Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

What an absurd fabrication.

 

1) If it doesn't advance the human condition ONE IOTA, it doesn't matter what you call it or what model it is .. it's no better than anything which exists elsewhere. Show me an example of publicly owned lands, and an improvement in the human condition, and I'll happily concede that your ideas are superior. It would need to offer the same equality as the communist model, without the totalitarianism or hierarchy.

2) It doesn't matter what you call it! Communist/capitalist/geoist .. if it's doing nothing to improve the human condition it's futile. It's all just ideas and talk. It needs to MATERIALLY change conditions for the people therein, and none of these examples have done that. In fact, the major quality of life improvements (in both HK and China) thus far have arrived via capitalism and democracy.

 

You constantly refer to the posts and ideas of others as 'evil'.

 

Only when they are. And the "shouting" claim was a fabrication.

See, I am not afraid to use the word, "evil" because I know what it means: deliberate abrogation of another's rights with intent to inflict injustice. Evil must always be justified, and the only way to justify it is with lies. The lies that people tell to justify evil are also evil, because they enable evil. Privilege -- legal entitlements to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation -- is government taking the side of evil against good. Clear?

 

Wrong. Correct understanding is valuable even before it is successfully applied to advance the human condition -- indeed, it is almost a requirement that knowledge precede its successful application.

Hong Kong, obviously. Up to 1949, land was privately owned in capitalist China, publicly owned in (semi-)geoist HK, and HK was consequently a beacon of liberty, justice and prosperity to the Chinese, who immigrated there in droves. Then after 1949, both land and production became publicly owned in China, and HK was even more of a beacon of liberty, justice and prosperity. Its geoist system was visibly superior in direct comparisons with both socialism and capitalism.

Nope. Flat wrong. The Procrustean egalitarianism of the communist model is not an advance of the human condition but a loathsome and idiotic attempt to turn human beings into ants. Marx didn't understand that his notions were wrong, foolish and doomed because he was a pre-Darwinian: he had no understanding whatever of the biological foundations of human nature. Inequality is natural in human societies; it has certainly driven our evolution into the more or less intelligent species we see today. And to the extent that it reflects differences in contribution and deprivation, inequality is good because it gets the incentives right.

Nope. Wrong again. Valid and agreed definitions are absolutely crucial. Few people are aware of this, but Newton's Principia Mathematica, by far the most important scientific work ever published, was revolutionary first of all because it provided precise, empirically valid definitions of terms that had been confusing people for millennia: weight, mass, force, velocity, momentum, etc. Once the correct definitions were in place, the basic principles and equations of Newtonian mechanics were obvious, almost tautological. That is why I take more care with definitions than anyone else on this forum.

Ahem. Wrong again. Kepler's Laws did absolutely nothing to improve the human condition: they describe planetary motions that do not affect us and which we can do nothing about. But they were the first example of a purely mathematical solution to a mystery that had baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years, and thus initiated the modern way of thinking: that the world can be understood -- that phenomena we can't explain are not governed by the inexplicable caprices of one or more gods, but follow impersonal, objective, infallible rules that we can in principle discover.

Obviously and wildly false. Look what has happened in China in the 40 years since it abandoned the socialist model for the geoist one.

Nope. Wrong again. Neither HK nor China is capitalist by definition, because all land is publicly owned; and China is certainly not democratic, either.

 

I will assume this is not a serious suggestion. While the very top level very possibly should pay more (and many billionaires say themselves they should be), 99% would serve no purpose other than completely remove motivation for innovation, growth, etc..

 

More to the point, it would effectively motivate only avoidance and evasion measures, making the system even more dysfunctional.

 

Tell that to the Hong Kongers living in cages. They're not sitting around thinking about the awesomeness of Geoism.

Meantime, China has improved the human condition via the rise of capitalism and democracy - regardless of what they call it. No one on earth but you (and your fellow Geoists) thinks otherwise.

 

Administration is no different from ownership. You know this, comrade, no?

Who do you think "administered" the dachas in Soviet Russia?

