In reply to the claims of the single taxers it may be urged, in the first place, that there are a great many other forms of monopoly value which are due to the growth of society and not to the activities of the individual monopolist and which, therefore, ought to receive the same kind of treatment as that given to the land monopolist. Many single taxers recognize this fact but insist that most of these monopolies rest in final analysis upon land monopoly and they maintain that to tax the land monopoly would be to tax all other forms of monopoly. This, however, is an overstatement of the importance of land monopoly.

In the second place, it may be urged in opposition to the single taxers that the present owners of land have, as a general rule, acquired their property in good faith and with the belief that it would be protected for them by the state; and in many cases it represents the result of labor performed by the individuals who own it. It would, therefore, not only be unfair to confiscate land value while leaving all other values to the enjoyment of their owners, but it would in addition give a rude shock to the whole institution of private property, since no property holder could any longer have entire confidence in the good faith of the state and would no longer care to labor and lay aside wealth if he lived constantly under the apprehension that at any time some new group of reformers might get control of the state and confiscate his property. The result of this lack of faith in the willingness of the state to protect private property would be a swift reversion to barbarism.

In the third place it should be pointed out that although society has created land values, society is being constantly repaid for the service in some degree by the existence of an agricultural population of independent land owners. Land ownership by a numerous agricultural population of land workers gives to democracy a stability which it is easy to underrate and which undoubtedly will contribute much to the ultimate success of this form of government. Where the land of a country is held in great tracts by absentee landlords this particular argument against the single tax loses its force. In the cities, too, where perhaps 90 per cent of the population do not own land this argument has little weight.