THE ANATOMY OF EXPLOITATION: THE GROUP HOLDING THE LAND AND THE FLATS. WHY CAN'T POLES AFFORD A HOME OF THEIR OWN?
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF'S COMMENT OF THE DAY
THE ANATOMY OF EXPLOITATION: THE GROUP HOLDING THE LAND AND THE FLATS. WHY CAN'T POLES AFFORD A HOME OF THEIR OWN?
Date: 14 September 2026
Author: Mieczysław Dzikowski – Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Logomarka
Public debate rarely hears analyses that lay bare the fundamental economic sources of the high cost of housing in Poland without political sugar-coating and lobbyists' evasions. In the latest programme by Jan Piński, featuring the economist Aleksander Piński, a brutally honest diagnosis was made of a mechanism that drains citizens' pockets, stifles Polish entrepreneurship and leads to demographic collapse.
Below I present only the detailed points reflecting the theses, arguments and examples presented in the discussion:
The hypocrisy of the political class and conflict of interest
Almost all politicians publicly declare a desire to increase the availability of housing and lower the cost of living, which would have to mean a slowdown in, or a fall in, housing prices.
Set against their asset declarations, the contradiction is extreme: from term to term, parliamentarians expand their private property portfolios. Around 45% of MPs own at least two residential units or plots of land.
In Poland, real power is exercised by the “group holding the land and the flats” – decision-makers invest private capital in real estate, so a permanent rise in prices is in their personal interest. The programme recalled the statement of a member of the government who, owning more than a dozen flats, admitted openly that “people buy flats so that their prices go up”.
Henry George's theory and the essence of the land monopoly
The programme invoked Henry George – a 19th-century American economist and journalist (author of “Progress and Poverty”, 1879, which sold millions of copies), admired by, among others, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Leo Tolstoy.
George's main thesis: the land monopoly is the mother of all other monopolies. Private profit from merely holding land and from the growth in its value brings no added value to society, and becomes a mechanism for sucking capital out of the economy.
Ownership of classic goods derives from work and effort (e.g. cutting down a tree and knocking together a table). No human being produced land – its supply in unique locations is fixed and limited.
The anatomy of ground rent – where does the rise in the value of plots come from?
The value of land rises not thanks to the work of its owner, but thanks to two factors independent of him:
Public investment in infrastructure: roads, pavements, metro lines, street lighting, water and sewerage networks, schools, clinics – all financed from the taxes of citizens at large.
General economic growth and the entrepreneurship of the community: GDP growth generated by society as a whole.
The current system leads to absurdity: society builds a metro station or a road with its own taxes, as a result of which the value of a private plot jumps, after which the local authority or the state, wanting to build a school, has to buy back the same land at a speculative price. The programme recalled the case of former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who bought a plot earmarked for a planned road investment for several hundred thousand zlotys and years later sold it at a multi-million profit without doing any work at all.
Examples of the capital-draining mechanism (Winston Churchill and Tim Harford)
Churchill's parable of 1909 (the parish of Southwark): Wealthy parishioners funded free bread for the poor. When the poor began to flock to the area around the church, local property owners raised rents by exactly the value of the bread being given away. The donors' money went straight into the pockets of the landowners.
The analogy with refugees from Ukraine in Poland (2022): When Poles rushed to provide selfless financial and humanitarian aid, the rental market immediately shot up – flat owners captured the demand generated and the aid capital.
The paradox of expensive coffee (Tim Harford, “The Undercover Economist”): A cup of coffee in the city centre costs PLN 15–20, even though the cost of the beans and milk is PLN 1–1.50. The difference is not captured by the café owner, but by the owner of the premises/land, who imposes the maximum rent, exhausting the entrepreneur's margin.
The real costs per square metre and developers' margins
In Warsaw, the average price per square metre reaches approx. PLN 18,000, while the pure construction cost is approx. PLN 9,000.
