Henry George does. You guys, his disciples, basically do too. Taxing the land at the confiscatory rate you advocate is essentially seizure by what St. Henry (patron Saint of Envy) thought would be a more politically feasible guise.
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Uh, that's YOUR fallacy, Steven:
See?Quote:
I didn't anthropomorphize a building, because that truly would be absurd (to even think of it). The state capital building is not the state. It is just a building. And I didn't claim the state could be anthropomorphized because it was created by humans, but rather because it was comprised of humans.
Wrong. A state is a geographically bounded society under unitary political administration. So it includes not only people but land and institutions.Quote:
What do you think a state is, Roy? It is nothing but a collection of people.
That's the fallacy of composition.Quote:
People who act. That's it! All the rest is stuff and fluff and bother. All human collectives, including a "state", can rightly be anthropomorphized because they are comprised of humans - the very "anthro" of anthropomorphism.
But to the extent that you are placing trust by voting for a politician, it is in a person, not the state. Even when you vote on a referendum, your trust is in those determining and administering the result, not in the state.Quote:
Oh yeah? When you vote for a politician to represent you in the state, you "entrust" that politician - else it wouldn't get your vote. And even though I "entrust" a politician with my vote, that does not necessarily mean that I "trust" that politician (that person who runs that part of "the state"). I am usually voting for what I consider the lesser of evils in most elections.
States are neither politicians nor appointed officials nor their populations.Quote:
My conception of a state, and why trust is a concept which very much applies to all of them, is dead on the mark and fits with reality. The fact that you believe otherwise is fascinating to me, as it causes me to wonder what kind of bizarre concept you have about what states really are.
No, you are just lying again, Steven. You know that geoists oppose collective ownership of products of labor (capital). You are just lying about it.Quote:
Likewise the non-Marxist but every bit as socialist geoists,
No, you are lying, Steven. LYING. It is indisputably the landowner who both desires and obtains unearned wealth and power under the CURRENT system, and it is the apologist for landowner privilege who rationalizes and justifies this redistribution of wealth and power to landowners in return for zero (0) contribution. The geoist, by contrast, is totally committed to wealth and power going only to those who have earned them by commensurate productive contribution.Quote:
who also desire unearned wealth or power
As the abolitionists did regarding slavery...? There is nothing "fabricated" about the fact that all people are naturally at liberty to use what nature provided, Steven. It is self-evident and indisputable. Apologists for slavery tried to pretend property in slaves was rightful and its abolition would be immoral and disastrous:Quote:
by simply redefining ownership and fabricating prior claims of liberty with regard to certain kinds of wealth
“When the emancipation of the African was spoken of, and when the nation of Britain appeared to be taking into serious consideration the rightfulness of abolishing slavery, what tremendous evils were to follow! Trade was to be ruined, commerce was almost to cease, and manufacturers were to be bankrupt. Worse than all, private property was to be invaded (property in human flesh), the rights of planters sacrificed to the speculative notions of fanatics, and the British government was to commit an act that would forever deprive it of the confidence of British subjects.”
–Patrick Edward Dove, The Theory of Human Progression, 1850
But we now know that the exact opposite was the case. And though apologists for landowning likewise try to pretend that property in land is rightful, and its abolition would be immoral and disastrous, I have proved the exact opposite is the case.
I have proved irrefutably that the landowner is a thief, and no flipping of definitions is involved, so stop lying:Quote:
- flipping definitions such that a landowner becomes a thief,
THE BANDIT
Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.
A thief, right?
Now, suppose he has a license to charge tolls of those who use the pass, a license issued by the government of one of the countries -- or even both of them. The tolls are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? He is still just a thief. He is still just demanding payment and not contributing anything in return. How can the mere existence of that piece of paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?
But now suppose instead of a license to steal, he has a land title to the pass. He now charges the caravans the exact same amount in "rent" for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable gentleman. But how has the nature of his business really changed? It's all legal now, but he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free, and contributing nothing whatever in return, just as he did when he was a lowly bandit. How is he any different now that he is a landowner?
And come to that, how is any other landowner charging rent for what nature provided for free any different?
