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Originally Posted by
Steven Douglas
"publicly created rent of the land he owns" - now there's a big cannon just loaded with presumptions and a slew of begged questions.
Google "economic rent" and start reading.
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Incidentally stow the "rent" and anti-landlord arguments with me. For the sake of our discussion only, my SOLE concern is for the rights of individuals and families who occupy and use land strictly for their own survival, not those who simply have titles to land which they do not occupy, but only sell, lease or otherwise charge rents to others.
And $#!+ on the people who would otherwise be at liberty to use it. Check.
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Somehow - and this is logical in your mind - an original homestead is endowed with "publicly created" value, even though no "rent" is charged to anyone, and nobody occupies the dwelling save the original dweller who improved the land. This results in value that the homesteader owes to others by way of circular logic that argues from your initial premise - that everybody has a natural liberty right to occupy and/or use the same land.
There is nothing circular about it. They would otherwise be at liberty to use the land, and the advantages created by government and the community would still be there if the owner and all his works vanished.
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To me that is a tax to reward those who simply covet.
<yawn> But that is objectively false. Wanting your liberty back, or just compensation for its removal, is not "coveting."
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PUBLICLY CREATED VALUE
While the actual 'value' of my attention might appear to have 'public' appeal, and strictly by virtue of the number of people who desire that attention simultaneously, that can produce the illusion that it was "publicly created". That would be false. It was not created for "the public", nor does "the public", nor any individual member thereof, have any "right" to it - any more than I have a right to anyone else's attention.
An improved piece of land can have the same dynamic associated with it.
No, it can't.
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A lone homesteader can go into what is an otherwise unoccupied and barren land, one that NOBODY WANTS, and can make aesthetically pleasing improvements - for himself only. Not to draw a crowd. Not to entice anyone or "rent" the property out to others. In fact, there is no "public" motive whatsoever to it. It is just land for him to live on, occupy and enjoy for himself, and possibly even a family if he has one. It may be a Rembrandt, but it wasn't for sale, and was never intended for public consumption. Artists have that right.
Another man sees the lone beautiful house in the middle of nowhere, and considers it Good. He does not COVET that man's house - which of course would be EVIL. No, this man doesn't want to take possession or control of what someone else has created (NOT the land - only the "privately created value", or improvements). No, this man is not an Evil Coveter of other people's works. He is actually a Good Man. He only admires the example of what has been accomplished. He wants to be near it, and to be associated with that kind of energy that he admires. So he does likewise. He builds a house of his own and makes improvements to his own land - right next to the original house.
Now, the man who built the original house may not 'like' the fact that a new neighbor has gotten so close to him, any more than he wants to be seated next to a crowded table in an otherwise empty restaurant. He also wouldn't choose a urinal next to one man in a bathroom that has thirty empty urinals. Personal bubbles and all that. Why shoulder to shoulder? Why next door? Was there no other place to live?
But...he is also not an Evil Man, so he holds his peace. After a little thought, he makes room in his mind. He fully recognizes that the world is not only his, and must be shared; that even if he preferred to live in isolation, he would never attempt to deny others their equal right to a place of their own in the world.
Well, social gravity being what it is, and complex social beings being what humans are, two beautiful cottages in the middle of nowhere attract enough attention that it soon becomes ten thousand houses in the middle of what is now somewhere. Gravity. Strange attractors. Accretion. Planetary formation.
Now enter His Honor Roy L., the new Mayor of the new town. He goes to the man who built and still lives in the original house - the one that was once in the middle of nowhere - and declares to this man that his house now has Publicly Created Value for which he must now pay RENT to the public. Why? Because many of them now COVET his location...
They "covet" it because there is now a community there, regardless of anything he does or did.
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the one that nobody wanted before...a location that he alone improved with no intention to sell...a location not unlike many other locations which still exist as unimproved and otherwise undesired land. But now, because "the public" values this land, he must pay RENT to that public. He must compensate them for their covetousness.
It is not compensation for "covetousness," that is just a lie from you. It is compensation for depriving them of the advantages government, the community and nature provide at that location.
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An LVT on Homesteaders is nothing more than Payola To Those Who Covet, as this kind of "Publicly Created Value" is another word for COVETOUSNESS.
Garbage. Wanting your liberty back, or just compensation for its removal, is not "covetousness."
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Thou shalt not covet.
Accusing those who oppose injustice of envy for its beneficiaries is one of the most evil acts any human being can commit, because it seeks to undermine all opposition to evil.