Monday, 20 July 2020

15. NOT ALL LIVES MATTER...YET

#compassioninpolitics #publicinterest #ethics #BuildBackBetter

#landvaluetaxation #socialjustice #economicjustice  #communityledhousing





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User:Thepeoplesartist&action=edit&redlink=1
During the Covid19 lockdown, I have been reflecting on the work of the surveying profession’s sustainable development pioneers and the challenge in the Political Economy essay by Tony Mulhall in my professional body, the RICS’
Land Journal Jan-Feb 2020 issue on Land Rationing. He asserted that everything we do with land must have an ethical dimension. This idea would probably not be the first to spring to mind if you asked members of the public what they think surveyors do. Readers of my earlier blogs on the findings of my Churchill Fellowship research, Property, Justice and Reason, will understand why I have returned to Winston Churchill’s unique insights on the connection between land use and ownership and social justice: sadly so unique that no other politician in the last hundred years has come close to making the same connections…not even those who claim him as a role model and draw inspiration from his political beliefs.

   
A shorter version of this blog entitled  The role of the surveyor in the ethics of land use” appears in the October issue of the RICS Land Journal (HERE)

I promise not to mention ‘the new normal’ more than twice. You are probably weary of reading helpful suggestions about what our post-Covid19 world should look like. However, the imperative to work within a new professional and political paradigm has been staring us in the face since at least the beginning of the century.

The work of the RICS Sustainability Working Group and EU Advisory Group on Sustainable Property Investment and Management from the early 2000s and their perceptions of the climate change challenges then remain enduringly relevant to our understanding of what still needs to be done in response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Climate Emergency, Covid19, and the prospect of endemic change and uncertainty. They described how professional ethics must shape the content of our work through the social, environmental and economic impact of what we do, and not just our conduct: not bribing people to win work, or running away with clients’ money.

Hairdressers being serious about sustainability? 
According to Professor Jeremy Till, Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of the Arts in his exploration of professional codes of conduct: “One of the most commonly made mistakes is to confuse professional propriety with an ethical position, as if acting in accordance with the codes of professional conduct will ensure ethical behaviour…standards my hairdresser could meet. Simply meeting the requirements of a code of conduct that serves only the client’s or the professional’s interest may be unethical in my terms” [i]

These sustainable development pioneers were responsible for reviving interest in our Royal Charter’s clause “securing the optimal use of land and its associated resources to meet social and economic needs”(3c), framing it as the overarching responsibility that affects the actions of every surveyor, so capturing the essence of sustainable and equitable development. The wisdom of the 1881 phrase ‘social and economic’ makes up for the absence of the modern ‘environmental’.

The political economy, when the Royal Charter was drafted, was founded on substantial investment in public works, faltering first steps towards redistributive fiscal policies, often to enable the development of major infrastructure investments and to promote public health. Surveyors and engineers were indispensable to the task of supporting the development of a thriving economy and a healthier society in a period of dramatic social and economic change; just as we must find new ways to do the same now. The Royal Charter did not equivocate or suggest ‘social-if-there’s-anything-left-over-after-economic-needs-have-been-met’; and explicitly recognised the interdependency between the public and private interests in a well-working society and economy, and thus the rationality of the ‘social and economic’ requirement.

Responding to change
Like our 19th Century founders, we must be thoughtful about how change happens. You probably noticed that during lockdown you really didn’t need to wash your hair as often ‘as normal’. Even in London, a 100m away from a trunk road, the air was so clean that we have barely used shampoo since March! The situation and our response were almost instantaneous. As part of lockdown, the UK government found money to house all its street homeless, thus achieving in a matter of days what had been considered ‘too difficult’ over decades. Hopefully, sending those homeless people back onto the streets is now unthinkable.

What of longer term changes to which our ‘response’ is a gradual almost unconscious process of normalisation that might nevertheless have quite significant consequences for good or ill? Every surveyor knows the meaning of ‘best consideration reasonably obtainable’ as the basis for determining property values. Like that Clause 3c of the Royal Charter, ‘reasonably’ implies rationality, and rationality relies on evidence; but what happens when land transactions, and thus values, no longer depend on evidence…depart from rationality?

