Chapter 22. The Non-Human Original Factors of Production
1. General Observations Concerning the Theory of Rent
In the frame of Ricardian economics, the idea of rent was an attempt at a treatment of those problems which modern economics approaches by means of marginal utility analysis.
Ricardo's theory appears rather unsatisfactory when judged from the point of view of present
day insight.
There is no doubt that the method of the subjective value theory is far superior.
Yet the renown of the rent theory is well deserved.
The care bestowed upon its initiation and perfection brought forth fine fruits.
There is no reason for the history of economic thought to feel ashamed of the rent theory.
The fact that land of different quality and fertility, that is, yielding different returns
per unit of input, is valued differently does not pose any special problem to modern economics.
As far as Ricardo's theory refers to the graduation in the valuation and appraisement of pieces
of land, it is completely comprehended in the modern theory of the prices of factors
of production.
It is not the content of the rent theory that is objectionable, but the exceptional position
assigned to it in the complex of the economic system.
Differential rent is a general phenomenon and is not limited to the determination of
the prices of land.
The sophisticated distinction between rents and quasi-rents is spurious.
Land and the services it renders are dealt with in the same way as other factors of production
and their services. Control of a better tool yields rent when compared with the returns
of less suitable tools, which must be utilized on account of the insufficient supply of more
suitable ones. The abler and more zealous worker earns a rent when compared with the
wages earned by his less skillful and less industrious competitors.
The problems which the rent concept was designed to solve were for the most part generated
by the employment of inappropriate terms.
The general notions as used in everyday language and mundane thought were not formed with regard
to the requirements of praxeological and economic investigation.
The early economists were mistaken in adopting them without scruple and hesitation.
Only if one clings naively to general terms such as land or labor is one puzzled by the
question why land and labor are differently valued and appraised.
He who does not allow himself to be fooled by mere words, but looks at a factor's relevance
for the satisfaction of human wants, considers it a matter of course that different services
are valued and appraised differently.
The modern theory of value and prices is not based on the classification of the factors
of production as land, capital and labor.
Its fundamental distinction is between goods of higher and of lower orders, between producers'
goods and consumers' goods.
When it distinguishes within the class of factors of production the original, nature-given
Factors from the Produced Factors of Production, the Intermediary Products, and furthermore
within the class of Original Factors, the Non-Human, External Factors from the Human
Factors, Labor.
It does not break up the uniformity of its reasoning concerning the determination of
the prices of the Factors of Production.
The law controlling the determination of the prices of the Factors of Production is the
The same with all classes and specimens of these factors.
The fact that different services rendered by such factors are valued, appraised and
dealt with in a different way can only amaze people who fail to notice these differences
in serviceableness.
He who is blind to the merits of a painting may consider it strange that collectors should
would pay more for a painting of the Lasquez than for a painting of a less gifted artist.
For the connoisseur, it is self-evident. It does not astonish the farmer that buyers pay
higher prices and tenants higher leases for more fertile land than for less fertile. The
only reason why the old economists were puzzled by this fact was that they operated with a
is a general term, land, that neglects differences in productivity.
The greatest merit of the Ricardian theory of rent is the cognizance of the fact that
the marginal land does not yield any rent.
From this knowledge there is but one step to the discovery of the principle of valuational
subjectivism.
Yet, blinded by the real cost notion, neither the classical economists nor their epigones
took this step.
While the differential rent idea by and large can be adopted by the subjective value theory,
the second rent concept derived from Ricardian economics, namely the residual rent concept,
must be rejected altogether.
This residual claimant idea is based on the notion of real or physical costs that does
does not make any sense in the frame of the modern explanation of the prices of factors
of production.
The reason why the price of Burgundy is higher than that of Chianti is not the higher price
of the vineyards of Burgundy as against those of Tuscany.
The causation is the other way around.
Because people are ready to pay higher prices for Burgundy than for Chianti, wine growers
Profits are ready to pay higher prices for the vineyards of Burgundy than for those of
Tuscany.
Profits are not a share left over when all costs of production have been paid.
In the evenly rotating economy, such a surplus of the prices of products over and above costs
could never appear.
In the changing economy, differences between the prices of the products and the sum of
One of the prices that the entrepreneur has expended for the purchase of the complementary
factors of production, plus interest on the capital invested, can appear in either direction,
that is, either as profit or as loss.
