Why I am a geoist-style capitalist and not a rightwing-style capitalist

I'll start with a bit of philosophy. Obviously, only a true commie would argue against the seemingly instinctual behavior to trade things, because voluntary trading makes both (or more) individuals "wealthier". But this is only sustainable if new things are being produced. If cars and laptops and cellphones weren't being built anymore and carpentry and construction weren't being done anymore, then there'd be cars and laptops etc. lingering for a while, but eventually, Entropy would prevail and nothing would be left.

The only way to really tell whether anything is "valuable", is the test of whether or not someone can produce something and have people consider it "valuable" enough to voluntarily purchase it, and have profit left over. If people don't buy it enough and pay enough for it to be profitable, then they don't "need/want" it enough to make it worth the physical resources, labor and time (the 3 ingredients to wealth) to create.

Therefore I do consider myself a capitalist. But I also consider myself a geoist.

The main reason why is because there are some valuable things that exist naturally, that you cannot produce nor improve, and even if you could, it'd still be immoral to occupy it and make people pay for it. This includes things such as air and indeed-although to a lesser extent-land.

Air is obviously something that companies should not privately own and sell because if that were legal, then they could theoretically suck up all Earth's oxygen supply and make you pay anything they wanted just so you could breathe! But to use a less extreme example, the same can be essentially said of land.

You cannot produce land (unless you triggered a volcanic eruption in the ocean that could result in above-sea-level rock or something). You cannot "improve" land either; putting a house or the like on top of land does not improve LAND, it simply creates shelter. The land is simply underneath the house being occupied.


Final point: My solution is to not abolish private ownership of land, because you need to occupy some amount of land in order to even have a house or other property (farms, gardens etc.) My solution is to, however, not allow Big Land Rent to immorally transfer large amounts of wealth to themselves and become wealthy from doing so. It's sorta hard to say that when you consider that my own father owns a few houses that he's renting and wants to give one of them to me and one each to his other kids when he dies, because I know he is doing so out of love, but I still can't stand for that.

 

but the problem is more simple to me over population of humans masses, causing a shortage of land and rent, so the one cause of extreme to survive with shelter , cause the the other extreme jewwealthyer like manipulater .

 

That did not really make sense, but yes I agree that Earth is overpopulated by humans..by about 7 billion humans.

 

dont worry nature is at play to make a big downsize, israel and iran could set the wild fire off, but its deeper then that female domanice is so out of control in this time line , i feel that a sexist civil war will also insue, with the homsexuals joining the feminist and white males siding with other races like the arabs islam and mexicans males in a battle that will led to a slaughter of millions ,that would finish clearing out the fat that is left over after the nucular war

 

Yes...right you are. The time line from (say) 1AD had a population of apx 1/4 billion worldwide and it slowly inched it's way up to 1/2 billion by the time of The Plague. That brought it back down to apx 1/3 of a billion world wide with a low inching until oil was found. At that point there was no more gradual rise in population, it was astronomic and reached 7 billion in under 150 years. Oil...what moves the world is crippling it at the same time. We rely on oil and no one has an alternative yet...it also produces ingredients that go into our fertilizers that keep food safe, which is one main reason for the population explosion. The earth got rid of dinosaurs which helped produce the oil, next unless we come up with a viable alternative to dinosaurs residue, we are next...at least most of us.

 

This has to be the best post I've read on this particular forum..ever. +REP!!

 

I humbly thank you. While I am a conservative, I am not brain-dead to the plight of humanity.

 

Isn't that a Facebook game?

 

By no metric is our Earth overpopulated. Instead, the problem is that freedom is underutilized.

 

If you could be any more wrong I would so state. The amount of food consumed daily by 7 billion people is staggering. many countries have very little food because of poor irrigation and other water issues. The amount of chemicals that come from oil to help with food production is also staggering. While physical space may not be taken up by 7 billion inhabitants, what they consume and utilize is beyond comprehension. That and the fact that 7 billion today will become 10 billion in 6-10 more years and on and on. We have a "growing problem". Half of the world is taking care of the other half, well almost, some of those are dying-off from starvation and illness.

 

The shortage of food shelter education health care and gainful employment is entirely artificial, created by concentrations of wealth and the greed for more without regard to anything, or anyone else.

There is enough food produced on this planet right now to feed over 10Billion. Only some 40% of arable land is under cultivation with less than 1% under maximum cultivation.