Recently, I have been visiting a child health charity that I helped establish in SE Asia. Talking with the chair of the charity about some of the new developments that I had seen, I suggested they did not seem to be doing much positive for the social, economic or environmental fabric of the cities I had visited. Although not a surveyor, he heads the property advice business of one of the region’s long established trading houses. Q. ‘Who are the investors?’…A. ‘You really don’t want to know! There is just so much free capital in the world just waiting for any opportunity to put money into property…the sure fire ‘bet’...something that in more normal times people would not be doing…especially from people who really understand the risks associated with property,’Oh, the usual roster of bad guys? Oligarchs, money launderers, exploiters of natural resources etc?’ … ‘Exactly, and the real concern is that they are spending money on what I would call an entirely irrational basis. They don’t understand the urban context, and they are not taking any advice based on market evidence. This really started back in the mid-80s with the deregulation of capital, but now we are at ‘peak whim’. They do it because they can.’ … ‘But they have surveying firms advising them in these transactions?’…Shooting eyebrows, a shrug of the shoulders…we are interrupted by others at the charity reception.

Above...site for advertising hoardings but also 
an area cleared of an existing township and lying
 empty for a decade - Right...18 months later


















The way we talk about land use suggests that professional attitudes, as they respond to change, can easily dilute the rational connection between social and economic need, and thus the integrity of the evidence used to rationalise investment decisions and determine values - as these ‘overheard in everyday work’ conversations also suggest:

  •         Surveyor 1: “Busy?”  Surveyor 2: “BUSY??? Soooo busy! Just rushed off my feet with viability appraisals for developers to avoid providing any affordable housing.” The RICS has spent considerable time reshaping the Financial Viability in Planning guidance, in a less than perfect public policy environment. Ensuring that surveyors act in the public interest in this kind of work has been a major pre-occupation. Their efforts have not been helped by surveyors and planners openly advertising how to minimise or avoid public policy obligations: even suggesting their clients can ‘go on a nice holiday!’ with the money they have saved, latterly changed to ‘now you can start your project!’
  •      "I think you misunderstand what is going on here. Our job is to get planning for our client, promise as little as possible (at planning), and sell the client’s land for as much as possible.” In countering proposals for sustainable development, perhaps this speaker misunderstood the difference between his Land and Planning team’s business model and the intentions of its institutional landowner client determined to promote a truly sustainable urban extension to justify the use of Green Belt land, and to de-risk a 30 year plus investment that would be resilient to future climate change and energy shortage uncertainties.
  •         “We’ll build more sustainable homes, provided people are prepared to pay more.” The logic of that housebuilder’s position is that only the already well off can benefit from sustainable development. This is certainly not the underlying purpose or ethos of sustainable development. It also expects the cost of sustainable development to be externalised from land value, thus exempting both landowners and developer from the ‘burden’ of sustainable development obligations, which then have to be carried by everyone else but them.
  •        “This is a ‘sustainable offer’ (for this land). That is a ‘commercial offer.” There is certainly no recognition of the need to satisfy both social and economic objectives. But, honestly, what on earth does this assertion even mean?   

Good work by chartered town planners and surveyors intent on fulfilling the expectations
of public policy introduced by a democratically elected government in 1981, 
albeit one headed by those well known politicians with suspected Marxist tendencies
Prime Minister Thatcher and Planning Minister Sir George, now Lord Young.


















I use these cases in ethics workshops with mid-career planning and development professionals in London. All the speakers rather miss the point about what is needed to make any settlement work well, both socially and economically, and sustain values over the long term. ‘Fraud against the public interest’ is probably the neatest and most printable reaction I have heard from my students. Next time, their verdict may be more severe, as initial research links higher rates of Covid19 mortality in London to overcrowding, homelessness and poor housing conditions arising from an insufficient supply of affordable housing. Some lives clearly matter less than others… 


Why is ‘sustainable development’ intrinsically ethical? 
I and colleagues have explored this subject extensively in the peer reviewed pages of Building Research & Information (BR&I). [ii] We aimed to capture the dual drivers of public and private interest, with particular emphasis on acting to minimise long term risks arising from climate change or similar global phenomena, and related to insurable risks. The BR&I papers describe practical frameworks for analysing sustainable and equitable development objectives and risks, and the ethical dimension of the choices to be made. 


