This is Monica Perez, and we are back to continue our reading and discussion of Our Enemy, the State, by Albert J. Knox.

And so far, it's my favorite. The favorite thing that we've read so far, it's lovelily, lately written.

And the fundamentals are just fantastic.

They're like a salve for cognitive dissonance in that it's so sensible and logical.

And I love it.

So let us continue.

We are, although this is part five of our series, it is chapter four

called the title given in this copy is Land Monopoly and American Independence. So let's hit it.

After conquest and confiscation have been effected and the state set up,

its first concern is with the land. You know, I think that the question of land ownership is the most interesting fundamental ideological question among any political ideology, is even moral. Very interesting.

The state assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every

landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the state. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the state

distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing

is that by the state's system of land tenure, each original transaction confers two distinct

monopolies, entirely different in their nature in as much as one

concerns the right to labor-made property and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property.

The one is a monopoly of the use value of land and the other a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep

other persons from using the land in question or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive

possession of values accruing from the application of labor to it. Values, that is, which are produced

by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question.

Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property,

values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic

...