The remaining PLN 9,000 per metre is the cost of buying the land (approx. PLN 4,000) and the developer's profit (approx. PLN 5,000).
Developers achieve record margins and a return on equity (ROE) of the order of 30–35% (Dom Development was cited, with an ROE of 35.5%), which is profitability comparable to global technology giants (Google, Microsoft), despite creating no export innovation. This is a direct result of controlling the limited supply of land.
A study of 142 years of property prices (“No Price Like Home”)
The research paper by K. Knoll, M. Schularick and T. Steger, covering the years 1870–2012 in 14 developed countries, showed that 80% of the long-term rise in property prices is attributable solely to the rise in land prices.
Between 1870 and 1950, average house prices in many countries fell in real terms despite rising prosperity. This was the effect of the transport revolution (railways, trams, cars, buses) and the invention of the lift, which multiplied the supply of available land and building space at a stroke, removing the barrier of the land monopoly.
The true history of the game Monopoly (The Landlord's Game)
The game was created in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie (a follower of Henry George) under its original name, The Landlord's Game, to illustrate the phenomenon of the land monopoly.
The game had two sets of rules:
Monopolist (the one on the market today): The player who first buys up the plots drains the others of cash through rent payments, driving everyone into bankruptcy and himself to extreme wealth.
Anti-monopolist (Georgist): The rise in land value goes into society's common pool, and the game ends with everyone winning when the poorest player has doubled his wealth.
Speculation in arable land in the heart of Warsaw
According to official data from Statistics Poland (GUS) as of 1 January 2024, of Warsaw's 51,700 hectares, as many as 10,835 hectares are formally agricultural land, including 7,670 hectares of arable land (mainly in the districts of Wawer, Wilanów and Wesoła).
To a huge extent, these are sites held for purely speculative purposes under the cover of preferential agricultural taxation.
Introducing a tax of just 1% of the market value of 10% of this land would bring the capital PLN 108 million a year, and covering all of it would yield over PLN 1 billion in revenue and immediately force speculators to start building or to sell the land on.
The state's double standards and the fiction of the free market
The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) pursues price-fixing and coercion in trade, but completely ignores the speculative freezing of land.
Reselling tickets to concerts or matches at inflated prices (“touting”) is an offence under Polish law punishable by detention or a fine, because the state considers speculation in a scarce good to be socially harmful.
In the case of land and housing – a good essential to human existence – the state not only tolerates bulk buying and speculation, but rewards rentiers with tax reliefs and mortgage subsidy programmes (the 2% Loan, plans for a 0% Loan), which transfer public billions to banks and developers, pushing prices up.
The prescription: a tax on the unimproved value of land (LVT)
The solution proposed by the classics of economics (including Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” and Milton Friedman, who called it “the least bad tax”) is the Land Value Tax (LVT).
The difference from a cadastral tax: A cadastral tax taxes the land together with the building, which discourages investment (building a better house raises the tax). LVT is levied solely on the pure value of the location, regardless of what stands on it.
The owner of an empty plot pays a high tax, which makes it impossible to “pickle” land for years – he must either build flats to make a profit or sell the land on for development.
Land cannot be moved abroad or hidden in a tax haven, and the tax does not reduce its physical supply. The weekly The Economist (article “Why Henry George had a point”, 2015) pointed out that economists commonly recommend this tax, but corrupt politicians and lobbyists block it, protecting unearned profits.
International experience: Singapore and the Viennese model
Singapore: Since 1973, the state has frozen land speculation by taking over land for infrastructure and increasing the stock of public land from 40% to 90%. In addition, prohibitive taxes were introduced on the purchase of additional flats (e.g. 20% on a second and 30% on a third unit).
Vienna: More than 60% of residents live in municipal or subsidised housing. In 2018, a regulation was introduced requiring that in new buildings of over 5,000 m², at least two-thirds of the units must be let at a fixed, regulated rent (approx. EUR 5/m² net).
