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You're an Anarchist, so no system of Government will please you.
Anarchist help me understand the problem posed by Robert Nozick. Nozick's problem is that competing private security agencies would inevitably become a single dominant agency, effectively a government, and you could not opt out. Sort of the same way commodity money like gold very quickly comes to replace all other competing moneys, so the same thing would happen with various competing private security agencies. True anarchy is impossible for this reason. Is Nozick wrong? Why?
See Chapter 14 (page 68) in Bourbon for Breakfast on why agencies which are the best at everything still can't dominate everything.
But what does that even mean? If two people both want exclusive use of the same land, one of them has to do without. So "total voluntariness" is inherently impossible. The point of LVT is that everyone who is forced to do without gets just compensation for being deprived of the opportunity.
What are you even talking about? Do you agree that paying for the groceries you take home from the supermarket is actually voluntary? How is LVT different from that?That is, actual voluntariness.
Yes, it is. It just doesn't enable land grabbers to violate others' rights without making just compensation.Your proposed system is not actually voluntary.
Yes, you can, as long as you don't violate others' rights by depriving them of their liberty to use the land. In fact, as long as you don't use land of greater value than the exempt amount, you pay no tax.I cannot opt out.
It's easy to opt out: just don't use any land anyone else wants to use.No one can opt out.
It also means others can volunteer not to exercise their rights to liberty, or they can refuse to relinquish their liberty without just compensation.A voluntary action means I can volunteer to do it, or I can refuse to volunteer.
There are a couple issues the Georgists have to deal with. First, to summarize the Georgist position: Land was not created by any human, thus it cannot be owned by any human and all landowners are really usurpers and thieves, depriving their poor fellow humans of the land they so ruthlessly claim.
Now, if the Georgists really believe this and if they really believed in justice and morality, it would follow that all land must be held in common forever and ever, Amen. There can be no private land monopolization. The Land Value Tax is a fee paid in order to secure permission to rip people off! To steal land from the masses! If we are seeking justice and morality, we do not base our society on handing out a phony "right" to steal and rip people off ion exchange for money. Why not have the whole mass of people own the land in common and have the workers' council make all land decisions? Because the Georgists understand the incentive problem and perhaps they understand some of the other problems also involved in collective ownership.
So the first point to realize is that Georgism is a philosophy about expedience and utilitarianism. Absolute rights and justice are sacrificed right off the bat. You can see that in the 36 pages above. Here they are ranting and raving about how landowners are thieves and property (in land) is theft and anyone who disagrees is a liar and a cretin, but do they call for an end to this theft? You know, I criticize theft because I am against it. Are they? Ha! The solution they propose is: "because landowners are all thieves, we have to allow them to keep thieving but have them pay a recurring fee to 'society' for the right to continue their brigandry." Look, if landowners are thieves, they're scum. The immoral looting needs to be abolished, not taxed. One gets the feeling they would call for taxation on the owners of chattel slaves in order to pay back society for their crime and that such a tax would make everything OK.
The second issue is physical. In Georgism, land is defined as the entirety of the universe. That is, every ocean, every planet, every star, every bit of stray hydrogen, and the vast expanse of emptiness in the cosmos. No one can own any of that. As soon as they improve it, they own the improvement, but they still can never own the "land", that is, the space and matter which nature provided.
So, if a man homesteads a section of forest, cuts down some trees, and uses them to build a house house there, he now owns the house, but not the land it sits on. Even if he fundamentally changes the make-up of the land by, e.g. planting a wheat field or digging a big hole, the underlying land can never be owned, only the improvements. That in and of itself seems fair and consistent. The man didn't create the land, he just happens to be using it (and thus preventing any of his equally-deserving fellows from using it, by the way) so how could he have any just claim to own it? The wheat, on the other hand, he very much had a hand in. The wheat would not exist without him, he created it with his laboring, and so it rightfully can be said to be his absolute property.
The problem becomes apparent when one realizes that not only is the wheat field making use of the matter and space provided for free via the existence of the universe, the wheat itself is making use of that free matter and space as well. The matter that was originally in the dirt has been percolated up through the wheat stalk to become the kernel. One cannot simply create matter out of nothing. As Carl Sagan said: “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” I think we can all agree, then, that everything in existence, no matter how man-made, has as one of its major components land. That is, everything consists of raw matter gotten from the universe and of space for it to occupy.
