What do you think of Land Value Tax (LVT)

[steve005]

any tax on land= paying rent and you don't really own it! think about it, what if you grow all you7r own food and built naturally(if they let you) you wouldn't need money for anything, cept to pay rent

[redbluepill]

How many Hubener dittoheads are there on this forum, anyway? Am I not demolishing him in words of few enough syllables?

Its a popularity show. It doesn't matter how sound and clear of an argument you are making. It doesn't matter how much they avoid crucial questions like "what is property?" They get upvoted you get downvoted.

[redbluepill]

Well, except that it doesn't. That's not a monopoly at all. Try again. If land was more profitable to hold than to sell - then....DUH there'd be no selling of land....except that there is - which means your conclusion is crap.

A monopoly has one owner - there are 10's of millions of land owners in the US. What about that don't you get?

The largest land owner in the country is the Federal Government. Did you know that?

I dont think you get my point. Those corporations and individuals don't typically control the poorest land. They control the best land. They reaps the benefits from the Earth while the rest are either indebted to them or prevented access. When you control an acre you monopolize that acre. When a corporation controls a thousand acres they monopolize those acres. The more they control the clearer the injustice. Have you read the Robinson Crusoe article? I would like your feedback on it.

Yes, the federal government does control the most land (think its 20-30%). They have no more right to exclude us from it as does a corporation.

[Roy L]

any tax on land= paying rent and you don't really own it!

You don't really own it whether you pay tax on it or not. You own a government-issued and -enforced privilege of violating others' rights, like a deed to a slave.

think about it, what if you grow all you7r own food and built naturally(if they let you) you wouldn't need money for anything, cept to pay rent

To compensate the community of those whom you deprive of the liberty they would otherwise enjoy. Right.

[Roy L]

"People often do things that are not profitable". This is just plan silly - of course people profit from lottery tickets.

?? And you call MY statement, "plain silly"???

ROTFL!!

Most do it for fun - why do people gamble at all?

Please go into your nearest casino and see how much fun the patrons appear to be having.

Again - you ignored my previous point that you can measure profit outside of simple monetary terms.

You are equivocating in an attempt to make your fallacious claims tautological.

Do parents emotionally profit when they raise children? I would argue most do and all intend to.

That is not what "profit" means.

Your second statement -So what? Each individual iPad has one seller. There are many owners of LAND and there are many owners of iPads. Thus - land is not a monopoly nor are iPads. Your statements aren't sound.

Wrong. The iPads are indistinguishable and interchangeable. Land parcels are not. Each one is unique, like original artworks. The fact that there are substitutes, sometimes quite close substitutes, is irrelevant. There are substitutes for any good in monopoly supply.

[Roy L]

No supply of land is not fixed

It is indisputably fixed. It cannot be increased by labor, and does not respond to price.

- you didn't refute my point at all!

Yes, of course I did.

The land market operates the same as every other market - a function of supply and demand.

Wrong. An increase in the price of a produced good stimulates increased production of that good. An increase in the price of land stimulates only more speculation.

Nothing more - to say that land is somehow special is ridiculous.

No, to say that the supply of land can be increased by labor as the supply of products can is ridiculous. It is literally absurd.

A monopoly has one seller of the ENTIRE supply not an individual piece of that supply- none of your examples are monopolies.

The supply of a land parcel consists of that parcel and no others. Unlike typical products, land parcels are unique and have no perfect substitutes, like original artworks, each of which is also a monopoly.

http://www.loopnet.com/New-York/New-York_Land-For-Sale/ Find a vacant lot - subdivide it in half. You now have two identical lots.

No, of course you don't. This is most obvious if you divide it in half such that one half fronts on the street and the other half on the alley behind it. But it doesn't matter how you divide it, the halves will not be identical. They will be at different distances from nearby amenities, have different light exposures through the seasons due to nearby tall buildings, have different buried utility lines, etc.

Your claim is refuted.

[helmuth_hubener]

It doesn't matter how much they avoid crucial questions like "what is property?"

