no more blogging for a while

Like Fagin in Lionel Bart's Oliver, I've been reviewing the situation. This blog takes a lot of time away from my other activities, mainly the game I'm developing. The game has a serious purpose and, if I do it well, it will do more good than this blog ever could. But it demands a great deal of time. So no more blogging for a while. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do all I want. Blogging stops today. Over the next week or two I'll update the land rent web site, then leave that alone as well. I need to really concentrate on the game.

Thanks for reading.

Delhi bombing: the rational response is land rent

Today's top BBC story is still the Indian bombing. I might seem crazy to link this with land rent, but hear me out.

According to the article there are many "terrorist" groups in Kashmir. According to everything I can find, sixty dead is very few compared with the thousands who die in the endless round of violence in Kashmir. And if you read about what motivates each side (Pakistan, Kashmir, India) the number of dead is far less than the number who are passionately angry about the question of who controls the land.

The word "rational" comes from the word "ratio" and means an ability to tell when one thing is more larger or more important than another thing. A rational approach to terrorism shows that the big picture, the cause that we should address, is land ownership. When terrorism threatens, we should redouble our efforts to promote land rent. It is the only rational response.

Indian bombing shows the need for land rent

Today's top BBC story is a bombing in India. Compared with the earthquake, this is insignificant. As noted earlier, earthquake deaths are caused by poverty, and economic justice is the solution to poverty. Hence, even in the face of a bombing, our priority should still be land rent.

Who caused the bombing? Fingers are pointed at the Kashmir rebels. If it was them, why did they bomb? Finding answers on western news sites is very difficult - we are told in one sentence that "they want Kashmir to be part of Pakistan" with no further analysis. Plainly we are not supposed to think about their demands. Anyone who bombs another country is plainly evil. (Unless of course it is us.)

Further investigation suggests that the number of deaths in bombing is nothing compared with the deaths within Kashmir itself. This is the only article I could find that tried to explain the Kashmiri point of view. Right or wrong, their point of view is what causes the bombing, assuming that Kashmii militants are the bombers:

My investigation took me to the region in 1993 to carry out extensive field
research on the besieged everyday life of the Kashmiri people, a people seeking
national emancipation from a colonial power. I discovered a similar problem in
Bosnia. The major difference, however, is that Kashmir's tragedy is situated on
the periphery of the world; therefore, the international community has dismissed
it as inconsequential even with the loss of tens of thousands of lives. To
complete my research on Kashmir, I documented the Indian-Pakistan dispute over
the Siachen Glacier located in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Kashmir.
There are no inhabitants on earth here other than the two rival armies faced-off
on this frozen battlefield. Living with the Pakistani soldiers on this perilous
glacier, I began to understand and chronicle the fervent commitment and costly
sacrifices made on behalf of the Kashmiri people. I also studied the people of
Baltistan who live within a region of Kashmir. Most of the research on Kashmir
fails to report the situation as it is, pivoting on Kashmir's desire to separate
from India, and India's military hold on Kashmir which has led to massive human
rights abuses. The primary purpose in my research was to understand this
conflict from the Kashmiri point of view, to come to terms with the real issues
at stake, and to document state violence against a people guilty only of the
crime of defending their liberty to decide their own destiny. My photographic
record offers a visual chronicle of my visit to Kashmir, and a reminder of the
human cost that has been endured by the Kashmiri people for many years.

- dissertation by Martin Sugarman, University of California at Los Angeles, 2001

It all comes down to a passionate desire for land. India wants Kashmir. Pakistan wants Kashmir. Kashmir wants Kashmir. Whoever owns land owners wealth. But land rent changes the rules - wealth only comes from work (any excess is given in land rent). So the mad desire for land cools down, to be replaced by a sane desire for the tax-free profits of honest work.

Note that even the craziest religious passion relies on economic realities. Bombers get their support from the poor and desperate or from the calculations of sympathetic governments. The ultimate cause is always economic.

Most so-called terrorism comes from a passionate desire for land. Land rent cools that passion and is thus the solution to terrorism.

The Lewis Libby story shows why we need land rent

Today's top BBC story is about revealing the secret identity of a CIA officer. The story illustrates the weakness of a secrets-based policy. Apart from the fact that you can never prove that secrets work (because the information is not open to peer review), most of the examples that come to light show very little benefit. In this case we don't know what the CIA officer achieved (if anything) but we do know that her husband's discrete work was ignored, and all the evidence regarding WMD was ignored in favor of political needs.