For now, let’s just look at the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Their ‘motto’ ‘Leave no one behind!’ and the objective of SDG Goal 11. ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ come very close to the definition of ethics offered by sociologist and ethicist the late Prof. Zygmunt Bauman: “Ethics is defined simply and directly as ‘being-for the Other’. To assume an ethical stance means to assume responsibility for the Other”. [iii] This sounds disarmingly simple, and is grounded, of course, in the core principles of most world religions. It also feels like a step into the political domain, and as we know, professionals, especially surveyors, don’t ‘do’ politics. Our job is to provide informed objective and rational advice, and let the politicians take the ethical responsibility for their political choices. We just reflect the markets and the political context within which markets operate; we do not shape them. Really?

We will all have observed the relationships between politicians and scientists around the world over the ‘best’ courses of action to tackle Covid19. Professionals advise: politicians decide. Yes? However, the over/mis-use of the phrase ‘following the science’ has probably undermined its power to suggest objective, simple and rational answers. We now understand that ‘the science’, just like any other body of technical knowledge and expertise, deals in complexity, uncertainty and the need to exercise both professional and political judgement, however much both politicians and professionals may wish otherwise.

Science has the answers to everything?
Politicians around the world have been making choices that do aim to balance social and economic priorities, some weighted very differently from others, reflecting the character and circumstances of their political economies. The scientists are certainly providing informed, objective and rational advice. Some are also using their ethical intelligence to speak out when they think the politicians are not serving the wider public interest, by ignoring or misinterpreting their advice…because they must, in the interests of saving lives. There is an ethical imperative to act, even if that means they must enter the political domain. Possibly more important than that, they may fear that if the actions of politicians stray too far from the advice, the public will stop trusting in the science, the expertise and judgement of scientists, and will thus cease to respect and trust politicians too. However great the damage thus inflicted on the political economy, it can at least be mitigated, in many countries, as politicians rise and fall at the ballot box. Professionals, on the other hand, have an enduring responsibility to the public interest to use their knowledge, skill and judgement in ways that must transcend political tenures.

Covid19 cannot be written off as exceptional
The political approach to Covid19 is not just about the social need to safeguard national health and save life. Balancing the social need with safeguarding the economy are the subjects around which ‘the science’ and ethical and political intelligence must be deployed. That is not so different in scope from the ownership and use of land. What we do to, on and with land, encompasses everything that enables us to survive, do business and hopefully live well.

Surveyors may face the same challenges as the scientists. Take the example of community land held under customary forms of ownership, estimated by Peter Veit, in the RICS Land Journal (Land Journal May-June 2019 Land Rights Conflict Avoidance), to be about 50% of all land globally. He describes how community land can be acquired or seized by force by governments or corporations without the knowledge, approval or consent of communities, and often without paying fair or any compensation. Apart from the loss of life often involved, ‘this raises serious human rights issues as community land is a primary source of income and livelihood, establishes social identity and security, has cultural and spiritual significance, and generates significant social, economic, and environmental benefits for society.’ 

Never say 'I'd kill for a cup of coffee'
again...you probably already have

These are characteristics of place and personal identity that shape and affect us all. So, community land is not an exotic issue whose effects are limited to remote places and people, with not much connection to more general professional practice, as previously discussed in the RICS Land Journal (Land Journal March-April 2017 Right to Land). If you want some idea of just how closely we are connected to those who used to live self-sufficiently and well on communally owned land, read this story about a 19th century Englishman, James Hill (not related), who prototyped modern systems of coffee production, by depriving native El Salvadoreans of their land and ability to feed themselves, so that hunger drove them to work for him: so don’t expect to enjoy your ‘coffee break’ – as you will learn another but more subtle exploitation of labour – ever again.


