Sources

This page is the checklist, not the argument. The series runs on Locke’s proviso, George’s unused-land case, and the classical-liberal line that ground rent is unearned. Those texts are old and they are not in dispute as texts. What is in dispute is what they license. I name the editions I used and I do not pretend a hostile reader has to accept my reading.

The foundation essay, From Plunder to Justice, is a standalone and carries its own Sources list (Bastiat, Locke, George, Rothbard). Internal essays are linked in the parts themselves and are not listed here. Part 5 is almost entirely argument. It does not rest on a lab paper, a court ruling, or a live news figure, and I have not manufactured citations to fill the gap.

Parts 1 and 2

• John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, Chapter V
• Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
• John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• Henry George, Progress and Poverty

Part 1 is a reading fight. Locke’s “enough, and as good” clause is Second Treatise, Chapter V. His walk-back on money and on America sits in the same chapter a few pages later. Rothbard’s rejection of the proviso is the load-bearing objection on my own side of the aisle; The Ethics of Liberty is the book the part answers. Nozick’s weaker reading, that appropriation is legitimate so long as no one is left worse off than in a world with no private property at all, is Chapter 7 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It is the strongest version of “a land tax is theft,” and Part 1 treats it that way.

Part 2’s named quotations are older than George. Mill’s unearned increment, landlords who “grow richer in their sleep, without working, risking, or economising,” is Principles of Political Economy, Book V, Chapter II. Smith’s claim that ground-rents are a revenue the owner “enjoys without any care or attention of his own” is The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II, not the more famous rent chapter in Book I. George’s unused-lot scandal is the spine of Progress and Poverty, especially the unused-land and speculation chapters.

Parts 3 and 4

• FCC: Spectrum auctions
• FCC: Broadcast licensing

Parts 3 and 4 are mostly mechanism. They rest on the same Locke-Rothbard-George line already listed, and on the site-versus-improvement split assessors and buyers already make when a parcel changes hands. I have not cited a particular city’s assessment manual. The claim is the ordinary practice, not one jurisdiction’s form.

Part 4’s cleanest non-land case is the airwaves. Wireless carriers already bid for spectrum at FCC auction. The older broadcast grant was handed out for a nominal fee against a public-interest promise, and that is the unpriced booth the part describes. The short version of that argument is the standalone post Nobody Paid Rent on the Airwaves. The live flare-up that post mentioned is illustration, not load-bearing structure, and Part 4 does not rest on it.

Part 5

No new external source. The last enclosure is the series line applied to the corpus: created work stays with the lab, unearned rent on the common mind does not. Open models are preferred in an earlier post. The return side of the capture, what you do with the rent once you have it, is The Citizens Dividend.