Gemeinnützige Bauvereinigungen (Austrian Limited-Profit Housing Associations): They are responsible for building almost 90% of flats. They operate like reformed cooperatives with a statutory cap on return on equity of no more than 3.5% (10 times lower than in Poland). They benefit from tax exemptions on condition that all surpluses are continuously reinvested in further construction and renovation, which makes it impossible to throttle supply.
A historical analogy: the First Republic and the Third Republic (a new feudalism)
The First Republic: Ruled by a 10% group of landowners (the nobility), who exempted themselves from taxes and extracted free serf labour from 80% of the population (the peasants). The lack of investment in modern industry led to military impotence and the partitions of the state.
The Third Republic: Power is exercised by a modern group holding the land and the flats. It extracts free labour from the young generations – a worker pays off a 20–30-year mortgage, half the value of which is pure monopoly rent for the developer and the bank. Instead of the serf-master's whip, the instrument of coercion has become the mortgage and the bailiff.
Pushing capital out of innovation into “concrete gold”
Holding capital in real estate stifles Poland's economic development.
Instead of investing their savings in innovative businesses, the stock exchange, new technologies and the creation of high value-added jobs, wealthy Poles buy further packages of flats to let.
Society bears the hidden cost of thousands of companies that were never founded because capital was frozen in bricks and mortar.
Demographic collapse as a death sentence for the state
In 1984, a cooperative flat in Warsaw cost the equivalent of about one average national salary per square metre; today, in the same place, developers demand more than two average national salaries.
American research after 2000 showed that around 50% of the fall in the fertility rate is directly attributable to prohibitive housing prices.
In Poland, fertility has collapsed below 1.1–1.2 children per woman. The lack of a roof of their own over their heads makes it impossible for young people to become independent and start families, pushing adult citizens into forced cohabitation with their parents.
After the fall of the First Republic, the nation survived and rebuilt the state because there was a biological substance. If the policy of the group holding the land leads to the depopulation of the country, there will be no rebirth after the Third Republic, because there will be no people left.
30 PILLARS OF LOGOMARKA
FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS FOR THE RULE OF LAW, DEMOCRACY, EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW AND CIVIC SOVEREIGNTY
(Open civic forum: weekly updates and new points added. Submit proposals to: biuro@logomarka.pl or via the portal http://algoomni.com)
THE SANCTITY OF EVERY VOTE: Every vote cast is the supreme, direct and inviolable mandate of the sovereign in the state. No digital algorithm, no politicised electoral commission and no backroom party deal has the right to annul, falsify, distort or ignore the will of the citizens. Transparency, physical verifiability and public scrutiny of the electoral process at every stage constitute the inviolable foundation of the existence of the Republic.
A RECOUNT OF VOTES AND INSPECTION OF THE 2025 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: The absolute necessity of carrying out a comprehensive inspection by commission and a new, 100% open and publicly broadcast recount of all ballot papers from the 2025 presidential election. Taking the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland in the shadow of procedural machinations, amid the paralysis of oversight bodies and the staggering passivity of the authorities of the time, constituted a violation of the constitutional order that requires the material truth to be fully clarified.
HOLDING PIS TO ACCOUNT – AN UNCOMPROMISING “ZERO OPTION”: Full, uncompromising criminal, constitutional and financial liability for the systemic destruction of the legal order, the dismantling of the separation of powers and the unlawful transfers of public funds during the years of PiS rule. A rejection of any rotten compromises, political deals or lenient treatment – every scandal, embezzlement and act of lawlessness must be adjudicated to the very bottom.
HOLDING THE CURRENT GOVERNMENT TO ACCOUNT FOR ITS OMISSIONS AND FAILURE TO SETTLE ACCOUNTS: A government that received a democratic mandate to restore the rule of law, but which, in the name of conformism, political calculation and a quiet life, chose procrastination and the sin of omission, must bear unequivocal political responsibility. The absence of firm accountability will take its revenge at the ballot box and open the way to a constitutional relapse of anti-democratic forces.