These differences are caused by changes which arise in the prices of the products in the
time interval.
He who succeeds better than others in anticipating these changes in time and acts accordingly
reaps profits. He who fails in his endeavors to adjust his entrepreneurial ventures to
the future state of the market is penalized by losses.
The main deficiency of Ricardian economics was that it was a theory of the distribution
of a total product of a nation's joint efforts. Like the other champions of classical economics,
Mises also failed to free himself from the mercantilist image of the Volkswirtschaft.
In his thought, the problem of the determination of prices was subordinated to the problem
of the distribution of wealth.
The customary characterization of his economic philosophy as that of the manufacturing middle
classes of contemporary England misses the point.
These English businessmen of the early 19th century were not interested in the total product
of industry and its distribution.
They were guided by the urge to make profits and to avoid losses.
Classical economics erred when it assigned to land a distinct place in its theoretical
scheme.
Land is, in the economic sense, a factor of production, and the laws determining the formation
One of the prices of land are the same that determine the formation of the prices of other
factors of production.
All peculiarities of the economic teachings concerning land refer to some peculiarities
of the data involved.
2.
The Time Factor in Land Utilization
The starting point of the economic teachings concerning land is the distinction between
and two classes of original factors of production, namely human and non-human factors.
As the utilization of the non-human factors is, as a rule, connected with the power to
utilize a piece of the earth, we speak of land when referring to them.
Legal provisions concerning the separation of the right of hunting, fishing and extracting
In dealing with the economic problems of land, that is, the non-human original factors of
production, one must neatly separate the praxeological point of view from the cosmological point
of view.
It may make good sense for cosmology and its study of cosmic events to speak of permanency
and of the conservation of mass and energy.
If one compares the orbit within which human action is able to affect the natural environmental
conditions of human life with the operation of natural entities, it is permissible to
to call the natural powers indestructible and permanent, or more precisely, safe against
destruction by human action.
For the great periods of time to which cosmology refers, soil erosion, in the broadest sense
of the term, of such an intensity as can be affected by human interference, is of no importance.
Nobody knows today whether or not cosmic changes will, in millions of years, transform deserts
and barren soil into land that, from the point of view of our present-day knowledge, will
have to be described as extremely fertile and the most luxuriant tropical gardens into
sterile land.
Precisely because nobody can anticipate such changes, nor venture to influence the cosmic
The natural sciences may assert that those powers of the soil that condition its serviceableness
Facts for Forestry, Cattle Breeding, Agriculture and Water Utilization Regenerate Themselves
Periodically It may be true that even human endeavors deliberately
directed toward the utmost devastation of the productive capacity of the earth's crust
could at best succeed only with regard to small parts of it.
But these facts do not strictly count for human action.
The periodical regeneration of the soil's productive powers is not a rigid datum that
would face man with a uniquely determined situation.
It is possible to use the soil in such a way that this regeneration is slowed down and
postponed, or the soil's productive power either vanishes altogether for a definite
Period of Time, or can only be restored by means of a considerable input of capital and
labor.
In dealing with the soil, man has to choose between various methods different from one
another with regard to the preservation and regeneration of its productive power.
No less than in any other branch of production, the time factor enters into the conduct of
of Hunting, Fishing, Grazing, Cattle Breeding, Plant Growing, Lumbering and Water Utilization.
Here too, man must choose between satisfaction in nearer and in more remote periods of the
future.
Here too, the phenomenon of originary interest, entailed in every human action, plays its
paramount role.
There are institutional conditions that cause the persons involved to prefer satisfaction
in the nearer future, and to disregard entirely or almost entirely satisfaction in the more
distant future.
If the soil is on the one hand not owned by individual proprietors, and on the other
hand all or certain people favored by special privilege or by the actual state of affairs
are free to make use of it temporarily for their own benefit.
No heed is paid to the future.
The same is the case when the proprietor expects that he will be expropriated in a not too
distant future.
In both cases the actors are exclusively intent upon squeezing out as much as possible for
their immediate advantage.
They do not concern themselves about the temporarily more remote consequences of their methods
of Exploitation, Tomorrow does not count for them.
The history of lumbering, hunting and fishing provides plenty of illustrative experience,
but many examples can also be found in other branches of soil utilization.
