The scientific meeting of “Fiqh Rant” was held on Monday, November 29, 1402, with the presence of researchers at the Institute of Contemporary Jurisprudence Studies. In this meeting of Hojjat al-Islam and Muslims, Dr. Mohammad Reza Yousefi discussed the fields of jurisprudence in the “Rent” debate.
Referring to the novelty of the concept of rent even in Iran’s legal texts, he emphasized the necessity and importance of thematics of this discussion and said: “Rent is an imported word in our country, which has been misunderstood, and because of this, there is a wrong mentality towards the concept of rent.” It’s formed.”
He added: “If this does not happen, we will suffer from misunderstanding, and therefore someone who is in the position of jurisprudence will suffer from misunderstanding, which we see as an example in the discussion of money creation in the field of traditional jurisprudence in the field of theology.”
The professor of Mofid University then examined the definition and characteristics of rent and said: Ricardo was the first person who proposed the term rent. He said that if we have high-quality and low-quality land, the high-quality land gives higher profit. But poor quality land gives less profit. Here, even though both farmers who worked on the land worked equally hard, the one who has good land has more output. Ricardo pointed out that gradually the land owner gets to this point and naturally increases the rent of his land.
From Dr. Yousefi’s point of view, in the later stages, this concept found its evolution and Buchanan considered incomes whose real value is different from the market value as rent.
He said: In the fourth stage or today’s rent, it means that an economic activist can sell a product after importing it at what price? The conditions may be competitive and the price of this product is one million tomans. But the government may allocate the entry of this product to one person. Therefore, this person can sell this product for two million tomans. The gap between these two states is called rent.
Hojjat-ul-Islam and Muslimeen Yousefi emphasized: Rent is different from corruption; Corruption in the economy means abuse of power for personal gain; Both the family and the party, and the relationship between corruption and rent is logically understood by both the public and the private sector.
Another concept that this university professor put his hands on was the concept of rentier government; A government whose most exports are based on national resources and has nothing to do with rent.
In the next part of his speech, this professor of economics examined the causes of rent and listed the inherent scarcity of factors or its inelasticity that may happen for various reasons, government intervention, and information asymmetry among these factors.
The next part of Dr. Yousefi’s speech was dedicated to “examples of government intervention in creating rent”. He mentioned examples such as exclusive licenses of the government, such as imports, subsidies to producers or consumers, handing over of state companies in a non-transparent and non-competitive environment, as well as banks’ mandated rates, customs, tax and duty exemptions, multi-rate currency, granting special privileges to inventions. Innovations in a specific geographical location or a specific activity are other examples of this phenomenon
He emphasized: Another type of rent is the rent of influence in the decision-making apparatus. Such as cases where the beneficiary himself is in a decision-making position in a related body.
Dr. Yousefi added: One of the most important factors of today’s rent is information asymmetry. For example, someone may know about the high price of the currency for some reason and use this knowledge as an opportunity for his own financial growth.
He pointed to senior managers who are in the central bank or tax systems and said: usually these managers are attracted to private banks immediately after retirement; Because they have information that is useful for private banks or their investment institutions. While in other countries, it is a law that such people do not have the right to work in another company for five years. An example of the discussion pot was the stock market management activists.
Dr. Yousefi added: Another reason for rent is the centralized political structure. Ensuring survival in the power structure creates corruption. Basically, the specific conditions of the country, such as embargo, and war create rents. For example, in an article published in English, rent statistics have been analyzed in the erosion of the Iran-Iraq war.
Dr. Yousefi further divided the rent into two types of advance rent and back rent. He considered productive rents given to producers to encourage and promote production; And he called the winning back rents as rents that help brokerage and mediation, so the economy is the winner.
He emphasized: In countries like ours, it is necessary to convert post-winning rents into pre-winning rents.
Hojjat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, Dr. Yousefi, in the final part of his speech, stated the contexts that the discussion of rent can have in jurisprudence and said: Examining the results of common jurisprudence rulings in the context of rent: does our current jurisprudence weaken or develop rent, and also examine From the point of view of jurisprudence, rent rulings have two main areas.
He added: In the first discussion, especially in governments that are centralized and the range of powers of the government is large and there is no transparency, we may create rents with jurisprudence. For example, in the case of Anfal, the government has a large ownership in the lands and the open lands are in the hands of the ruler. If this happened during the period of Osman and large rents were created for his relatives.
Mofid University professor emphasized: The most important issue in rent is thematics. Because in rent means to turn competition into monopoly. We must look at the economic consequences of a decision. In the subjects, we must examine the discussion with the popular rules of jurisprudence; Rules such as equal value to falsehood. The jurist must consider the effects of his fatwas. At present, jurists sometimes consider the consequences of fatwa as part of the ruling. For example, in the discussion of women entering the stadium, if we look at this discussion as a single person, we rule that it is halal, but by imagining the consequences of women’s presence next to men in the stadium, it is sanctioned. We see similar examples about the boycott of Rytel.