THE COMPLETE ABOLITION OF IMMUNITIES: The definitive abolition of parliamentary, judicial, prosecutorial and official immunities. All citizens without exception must be 100% equal before the law and answer before the same common courts. The institution of immunity has been utterly perverted, becoming a pathological shield protecting corruption, common crimes, abuses of power and the impunity of elites.
A MANDATORY TWO-TERM LIMIT IN ALL BODIES: The introduction of a hard limit of a maximum of two terms (counted over a lifetime) for MPs, senators, city presidents, mayors, heads of rural municipalities and the heads of state agencies and central offices. An end to a professional caste of politicians welded to their seats for decades and to the creation of entrenched bureaucratic clans feeding on citizens' property.
MANDATORY TOXICOLOGY TESTS FOR PERSONS IN THE HIGHEST OFFICES: Mandatory, independent and random laboratory tests (blood, urine, hair) carried out every 3 months for the President of the Republic of Poland, the Prime Minister, ministers, deputy ministers, MPs, senators and heads of state institutions. Refusal to undergo testing or a positive result results in immediate and automatic dismissal from office. Persons deciding on the security and fate of the nation must be fully sane, responsible and free from chemical addictions.
A CITIZENS' CONSTITUTION WITH FIXED DEADLINES: The new Basic Law must be written directly by citizens and independent experts, not by politicians and law firms concerned with their own impunity. The absolute elimination of discretionary, elastic wording such as “without delay” or “within a reasonable time” and its replacement with precise calendar days, on pain of automatic loss of office by the official or judge should they be exceeded.
STRICT ORDER OF RECEIPT IN COURTS AND OFFICES: A statutory, absolute requirement to proceed with and examine cases according to the exact date, minute and hour of their receipt by courts, prosecutors' offices and public administration offices. A final end to the “freezers” for cases inconvenient to those in power, the political favouring of court calendars, the selection of cases at the dictate of cliques and the deliberate protraction of proceedings so that they become time-barred.
FULL DISCLOSURE OF THE LIST OF THOSE ILLEGALLY SURVEILLED WITH DIGITAL SYSTEMS: The immediate publication of a full, open and complete register of all persons surveilled with cyberweapons (Pegasus, Hermes, Predator, Feng and related systems). The public and public figures have an inalienable right to know who was wiretapped, blackmailed, manipulated and operationally destroyed when strategic state and economic decisions were being taken.
FULL CRIMINAL, CIVIL AND FINANCIAL LIABILITY OF OFFICIALS, JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS: The introduction of full, personal criminal, civil and financial liability (with all private assets, present and future) for the president, prime ministers, ministers, MPs, senators, heads of rural municipalities, mayors, councillors, state officials, and unconditionally for judges and prosecutors, for knowingly violating the Constitution, corruption, fabricating evidence, issuing unlawful decisions and judgments, gross omissions and errors causing losses to the State Treasury or harm to citizens. An end to hiding with impunity behind a judicial robe, immunity or an official stamp – for lawlessness and damage, those in power, judges and prosecutors must pay out of their own pockets and answer criminally like any other citizen.
A TOTAL BAN ON HOLDING MULTIPLE OFFICES AND A BAN ON SITTING ON THE BOARDS OF STATE TREASURY COMPANIES: A radical, absolute ban on sitting on the management boards, supervisory boards and advisory bodies of State Treasury companies, municipal companies and government agencies for ministers, deputy ministers, senior state and local government officials, MPs, senators, heads of rural municipalities, mayors, city presidents and councillors (with a 5-year cooling-off period after leaving office). A final severing of the pathology of party cronyism, nepotism and the milking of state assets by political appointees.