The real power is political and this comes down to control of resources. Control of resources decides wars and policies, control of resources decides wealth and poverty, control of resources decides justice and misery, control of resources involves trillions of dollars taken from the poor and given to the rich. That is why land rent, the just allocation of resources is vastly more important than any silly games over who said what. In comparison, the whole existence of the CIA and other secretive organizations is irrelevant and probably counter productive by creating distrust.

"today's top BBC story" (unimportant post)

I just checked the BBC site for a not-blog-related reason, and maybe I should clarify something. When I say "today's top BBC story" I mean the main headline at the moment when I write the blog. That is usually just after midnight or around 8 am my time (GMT +). I always choose the main headline to avoid any self-selection bias. But obviously the story changes throughout the day, so it may not be the biggest story of the whole day.

See, I told you this was an unimportant post.

land rent gives power to those who earn it

Today's top BBC story is Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers stepping down. One way to view this is that the US president made a lot of mistakes, and this (trying to send his own lawyer to the supreme court) is just one of them.

GWB comes from a wealthy oil family. You have to be wealthy to become US president - poor people never get elected. A lot of oil money is earned (in prospecting, drilling, etc.) and the rest of it is unearned: a company that can buy the best oil land has an unfair advantage over the others. With better land, they can do the same work as their less landed competitors yet gain higher profits. Land rent would calculate the unearned portion and takes that as tax. That creates a level playing field for all competitors (and also allows all other business activities to be tax free, thus rewarding entrepreneurs). Applying this to GWB, he could only get rich in oil if he was a smarter businessman than his competitors. It appears that he isn't, so under a land rent system he would not be highly wealthy, so he would not be elected President, so he could not make silly decisions like today's.

A better leader in the White House - another benefit of land rent.

Israel and Palestine need land rent

Todays top BBC story is a suicide bomber in Israel. At the root of all the troubles is that Israel and Palestine want the same land. Land rent would solve that problem.

Land rent takes the unearned value of land and gives it to society. So land owners keep all the wealth through their hard work, but none of the wealth that comes simply because of their preferential location. If land rent was applied between Israel and Palestine, Israel would have no economic benefit in occupying the prime land, and Palestinians would find their standard of living raised (see the main web site for how land rent creates a healthy economy). With less desire to grab territory and fewer desperate unemployed youths, the Israel-Palestine problem would be solved, or at least improved beyond all recognition.

Solving the Middle East's number one problem: another benefit of land rent.

the solution to a divided country is land rent

Today's top BBC story is the Iraq constitution. Most voters supported it, but some opposed it. The opposition fears that increased autonomy means the oil-rich states can keep wealth instead of sharing it with oil-poor regions.

Land rent is the answer. With land rent, the value of all land is, in effect, equalized. One result is that no region has an advantages over another region simply because it sits on an oil field. (See the main web site for how land rent is calculated.) There are many other advantages, but this is the one that is relevant to today's news.

Justice between national regions: another advantage of land rent.

AIDS

Today's top BBC story: millions of children dying from AIDS in Africa, and only five percent get any treatment. It is of course no coincidence that Africa is the (financially) poorest continent on earth. If we add up all the tragedies that are caused or made far worse by poverty, we arrive at one of three possible responses:

1. Denial. Just get on with your life, make some token payment to a charity, but "there's nothing you can do."
2. Focus on just one or two charitable needs and ignore the millions of others.
3. Attack all these problems at their root: economic justice.

It all comes down to poverty, and poverty starts at the most fundamental level: unjust access to raw materials. This unjust access leads to inefficiency, corruption, lack of opportunity, war, and all the other immediate causes of poverty. And these in turn lead to desperation, ignorance, an inability to plan ahead, an inability to cope with or recover from problems, and an endless catalog of misery and pain.
We should do what we can on individual issues like AIDS, environmental damage, terrorism, war, or emergency relief, but in the long term, land rent is the only real solution.

more hurricanes

Hurricane Wilma again. Same response. If people have enough wealth, and everyone has a fair chance of gaining wealth, we can predict, avoid, ride out and recover from hurricanes. The real story is always economic justice.

BTW I just revised the main land rent site. Again. Every few months I look at the old site and say "that site was awful - what was I thinking?" Hopefully each revision is better than the last. This latest iteration removes several pages of waffle and speculation, tidies up what remains, and clarifies the economics.

