The problem of Capitalism

Correction: The bolded^^^ should read: "that whatever is bought is morally rightfully owned"

I mistakenly placed the "owned" before the "bought". Added some more to it, as well. Just wanted to clarify, but I think what I meant was clear, anyways.

 

I would like to hear your moral justification for anybody being able to use any land they choose any time they choose.

 

I know it sucks, because you are so entrenched in your ideology, but georgism has been completely dismissed as an economic system. It can’t snd doesn’t work. When you guys compare owning land to owning human beings, you look very silly.

 

No. In our system, the land"owner" would merely pay the full market rent for the land they wish to deprive others of as a basis for the community continuing to secure their exclusive tenure for "their" land.

If the government tried to get more than the market rent, the land would become vacant and there would be no revenue. So, to maximize revenue, you can't ask for more than the market rent.

"Unique desire and willingness to pay" of an individual is irrelevant. Even if somebody is willing to pay up to 20,000, he wouldn't need to pay more than 15,000, if that's the market rent.

No income tax. No sales tax. A very, very simplified tax code in comparison to the current one. Far less intrusive than the current one.

People just need to get over the idea that land should be some kind of investment (an investment in being allowed to steal from society) and that owning it is somehow a holy foundation of society.

The land"owner" is the one who gets gets the benefit from the opportunities the government provides, which has apparently been mathematically proven:

"In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz showed that under certain conditions, beneficial investments in public goods will increase aggregate land rents by at least as much as the investments cost. This proposition was dubbed the "Henry George theorem", as it characterizes a situation where Henry George's 'single tax' on land values, is not only efficient, it is also the only tax necessary to finance public expenditures."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem

Merely asking the land"owner" to pay for what he's taking shouldn't even be considered a tax but a reimbursement to the community, IMO.

 

Lafayette;

With respect, you are quoting theory, and drafts and charts. There is nothing real world here. To paraphrase A British Prime Minister, he said "There are lies, damn lies and there are statistics". You can make statistics come out any way you want.

Your theories omit one real thing--

CONSEQUENCIES

Why are there riots in Venezuela which turned away from capitalism and went to socialism? Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Why do the yellow vests demonstrate against the socialist agenda in Paris?

We are all prone to want to talk about countries we have never lived in. In my college days, we talked about the great societies in Sweden and Denmark. Then I went to Europe where everyone talked about how great American was.

Someone should write a book and call it "Let's Look At (Insert Country Name)"





Please don't say just wait. That is a non-reply.

 

In my previous response to your post, I mistakenly just wrote $20,000 and $15,000 instead of $20,000/year or $15,000/year. Per year sounds bad as an example anyways.

Per month sounds is better. So, if market rent for a land parcel was $1,250/month, but an individual would be willing to pay up to $1666 for it, that individual still wouldn't have to pay more than $1,250/month for the land. (Though there is no need for you to be "willing" to pay more than the market rent, anyways.)

It works the same way now. We just want to make sure that it can be devoted to public benefit instead of simply staying in individual landowners' pockets.

Just for the sake of simplifying it, let's make it look like an auction:

If you buy a Picasso $100,000,000 then you only needed to pay one increment (let's say $5,000,000) above the $95,000,000 bid of the second highest bidder. You wouldn't have to pay the $125,000,000 you would theoretically have been "willing" to pay.

If you want the land, your bid only needs be an increment above the second highest bidder. So, assuming increments of $25, that means a second highest bid of $1,225/month; setting the market rent at $1,250/month.

bringiton can probably explain it much better than I can (maybe even correct my mistakes).

 

Sure thing. I'm the one living closest to the Commie dream, yet I'm the one who's wrong.

A bit too 'hands dirty and real' for ya

 

Buying justifies ownership is your own brain child. That principle would justify chattel slavery, as already proved by means of reductio ad absurdum. That being your justification for property in land speaks for itself, thus it is automatically refuted. Unless you wish to condone chattel slavery. Anything else would be logically inconsistent.

I don't think anybody should be able to use any land they choose at any time they wish to. They would have the natural liberty to do so, but it's not workable. So we need to secure exclusive land tenure for the user, but only as long as the community is repayed with the full land rent (devoted to public benefit), and then additionally give the individual people compensation in the form of an exemption up to a certain amount of land rent (enough to get some advantageous land for free) or some form of basic income financed by the revenue from the repayment of land rent to the community.