Let us consider two different assets: a parking lot, and a chain saw. Both are considered fully ownable by libertarians, and indeed by most people. Georgists consider only the chain saw to be fully ownable. That is because the parking lot has a strong "land" component while the chain saw does not. Now the parking lot qua parking lot is ownable, the Georgists would be quick to clarify. The pavement, the painted lines, all of that is an improvement and thus ownable. The land that it is blanketing, however, is not ownable. That raw land should be taxed according to whatever its value would have been were it not leveled, tamped, and covered with pavement.
To be consistent, the same reasoning must apply to the chain saw. The chain saw should be taxed according to whatever value the ore, petroleum, etc. would have had were it not refined, cracked, made into steel, made into plastic, cast, injection-molded, and assembled into a chain saw. The raw elements composing the chain saw are just as much a part of the universe as the raw elements composing the parking lot.
But Georgists do not apply the same logic to the chain saw as to the parking lot. Part of this doubtless is because of their placement of expediency above the concepts of justice or consistency. The land in the case of the parking lot is big, static, and, as they are fond of pointing out, impossible to hide from the tax man. The land tucked away in the chain saw is small, portable, and can be hidden from the tax man. Thus, as a practical matter, by "land" the Georgists do not, in fact, mean all the matter and space in the universe. Rather, they mean that very particular class of land that lays horizontally at the surface of the Earth and upon which men walk.
This inconsistency opens them up to all kinds of hypothetical absurdities and conundrums. What if a man were to fly to an asteroid and claim to own it? That claim would be invalid under Georgist thought, since the land of the asteroid is unownable. What if instead he were to carve a large chunk out of the Earth and launch it into space as an artificial asteroid? Since it becomes an artificial asteroid only through herculean human effort, it would seem to be fully ownable, for the same reasons the wheat kernel and the chain saw are fully ownable. Thus, a thousand years down the road, all the inhabitants on Asteroid B are enjoying full alloidial property rights while on asteroid A they must pay land-value tax to humanity for the crime of monopolizing their pieces of the asteroid. But what is fundamentally different about these two asteroids at this point? Should the distant, murky past of the asteroids' respective beginnings really affect their property situation so?
What if I were to tunnel a shaft a mile down and at the bottom of it hollow out an enormous cavern. Would I then be responsible to pay land value tax? Would not this be essentially the same type of endeavor as the asteroid launch? One is putting solid mass where there is emptiness in order to create new livable square footage. The other is creating emptiness where there was solid mass in order to create new livable square footage.
If the artificial asteroid people and the hollow earth people can both escape the LVT via their shenanigans, what of those who drain swamps, manufacture islands, blow up mountains, or heat icy wastes and in so doing make these places habitable or useful when before they were not? The typical Georgist response to, e.g. the artificial island manufacturer, would be that while he may own the island, he does not own the land under the island and thus must pay tax on the value of the land under his island. But what about the land over the island? What about the land in the island which has merely been shuffled around? Why do we only care about what's underneath? Is land only land when it is "under" -- when men can stand on it? To figure out the taxable land do we simply calculate the surface area of the Earth's sphere, despite the fact that much of this is covered in ocean, making it impossible to "stand on" without application of improvements or technology?
The artificial island builder created the value of the land under his island, value which did not exist until he arrived. No one was using the land before him. For all practical purposes, it was not land. He has thus created new usable land, just as the Earth hollower created new usable land, and just as the asteroid launcher created new usable land. They have not created new land in an absolute sense if one defines land as the entirety of the universe, but they have changed the nature of the land. And in doing so, they have created a valuable asset where none existed before. If the chain saw manufacturer, who does the same thing -- he rearranges the matter given by nature to create a new valuable asset -- if he can own his creation, these real-estate-improvers ought to be able to own their creations as well. To a lesser extent, the irrigator, the forest clearer, the mountain blaster, and the explorer all create value where there was none before. Their creations are tied to the horizontal surface of the Earth. That is a laughably arbitrary reason to deny them the fruits of their labors.
The chain saw monopolizes the scarce matter, or "land", of the universe just as the parking lot does. The Georgists say that the parking lot owner must pay tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing, but the chain saw owner need pay no tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing. Why? Because one collection of matter is arranged in a way that the Georgists recognize as land -- dirt laid out horizontally at the surface of the Earth.