AN ABSOLUTE BAN ON SWITCHING PARLIAMENTARY CLUBS AND COUNCIL GROUPS (A BAN ON POLITICAL TOURISM): The mandate of an MP, senator and councillor is bound to the will of the voters expressed on the electoral committee's list. Leaving the club, moving to another grouping or political mandate corruption results in the automatic expiry of the mandate and replacement by the next person on the electoral list. An end to trading in citizens' votes in parliament and local government.
MANDATORY ATTENDANCE AT VOTES AND SESSIONS ON PAIN OF LOSING ONE'S MANDATE: The work of a parliamentarian and councillor is a firm official duty towards the sovereign. Unexcused absence from sittings of the Sejm, the Senate, committees or key votes exceeding 10% in a quarter results in automatic loss of the mandate by operation of law, with no right to severance pay or a parliamentary pension.
FULL TRANSPARENCY OF EXPENDITURE: ALLOWANCES, MILEAGE AND OFFICES SETTLED EXCLUSIVELY BY PAYMENT CARD: A total ban on cash, lump-sum and advance settlements in parliamentary and local government activity. All office expenses, expert opinions, hotels, business trips and mileage must be paid exclusively with a personal official card linked to a public online register of expenditure available to every citizen in real time. Any attempt at mileage fraud means an immediate referral to the prosecutor.
AN END TO “SACRED COWS”: THE SAME LAW FOR POLITICIANS, JUDGES, PROSECUTORS, THE SERVICES AND JOURNALISTS: Equal law for all without caste privileges. The abolition of separate procedures, immunities, secret disciplinary courts and arrangements protecting politicians, prosecutors, judges, special services officers and the journalists linked to them. Every crime, obstruction of justice, fabrication of operational material or paid media protection will be tried in open proceedings before a jury.
SYSTEMIC PROTECTION AND STRICT COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE OVERSIGHT OF FORMER SPECIAL SERVICES OFFICERS: Special services officers (AW, ABW, SKW, SWW, CBA) who possess knowledge of state secrets must not be abandoned on the open market as easy prey for foreign intelligence services and criminal groups. The introduction of a 10-year ban on working for foreign entities and in sensitive sectors (cryptocurrencies, finance, gambling), combined with fair state analytical remuneration and permanent counter-intelligence protection.
FULL TRANSPARENCY AND A BLOCK ON INFILTRATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS: Every draft law, regulation and amendment must have a public, digital register of its authors by first and last name, and a lobbying trail. An absolute ban on laws being written by external law firms and lobbyists linked to foreign capital. All attempts to block anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering legislation to be treated as diplomatic treason.
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE AND AN END TO BUDGET FUNDING OF RELIGIOUS STRUCTURES: The immediate abolition of the Church Fund, the taxation of the income of religious associations under general rules and an absolute ban on transferring State Treasury and local government property for next to nothing. Religious associations may be financed exclusively from voluntary tax allocations by the faithful (a voluntary church tax).
A CITIZENS' VETO AND BINDING REFERENDUMS WITH NO TURNOUT THRESHOLD: Restoring real power to the sovereign: a motion supported by 500,000 citizens' signatures obliges the Sejm to call a nationwide referendum, the result of which is absolutely binding on the state authorities, with no possibility of applying a turnout threshold. The executive and legislative authorities are prohibited from overriding the will of the nation expressed in a referendum.
DIGITAL TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY: ONLY REAL DATA IN THE PUBLIC SPACE AND ON THE INTERNET: A requirement to verify identity and use real data when registering, logging in, publishing articles, running newspapers and operating social media and app accounts. An end to troll farms, bots, false identities and organised disinformation – every participant in public debate and on digital platforms must bear full, personal legal responsibility for the content they publish.
TOTAL TRANSPARENCY OF SERVICE: BODY-WORN CAMERAS FOR OFFICIALS AND UNIFORMED FORMATIONS: An absolute obligation to make audiovisual recordings of all official activities undertaken by state officials, customs officers, police officers and officers of all uniformed and special services by means of permanently active body-worn cameras. The recording constitutes hard evidence in disciplinary and criminal proceedings, eliminating violence, abuses of power, extortion and the fabrication of charges.