From the point of view of the natural sciences, the maintenance of capital goods and the preservation
of the powers of the soil belong to two entirely different categories.
The produced factors of production perish sooner or later entirely in the pursuit of
production processes, and piecemeal are transformed into consumers' goods, which are eventually
consumed.
If one does not want to make the results of past saving and capital accumulation disappear,
one must, apart from consumers' goods, also produce that amount of capital goods which
which is needed for the replacement of those worn out.
If one were to neglect this, one would finally consume, as it were, the capital goods.
One would sacrifice the future to the present.
One would live in luxury today and be in want later.
But, it is often said, it is different with the powers of land.
They cannot be consumed.
Such a statement is meaningful, however, only from the point of view of geology.
But from the geological point of view, one could or should no less deny that factory
equipment or a railroad can be eaten up.
The gravel and stones of a railroad substructure and the iron and steel of the rails, bridges,
cars and engines do not perish in a cosmic sense.
Only from the praxeological point of view is it permissible to speak of the consumption,
the eating up, of a tool, a railroad, or a steel mill.
In the same economic sense we speak of the consumption of the productive powers of the
soil.
In forestry, agriculture and water utilization, these powers are dealt with in the same way
as other factors of production.
With regard to the powers of the soil, too, the actors must choose between processes of
production which render higher output at the expense of productivity in later periods,
and processes which do not impair future physical productivity.
It is possible to extract so much from the soil that its later utilization will render
Smaller Returns per Unit of the Quantities of Capital and Labor Employed, or Practically
No Returns at All.
It is true that there are physical limits to the devastating powers of man.
These limits are sooner reached in lumbering, hunting and fishing than in tilling the soil.
But this fact results only in a quantitative, not in a qualitative difference between capital
Natural Decumulation and Soil Erosion.
Ricardo calls the powers of the soil original and indestructible.
However, modern economics must stress the point that valuation and appraisement do not
differentiate between original and produced factors of production, and that the cosmological
indestructibility of mass and energy, whatever it may mean, does not enjoin upon land utilization
A character radically different from other branches of production.
3.
The Submarginal Land
The services a definite piece of land can render in a definite period of time are limited.
If they were unlimited, men would not consider land a factor of production and an economic
good.
However, the quantity of soil available is so vast, nature is so prodigal, that land
is still abundant.
Therefore, only the most productive pieces of land are utilized.
There is land which people consider, either with regard to its physical productivity or
with regard to its location, as too poor to be worth cultivating.
Consequently, the marginal soil, that is, the poorest soil cultivated, yields no rent in the Ricardian sense.
There are areas in which practically every corner is cultivated or otherwise utilized,
but this is the outcome of institutional conditions, barring the inhabitants of these regions from access to more fertile, unused soil.
Submarginal land would be considered entirely worthless if one were not to appraise it positively in anticipation of its being utilized in later days.
The appraisal of a piece of soil must not be confused with the appraisal of the improvements, that is, the irremovable and inconvertible results of the investment of capital and labor
that facilitate its utilization and raise future outputs per unit of current future inputs.
The fact that the market economy does not have a more ample supply of agricultural products
is caused by the scarcity of capital and labor, not by a scarcity of cultivable land.
An increase in the surface of land available would, other things being equal,
will increase the supply of cereals and meat only if the additional land's fertility exceeded
that of the marginal land already previously cultivated.
On the other hand, the supply of agricultural products would be increased by any increase
in the amount of labor and capital available, provided the consumers do not consider another
Another employment of the additional amount of capital and labor more appropriate to fill
their most urgent wants.
These observations, of course, refer only to conditions in which there are no institutional
barriers to the mobility of capital and labor.
The useful mineral substances contained in the soil are limited in quantity.
It is true that some of them are the outgrowth of natural processes which are still going
on and increasing the existing deposits.
However, the slowness and length of these processes makes them insignificant for human
action.
Man must take into account that the available deposits of these minerals are limited.
Every single mine or oil source is exhaustible.
Many of them are already exhausted.
We may hope that new deposits will be discovered and that technological procedures will be
invented which will make it possible to utilize deposits which today cannot be exploited at
all or only at unreasonable costs.
We may also assume that the further progress of technological knowledge will enable later
generations to utilize substances which cannot be utilized today.
