to the holocaust, and his admiration for Stalin (in the 1930s) – knowing full well that millions of human beings were dying in the Soviet Union.
In 1912 – Johnson County Tennessee and Jackson County Kentucky supported “Bull Moose” Theodore Roosevelt against the Republican Party – they were prepared to give statist ideas a go. Do not mistake me – the Progressive ideas of “Teddy” Roosevelt were wrong – but he-himself was a decent man, honourable.
But in 1936 these two counties were the most ANTI Franklin Roosevelt counties in the United States, people there understood that not only the ideas of Cousin Franklin were wrong – he was wrong in-himself, he was just no-good.
Fraser Orr – Canada should be in the position of Australia and New Zealand, it has lots of farmland and natural resources in relation to its population.
However, he government of Canada is very bad (the Australian government is bad – but not as bad as the Canadian government) – committed to the terrible evil that is the “International Community” and its Collectivist (Corporate State) plans.
Rather than blame “Trump” Canadian Conservatives should work towards the secession of Alberta and other Provinces, they do not have to join the United States, and they can keep King Charles as head of state – should they wish to do that.
It must be stressed that Mark Carney and the rest of the establishment care nothing for Canada, indeed they would be horrified if it followed an independent policy.
Their loyalty is to the International Community – to its Collectivist project. They are happy to see the Canadian people, Candadian culture and history, destroyed.
I like the philosophy of freedom and self reliance rather than state dependency.
What i don’t like is this myopic rubbish regarding housing. I believe people should own their own homes and have assets. The housing market is massively under supplied because of mass immigration. I’ve come to realise I’m pretty much conservative. I don’t want massive house building projects. I don’t want 10 million immigrants in my country. I want my countries culture and character to remain.
I live in the Test Valley. I read that central government want 17 thousand more houses built. The population of Hampshire has risen by around 500 thousand in not a lot of years. I want an end to this destruction.
Sort of.
Presently, there are roughly $40,000,000,000,000.00 – forty trillion dollars – sitting in USA qualified accounts, awaiting timed distribution to their oldster owners.
The gov has been salivating over this untapped pile of gold for decades. From plans to beef up taxation of the proceeds of these funds, to an actual wealth tax on the balances, I do not expect that “we” will continue to own them in the way that we think we own them.
Government-directed investment of such funds is the closest thing to outright confiscation they could manage without revolt. If the gov is telling me that my qualified-fund assets must be invested in The Barack Fund – which will invest in All Things Woke – then they will finally control that $40T part of the economy.
Imagine all of our money invested in ESG/DEI-centric corporations, to the detriment of those corps who do not follow woke rules. It would be the ultimate takeover. We will have lost at that point.
First, we should not compare mandatory pension funds to a utopia, but to the politically-feasible alternatives, such as government pension funds, or government welfare for the old.
About the risk of pension funds failing in a stock market collapse: I am less worried about that, than i am about a sovereign-debt crisis that leaves the government unable to pay pensions, as happened in Greece.
Certainly, governments will not allow government-approved pension funds to fail — and i do not think that they should.
But when a government needs to rescue a pension fund, it should inflict severe pain on the managers that ruined the pension fund. I am talking about stripping the managers, and their spouses, children, and grandchildren of all assets: homes, investments, pensions, you name it. Let them live in homeless shelters.
Let that happen a few times, and managers will learn the lesson.
Snorri – there is little real distinction between the government and the vast “partner corporations”, they are joined at the hip. The officials and corporate managers are much the same – went to the same universities, go to the same conferences, push the same policies.
As for money – it is no longer gold or silver or any commodity, it is simply fiat (edict – whim). The Western practice of creating this “money” from nothing and then lending it out (via the Central Bank) to favoured banks and other corporations, and borrowing it back again at a higher rate of interest, is utterly insane.
It creates both inflation and a massive national debt (which you mention in the case of Greece) creating this “money” and spending it would create no more inflation than creating the money from nothing, lending it out and borrowing it back again.
Do-not-mistake-me – I do NOT support fiat money, but if we have fiat money there is no justification for a “national debt” and so no excuse for a “sovereign-debt crises”. For example, there is no justification for the American government wasting over a TRILLION Dollars a year servicing the national debt.
Greece should not have joined the Euro and neither should Bulgaria (the people out on the streets in Bulgaria today opposing joining the Euro are correct), policy should not be for the benefit of “The City”, “Wall Street” or other welfare recipients (for that is what they are) in thousand Pound suits. These “financial people” are NOT Mr J.P. Morgan providing gold (or anything real) to the government.
I repeat – governments are not borrowing gold or silver or anything real, governments borrow fiat money which they themselves create (and then lend out, via the Central Bank, and borrow back – at a higher rate of interest) and that is utterly insane.
As for not fearing a stock market collapse – will you should, because it will happen. At least in Britain (which the original post was about) the economy has no foundation.
It will fall – it is already too late to stop that happening.
Stuart Noyes.
I find it interesting that there was no great influx of people from Latin America to the United States BEFORE government benefits and public services.
If they have not come for the new benefits and public services, why did they not come when these benefits and public services did not exist?
After all the borders were undefended – anyone could walk in, yet (by and large) they did not.
It is much the same with the United Kingdom.
The great influx of immigrants came AFTER, not before, the government benefits and public services.
If they did not come for the benefits and public services – why did they (by and large) NOT arrive before these things were created.
There was some restriction on Jewish emigration from the Russian Empire – my great-grandfather arrived before this bit hard, but no restriction at all on people from the British Empire arriving in Britain.
Anyone in the British Empire could get on a ship and arrive in Britain and have the right to remain.
Yet, contrary to the BBC (their absurd period dramas) and so on, very few people did.
It is almost as if going to a land where there was very little in terms of government benefits and public services did not appeal to them.
Paul,
Not sure what kind of immigration you are referring? Latin American immigration to the us is almost entirely illegal?
Most UK immigration has been legal. Looking at historic data from the past 50 years, net immigration was around 40k a year for decades. That changed with Blair and has never returned to previous levels despite changes in government and obvious public opposition. Conservative in name only governments mostly since 2010.
What changed? What was the legislative situation before Blair compared to now?