June 5– “Of the Rent of Land” from "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1776)

 Rent!

June 5– “Of the Rent of Land” from The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)

Summary: The more valuable land is, the more rent you can charge for it.

Commentary: The best part about reading historical pieces first hand is seeing all the places where the popular stereotypes about them are wrong. Adam Smith is often held up as some sort of libertarian super-capitalist. In reality, he mostly just talks about market economy in general, and often at least tangentially engages with thought that'd be more associated with socialism or communism today. In this selection, the phrase "rent of the landlord" or a variant like "to the landlord" appears about half a dozen times. In most cases it's like some sort of ghost that skims off the top for no particular reason. It sounds like friction or taxes or something. 

But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. The surplus too is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.

There's just some extra there for them. In theory, you could argue the landlord maintains/improves the land in order for the farmer to use it more effectively,  thus improving profits for both of them, but the only time anything like this is mentioned is in the context of canals or roads which (at least today) is mostly done by the government (who pays the landlord to use the land for it even!) From a cursory Google, it looks like they mostly paid for it back then too.

We do get this section towards the end:

In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in a corn or grass field. But to bring the ground into this condition requires more expence. Hence a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. It requires too a more attentive and skilful management. Hence a greater profit becomes due to the farmer.

It's not clear to me what the landlord is doing that the farmer wouldn't. Does the landlord prep the ground and the farmer only plant and tend the crops? It seems like it'd make more sense for the farmer to do all of it than to hope the landlord did it the way they wanted.

Beyond that, some interesting discussion on how different commodities have different prices in different places. He talks a bunch about how meat is cheaper than bread in some less developed areas, but (again through only a brief search) it seems unlikely. Maybe something like squirrel where there's a billion of them everywhere, but he's talking about beef, and they require a lot of grain to make a pound of cow.