Nigerian plane crash

Today's top BBC story is a Nigerian plane crash. Nigeria has a very bad record for plane crashes, which suggests poor safety in general. This is hardly surprising, given the BBC overview of the country:

Thousands of people have died over the past few years in communal rivalry. Separatist aspirations have been growing, prompting reminders of the bitter civil war over the breakaway Biafran republic in the late 1960s. The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land. The government is under pressure to improve the economy, which experienced an oil boom in the 1970s, but which has been severely undermined by corruption and mismanagement.

Another BBC report places the blame for Nigeria's problems squarely on the difficulty of getting Nigerians to pay tax.

Land rent is the fairest tax, and the hardest tax to avoid. Land rent ends competition for land because everyone pays the fair price so there is no benefit in land grabs. And since resources go to those who can pay the highest price, only efficient managers can rise to the top.

Land rent: the solution to tax avoidance, poverty, land competition, incompetent government, and all of Nigeria's economic problems - including crash-prone airlines.

hurricanes are an economic issue

Today's top BBC story is Hurricane Wilma. Thanks to satellite technology (owned by wealthy nations), wealthy people have many days' warning to tie everything down then drive to safety. Then the governments and insurance companies can sort out the mess, and decide whether they should change their plans - e.g. encourage people to no longer live in certain areas, change insurance premiums, etc. In other words, this is a purely economic issue in which significant pain or death need not occur.

Of course poor nations and poor people will experience death and pain. Everything comes down to economics. And the most fundamental feature of economics, the foundation upon which all wealth is built, is land and rent (in the strict economic sense of those words).

assassination and controlling land

Today's top BBC story is about who assassinated the Lebanese Prime Minister. As usual it's about land rights. "...it is widely believed that the Syrian authorities were angered by Mr Hariri's growing opposition to their influence in Lebanon. ... Syria was the main power in Lebanon until its military withdrawal earlier this year."

Land rent solves all this nonsense about land grabbing. If we have land rent, whoever occupies the land must pay the full market rate for depriving others of its use. Aggressive thugs cannot afford to occupy land, tanks or not.

Fewer occupations and political assassinations: another advantage of land rent.

aid is not the best answer

Today's top BBC story is the need for aid to Pakistan earthquake victims.

"While 92 countries had helped nations hit by last year's Indian Ocean tsunami,
only some 15 to 20 countries had responded to the latest disaster. ... the
earthquake has come at a time when aid agencies are already very stretched
carrying out relief work in storm-hit central America, as well as Niger and
Sudan. She quotes a senior official as saying agencies would find it very
difficult to respond to another disaster. "

People just don't like giving aid. So it's not an effective way to solve (and more importantly, prevent) problems. But you only need aid if there is poverty. So the solution is to end poverty. It's not as difficult as it sounds.

justice or power?

Today's top BBC story is Saddam Hussain's trial. It seems pretty clear that he is/was a nasty piece of work, ordered many deaths and should never have had any power. But the trial can hardly claim to be fair, since his mortal enemies hold all the cards. If the situation was reversed, Saddam could hold the same carefully managed trial for us. Only two days ago, 70 Iraqis were killed by western troops, and eye witnesses claim all the people were innocent. Even if we include all the million people Saddam killed since coming to power in 1979 , this is a lower unlawful death rate than the carnage since 2003. When one side holds all the power, a trial cannot be fair.

What's the alternative? (Do you really have to ask?) With land rent, the problem could not arise in the first place. If a society has land rent, thieves can never gain power. And the poor always have a basic income. Tyrants rely on genuine injustice to give them popular support - all tyrants arise amid great injustice. Take away the injustice and you take away their support. Give the ordinary people a land rent based income, and you give them the economic security to solve their own political problems.

Given that Iraq did not have land rent, and Saddam is in jail, would I stop the trial? No, but I would make it a very low key event. Saddam's system was based on theft backed by violence. Modern democracies are based on theft backed by violence. Sure, Saddam's had MORE theft and MORE violence, but let's focus on the real issues. Get rid of theft at the foundation of society, instead of worrying about who is the bigger thief.

nothing to add

Today's to BBC story: 70 killed by American bombing, and Iraqi constitutional vote still being counted.

I have nothing to add to previous posts. The solution to all our problems is justice. With justice, people can get themselves out of poverty, and have the power to solve their own problems, and choose the leaders they want without relying on other nations.