Georgists are guilty of not thinking three-dimensionally. For them, the world is still flat and horizontal land still holds some sort of almost mystical quality making it unownable. As technology progresses, very small or nontraditional real-estate, as well as very large manufactured items, blur the line between what is taxable land and what is not. One path forward to rigorize this school of thought would be to introduce the idea of taxing the underlying land in boats, hammers, and chain saws in the same way as the land underlying skyscrapers, fish ponds, and parking lots. Another path forward would be to admit that although man did not create the universe (as far as we know!) we will nevertheless allow the entire universe to pass into private ownership, since the alternative is to create some sort of tax on the universe, whose purpose and benefit would be singularly unclear.
You changed what I said. Not very honest.
Land is not produced by human labor, groceries are.Land is matter, groceries are matter.
Because you have made just compensation to the apple's rightful owner for depriving him of what he would otherwise have, and you are thus not violating anyone's rights by owning and monopolizing the apple.I buy the apple, I own it totally and absolutely forever and do not have to ever pay tax on it (ever!)
No, because land can never rightly become property in the first place, and you therefore cannot possibly have bought the land from its rightful owner. You have merely bought a privilege of violating others' rights, like buying a slave. Monopolizing it indisputably violates the rights of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it. The only difference between buying land and buying a slave is that when you buy a slave, you buy a privilege of violating ALL of ONE person's rights without making just compensation. When you buy land, you buy a privilege of violating ONE of ALL people's rights without making just compensation.I simply continue monopolizing it 'til Kingdom come. I buy the land, the same thing should (obviously) occur.
Bingo. You are quite a bit quicker on the uptake than your Georgist cohorts. Good thing they invited you here. Welcome, by the way, and feel free to support Ron Paul.
Ah, that would be another thread. Cool that you're interested in that, though. I figured you were only interested in promoting the LVT, here because Roy L or redbluepill is on some other Georgist forum or e-mail list with you and posted there requesting "Hey, everyone, look at this thread. Come help me cream these Ron Paul guys with our LVT logic!" Actually, I still figure that's how you got here, but perhaps since you're intelligent and interested, that chance meeting can now blossom into more!Anarchist help me understand the problem posed by Robert Nozick.
When what you say is incredibly boring and repetitive, I will feel free to change it to whatever I want and have a discussion with my improved and intelligent imaginary Roy L instead.
There is land in the apple. Men can own improvements on the land (in this case turning soil into an apple), but never the land. The apple is just rearranged land. The constituent land must be taxed.No, because land can never rightly become property in the first place, and you therefore cannot possibly have [obtained] the land from its rightful owner.
Or not. Tax all land or tax none of it, either way is consistent at least. But let's be consistent.
Not until as there is an absolute ban on income and sales taxes could I consider a LVT, and then only under certain restrictions.
Right now in the USA property taxes are local (at least mine are paid to the county) and different levels of government have different taxation methods.
Not only would a LVT require amending the Constitution, there remains a great deal of explanation as to how local property/land value tax, implemented and controlled at the county level, would translate into revenue for the State and Federal Governments and elimination of State and Federal taxes.
Of course my main complaint against any new tax is that none can be considered until others are eliminated, otherwise we'll end up with a LVT on top of what ever other taxes the politicians can dream up.
Last edited by WilliamC; 09-21-2011 at 03:46 PM.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
That is one of those things that irks me. They ignore the fact that a landlord IS a government. The landlord collects taxes that they call rent. They also make laws on their land. The land becomes monopolized and guess who becomes the anarcho-capitalist's new ruler? Some landlord or corporation.
http://libertythinkers.com/education...r-land-rights/
Last edited by redbluepill; 09-21-2011 at 03:49 PM.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/
http://www.wealthandwant.com/
http://freeliberal.com/
Actually, we don't ignore that, we disagree with that. I mean, I know it's impossible for anyone to disagree with you without being a reprehensible, cretinous liar, but some of us "ignore" that impossibility and cling to the crazy idea that it's possible to have a rational thought and not be a Georgist.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/
http://www.wealthandwant.com/
http://freeliberal.com/
Sometimes they draw themselves, and I'm just naturally a funny guy! Obviously they are not here because they are particularly interested in Ron Paul activism. 100% of their posts are on this thread! No, they joined to promote LVT, and found this thread either by being referred by some other Georgist or through a search engine. And that's cool! The more the merrier.
Excellent summary, + rep.
