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Stewardship economy is used to describe an ideal economy in which each person receives an equal share of the wealth of the natural world. In this ideal world, artifacts (the things we make) are held in ownership, while the natural world (land and natural resources) are held in stewardship. or basic income) for all. In a similar way the proprietor of any aspect of the environment (such as oceans, rivers, minerals, the atmosphere, radio spectrum and satellite orbits) pays the resource rent into a fund that is distributed equally to all as an environmental dividend. A stewardship economy is contrasted with a conventional ownership economy in the 2011 book Stewardship economy: private property without private ownership. Origins Henry George and Hillel Steiner are now identified as belonging to the left-libertarian tradition. While Henry George describes payment of the market rent of land as a land value tax, stewardship economy describes it as a charge or fee for use: the result of a new form of property rights to the natural world. A stewardship economy provides an ethical framework for land value taxation. "Stewardship Economy struck me, as soon as I saw the title, as a term that deserves to stick.... Pratt achieves for me, in that one word stewardship, a mind-set that should make it easier to imbue land value taxation with an ethical dimension.... here will be no success for us land-taxers until we can frame our policies within a stewardship context." Although the left-libertarian tradition dates back no more than 250 years, the practice of raising public revenue from lands that were designated to support religious or state institutions dates back to at least the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. In England the obligations of landowners to support the state were eroded during the transition from feudal to market economy, but it was not until 1799 that taxes on income were introduced to provide revenue to fight the Napoleonic war. Transition to a stewardship economy Advocates of land value taxation or a stewardship economy generally recognize that it is not possible to make a rapid transition to an economy in which proprietors pay 100% of the market rent of land and natural resources into this fund, as this would amount to confiscating the value of their property. Supporters generally propose collecting a proportion of the market rent rather than the full amount. This approach has been put in to place in several jurisdictions, but resistance from property owners has prevented its extension above about 20% of the market rent.<ref name="andelson" /> Supporters of a stewardship economy propose that current owners should retain the full value of the properties they own, but that 100% of any future increase in the market rent should be collected for the common good.<ref name="stewardshipeconomy" />
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