In Bauman’s definition, these are the ‘Others’ who demand the same respect and ethical consideration, whether they live in tropical rain forests (which might yet harbour valuable ingredients for a Covid19 vaccine or other scientific discoveries)...or could and should have been living in the affordable housing which developers, landowners and politicians have chosen not to provide...or on council housing estates in London, where residents have only recently had the right to a ballot restored to them to decide the future of their communities affected by regeneration and the attention of footloose global capital. Each of these situations is driven by the same flows of ‘free capital’ as observed in SE Asia. [iv]

If surveyors play such a critical guardian role for society for the use of land, then the surveyor must also have both the right and a duty to challenge what 'the client', 'the market' or politicians may ask for.  This must be at the level of specific projects and assignments, and at a thought leadership level about the remit of the profession and its role in shaping and sustaining the political economy within which we all have to survive and thrive.

Jeremy Till's answer to the two obvious criticisms that the client pays, so is entitled to get what they want, and that “the whole idea of wider responsibilities smacks of idealism”, is that social values and ethical choices are inherent in all professional work: “Just to ignore them does not mean that they will go away. Better to face up to them, and…deal with the tension between the values and priorities attached to the professional codes and implicit in social ethics […] Not to engage with the dirty reality of short term demands is as much a form of escape as the positing of utopian proposals of a harmonious ethic.”  [v]  

The key words here are 'it did not seem strange'...just as the four
 'overheard' sayings are quite normal - what some surveyors say
without thinking they were strange or damaging other people
Indeed, the kind of idealism of some politicians, which imagines that we can ignore selective aspects of the science around Covid19 without consequences, has already been shown to have been deadly for thousands of citizens around the world, and thus failing to deal with the world as it is. That would be irrational, and as with the avoidance of providing public policy requirements for affordable housing, irrationality is so easily normalised that it also becomes easy and normal to accept that some lives matter much less than others.  





The ‘new normal’
I’ve kept my promise, but when I mentioned it the first time, I may have implied that it was since at least the beginning of the 21st Century that ‘the imperative to work within a new professional paradigm has been openly staring us in the face’. I actually meant the 20th Century.

A young Winston Churchill in 1910
Leading UK politicians in the reforming Liberal government, in the lead up to World War I, would have been familiar with the words of the Royal Charter. Just two decades after it was adopted, one of them was arguing in the two General Election campaigns of 1910 that the strength of the economy and the welfare of all citizens depended on stable and fair land markets, and that inequitable wealth creation though inflation and speculation in land prices undermined basic freedoms: “The civilisation of modern States is largely based upon respect for the rights of private property… that respect cannot be secured unless property is associated in the minds of the great mass of the people with ideas of justice and of reason…The best way to make private property secure and respected is to bring the processes by which it is gained into harmony with the general interests of the public.” [vi]


Just as the scientists have been trying to do for Covid19, he recognised that the success of any political economy depends wholly on the public’s trust and respect for the basis of rationality and justice that underpins political decision-making and the supporting professional advice: in this case in relation to property ownership and thus land use decisions. The wise politician? Winston Churchill.

But if it is possible to lose the public interest thread that runs between evidence, rationality and value, how will we surveyors now fulfil the task of optimising the use of land to meet social and economic need, in the ‘new normal’, and as the world changes rapidly about us? And how, in practical terms, can we demonstrate our accountability to the public whose interests we serve, and whose trust and respect we must retain, to show that all lives matter.

During lockdown, hairdresser Joshua Coombes 
has been seeking out 'the Other'
https://www.pointsoflight.gov.uk/do-something-for-nothing/ 
Till’s hairdresser can have the final word, or rather my hairdresser can. When I told him about Till’s ethical hairdresser, he rushed to show me his membership card for the Fellowship for British Hairdressers whose motto is ‘Strength through quality’. ‘Makes us sound like bridge builders, but like you, we will only survive if the public value what we do because what we do is good.’…and as we come to the end of lockdown, the public has been considerably more interested in visiting their hairdresser than in hiring a surveyor.