 

It's the second or third different sock puppet he's used. I think he was actually banned under a different name, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

You have to be referring to bringiton.

It's funny, because he shouts evil from the rooftops while trying to justify ownership (what he likes to refer to as "administration") by the ruling elite, aka government.

If you ask me, that's as evil as it gets.

 

I would tell them what I have told you: through the institution of exclusive land tenure, they have been forcibly stripped of their liberty right to use land without just compensation, and that is why they are consigned to living in cages. But probably like many other people, they would not be intelligent enough to understand that.

Of course not. Like most people, including the HK and Chinese authorities, they are not intelligent enough to understand that exclusive land tenure forcibly removes everyone's rights to liberty, and must justly be compensated by free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity.

No, they don't call it capitalism or democracy because it isn't.

That's just indisputably false, as I have proved to you repeatedly.

 

<yawn> Already proved false multiple times: a trustee administers the trust assets but does not own them.

Ownership by definition requires four rights: exclusion, control, benefit and disposition. Not one, two, or three of those rights. ALL FOUR. As the proposed land administration office lacks the rights of both benefit and disposition, it is by definition not the owner of the land. It does not matter how many times you falsely claim that it is. It also does not seem to matter how many times, how clearly, simply, and patiently, or in how many different ways I prove your claim is false. You just ignore the fact that it has been proven false and repeat it anyway.

I know that you know I have proved it false multiple times.

Party apparatchiks. And your point would be....?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right: Hong Kong has been the same as Soviet Russia for over 160 years. How could I have forgotten?

 

I'm not a fan of the state performing all those functions. Sounds like a monopoly.

 

1) So you agree that in Hong Kong - the place YOU give as a good example of your ideas - State 'control' (aka ownership) of all the land hasn't improved anything for anyone, since the same crazy wealth disparity exists there, as it does when citizens own the land. Actually, it's worse. At least in an ordinary capitalist democracy, those cage dwellers would have the option of working towards owning their own piece.

2) Oh but no doubt you are 'intelligent enough to understand', right? Either way, no, freehold does not 'force' anything. We're all free to choose ownership, and reap its benefits - or choose to be life renters and throw all our money away. Unless we live in Hong Kong of course .. where that particularly good path out of poverty is not available to us. Maybe you should migrate to HK, where you don't have to tolerate the terrible imposition of options. You could be a life renter of a cage. Heck, you might even find one with a window four cages down from you, and a new lightbulb!

3) It doesn't matter what you or they call it (in China), it's still a result of capitalism and democracy. As Communistic practices have fallen away under the pressure from capitalist models, so things have improved there.

 

No, that is just you makin' $#!+ up again. I have never called it a good example of my ideas. It is an early (and consequently primitive and imperfect) example of the geoist model -- private ownership of what is privately created, public ownership of what is publicly created -- and brutally demolishes and humiliates idiots who claim no one will build anything on land they don't own. Unfortunately, it is only about 1/10 of the way to being a good example of what I advocate, as it still gives most publicly created land rent to private landholders as a welfare subsidy (which is why HK has so many real estate billionaires), does almost nothing to compensate people for the removal of their rights to liberty by exclusive tenure (hence the cage living), privileges private banksters to create its money, enforces IP monopolies, etc. All it really shows is that the geoist system is superior to capitalism, which is a pretty low bar.

No, that is also just you makin' $#!+ up again. It has improved almost everything for almost everyone -- except those at the very bottom, who are a melange of the least productive, the mentally and psychologically ill, the cognitively challenged, the lazy, the criminal, the addicted, the spendthrift, etc. and thus end up living in cages.

<sigh> Let's assume wealth follows an inverse exponential distribution, as empirical research in many societies has shown it does. There is a very great difference between a wealth distribution that arises that way by chance, through an annual lottery (which is sort of fair, in one sense), an identical distribution that arises through each citizen keeping the value they contribute and paying for what they take (much fairer,I think everyone can agree), and an identical distribution that arises through privilege, where private landowners just take from everyone else in proportion to their landholdings (self-evidently much less fair than the lottery), as in places where land is privately owned..

GET IT???