Until we address the root cause of poverty - unjust access to resources - the world will always be in a mess.

bad weather and earthquake relief

The top BBC story is still the Pakistan earthquake. This time the news angle is the weather. Nobody should underestimate the weather, but in a wealthy neighborhood there are enough roads, strong houses, and farm vehicles, that even if many roads were blocked, the weather would not be a major problem. I know that I keep repeating the same old message, but it is a simple one: the real cause of the majority of deaths, is poverty.

Poverty comes because of unequal opportunities (nobody wants or needs to be poor). The solution to unequal opportunity is land rent. By ensuring fairness in land ownership we ensure fairness in everything else, plus we encourage wealth creation, plus we ensure a basic level of income for everybody.

The problem is poverty. The solution is land rent.

arbitrary power

Today's top BBC story is still the Iraqi constitution vote. Or rather, reactions from America. Have you noticed how power is so arbitrary? America's opinion matters because that country and its allies invaded Iraq. Previously, Saddam Hussein had power because he grabbed it and simply held it for as long as he could. Now, a constitution has been written by groups appointed by those in power, and it will be decided by arbitrary rules like how many vote for and against in how many places ("if voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces muster a two-thirds majority against the constitution, it will fail.")

Iraq has arbitrary rules made up by whoever has the biggest guns. We can hope that the good guys win and their rules are fair, but that is only a hope. not a guarantee.

Land rent would provide a guarantee of justice. If they had land rent, wealth (and thus power) would be fairly distributed and predictable. Nobody could increase their wealth (and thus power) simply by grabbing land. It would also be a much simpler system.

Iraq constitution

Today's top BBC story is the vote on the Iraq constitution.

"Sunni leaders fear the current proposals may lead the country to split,
with a Kurdish north and Shia south, depriving Sunni Arabs of access to the
country's oil resources."

As usual, land rent is the answer. Land rent is a fair rent charged on oil fields and other land. If one person gets the oil fields, they compensate their neighbors who were less lucky.

Justice in Iraq - another benefit of land rent.

bird flu

Today's top BBC story is bird flu. Like most of the world's problems, this is a disease for humans in poverty. (The west is only at risk if it mutates into something that rich people can catch.) For a domestic bird to catch the virus, it needs to be in extended contact with wild birds, and for a person to catch the virus, they need to be in extended contact with the birds. Both situations require dry conditions. (The virus relies on droppings landing, drying out, and then the dust being inhaled.) In wealthy countries, domestic birds are kept separately from wild birds, and people do not spend much time with their flocks.

Since this is a disease of poverty, the solution to this and a thousand other problems is to cure poverty. Land rent is the fastest solution to poverty - see www.answersanswers.com for details.

Preventing bird flu - another advantage of land rent.

angry young men

Today's top BBC story concerns a murder in Nottingham. I used to live in Nottingham, so took an interest in this story. It is just ordinary gang warfare, where sometimes the innocent get hurt.
Our nations are all based on stolen wealth (all land is taken from others) backed up by violence (armies). Gang warfare is just national politics on a small scale.

23,000 dead

The Pakistan earthquake is still the top story on BBC UK. Quite right too. But I cannot help comparing this with the last time that a single news story dominated the headlines for so many days. That other story was the London bombing, at which 52 people died. Bombs killed 52, earthquake killed 23000. I hope that, in the next months and years, we can retain a sense of perspective about the real dangers in this world.

aid from the poor to the rich

Today's top story is still the Pakistan earthquake. Todays story is about aid arriving from the west. So it is worth remembering that poor countries always send more wealth to rich countries than ever comes back in aid. It is a simple fact of economics, as pointed out in a earlier blog:

When a country is failing, it has less money to pay its people. Let us imagine that country A pays its people an average of five dollars an hour, and country B pays fifty cents per hour. For citizen B to earn a day of country A's production, he needs needs 50 dollars, so he needs to work for 100 hours. For citizen A to earn a day of country B's production, she only needs 5 dollars, so she needs to work one hour. So the pay difference of 10 to 1 produces a trade difference of 100 to one.
For poor countries to survive, they must trade with the rich countries. But the 100 to 1 disparity means that whenever they trade, the rich countries act like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking out anything of value from the poor country.