To me it seems that the basis of georgism is that property is always a zero-sum game, and that any increase in property by one individual somehow automatically decreases the property of everyone else because there is only a finite amount.
Land might seem to be finite, but it's really not as improvements in technology allow us to make use of what previously was unusable land.
The ultimate expression of this would come from colonization of other planets, when whoever gets there first automatically controls what happens to the land once they get there, no matter what literally everyone else on Earth might feel.
The immediate example that come to mind is the water ice at the Lunar poles. This is a finite and limited resource, and assuming we stupid humans don't kill each other eventually some of us will get there and occupy them/use the resources.
Given the enormous difference in the gravity well between Earth and The Moon it makes the most sense to use the lunar ice to fuel Mars missions, since there is no possible way to terraform the Moon but Mars is as good as we get given our Solar System. Were this resource somehow destroyed or consumed it could literally mean the difference between species survival and extinction.
I've kind of wandered but to me Georgism has no answers to these problems, and the truth is the issue will be decided by whomever gets there first. The idea that future space explorers/colonists will have to pay some sort of land value tax to everyone back on Earth seems rather farfetched.
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
Ron Paul: He irritates more idiots in fewer words than any American politician ever.
NO MORE LIARS! Ron Paul 2012
Without reading any further, I know your "arguments" will consist exclusively of the same kind of absurd, dishonest garbage I listed in post #355.
Except by just compensation for violating others' rights.Now, if the Georgists really believe this and if they really believed in justice and morality, it would follow that all land must be held in common forever and ever, Amen. There can be no private land monopolization.
It's just compensation for ripping them off.The Land Value Tax is a fee paid in order to secure permission to rip people off!
From every individual who would otherwise be at liberty to use it.To steal land from the masses!
It's a privilege, not a right, and it is granted in return for just compensation, not "handed out." Same as paying wages to compensate people for taking the fruits of their labor. It's not stealing if just compensation is made, it's a voluntary, market-based, value-for-value transaction.If we are seeking justice and morality, we do not base our society on handing out a phony "right" to steal and rip people off ion exchange for money.
Because land cannot rightly be owned by a mass or collective any more than by an individual, and your suggestion is just silly, dishonest garbage, as I predicted.Why not have the whole mass of people own the land in common and have the workers' council make all land decisions?
They do indeed -- unlike lying apologists for privilege, greed and injustice who try to rationalize the something-for-nothing parasitism of rent seekers.Because the Georgists understand the incentive problem
But more importantly, because geoists are not liars.and perhaps they understand some of the other problems also involved in collective ownership.
Lie. It's about rights, liberty, and justice.So the first point to realize is that Georgism is a philosophy about expedience and utilitarianism.
That's just a flat-out lie from you. It is landowner privilege that sacrifices individual rights and justice right off the bat.Absolute rights and justice are sacrificed right off the bat.
You can see it exposed as a lie in the 36 pages above.You can see that in the 36 pages above.
Yes.Here they are ranting and raving about how landowners are thieves and property (in land) is theft and anyone who disagrees is a liar and a cretin, but do they call for an end to this theft?
No, you rationalize, excuse, defend and justify it because you (probably incorrectly) believe you profit by it.You know, I criticize theft because I am against it.
Were slave owners thieves? Were Jefferson, Washington and others of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves scum? Sometimes, people participate in thievery and evil because they live in a society where it is accepted, or they don't know any better, not because they are evil scum.The solution they propose is: "because landowners are all thieves, we have to allow them to keep thieving but have them pay a recurring fee to 'society' for the right to continue their brigandry." Look, if landowners are thieves, they're scum.
LVT abolishes it BY taxing it, as there is no practical way for individual landowners to compensate everyone else individually.The immoral looting needs to be abolished, not taxed.
More absurd, dishonest garbage from you. It was the slaves whose rights were being violated, not society, so the compensation would rightly go only to them, just as wages are paid only to the workers who do the work, not to the government or society generally. Landowning, by contrast, violates the rights of everyone who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land, so everyone should rightly be compensated.One gets the feeling they would call for taxation on the owners of chattel slaves in order to pay back society for their crime and that such a tax would make everything OK.
Except human beings and the products of their labor.The second issue is physical. In Georgism, land is defined as the entirety of the universe.
