Private monopoly in land should be treated on the same principles as other forms of monopoly. Where it is on the whole beneficial it should be retained and where its disadvantages outweigh its advantages it should be modified. For the state to confiscate land values is out of the question. While a few single taxers might not see in such confiscation a general attack upon private property, people in general would see such an attack and its effect would be much the same as if it were a general attack upon private property. If the state were to confiscate all land, and to pay the present owners the present value of the land this objection would be overcome, but it would meet the further objection that the state would receive from such confiscation no part of the present rental of land, for the reason that it would have to pay to the present owners an equivalent of the rent which it received. The state, by such a measure, however, would get for itself the future increase in land values but it would lose the advantages which come from maintaining a class of independent small farmers who own their farms. Moreover, on account of the known incapacity of the state to manage business economically, the chances are that there would be a great deal of loss connected with the large financial operations involved.

In recent years a much simpler plan of levying a special tax on the increase in land values has been put in practice in Germany and in Great Britain. A tax running as high as one third in Germany and one fifth in Great Britain of the increase in the value of land is collected usually on the occasion of the transfer of ownership of land. The German tax which has been in operation as a municipal tax for more than a decade proved itself so satisfactory that it was later adopted as an imperial tax. British experience with this form of taxation has been of briefer duration and there are still many administrative problems to be solved. Of its ultimate feasibility there can be no doubt. These taxes on the increase of land values are, however, a long way from the ideal of the single taxers.