The few hundred thousand dollars pledged in earthquake relief should be seen in context: it is just crumbs compared with the vast wealth we suck out of Pakistan and every other less developed country. This wil be a fact of life for as long nations have different levels of economic success. The long term solution, as noted yesterday, is land rent.

fabulous wealth for all

The top story is the still the Pakistan earthquake. I've covered the obvious benefits of land rent within a nation, now let's do some blue skies thinking: what if we had land rent BETWEEN nations? I know that nobody would accept it - theft and corruption are the basis of our societies - but let's imagine...

Imagine if each nation had to pay rent to everyone else for the land they occupied. Land would be charged at the market rate, so unproductive land would be very cheap. And since everyone is paying and receiving, the net cost would be zero. But efficient nations would find the cost easy to pay, and inefficient nations would find the cost too much. When people cannot pay rent, their land is sold on the market. Imagine if this infinitely sensible policy was applied to nations. Efficient nations would take over the land used by inefficient nations. Every nation on earth would be run at optimum efficiency, creating wealth for itself, and even more wealth for tis neighbors through trade. The whole world would have undreamed of wealth. And one of the infinite benefits would be that Pakistanis would have the latest technology to predict earthquakes, earthquake proof homes, and money to get out when the early earnings arrive.

Sure, it's blue skies thinking, but lets be clear: opposition to land rent costs the world trillions of dollars and untold misery. A few hundred thousand unnecessary earthquake deaths are just the tip of the iceberg.

Fabulous wealth for everyone in the world: another (long term) benefit of land rent.

off topic: expanding earth

While looking for earthquake related sites, I was reminded of one of the great advantages of the Internet: interesting ideas never die! Years ago I read of the expanding earth hypothesis. It's a simple idea - if you try to fit the continents together (as they were before continental drift) there are gaps. But if the earth was smaller in the geological past, the continents fit perfectly. I lost my copy of the old article, but today I was pleasantly surprised to find several web sites devoted to the topic. The main evidence is summarized here. If this ever becomes mainstream science, remember that you heard it here first!

same news, same solution

Today's top news story is still the Pakistan earthquake. It was far weaker than expected, yet the death toll was still high. People know that this big earthquakes are likely here, yet they still live in sub-standard housing. This just reinforces the point that the real story is poverty. So the solution is land rent.

Nearly every problem comes down to poverty. So the solution to nearly every problem is land rent.

surviving earthquakes

Today's top news is an earthquake in Pakistan. This is an economic issue. With more wealth, people get more warning, have more chances to escape, and the buildings are more likely to survive. Land rent is the best way to get wealth, because it creates a society based on justice for all, and it rewards wealth creation.

Surviving earthquakes - another benefit of land rent.

intellectual property

Todays top BBC story is the race to bring a new anti-cancer drug to market. Big drug companies are pouring vast resources into this, knowing that they can make huge profits. Yet patents will expire after 20 years. The 20 year patent rule is a very good rule. It works. It brings great profit to the creators of an idea, and then gives the idea free to everyone within a reasonable time. So everybody wins!

The principle behind the concept of ownership is to reward the creation of wealth. The key is to also reward society, because a lot of your wealth depends on society's markets and laws. Land rent does this for easy-to-measure property like land. A twenty year patent laws does this for hard-to-measure intellectual property. The same argument should apply to copyright laws.

Twenty year patents and copyrights - land rent for intellectual property.

geopolitical hypocrisy

Today's top BBC story: Iran denies supplying the bombs that killed British soldiers. This is a self-defeating news story. If Iran was evil to supply bombs that killed eight people, then what does that say about Britain and America, supplying bombs that killed many thousands? If we start counting body bags, then Britain and America become the undisputed villains.

If we want our enemies to look bad, we have to find some rational basis for the war, in order to demonstrate that our choices were better than their choices. All such choices come down to one question: who has a right to control the land (and hence create the laws that others must live by)?

Land rent is the only fair system for allocating land, because it is based on market forces and compensating our neighbors for the inconvenience we may cause by depriving them of land. Without land rent, land ownership is at best arbitrary, at worst a constant source of bloodshed. Without land rent, war is inevitable and endless.

Land rent - the solution to geopolitical problems.

biofuels

Today's top story on he BBC is about candidates for the Conservative Party leadership. It's all meaningless sound bytes, with no substance worth discussing. In the absence of a real story, here's something on biofuels.