They can own the matter they have removed from nature and made into products.That is, every ocean, every planet, every star, every bit of stray hydrogen, and the vast expanse of emptiness in the cosmos. No one can own any of that. As soon as they improve it, they own the improvement, but they still can never own the "land", that is, the space and matter which nature provided.
Congratulations on not lying for a whole paragraph.So, if a man homesteads a section of forest, cuts down some trees, and uses them to build a house house there, he now owns the house, but not the land it sits on. Even if he fundamentally changes the make-up of the land by, e.g. planting a wheat field or digging a big hole, the underlying land can never be owned, only the improvements. That in and of itself seems fair and consistent. The man didn't create the land, he just happens to be using it (and thus preventing any of his equally-deserving fellows from using it, by the way) so how could he have any just claim to own it? The wheat, on the other hand, he very much had a hand in. The wheat would not exist without him, he created it with his laboring, and so it rightfully can be said to be his absolute property.
No, anything man-made is by definition not land. Labor removes matter from nature and transforms it into something artificial. There is no requirement that a product be created ex nihilo.The problem becomes apparent when one realizes that not only is the wheat field making use of the matter and space provided for free via the existence of the universe, the wheat itself is making use of that free matter and space as well. The matter that was originally in the dirt has been percolated up through the wheat stalk to become the kernel. One cannot simply create matter out of nothing. As Carl Sagan said: “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” I think we can all agree, then, that everything in existence, no matter how man-made, has as one of its major components land.
No, land consists of matter, space, etc. that is still where nature provided it, and has therefore NOT been "gotten from" the universe.That is, everything consists of raw matter gotten from the universe and of space for it to occupy.
Only by feudal libertarians.Let us consider two different assets: a parking lot, and a chain saw. Both are considered fully ownable by libertarians,
Just as slaves once were considered ownable by most people...and indeed by most people.
Again, congratulations on writing a paragraph about geoism without a lie in it.Georgists consider only the chain saw to be fully ownable. That is because the parking lot has a strong "land" component while the chain saw does not. Now the parking lot qua parking lot is ownable, the Georgists would be quick to clarify. The pavement, the painted lines, all of that is an improvement and thus ownable. The land that it is blanketing, however, is not ownable. That raw land should be taxed according to whatever its value would have been were it not leveled, tamped, and covered with pavement.
No, they have been removed from nature. Removal of depletable resources from nature in fact triggers not a land tax but a once-and-for-all "severance" tax, which recognizes the difference between violating others' rights by permanently depleting a natural resource and by merely temporarily occupying it.To be consistent, the same reasoning must apply to the chain saw. The chain saw should be taxed according to whatever value the ore, petroleum, etc. would have had were it not refined, cracked, made into steel, made into plastic, cast, injection-molded, and assembled into a chain saw. The raw elements composing the chain saw are just as much a part of the universe as the raw elements composing the parking lot.
Because the land is not depleted, only occupied.But Georgists do not apply the same logic to the chain saw as to the parking lot.
Lie. It is landowner privilege that cannot consistently be justified.Part of this doubtless is because of their placement of expediency above the concepts of justice or consistency.
There is no land in the chainsaw. It is all artificial.The land in the case of the parking lot is big, static, and, as they are fond of pointing out, impossible to hide from the tax man. The land tucked away in the chain saw is small, portable, and can be hidden from the tax man.
Right. Geoists always state explicitly that human beings and the products of their labor are not land.Thus, as a practical matter, by "land" the Georgists do not, in fact, mean all the matter and space in the universe.
False. Land is the whole physical universe OTHER THAN human beings and the products of their labor. It includes mineral resources, natural water sources, broadcast spectrum, the oceans, sunlight, rainfall, wildlife, the sun, moon, planets and stars, and many other things as well as the earth's surface.Rather, they mean that very particular class of land that lays horizontally at the surface of the Earth and upon which men walk.
There is no inconsistency, and all the absurdity in question is committed by apologists for landowner privilege, as I demonstrated in post #355.This inconsistency opens them up to all kinds of hypothetical absurdities and conundrums.
Yes, assuming he paid the severance tax on the mineral resources he depleted.What if a man were to fly to an asteroid and claim to own it? That claim would be invalid under Georgist thought, since the land of the asteroid is unownable. What if instead he were to carve a large chunk out of the Earth and launch it into space as an artificial asteroid? Since it becomes an artificial asteroid only through herculean human effort, it would seem to be fully ownable, for the same reasons the wheat kernel and the chain saw are fully ownable.