[i] J. Till (2009) Chapter ‘Imperfect Ethics’ in ‘Architecture Depends’ MIT http://www.jeremytill.net/architecture-depends
[ii] S. Hill & D. Lorenz (2011) Rethinking professionalism: guardianship of land and resources. Building Research & Information, Vol 39(3), pp314–319. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09613218.2011.563051 and S. Hill, D. Lorenz, P. Dent & T. Lützkendorf (2013): Professionalism and ethics in a changing economy, Building Research & Information, Vol 41:1, pp8-27: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2013.736201 and ditto in D. Lorenz, P. Dent & T. Kauko (Eds) (2017) Value in a Changing Built Environment, Wiley-Blackwell https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Value+in+a+Changing+Built+Environment-p-9781444334760
[iii] Z. Bauman (1993), Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford
[iv] B Colenutt (2020) The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis : Bristol University Press & Policy Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvzsmcrm
[v] J. Till (2009) ibid
[vi] Quote (with my emphases) is taken from Churchill’s speech on “The People’s Land” is contained in Section 4:
W.S. Churchill (1909) The People’s Rights, Hodder & Stoughton and also available here:
http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Churchill_TPL.html
. Further discussion in S. Hill (2015) Property, Justice and Reason, Winston Churchill Memorial Trust https://independent.academia.edu/StephenHill3

Wednesday, 28 November 2018



14. REVOLTING BABYBOOMERS!
28th November 2018

It’s all our fault…I and my fellow babyboomers haven’t been building the homes we need…for decades.

So said our latest Housing Minister, Kit Malthouse, at a recent housing industry annual lunch….and he was roundly applauded for this perceptive and courageous critique of our housing record.

I really am not to blame, Minister, and that kind of throwaway but calculated remark at the end of a speech really makes me angry: no doubt it was in your briefing notes.  

I know you’ve only been in office for a few months, and you were gracious enough to acknowledge that you might not be there for very much longer...always good for a laugh the number of Housing Ministers we have had, except it isn't a joke…but I suggest you send your SPAD on a history course to learn what has really been happening about housing…well, at least for the last forty years…four decades should be enough to make sure you understand the real causes of why we haven’t been building enough homes…and then you might be able to devise some policies that really tackle the problem.

The Financial Crisis…and getting back to normal
After the 2007/8 housing market and global financial crash, it was too tempting for government and industry to think that ‘getting back to normal’ was the immediate task ahead. It was a time for reassurance and reversion to the familiar: though how the housing market behaviour of the preceding decade could ever have been thought of as a reassuring experience is mystifying. Plentiful evidence of how the crisis was emerging was steadfastly ignored.
[i] All governments seemed determined to not address the fundamental flaws of a market that had not just broken in 2007/8, but had been dysfunctional since a much earlier financial crisis.

In September 1976, in response to the International Monetary Fund’s intervention, the Treasury dispatched civil servants to explain to councils the implications of DoE Circular 123/76.[ii] The ‘bright young man’, who came to my council in North London to explain this clever new policy to save money, told us authoritatively that ‘the party is over: it is not the function of government to spend on council housing or infrastructure’. He was genuinely surprised to be told that development usually went quicker and more cheaply if preceded by its infrastructure, and that housing prices and the performance of local housing markets were usually more stable and less volatile when there was a sufficient supply of new affordable housing. Although those responses could be found in any standard housing economic textbook of the time, the Treasury seemed to be unaware of them.

Even if a government wanted to prioritise home ownership in its housing policies...these might be some sensible things to do, according to an outline of an essay I did in my first term studying Land Economics at university in 1967...almost certainly copied straight from a standard textbook.
Litany of political failure and lack of leadership

The so-called ‘cap on council house building’ dates, therefore, from 1976 under the Labour government of Jim Callaghan, though it was reinforced and kept in place by both Conservative and Labour Governments, entirely on ideological grounds about tenure preferences and the power of local government relative to national government, and without any regard to the contribution that social housing supply makes to local housing markets and the national economy.
Since 1976, we have experienced a series of missed policy opportunities and policy failures that have reinforced the damaging long term impacts of that policy…here are just a few:
·         The failure by Gordon Brown to ask Kate Barker the right question…twice: how spatial planning and investment in infrastructure could be effectively integrated at national, regional and sub-regional levels to enable the cost efficient and speedy construction of new homes.  

·         The failure by all governments to recognise that s.52, and later s.106 planning agreements and Community Infrastructure Levy were and are not a fit-for-purpose substitute for public investment in essential infrastructure, including affordable housing.