No, that's another lie from you. He simply has his natural right to liberty restored, and is justly compensated for its forcible violation by landowners.Quote:
and a would be thief becomes a collective landowner
Lies.Quote:
- the landownership essence of which is negated and dismissed through philosophical sophistry and etymological sleight-of-hand,
Is the earth's atmosphere or the ocean owned? Is it ownable? Does government administer its use to safeguard the equal rights of all? Why could not similar logic apply to land?Quote:
which changes the very definitions of owner and ownership, such that land becomes not owned, but "unownable", even when it is collectively something-which-shall-be-called-other-than-owned.
No, he didn't. He mainly profited from government-issued and -enforced privileges.
And change your word "land" to "slaves," and the irrelevance of his having "traded" for it is made clear: trading for something that was never rightly property in the first place cannot make it rightly your property.Quote:
Change your word "on" to "for". He had to earn a lot of wealth to be able to trade for all that land.
Your evidence that the "original homesteaders" of that land did not obtain it through the forcible dispossession of its previous occupants, as historical fact plainly shows?Quote:
Now he was not the original homesteader, of course, which is what we were talking about, but hey, I'm easy! Move the goal posts all you want, I'll roll with it.
Thought not.
True, although legal formulas might require something of the sort if there can't be a land trust administered by government.
IMO it would be more accurate to say no one here claims the government should nationalize land. I definitely claim government should confiscate land from those who do not justly compensate those whom they deprive of it.Quote:
No one here claims the government should confiscate land.
No, just the rent value in the form of a perpetual confiscatory tax on land rents.*
Yeah, you just redefine terms, and what you wrote becomes true. Abolish all "propertarian" language, so that all the force and effect of public/collective landownership exists, but is referred to as something else, such that a rose any other name magically becomes something else entirely. No more "landownership", and no "confiscation", because that would imply that "ownership" was even possible. With that verbal slight of hand, you're in like Flynn. But you're not really "confiscating" value -- so much as "recovering value" that was otherwise confiscated by the "exclusive landholder", who interfered with everyone's natural liberty right to equal use of that same land, which value must be compensated to the collectivized landlord-which-shall-not-be-referred-to-as-a-landowner.
Yeah, there is no government-owned land and no confiscation that I can see, besides a geo-liberation of lands, and a confiscatory tax on land rents*, and a return of value to all community and state comrades who contributed value to the land, and therefore have a self-evident, just, rightful, indisputable and equal claim in common.
Quote:
* Geoist/LVT Propoenents, and Henry George theorem author Richard Arnott, along with Kenneth Arrow, Anthony B. Atkinson and Jacques H. Dreze, editors, Public Economics: Selected Papers by William Vickrey. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
From the introduction to the section on Urban Economics, p. 336.:
"One of the most celebrated results in urban economics is the Henry George Theorem. The best-known variant of the Theorem states that in a city of optimal population size, where the source of agglomeration is a localized pure public good, urban (differential) land rents equal expenditure on the public good. Thus, a confiscatory tax on land rents is the single tax necessary to finance the public good."
You committed the fallacy of composition by pointing to objects not in question or at issue, ignoring those which are at issue, and judging the whole based on those select factors alone.
A) The parts of the whole X have characteristics A, B, C, etc.
B) Therefore the whole X must have characteristics A, B, C.
"I don't trust the state."
A. States are made up of things that include geographical boundaries, land, and buildings, for which the concept of trust does not apply.
C. Therefore, the concept of trust does not apply to the state.
"The gunman shot me with a bullet."
A. The gunman wore jeans.
B. Jeans are incapable of shooting bullets.
C. Therefore, the gunman was incapable of shooting bullets.
I pointed to the only parts for which I do have a problem. You committed the fallacy of composition (and simultaneous red herring) by throwing up parts of the composition which are not at issue. You are the one who wants to say that "[The state] includes not only people but land and institutions..." so as to draw attention away from the people - for which trust is very much at issue.
That's the fallacy of composition, Roy. And it's all yours.
Yeah, and the Constitution has a clause which was supposed to "determine and administer" the result of "No State shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."Quote:
But to the extent that you are placing trust by voting for a politician, it is in a person, not the state. Even when you vote on a referendum, your trust is in those determining and administering the result, not in the state.