Assuming an appropriate jurisdiction exists to administer possession and use.Thus, a thousand years down the road, all the inhabitants on Asteroid B are enjoying full alloidial property rights while on asteroid A they must pay land-value tax to humanity
One is natural, the other artificial.for the crime of monopolizing their pieces of the asteroid. But what is fundamentally different about these two asteroids at this point?
Depends how murky it is. Products of labor are eventually discarded or abandoned; they decay and return to nature. Sometimes they can be salvaged, other times they become indistinguishable from natural material. If in the course of 1000 years the artificial asteroid was abandoned and was no longer anyone's property, it might be considered to have reverted to nature, and be treated as land again. Consider shipwrecks. They are the property of their owners for a time, but then become subject to salvage. But even the right of salvage expires after some hundreds or thousands of years, and they become historic sites administered by governments as part of the common cultural heritage.Should the distant, murky past of the asteroids' respective beginnings really affect their property situation so?
Possibly. The land down there is probably not worth much.What if I were to tunnel a shaft a mile down and at the bottom of it hollow out an enormous cavern. Would I then be responsible to pay land value tax?
Both are improvements. Consider cave paintings. There is no doubt they are products of labor, but because their origins and chain of title have been lost, they are treated as common resources, not private property.Would not this be essentially the same type of endeavor as the asteroid launch? One is putting solid mass where there is emptiness in order to create new livable square footage. The other is creating emptiness where there was solid mass in order to create new livable square footage.
They can't escape it entirely, as explained above.If the artificial asteroid people and the hollow earth people can both escape the LVT via their shenanigans,
They should make just compensation for what they deprive others of.what of those who drain swamps, manufacture islands, blow up mountains, or heat icy wastes and in so doing make these places habitable or useful when before they were not?
Which is typically going to be little or nothing, as it was underwater and NO ONE ELSE WANTED TO USE IT.The typical Georgist response to, e.g. the artificial island manufacturer, would be that while he may own the island, he does not own the land under the island and thus must pay tax on the value of the land under his island.
The earth's atmosphere is also land.But what about the land over the island?
<sigh> Removed from nature and therefore not land.What about the land in the island which has merely been shuffled around?
We don't. But that is the land part of the island.Why do we only care about what's underneath?
Stupid, dishonest garbage.Is land only land when it is "under" -- when men can stand on it? To figure out the taxable land do we simply calculate the surface area of the Earth's sphere, despite the fact that much of this is covered in ocean, making it impossible to "stand on" without application of improvements or technology?
No. Its unimproved value has not changed.The artificial island builder created the value of the land under his island, value which did not exist until he arrived.
Yes, of course it was.No one was using the land before him. For all practical purposes, it was not land.
Equivocation fallacy. None of them has created land in the relevant sense. They created built space.He has thus created new usable land, just as the Earth hollower created new usable land, and just as the asteroid launcher created new usable land.
They can.They have not created new land in an absolute sense if one defines land as the entirety of the universe, but they have changed the nature of the land. And in doing so, they have created a valuable asset where none existed before. If the chain saw manufacturer, who does the same thing -- he rearranges the matter given by nature to create a new valuable asset -- if he can own his creation, these real-estate-improvers ought to be able to own their creations as well.
No, they may ADD value where there WAS value before, which is why they choose to do those things in certain places but not others. And the explorer is not in the same category as the others, as he is not adding value or making any improvements except to his own knowledge.To a lesser extent, the irrigator, the forest clearer, the mountain blaster, and the explorer all create value where there was none before.
The explorer has not created anything tied to the earth's surface. You are just trying to sneak him in as an improver of the land in order to construct a fallacious argument later.Their creations are tied to the horizontal surface of the Earth.
What is laughably arbitrary is your claim that LVT would deny them the fruits of their labor.That is a laughably arbitrary reason to deny them the fruits of their labors.
No. The chainsaw contains NO natural opportunity, and its ownership consequently deprives no one of any natural opportunity. The parking lot does occupy a natural opportunity, and its ownership consequently DOES deprive people of a natural opportunity. The apologist for landowner privilege will do, say, and believe ANYTHING WHATEVER in order to avoid knowing that self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality.The chain saw monopolizes the scarce matter, or "land", of the universe just as the parking lot does.