·         The failure by Labour to restore local government financial autonomy through the Lyons Inquiry into Local Government 2007, and to reform and/or update council tax valuations since 1991.

·         The failure by Labour to deliver the ‘double devolution’ of powers and responsibilities to councils and communities as part of the modernising local government reforms of the early 2000s.

·         The failure by all governments to modernise, reform and diversify the housing supply side, as identified by the DCLG Housing Construction Task Force (2008-10),[iii] whilst continuing to inflate housing costs through demand side subsidies like the Help to Buy policy.

·         The failure by all governments that continues to this very day current to maintain an adequate supply of affordable housing in specific market areas to mitigate against volatility in both ownership and rental markets; with 1m fewer affordable homes in 2018 than there were in 1980 (whilst the population has grown by over 7m people).

·         The failure by all governments to prevent over £400bn of the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing programme being used to inflate asset values (primarily urban land prices), creating long lasting market distortions, rather than investing in infrastructure and new housing.

The Problem with Land…no one wants to deal with it
In 1900, Cass Gilbert, later the architect of the Woolworth Building in New York, was right in saying, “The building is merely the machine that makes the land pay”. It is hard to accept that a century later, that principle is now fully embedded in the omissions and commissions of UK government policy that will take a great deal of undoing.
To this day, the penny has yet to drop at the Treasury. At a recent event in Parliament, the former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Macpherson, claimed he spent years trying to convince his Treasury colleagues that we needed to tax land, “It worries me...that we don’t have a land tax…In a sane world, we would have a proper land tax.” But he was the one who was branded ‘mad’, and so our Treasury remains totally economically illiterate about land price, its impact on resources available for social housing and infrastructure, and its other macro-economic effects. We are still living with the consequences of those hopeless decisions in 1976.


The words of Grant Shapps, many Housing Ministers ago,We need a housing market that’s BORING…where things are really quite predictable,” illustrate his frustration at a situation that was nevertheless beyond the appetite of government to address with policies that would have actually made a difference: building more social housing.  In the face of comments reliably attributed to the then Chancellor of Exchequer, “I don’t understand why you (Nick Clegg) keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters” and to the Cabinet just before the 2015 General Election “Hopefully we will have a little housing boom, and everyone will be happy as property values go up” that policy option was never likely.
These two diagrams, left, tell an interesting story about the slide from coherence of housing market behaviour pre-1985 and Big Bang to an extended era of divergence and volatility that continues to this day, and the relationship of land and housing prices to national economic performance.

 



















The Ultimate Question




There is now a surprising, but also long overdue, consensus across the political spectrum that more social housing is urgently needed; not just because the needs of unhoused households are so great. It is at last recognised that the absence of a sufficient supply of affordable housing increases the volatility of housing costs for everyone, and imposes a significant deadweight of additional costs on the public purse in health, social care, public safety and criminal justice policy areas, to name a few. Minister, this has been known and evidenced for decades.[iv]


The lifting of the cap of council house building, announced by the Prime Minister at this year’s Conservative Party Conference was very welcome. But it was not, as often implied in commentary, the relaxation of a recent short term restriction. It’s been 42 years since it was originally applied…thus proving Douglas Adams right…the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything really is 42


But as the computer Deep Thought observed when he had finally calculated the answer (apologies if you are not a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan)…‘You’re really not going to like it, you know’…and they are not, the politicians and the Housing Ministers, every one of them that have held office since 1976 are not going to like 'the answer'.. 

The only people responsible for there not being enough affordable and safe homes for all are YOU.
 








[i] Inter alia Ambrose P et al (2005) Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, http://taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk/files/Z2K_Memorandum_to_the_PM_on_unaffordable_housing.pdf  and Harrison. F (2005) Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010 Shepheard-Walwyn http://thepropertyhub.net/tpp069-18-year-property-cycle/
[iv] “The Real Cost of Poor Homes” Ambrose P (1996) & “The Real Cost of Poor Homes: Footing the Bill” Barrow. M and Bachan. R (1997) RICS, and “Debt, Death & Deadweight – The Acts of Parliament” Harrison. F (2018), https://landresearchtrust.org  which explores the revenue-raising alternative to taxes that destroy people's wealth, health and welfare.