 

I'm sure that all sounds cute and smart in the hallowed halls of academia but out here in the sagebrush we can easily see what is really happening. The wealthy are buying ranch and farm land at exreme prices, far higher than the production from the land can support and far higher than generational ranchers and farmers are able to pay.

These wealthy buyers have no interest in the revenue from this land, they have a heavy revenue stream from other sources. In many cases they stop all economic activity on the newly purchased land. This isn't good for the local community or the national interests (jobs and taxes). Raising the property tax five or ten fold won't make any difference to the 1% but will force most everyone else off the land.

What you and @bringiton are advocating will result in the return to fuedalism.

And no, bringiton can't explain it any better.

 

Because the rich have access to newly created bank money at low interest rates. If the interest rate is low enough, any purchase price can be justified. But not any RENT.

See how that works?

Of course you don't, because you have decided not to.

Then why are they buying it, hmmmmm?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right: for TAX BREAKS. But if their income is no longer taxed, and indeed nothing but the land is taxed, buying the land can't possibly get them any tax breaks; instead, all it can get them is a huge tax LIABILITY.

See how that works?

Of course you don't, because you have decided not to.

That is false. Everywhere land rent recovery has been tried, it has produced an economic boom. Every single time. And the reason is simple: if the holding cost of vacant land exceeds any plausible appreciation, the speculators leave, and the only people left bidding for the land are those who want to use it.

See how that works?

Of course you don't, because you have decided not to.

Such claims are the exact, diametric opposite of the truth. Feudalism is based on hereditary land use contracts in an economy where landowning must be defended by the landowner. Under the system of liberty and justice in public revenue and land tenure we propose, the market tends to move all land into the most productive hands, and the community secures the landholder's tenure for him, which is what makes the land valuable.

See how that works?

Of course you don't, because you have decided not to.

I just did. So much for your silly garbage.

 

I'm not an academic.

They're speculating on future value increases. This wouldn't be possible in our revenue system. As bringiton mentioned a few days ago, as soon as the "holding cost exceeds any plausible appreciation", it would become a net loss for them. They would be forced to put it into productive use or give it up. If they don't, they could just as well burn money like Joker in The Dark Knight.

We wouldn't be arbitrarily raising the "property tax" five or ten fold. We'd completely eliminate any taxes on any improvements given to the land. The property tax has two portions: The portion that falls on land value (what the landowner gets from the community) and the portion that falls on improvement value (Houses, etc.). We would also relieve you off income tax, sales tax, etc. burden. Your property right to the fruits of your labor should be respected.

What we would do is recover the rental value of the land (This wouldn't happen all at once, but incrementally. There would be a recent purchase exemption as well in order to not burden people who've only just jumped on the gravy train of landowning). Our tax system is essentially designed to give the landowner the ability to pocket other people's taxes (Efficient government spending has a causal [upwards] impact on land value, as proven by the Henry George Theorem). The only people who have benefitted from our system of land tenure are the ones who have gained more through land value than paid in other taxes.

You're confusing our system with Longshot/TedInTheShed's system.

 

Nonsense. Government can't do any better than recovering the full market rent of the land (if it tries to get more it will lose revenue, as land is left idle), so the system of location subsidy repayment that we advocate automatically aligns government's own financial incentives with the public interest in efficient spending on desirable services and infrastructure and optimally productive private use of land.

Our solution is so much better you can't even imagine it.

No, it's actually dead simple. A thing's market value is just what the person who wants it most would have to pay to get it from the person who wants it second most. Fairness is automatic under the location subsidy repayment system because everyone pays the market value for what he is taking from the community, and gets to keep everything he earns. It's as fair as buying a loaf of bread from a bakery: you get the kind of bread you want at the market price, and the baker gets his livelihood. You are merely accustomed to taking bread without paying for it, so now you think if you have to pay, it's not fair.

 

I learned a lot. As Edison observed, "I haven't failed; I've discovered 9,000 things that won't work."

I doubt that. The schemes I have seen are not workable on a societal scale, don't achieve liberty or justice, and may actually impede justice.

<yaawn> Yeah, yeah. "Shut up and get back on the treadmill." I've heard that line before.

