Domar revives an argument he found in Kliuchevsky's account of Muscovy and gives it a spare economic form. Where land is plentiful and labour scarce, land yields no rent: a hired man can walk off and farm for himself, so competition among employers pushes wages up to the value of what he produces and leaves the owner nothing.

A state that wants a class of landowners who do not work, as Russia wanted servitors able to equip themselves for war, cannot get one from market forces. Granting them exclusive title to land is not enough while peasants may still move. Only fixing labour in place ends the competition and lets the owner take everything above subsistence.

The hypothesis is stated as an incompatibility among three things, no two of which can coexist with the third. Domar concedes that government action is doing the decisive work, which leaves abundant land neither necessary nor sufficient for bondage.