DIRECT ELECTIONS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF RECALLING JUDGES, PROSECUTORS AND MINISTERS: The introduction of universal, direct civic elections and a mechanism for the sovereign to recall judges, prosecutors, senior officials, ministers and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. The definitive elimination of the political and party-based key for appointments, nepotism and corrupt backroom promotions in favour of direct verification and a mandate of trust from citizens.
FULL DECLASSIFICATION OF ARCHIVES: OPENING THE IPN FILES AND THOSE OF THE COMMUNIST-ERA SERVICES: The immediate, one-hundred-percent opening and full publication of all archival materials, personal and operational files of the IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) and of the communist special services (SB, WSW, Directorate II of the General Staff). The abolition of the so-called restricted collections, in order to definitively cut off the possibility of blackmail, manipulation of the political scene, building up agents' “hooks” and concealing the past of decision-makers.
A PUBLIC LIST OF ILLEGAL SECRET COLLABORATORS IN PROFESSIONS OF PUBLIC TRUST: The unconditional publication of a complete register of persons practising professions of public trust (judges, prosecutors, doctors, advocates, legal advisers, journalists) who were illegally recruited or entered into covert cooperation with the special services, including the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA). Secret entanglement within the structures of the justice system, the media and healthcare constitutes a direct threat to the rule of law and civil liberties.
MODERN AND DEFENCE-ORIENTED EDUCATION: REPLACING RELIGION WITH DEFENCE TRAINING, AI AND PROGRAMMING: The definitive withdrawal of religious instruction from public schools and its replacement with subjects of key civilisational and strategic importance: practical defence training and rescue skills, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced programming and modern computer science. Polish young people must acquire the competences of the future and hard skills for defending the country, not dogmatic indoctrination at the taxpayer's expense.
CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS FOR ELECTIONS AND AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM: The implementation of firm, systemic control mechanisms and procedures making any repeat of rigged elections impossible (including the 2025 presidential election) and eliminating the precedents of breaking the law and the Constitution known from periods of authoritarian practices by centres of executive power (including practices from the time of Andrzej Duda and Karol Nawrocki). Any attempt to unlawfully manipulate the electoral process or stretch prerogatives must meet with an automatic, absolute blocking of the action and the immediate criminal prosecution of the perpetrators.
TOTAL TRANSPARENCY OF REMUNERATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR, FOUNDATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS: The introduction of absolute transparency of all salaries, bonuses, awards and allowances received by politicians, state and local government officials and members of the governing bodies of foundations and associations using public funds or citizens' collections. A nationwide online register of remuneration, available in real time, will definitively eliminate hidden corruption, the siphoning off of money and the creation of parasitic political troughs.
ASSET DECLARATIONS WITHOUT EXEMPTIONS – 100% PUBLIC AND COMPLETED ELECTRONICALLY: The complete abolition of confidentiality clauses and exemptions from disclosure in the asset declarations of persons holding public office (including judges, prosecutors, parliamentarians and ministers). An absolute obligation to complete declarations exclusively in a standardised electronic format (an end to deliberate, illegible handwritten scrawl), together with a precise market valuation of real estate, cryptocurrencies, company shares and assets transferred to spouses and relatives.
FULL ANNULMENT OF THE DECISIONS OF MATEUSZ MORAWIECKI'S 2023 TWO-WEEK GOVERNMENT: The statutory declaration as null and void by operation of law (ex tunc) of all financial and personnel decisions, resolutions, appointments, grants and asset transfers made by the so-called two-week government of Mateusz Morawiecki appointed in November 2023. A sham cabinet with no parliamentary majority served solely to entrench party sinecures, push through million-zloty grants for foundations linked to the outgoing government and siphon off public funds – all these acts must be immediately annulled and the funds recovered.