No it isn't, which is why so many people from poor capitalist countries want to go and live there, cages and all.

BWAHAHAHAHAAA! The "option" is it? Like slaves have the "option" of saving up their money and buying their rights to liberty from their owners?

Count on it.

Obviously, that is just a bald falsehood. Private title to land forcibly strips everyone of their liberty rights to use that land and gives them to the landowners as their private property. Landowners literally own everyone else's liberty rights to use that land.

No, that is just more of the same absurd and disingenuous garbage you have been spewing for months. If you have to PAY someone else full market value just for permission to exercise your right to liberty, you're not FREE.

GET IT??

I.e., the benefits of owning everyone else's rights to liberty. I have never said or implied that that is not a very desirable situation to be in. Problem is, the benefits are obtained exclusively at the involuntary expense of others.

Having money extorted from you by a protection racket is not "throwing it away," and your attempt to characterize it as voluntarily chosen profligacy is nothing but more of your despicable and evil blame-the-victim filth.

Actually, most HK billionaires got there by owning land leases, and it is certainly an available path out of poverty -- at the involuntary expense of others, of course, if you can call that a "good" path.

<yawn>

It does if you want to be honest and accurate.

No it isn't. It's indisputably a result of their adoption of the geoist model, because that is what it is.

ROTFL! They did not "fall away under the pressure from capitalist models." Deng Xiaoping made a deliberate choice to adopt HK's geoist model because he could see it was superior not only to socialism, but to capitalism.

 

Right, me neither. That's why I oppose state ownership of land: it can't rightly dispose of land, as that would mean it was disposing of future generations' rights to liberty. Even the current generation of voters has no right to dispose of future generations' rights, only their own, as it does when it holds the state democratically accountable for its administration of possession and use of land.

Exclusive tenure to land is always a monopoly, as each parcel is unique, and supply cannot be increased.

 

The state, government, "administrators"...what ever name you may wish to call them, all draw a certain type of psychopathic personality. It is these people that work to focus the powers they are given into a monopoly.

That will ALWAY and FOREVER be the end result.

The power to enforce the trust is all they need to achieve this end goal- military, the police and the courts. It is a fool's errand to believe otherwise, as history has proven it.

The geoist vision is no different than any any other form of government in this regard. It's not special. The end is the same. Government is government. Psycopaths are psychopaths and it doesn't matter what flag that is standing behind them.

 

That is just absurd and puerile, "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" nonsense with no basis in empirical evidence or historical reality.

Garbage unsupported by any empirical evidence.

More silliness with no basis in fact.

No, history has proved you flat, outright wrong as a matter of objective physical fact. If there is one thing history teaches, it is that a government has to be very bad indeed to be worse than no government.

That is just another bald falsehood. The geoist model is self-evidently and indisputably more just than socialism or capitalism because it converts both exclusive land tenure and the public revenue system from force-based extortion rackets to voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transactions.

I see. So, in what you are no doubt pleased to call your "mind," the end is the same in Switzerland as in Swaziland, the same in Canada and Cameroon, the same in Hong Kong and Honduras.

You thus disqualify yourself from serious discussion of public policy.

And kindergarten-level "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" bull$#!+ is kindergarten-level "Meeza hatesa gubmint!" bull$#!+ no matter what disingenuous, blame-the-victim, propertarian codswallop it is alleged to be based on.

 

Exclusive labor tenure is always a monopoly as each worker is unique and supply cannot be increased.

 

What?

Maybe if it meant anything, which it doesn't.

True.

Self-evidently false.

Why, whenever you presume to dispute with me, do you always feel you have to resort to claims that are self-evidently and indisputably false as a matter of objective physical fact?

 

Edward Abbey stated it well:

 

Every laborer is unique and is therefore a monopoly. Why do you dispute this obvious fact?

 

Is that what you meant by "exclusive labor tenure"? That each worker is the sole supplier of his own labor? Kinda obvious....

I haven't disputed it. What I'm waiting for is your explanation of why the supply of labor, like the supply of land, cannot be increased.

 

Each laborer is unique and is therefore a monopoly.