Property is, initially, established by claiming things that no one else has already claimed. No one was claiming it before, so you're not violating anyone's rights, you're not aggressing against anyone, by appropriating for yourself. There are limits to how much you can claim, the whole "mixing your labor" in thing probably would help to solidify your claim, also marking the borders if the matter is fairly immobile, or moving the matter into a place you already possess if it's transportable.

That's what property is: stuff people claim. And then, stuff people buy or get given from those who originally claimed it.

http://mises.org/media/1147/How-We-Become-Owners

[smokemonsc]

?? And you call MY statement, "plain silly"???

ROTFL!!

Please go into your nearest casino and see how much fun the patrons appear to be having.

You are equivocating in an attempt to make your fallacious claims tautological.

That is not what "profit" means.

Wrong. The iPads are indistinguishable and interchangeable. Land parcels are not. Each one is unique, like original artworks. The fact that there are substitutes, sometimes quite close substitutes, is irrelevant. There are substitutes for any good in monopoly supply.

You clearly don't understand the terms you are using. How can I have a discussion with you when you don't know the meaning of the word monopoly? Must I say it again?

A monopoly is when someone has 100% ownership of the entire supply of something. I don't know how much more clear I can make it. The differences between land lots are irrelevant because the cost of one lot directly affects the cost of another - because they are of the same supply. You continue to use a bad understanding of what a real monopoly is to justify an economic view that is equally wrong. You seem to think nobody ever sells land, which is just about the dumbest thing said on these forums. I'm not going to continue this discussion until you start using the correct definitions of economic terms.

The rest of your post is just retarded.

[smokemonsc]

I dont think you get my point. Those corporations and individuals don't typically control the poorest land. They control the best land. They reaps the benefits from the Earth while the rest are either indebted to them or prevented access. When you control an acre you monopolize that acre. When a corporation controls a thousand acres they monopolize those acres. The more they control the clearer the injustice. Have you read the Robinson Crusoe article? I would like your feedback on it.

Yes, the federal government does control the most land (think its 20-30%). They have no more right to exclude us from it as does a corporation.

I do understand your point - you think because not all land plots and 100% identical it somehow changes the definition of a monopoly - which it does not! Again monopoly means one user has 100% ownership of an entire supply. It does not matter if each unit of that supply is identical or not. Where talking apples and oranges here. This thread has been about land in the general sense, the entire land of the country. I've proven that land ownership in this country is not a monopoly as MILLIONS of land owners exist. Not 1, not 100, but MILLIONS. I've also proven that land is not constant - its total supply changes every year. I used Dubai as an example of man made land, as well as my new example of Volcanoes. The islands of Hawaii grow by several 1,000 sq ft a year alone.

Even if one person owned all of the land in the world. They would have to resort to one of two things to maintain it. They would have to provide some good or service in order to trade for their own needs, or employ guards to defend it - which would then have to be paid by some good or service. In the end - monopolizing the entire world's land is impossible. I don't think we need to do anything about it, and I don't think it's a problem.

[helmuth_hubener]

[T]hat is why government exists in the first place: to secure property rights, [except for Helmuth's property right to that Manhattan apartment]

LOL! We have a low-level world-view incompatibility. You're BIOS, I'm EFI. They're just not going to fit together. Government is a gang of bandits. Government is nothing but a group of parasites.

That's just puerile nonsense. I even gave you examples of how they conflict, ... different people to use the same natural resources.

If I have a right to control my body, and Dennis Rodman has a right to control my body, then one of those rights simply does not exist.

What is a "right" anyway? A right is a boundary.

http://mises.org/store/Boundaries-of-Order-P589.aspx

A right is a boundary, delineating a property. Two people cannot both own 100% of the same property. Of course, you would differ with me there, because you think each person in the whole horde of humanity has a property in the whole blessed universe! Which is... let us be gentle and say: unworkable! Your solution is to hold the universe in common intellectually, but as a practical matter to legalize stealing and let landowners steal all that common property. My solution is to let everyone divvy it all up.

My solution is better.