It's just a document, after all. An inanimate object with mere words scribbled thereon -- supposedly The Law of the Land, and an integral part of "the state". How is that one working out for us? Does trust apply there, Roy? Is there any trust betrayed there that you can see? Why is that not being followed? Was it due to improper geographical boundaries, or did it perhaps have something to do with building construction? Or, could it, perhaps, have had something to do with that little, insignificant part of the state that you want to ignore, referred to as "unitary political administration" (aka PEOPLE ACTING)?
Again with a variation on the composition fallacy, and also a flagrant self-contradiction.Quote:
States are neither politicians nor appointed officials nor their populations.
YOU:
1. States include not only people but land and institutions.
2. States are neither politicians (people) nor appointed officials (people) nor their populations (people).
Ergo, as a tautology, and according to you, Roy: States are not people, but states include (are comprised of) people.
Hmm...OK. As long as we are clarifying, it's the people running the state that I have a problem with, as they have proved, historically and in my humble personal estimation, to be COMPLETELY UNTRUSTWORTHY ON THE WHOLE. Not the buildings. Not the geographical boundaries or lands they describe. Just THE PEOPLE in the state - the vast majority of them. Not the barrel itself - just the hundreds of rotten apples that have cycled in and out of that barrel since long before I was born. But meeza lubs barrels, and meeza lubs fresh apples.
You want the state to take on magical properties by way of composition, as we meld the constituent parts together as a composition, in such a way that it takes on characteristics that can no longer be examined individually.
I said "non-Marxist", Roy, what more do you want? I didn't say a thing about labor, or the rationale or mechanism used by a collectivist who looks to redistribute wealth for the good of the whole. I just lumped your ideology in as a variation on socialism, in much the same way that I see fascism and socialism, not as opposites, but having too much in common with each other - despite their diametrically opposed reasoning and mechanisms.Quote:
No, you are just lying again, Steven. You know that geoists oppose collective ownership of products of labor (capital). You are just lying about it.Quote:
Likewise the non-Marxist but every bit as socialist geoists,
By that same logic, I am every bit as much "naturally at liberty" (self-evidently and indisputably, no less) to apply that to some of your personal wealth. It does not matter whether it is right or wrong in anyone's mind. If we both spy the same chunk of gold on the ground, but you beat me to it and pick it up first - I am as "naturally at liberty" to use that chunk of gold as you are. I would also be "otherwise at liberty" to find and use that same gold had you not existed. You want land to be somehow special, the lone exception to the rule, and for your own narrow reasons.Quote:
There is nothing "fabricated" about the fact that all people are naturally at liberty to use what nature provided, Steven. It is self-evident and indisputable.
You did nothing of the sort. You used verbal slight of hand to make would-be thieves owners, and owners thieves. That's all you did, Roy.Quote:
I have proved irrefutably that the landowner is a thief, and no flipping of definitions is involved, so stop lying:
Yes, even when that thief promises to share the loot with every other parasite who inhabits that mountain pass, and even when that thief wears a badge and steals on behalf of everyone under color of law. A consortium of thieves are still filthy rotten thieves nonetheless, right down to each individual who accepts stolen goods.Quote:
Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.
A thief, right?
Non-sequitur. If the state could (and it is trying) it would behave every bit as much as the AIRLORD and OCEANLORD (and I wouldn't put it past them to want to be SUNLORDS and SPACELORDS if they thought they could get away with it), as you want it to act as a LANDLORD - collecting rents for which none is due. A carbon tax is an example of AIR RENT collected from the AIRLORD. Not as an "administrator". That's your disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, anti-propertarian sleight-of-hand double-talk for COLLECTIVE OWNER.Quote:
Is the earth's atmosphere or the ocean owned? Is it ownable? Does government administer its use to safeguard the equal rights of all? Why could not similar logic apply to land?
Evil, despicable filth.
One of the most evil moral crimes any human being can commit is to accuse those who oppose injustice of envy for its beneficiaries. For an apologist for landowner privilege to accuse geoists of envy for landowners is as deeply evil as it was for apologists for slavery to accuse the abolitionists of envy for slave owners. The evil of such an act is so staggering, so monumental, so utterly satanic, that one can almost smell the reek of sulfur through the computer monitor when reading the words.