All landlords, seeking to secure their source of income, are in a cooperative agreement with each other. They each seek to keep prices as high as possible; where there is a competition, it is weak. Since the common workers can very rarely possess enough to buy a house, they are subservient. They must find a landlord, but they have the choice of a landlord. It is to say that the vassal and the king, when there is a choice in which one to serve, are tamed. That is the argument of free market economists.

     It is easy for the few possessors of wealth to come together and make mutual agreements in their exploitation of the poor. They have all of the time and wealth in the world -- so much that they are always given in to meaningless, trivial, and extravagant pursuits of luxury. It is easy for them to come together and plot against the common people. To take more food from working families, to take more free time from the laboring masses, to worsen the living conditions of all but the few.

     Such explicit meetings are often unnecessary. Each capitalist and landlord is aware of their own interest, and similarly, is often aware of the interest of others who hold the same position. Each, wanting to stay afloat on the wealth of others, seeks to unite in a common direction with the others, so that they can maintain their mutual domination over the masses. For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one such organization. They formally oppose belief in Global Warming -- not because there is scientific support for that idea, but because environmental regulation increases their production costs. And that cuts into profits. It weakens their ability to fleece their flocks, to squeeze every last bit out of rent, to get every bit of labor out of each hour.

     This class of land owners, which praises itself for "giving homes to people," often increases the rent on a regular basis. The cost goes up every year or two, and sometimes more often than that. They defend this on the grounds that "property values are rising" and "the value of the land is increasing." But during the Housing, Financial Crisis in the United States, properties fell to one fifth or one tenth of their original value. Did the cost of rent fall to one fifth or one tenth? No -- in many places, it was actually still increasing!

     Just as it is with the capitalist, who makes cuts and layoffs during a recession. "I must cut your wages, because profits have fallen," is the boss's justification. But the worker is wiser than that, and asks, "What about when profits were doubled and wages were the same? What happened to that extra money?" Profits, when they soar, do little to improve the condition of the worker. And when they fall, they spread all sorts of miserable ills -- from mass poverty and unemployment to artificial famines and coal monopoly winters. Poverty and unemployment that exists only because of some artificial title to property.

     There is no justification for it. The wealthy do not contribute labor, but live off of it. They do not add anything to society, but they exploit it. They alienate us from the land, prohibit us from living unless we admit them as a lord, prohibit us from working unless we admit them as a boss. There is no good in a system of Capitalists and landlords, as it is a system where the few live off of the hard labor of the many, to the great misery and poverty of the workers.

     It is naturally in the interests of the people to overthrow the landlords and employers, the new aristocrats and new noblemen. The landlords keep us from the property that we need to live. They put a tax on everything we make, called profit, and then when they "misdirect" the economy, waves of unemployment and poverty ripple throughout society. For the people to be made up of independent individuals, masters of their own lives, we must abolish the class of possessors. If there is any real right to live, to become part of society on equal terms, it must begin with an equal right for all to the land!

"There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those people poor. They have no right to anything that nature gives them. All they can make above a living they must pay to the landlord. They not only have to pay for the land that they use, but they have to pay for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for any improvements they make are made an excuse for putting up the rent. These people who work hard live in hovels, and the landlords, who do not work at all -- ooh! they live in luxury in London or Paris. If they have hunting boxes there, why they are magnificent castles as compared with the hovels in which the men live who do the work. Is there any question as to the cause of poverty there?"
          --Henry George, 1885
          "The Crime of Poverty"