The idea that the planet has reached some maximum of food production is a myth.

 

Please show us where this information comes from.

 

Labor, physical resources and time (the 3 ultimate ingredients of production/wealth), are being focused on things such as electronics, fancy cars, luxury goods/services etc., instead of being relatively more focused on food, due to, ultimately, resources being bottled up at the top. I wouldn't say that it's entirely artificial, though

 

The point of that smartass response of mine was that I don't like people in general which is why I said "overpopulated by 7 billion", but "overpopulation" is really subjective because you can almost always live on less resources. The problem is, I don't like having to live with less resources resulting from such unnecessarily high population densities.

And in places such as China, India, the middle east and Africa, I agree with you entirely. Even the U.S. in large part. But then, I don't only consider freedom being restricted as necessarily equating to government/public-institutional force, but violence committed by any individual(s).

 

There's more to it than that. In most countries with food issues, there is a systematic effort to deny access to land to those starving. Because if they had access to land suitable for subsistence agriculture, they would stop working in the capital-intensive industries and just go feed their families. Hence the widespread capitalist objection to agrarian land reform programs.

 

Anyone who has studied third world agricultural policies can verify the general claim. There is really no valid excuse for anyone to go hungry today outside of major disasters and the like. Persistent hunger has no justification in economics. Land reform alone would solve the problem. It doesn't take some technical revolution, it just takes fair land distribution.

 

Well I am a capitalist, but I'm also a geoist. Something has to be done to stop Big Land Rent from immorally transferring resources and wealth to itself; it's hurting the economy greatly.

 

Geoism and capitalism don't go together. I mean, even a basic examination of Henry George's political proposals reveals that much.

In what way is land substantially different from other forms of fixed capital? It could just as easily be argued that society ought to own the means of production and lease it out to producers in the same way that society owns the land and leases it under geoism. Literally the same arguments apply; land and fixed capital behave basically the same way from an economic standpoint.

 

I'm not necessarily a Georgist, though I don't know exactly what all his ideas entailed. That's why I consider myself, more accurately, to just be a "geoist". But the means of production can be owned privately, and yet regulation on bottling up of physical resources (geoism) can simultaneously exist.

Land, air, etc. are things that not only can one not produce nor improve, but even if they could, it'd be immoral to artificially make it scarce by occupying all of it, and then charging people for it.

 

Is the word staggering a metric unit of measuring?

The world isn't 'overpopulated' as the world could easily sustain a far larger human population indefinitely. There is also no fear of overpopulation in our future as developed nations tend to have fertility rates at or below the replacement rate. In time, every nation on Earth will become a developed nation.

 

There is no functional difference between what you consider a 'geoist' and your strawman of what a right wing extremist believes.

99% of the wealth in the world is value added. Fish in the sea and oil in the ground is useless to everyone, the effort in bringing it to market is what creates wealth.

There is also no shortage of land. You can buy acres of undeveloped land in the US for so little it'd shock you. I was talking to someone while on vacation this year about acres of forest in Maine for about 1k. My uncle in law just bought a 17 acre plot of land for very little out where I live.

All of the value to land is human created as well. As in man creates everything of value that raises property values.

 

It's not a strawman; it's just that there are few actual right wing extremists.

Is that why Big Land Rent is able to immorally transfer such large amounts of wealth to itself? (Obviously, this mainly applies to cities, and not the middle of nowhere).

You mean, putting things over land "improves" land itself?

 

Gee, why is that? So close and yet...

Sigh...

What do you think? Yes, putting things over land makes property more valuable. Does it make the land itself more valuable? That's sort of the point I am making, the land itself isn't really worth anything so your definition of a 'geoist' is meaningless.

The land itself, sans human development, is worthless. What you are paying for with the value of property (that costs more than the 1k per acre of undeveloped land) is all the human development. And that human development is rightfully owned by man.

 

It's because Big Land Rent has more of a monopoly in big cities, immorally. I have always thought and will always think that building a house/apartment over land before anyone claims it, just so that you can occupy said space, and then charge others amounts that are by far beyond whatever maintenance/improvement costs are needed, to people that just need somewhere to live, and then getting rich off of it, is immoral.

No, it's not. If everyone privately owns 100% of land on Earth, I can't go anywhere without trespassing.

 

And yet, there is still plenty of land out there no one wants.