But all these things do not matter for the present-day conduct of mining and oil drilling.
The deposits of mineral substances and their exploitation are not characterized by features
which would give a particular mark to human action dealing with them.
For catallactics, the distinction between soil used in agriculture and that used in
mining is merely a distinction of data.
Although the available quantities of these mineral substances are limited, and although
we may academically concern ourselves with the possibility that they will be entirely
exhausted one day, acting men do not consider these deposits rigidly limited.
Their activities take into account the fact that definite mines and wells will become
are some exhausted, but they do not pay heed to the fact that, at an unknown later date,
all the deposits of certain minerals may come to an end.
For to present-day action the supply of these substances appears to be so abundant that
one does not venture to exploit all their deposits to the full extent which the state
of technological knowledge permits.
The mines are utilized only as far as there is no more urgent employment available for
the required quantities of capital and labor.
There are, therefore, sub-marginal deposits that are not utilized at all.
In every mine operated, the extent of the production is determined by the relation between
the prices of the products and those of the required nonspecific factors of production.
4. The Land as Standing Room
The employment of land for the location of human residences, workshops and means of transportation
withdraws pieces of soil from other employments. The particular place which older theories
attributed to urban site rent need not here concern us. It is not especially noteworthy
The theory that people pay higher prices for land they value more for housing than for
land which they value less.
It is a matter of fact that for workshops, warehouses and railroad yards people prefer
locations which reduce costs of transportation and that they are ready to pay higher prices
for such land in accordance with the economies expected.
It is also used for pleasure grounds and gardens, for parks, and for the enjoyment of the grandeur
and beauty of nature.
With the development of the love of nature, this very characteristic feature of bourgeois
mentality, the demand for such enjoyments increased enormously.
The soil of the high mountain chains, once merely considered a barren dreariness of rocks
and to consider them his own, as it were.
The nominal owner does not derive any advantage from the satisfaction his property gives to the visitors.
But this does not alter the fact that this land serves human well-being and is appreciated accordingly.
The ground is subject to an easement that entitles everybody to pass along and to camp on it.
As no other utilization of the area concerned is possible, this servitude completely exhausts all the advantages the proprietor could reap from his ownership.
Since the particular services which these rocks and glaciers can render are practically inexhaustible,
do not wear out and do not require any input of capital and labor for their conservation,
This arrangement does not bring about those consequences which appeared wherever it was applied to lumbering, hunting and fishing grounds.
If, in the neighborhood of these mountain chains, the space available for the construction of shelters, hotels and means of transportation,
for example, rack railroads, is limited, the owners of these scarce pieces of soil can sell or rent them on more propitious terms,
and thus divert to themselves a part of the advantages the tourists reap from the free accessibility of the peaks.
If this is not the case, the tourists enjoy all these advantages gratuitously.
5. The Prices of Land
In the imaginary construction of the evenly rotating economy,
economy, buying and selling of the services of definite pieces of land does not differ
at all from buying and selling the services of other factors of production.
All these factors are appraised according to the services they will render in various
periods of the future, due allowance being made for time preference.
For the marginal land, and of course for the sub-marginal land, no price is paid at all.
Bearing land, that is, land that, compared with the marginal land, bears a higher output
per unit of input of capital and labor, is appraised in accordance with the degree of
its superiority.
Its price is the sum of all its future rents, each of them discounted at the rate of originary
interest.
There is need to remember again that the imaginary construction of the evenly rotating economy
cannot be carried consistently to its ultimate logical consequences.
With regard to the problems of land, one must stress two points.
First, that in the frame of this imaginary construction, characterized by the absence
of changes in the conduct of affairs, there is no room for the buying and selling of land.
Second, that in order to integrate into this construction mining and oil drilling, we must
must ascribe to the mines and oil wells a permanent character, and must disregard the
possibility that any of the operated mines and wells could be exhausted, or even undergo
a change in the quantity of output or of current input required.
In the changing economy, people buying and selling land take due account of expected
changes in the market prices for the services rendered by the soil.
Of course, they may err in their expectations, but this is another thing.
They try to anticipate to the best of their abilities future events that may alter the
market data, and they act in accordance with these opinions.
If they believe that the annual net yield of the piece of land concerned will rise,
The price will be higher than it would have been in the absence of such expectations.