My daughter (age 14) is to give a presentation on alternative energy at her school. Her teacher had prepared a summary of the issues to start her off. My personal favorite energy source is biomass - you grow it, burn it, and grow it again. Very simple technology, zero net emissions, a much bigger and more stable market in fuel, so everyone wins. So I was interested to see what her teacher's notes said about biomass: nothing. However, it did have something to say about biofuels (where you turn biomass into ethanol for more concentrated energy). It quoted research by David Pimentel, saying that biofuels use more energy to create than they produce, they require too much land, and they have serious problems with emissions - notably Nitrous Oxide (NOx) and the carcinogenic aldehydes. So I did some research, and guess what, Pimentel (and hence my daughters' teacher) is wrong on all counts.

Most researchers agree that biofuel creates a net increase in energy. See http://www.b100fuel.com Actually, it wouldn't be a fatal blow even if the overall energy balance was low or even negative. Biofuel is important because it concentrates energy so as to be portable - e.g. for cars. Its great benefit is that it is portable, not that it is efficient. Every battery takes more energy to produce than it gives out, but batteries still play a useful role.

Biofuels do use more land, but that can be an opportunity, not a problem. Biomass can be grown anywhere that there is sunlight and irrigation. At present, we import energy from just a few producing countries, and that leads to war and injustice. If we used biomass, far more countries could enter the market. Imagine vast areas of North Africa turned over to cultivation. We improve the environment, reduce poverty, an create a more stable market in one go. And of course biomass does not have to provide all the energy - there is also solar power, wind power, tidal power, wave power, efficiency savings, geothermal power, etc., etc.

NOx emissions depend on the type and use of the engine. Some research shows that it actually goes down. See http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_nox.html Similarly, aldehyde emission are not any higher than with conventional diesel - see the final report to the US department of energy on the subject. And remember that the main greenhouse emissions - like CO2 - drop to zero, because all the CO2 is reabsorbed into the next generation of biomass.

Any major change will have costs, even if instituted gradually. But compared with the costs of global warming (reduced coastline, global unrest, famine) or the costs of nuclear power (waste and decommissioning, accidents, availability of weapons-grade material, some of which will always be lost), biomass and biofuels are the bargain of the millennium.

old topics again

Today's top story on the BBC is Turkey and the EU. I promised to stick to just the top story each day, even if the story is not new. This story is not new, and the land rent angle was discussed here.

And yesterday's tragic news of the old people who died on a boat trip is one more example of why our governments are wrong to focus on terrorism. A few days ago, twenty-something people died in bomb blasts in Bali. A few days later, twenty-something people died on a boating accident. Both events are tragic, but neither one justifies spending billions and wrecking economies and human rights.

off topic

In today's news, 21 elderly people died in a freak accident on a boat. I was going to say somethings about land rent and retirement income, but thought it might seem in poor taste. So I send my condolences to the families.

undermining Al Qaeda

Today's top story is the Bali bomb blasts. As usual, Al Qaeda is blamed. Al Qaeda's support rests on the injustice of the Israel-Palestine land question. A land ownership question? This is a job for land rent! If Israel had land rent, it would pay a fair price for occupying that land, and the non-occupiers (in this case the Palestinians) would benefit financially. Result: justice at last, and much less anger against Israel and its western allies.

Undermining Al Qaeda: another benefit of land rent.

better judgment

Today's top story on the BBC is about gambling. The big question is, do casinos do more good than harm? Supporters point to the money they attract. Critics point to gambling addiction and crime. Who is right? Land rent helps us find the answer.

If casinos attract people and business to the neighborhood, this increases land values. But if casinos create crime and local people spend less money on other services, people leave and land values go down. For example, this is from a report on Atlantic City:

The study shows that casinos have had an effect on increases in crime in the region, especially in Atlantic City, its adjacent localities, and localities accessible via major arterial roads. Crime levels in accessible areas diminish with distance from Atlantic City. This possibly results from crime committed by crime-inclined visitors to the casinos or others related to the industry. The casino-related crime increase is reflected in depressed property values, an effect which diminishes with distance from the city.

On the other hand, the casinos create a lot of employment. So a calculation can be made. The calculation will not cover every possible cost and benefit, but even a marginal change results in movements of millions of dollars. This is more than enough to demonstrate whether casinos are a good thing (attracting people) or a bad thing (increasing crime). A land rent system constantly measures land values, so these calculations are made all the time.

Better judgment - another benefit of land rent.