I certainly enjoy my creature comforts, like anyone else. I also have to live and support my family, so I can't go around in sackcloth and ashes in some wort of quixotic campaign of self-abnegation. You seem to think you can stop me from telling the truth by shaming me for not doing more, when I am already doing more than 99+% of my peers.

 

dear, govt can set the price for land anywhere they want and we'd have to pay it or live and work on the ocean. You are a baby in kindergarten.

 

Hey, bringiton, just an interesting question I had, if you want to give it a shot:

Humans are more similar than different. Does that mean that in an economy without privilege, assuming IQ and Personality traits vary independently (as you had mentioned in one of your posts), that wealth would probably be distributed in a Bell Curve shape as well? Additionally assuming that privilege wealth from past privilege has already been used up, of course.

 

1) who knows what a large fraction is?????????????
2) what we know is the larger the govt the poorer the people. Socialism starves people to death;it does not make them rich. Look at USA/Europe same GDP but they have twice the population. Kindergarten??

 

oh no it is you who is a joke!
( this is a liberal's idea of debating)

 

1) who knows what a larger govt is??
2) why so afraid to name the top 3 shole countries with small governments?? What does the liberal learn from his fear?

 

Chattel slavery violates the body of another person and is therefore morally unjustifiable.

Except that land is not a human being.

And why does the community get a monopoly over who can access and control land?

 

"We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute."
-- Thomas Paine

Whats to learn? He had one good idea that transformed life on the planet and one bad idea the was perfectly ignored for its idiocy. You need to think before you post.

Also when Paine wrote 99% were farmers so land was far more important for life than now.

 

I have proved you wrong repeatedly. Owning land is similar to owning a human being in that in both cases, it is other people's rights to liberty that you own. That fact alone proves you wrong.

So? Owning the atmosphere would be equivalent to owning the entire human race as slaves. That proves that owning something that is not a human being can be equivalent to owning a human being. And that proves you wrong.

But let's take another, more realistic hypothetical that proves you wrong:

A man -- let's call him Massa -- owns a natural spring in the middle of the desert (I do not believe you are so dishonest as to claim that though land can be owned, a natural spring cannot be owned). Like land and the earth's atmosphere, the spring is in no way similar to a human being. One day a man dying of thirst -- call him rahl -- stumbles in from the desert, and makes for the spring to slake his parched throat. But as he kneels to partake of the cool, sparkling liquid, he hears a revolver being cocked behind his head, and a low, quiet, sibilant voice informs him, "Uh-uh. I know what you're thinkin', punk. Is the owner of this here spring going to charge me six days' labor for a drink of water, or only five? And to tell the truth, in all this heat I haven't quite totaled up the rent myself. But bein' as it's 44 miles to the next waterhole, which might as well be the other side of the world, and I'd as soon blow your head clean off for trespassin' on my land, you gotta ask yourself a question: Do I feel thirsty today? Well, do ya, slave?"

You are destroyed.

I just proved it can. Again.

You showed nothing of the sort. GZ posted quotes from Nobel laureates in economics showing that the greatest economic minds support our position. You have offered no relevant facts, just disingenuous evasions and logical fallacies.

 

Pure ignorance and insanity. If someone feels like a slave without land he is free to buy it like any landowner before him to end his slavery. A real slave can't buy his liberty!! Child's play defeating this liberal.

 

It does not matter how many times you repeat it. Comparing owning land to owning a human is retarded. You’ve been shown how and why georgism does not and can not ever work. It’s a completely failed ideology.

 

Industry is created by labor. Land is not. Industry is therefore something government can only tax to the detriment of the people. Land is not. Why do you refuse to know such facts?

Unlike you, Paine understood that land value is not created by the landowner but by the community. He was rightly inveighing against taxation of PRIVATELY created value, not PUBLICLY created value.

See the difference?

For you, everything.

The Founders made taxation of land the sole source of federal revenue in the Articles of Confederation.

That's funny, coming from you. See above for actual examples of thinking.

No, only about 80%. And land was no more important then than it is now, as its astronomical price proves.

 

Having to pay for your rights is not the same as actually having rights.

You are factually incorrect. Slaves have almost always had the "freedom" to purchase their rights to liberty from their owners, just like the landless.

<yawn> You just got your @$$ handed to you, child.