This is, for instance, the case with suburban land in the neighborhood of cities growing
in population, or with forests and arable land in countries in which pressure groups
are likely to succeed in raising, by means of tariffs, the prices of timber and cereals.
On the other hand, fears concerning the total or partial confiscation of the net yield of
land tend to lower the prices of land.
In everyday business language, people speak of the capitalization of the rent and observe
that the rate of capitalization is different with different classes of land and varies
even within the same class with different pieces of soil.
This terminology is rather inexpedient as it misrepresents the nature of the process.
In the same way in which buyers and sellers of land take into account anticipated future
events that will reduce the net return, they deal with taxes.
Taxes levied upon land reduce its market price to the extent of the discounted amount of
their future burden.
The introduction of a new tax of this kind, which is likely not to be abolished, results
in an immediate drop in the market price of the pieces of land concerned.
This is the phenomenon that the theory of taxation calls amortization of taxes.
In many countries, the owners of land, or of certain estates, enjoyed special political
legal privileges, or a great social prestige.
Such institutions, too, can play a role in the determination of the prices of land.
The Myth of the Soil
Romanticists condemn the economic theories concerning land for their utilitarian narrow-mindedness.
Economists, they say, look upon land from the point of view of the callous speculator
who degrades all eternal values to terms of money and profit.
Yet, the glebe is much more than a mere factor of production.
It is the inexhaustible source of human energy and human life.
Agriculture is not simply one branch of production among many other branches.
It is the only natural and respectable activity of man, the only dignified condition of a
really human existence.
It is iniquitous to judge it merely with regard to the net returns to be squeezed out of the
soil.
The soil not only bears the fruits that nourish our body, it produces first of all the moral
and spiritual forces of civilization.
The cities, the processing industries and commerce are phenomena of depravity and decay.
Their existence is parasitic.
They destroy what the plowmen must create again and again.
Thousands of years ago, when fishing and hunting tribesmen began to cultivate the soil,
romantic reverie was unknown.
But if there had lived romanticists in those ages, they would have eulogized the lofty
moral values of the hunt, and would have stigmatized soil cultivation as a phenomenon of depravity.
They would have reproached the ploughman for desecrating the soil that the gods had given
to man as a hunting ground, and for degrading it to a means of production.
In the pre-Romantic ages, in his actions, no one considered the soil as anything other
than a source of human well-being, a means to promote welfare.
The magic rites and observances concerning the soil aimed at nothing else than improvement
of the Soil's Fertility and Increase in the Quantity of Fruits to be Harvested.
These people did not seek the Unio Mystica with the mysterious powers and forces hidden
in the soil.
All they aimed at was bigger and better crops.
They resorted to magic rituals and adjurations because, in their opinion, this was the most
efficient method of attaining the end sought.
Their sophisticated progeny aired when they interpreted these ceremonies from an idealistic
point of view.
A real peasant does not indulge in ecstatic babble about the soil and its mysterious powers.
For him, land is a factor of production, not an object of sentimental emotions.
He covets more land because he desires to increase his income and to improve his standard
of living.
Cities buy and sell land and mortgage it.
They sell the produce of land and become very indignant if the prices are not as high as
they want them to be.
Love of nature and appreciation of the beauties of the landscape were foreign to the rural
population.
The inhabitants of the cities brought them to the countryside.
It was the city dwellers who began to appreciate the land as nature, while the countrymen valued
it only from the point of view of its productivity for hunting, lumbering, crop raising and
cattle breeding.
From time immemorial the rocks and glaciers of the Alps were merely wasteland in the eyes
of the mountaineers.
Only when the townsfolk ventured to climb the peaks and brought money into the valleys
did they change their minds.
The pioneers of mountain climbing and skiing were ridiculed by the indigenous population
until they found out that they could derive gain from this eccentricity.
Not shepherds, but sophisticated aristocrats and city dwellers were the authors of bucolic
poetry.
Daphnis and Chloe are creations of fancies far removed from earthly concerns.
No less removed from the soil is the modern political myth of the soil.
It did not blossom from the moss of the forests and the loam of the fields, but from the pavements
of the cities and the carpets of the salons.
The farmers make use of it because they find it a practical means of obtaining political
Federal Privileges, which raise the prices of their products and of their farms.