No, on the natural opportunity that others would otherwise be at liberty to use. Stop lying about what geoists plainly say.The Georgists say that the parking lot owner must pay tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing,
Because it does not deprive others of their liberty to use what nature provided.but the chain saw owner need pay no tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing. Why?
False.Because one collection of matter is arranged in a way that the Georgists recognize as land -- dirt laid out horizontally at the surface of the Earth.
Lying apologists for landowner privilege are guilty of lying about what geoists plainly say.Georgists are guilty of not thinking three-dimensionally.
There is nothing mystical about the fact that the earth's surface is not a product of human labor.For them, the world is still flat and horizontal land still holds some sort of almost mystical quality making it unownable.
No, they do not, and you have offered no reason to think they do.As technology progresses, very small or nontraditional real-estate, as well as very large manufactured items, blur the line between what is taxable land and what is not.
Products do not contain "underlying land." The resources depleted in the course of their manufacture would be subject to a one-time severance tax at the time of depletion.One path forward to rigorize this school of thought would be to introduce the idea of taxing the underlying land in boats, hammers, and chain saws in the same way as the land underlying skyscrapers, fish ponds, and parking lots.
No, that is just more stupid, dishonest garbage from you. The tax is on depriving others of opportunities they would otherwise have, and its purposes and benefits -- liberty, justice and prosperity -- are very clear. They are merely purposes and benefits that you purpose to sacrifice on the altar of your greed for unearned wealth.Another path forward would be to admit that although man did not create the universe (as far as we know!) we will nevertheless allow the entire universe to pass into private ownership, since the alternative is to create some sort of tax on the universe, whose purpose and benefit would be singularly unclear.
Last edited by Roy L; 09-21-2011 at 05:42 PM. Reason: quote errors
Translation: like all apologists for landowner privilege, you feel free to lie about what geoists have plainly said.
All apologists for landowner privilege lie. That is a natural law of the universe. There has never been an exception to that law, and there never will be.
No, there is not.There is land in the apple.
The rearrangement is what makes it not land.Men can own improvements on the land (in this case turning soil into an apple), but never the land. The apple is just rearranged land.
There is no "constituent land" in an apple. You are just lying.The constituent land must be taxed.
You claim Georgists say there is no such thing as matter that is not land. That is a flat-out lie.Or not. Tax all land or tax none of it, either way is consistent at least.
?? This, from YOU??? ROTFL!!!But let's be consistent.
I see. So, in what you are no doubt pleased to call your "mind," it's OK to maintain unjust and destructive taxes permanently, and never even try to implement a just and beneficial one, because all the unjust and destructive ones can't be abolished and permanently banned at the same moment a better one is introduced.
Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that...
It would not.Not only would a LVT require amending the Constitution,
Presumably each jurisdiction would continue to implement its own taxes.there remains a great deal of explanation as to how local property/land value tax, implemented and controlled at the county level, would translate into revenue for the State and Federal Governments and elimination of State and Federal taxes.
Why will you not even consider using LVT to replace unjust taxes gradually?Of course my main complaint against any new tax is that none can be considered until others are eliminated, otherwise we'll end up with a LVT on top of what ever other taxes the politicians can dream up.
And already demolished and refuted as silly, dishonest garbage.
Excellent summary of stupid, dishonest, anti-justice, anti-liberty, anti-truth, anti-geoist garbage.To me it seems that the basis of georgism is that property is always a zero-sum game, and that any increase in property by one individual somehow automatically decreases the property of everyone else because there is only a finite amount.
Its supply is not only finite but FIXED.Land might seem to be finite,
Irrelevant.but it's really not as improvements in technology allow us to make use of what previously was unusable land.
What about when the next group arrives?The ultimate expression of this would come from colonization of other planets, when whoever gets there first automatically controls what happens to the land once they get there, no matter what literally everyone else on Earth might feel.
Who got to North America first? Did they decide?I've kind of wandered but to me Georgism has no answers to these problems, and the truth is the issue will be decided by whomever gets there first.
So did abolition of slavery 300 years ago.The idea that future space explorers/colonists will have to pay some sort of land value tax to everyone back on Earth seems rather farfetched.
LOL! Roy baby, I've been wondering more and more if you're really an anti-georgist guy in the tradition of the fantastic mikehuckabeeforums.com. If so, I love it, you're doing simply fabulously, darling! I almost want to make a sock puppet and join in. I should speak no more of this, for that would ruin the joke.
