In capitalist countries, the majority of the people pay for the huge profits from speculation in private land (Figure 7), and more land is concentrated in the hands of ever fewer people. In communist countries, the uneconomic use of communal land is the major problem. In former West Germany about 70% of the land belonged to 20% of the people. In Brazil and other Third World countries, the land-owning minority is often as small as 2-3% of the population. The problem in capitalist countries, therefore, has to do with private ownership of land.
Figure 7 To Pay for a Building Site in the FRG in the 1980s In communist countries, in the former Soviet Union, for example, where land was communally owned and used, about 60% of the food was being produced on that 4% of the land which was owned privately. This meant that the problem here was communal ownership and use. A combination of private use and communal ownership would be the most advantageous solution for achieving social justice and allowing individual growth. This is what was suggested by Henry George in 1879, (13) Silvio Gesell in 1904, (14) and Yoshito Otani in 1981. (15) In practical terms today, it would mean that a community would buy up all its land and lease it out to its inhabitants. Countries with a progressive constitution would have no trouble implementing this change from an ideal point of view. Thus the constitution of the former Federal Republic of Germany described land as an asset which carries a "social" responsibility. Up to this date, however, this social responsibility has not been met. Figure 7 shows that, on the average, people had to work three times as long in 1982 as they did in 1950 in order to pay for a piece of property.
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