I read the chapter and its about comparative advantage, and why firms that have comparative advantages for all of their products choose to produce only what they do best. This does not answer the question posed by Nozick as to how several competing protection agencies in a single market inevitably evolve into a single agency.
You mix a truth with half-truth with complete falsity and you leave out a lot of important stuff. Its better to define it for what it is: Georgists believe community services and improvements should be funded from ground rents. I'm not a georgist. I also believe in taxing (albeit to a lesser extent) pollution and patents. I also think where appropriate services and improvements should be funded with user fees.
The last sentence is correct about the Georgist position, as I understand it. The rest of that paragraph is too obtuse. The statement about securing the right to "rip people off"...No friend.
Georgism incorporates both expedience and utilitarianism, and those are very good principles on which to build a "community." Absolute rights and justice? C'mon man. Its not like Georgiest believe in applying expedience and utilitarianism to murder and theft laws. Its not like they don't believe in justice in the court system when you file a lawsuit. If you think absolute rights and justice within society depend on society granting you title to land for free you understand neither rights nor justice. Its only because there is a community that such a thing as Title even exists. Without community there'd be no title you'd be left to defend your land all by yourself or with whatever private security you can rustle up. If my security agent is bigger than your's what do you have then? You got a fight and one that you will lose. See this is also why competing security agencies is a myth, and why I want you to answer Nozick's problem and point me to an answer you've given somewhere else. I believe there can only be one security agency, the one with the biggest guns and toughest dudes. In the end you're gonna pay them protection money and it won't be voluntary either, not if you want to have Title.
Georgists are concerned first and foremost with the spaces in which community is possible. The stars and the expanses of the cosmos are not viable places for community. People don't inhabit oceans, but if the so-called floating cities ever come to fruition, you can bet that apartment space will be sold based on sq. footage.
This is incorrect. The land underneath parking lot represents land that could be used for another purpose, a higher purpose. The chain saw cannot be efficiently disassembled and turned into something better. More importantly, the chain-saw already takes into account the original tax as applied on land, because each of its components came from material coming out of land somewhere that was taxed according to its value.
You earlier said Georgists think about expediency and utilitarianism...in other words practicality. I could take time to address each of your questions about asteroids, heating ice beds, and digging holes to the middle of the earth, and I'm confident I could address each one using georgist principles in a non-contradictory way, but in the interest of practicality I think its time for bed.
I hope you realize, Roy L., that eventually everyone will get tired of posting on this thread. It will not be because you have conclusively demolished them, it will be simply because you are so obnoxiously rude. On the freestateproject forums, the token Georgist annoyance there is also persistent, intractable, and repetitive, but in contrast to you he's polite. See this thread: http://forum.freestateproject.org/in...7639#msg207639 See a whole bunch of the threads: http://forum.freestateproject.org/in...last_post;desc There, the Georgist discussion will go on and on and on forever, because as one libertarian foe tires, another starry-eyed recruit steps up in the never-ending futile quest to free BillG's mind.
Liberty Forest has a much higher population than the Free State Project forums, so honestly, if you could just control yourself and stay civil, this thread will in fact go to 100 pages just as I predicted and then you can start another thread, and another, and another, and keep your entertainment/hobby going forever! I'm giving you good advice here.
I made the opposite point, actually: If all land titles are invalid, if no one has the right to monopolize a piece of land, then it is unjust, robbery, an outrage, etc., for this usurpery we call land ownership to be going on. That is what Roy L. has said over and over, and redbluepill also to a lesser extent. Coming at it from a natural rights perspective, I see clearly that if we have all this robbery (and Roy L. has even compared it to chattel slavery repeatedly), the just and moral thing to do is to abolish the robbery. Outlaw the injustice. Make it forbidden to monopolize land. That is the solution.
But instead of abolishing the wrong, you propose instead to tax it. "Oh, it's fine, Mr. Landowner, keep raping my rights and robbing me of that Manhattan apartment that's my nature-given right, just pay this annual fee for the privilege of doing so." That's utter garbage, as I see it! If I've got a right to that Manhattan apartment, I've got a right to it, and paying a fee to strip my right away from me does not make it acceptable!
Now maybe you do not agree with Roy L. that land ownership is robbery. But if you do, then I really don't understand how you can make a moral case for enshrining robbery in your ideal social system.
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