What do you think of Land Value Tax (LVT)

[redbluepill]

The OP's idea is more reasonable, moral, and Constitutional than the Income tax, but I still say that people should avail themselves of the IRS' "patriotic donation" program instead of insisting on any sort of tax. Tariffs are okay too, IMO.

I don't think I have ever met a geolibertarian/Georgist who was pro-IRS.

[redbluepill]

The life and liberty that I put into making it mine. I worked and saved, using my time, talents, and energy, and thus was, after a long time, able to trade someone for the land. To rob me of my property, to claim it isn't mine, is to claim that portion of my past which I traded for it was not or is not mine. It is to rob me of years of my past, just as to murder me is to rob me of (potentially) years of my future, and to enslave me is to rob me of my present. All these acts are fundamentally evil and anti-life.

That is why it is mine. I came by it honestly and upstandingly. It would be dishonest and despicable to rob me of it.

Alright, you bought it from someone. What made the land theirs?

You have a natural right to work the land. You also must acknowledge the right of others around you to have equal access to land. When you have a few people grabbing up all the land then you have a problem. That is why there was and is such a huge gap between the wealthy and impoverished in the South starting in the colonial days. Many poor people became indebted to a few wealthy landowners. They never experienced freedom because they were not allowed access to the land without permission.

I once asked a fellow libertarian to consider the following scenario:

There is an island where one man lives. Since he was there first he claimed the island as his property. One day another man who is shipwrecked shows up on the island. The first man declared that if the second man is to stay he must become his servant.

What did the fellow libertarian say? He said the first man had every right to make the second man his 'bitch'. I was appalled.

[heavenlyboy34]

I don't think I have ever met a geolibertarian/Georgist who was pro-IRS.

I'm not pro-IRS, but until we transition away from the prevailing system, we've got to work with what we've got. It took more that 100 years to get here, and it's not going to be fixed overnight.

[heavenlyboy34]

Alright, you bought it from someone. What made the land theirs?

You have a natural right to work the land. You also must acknowledge the right of others around you to have equal access to land. When you have a few people grabbing up all the land then you have a problem. That is why there was and is such a huge gap between the wealthy and impoverished in the South starting in the colonial days. Many poor people became indebted to a few wealthy landowners. They never experienced freedom because they were not allowed access to the land without permission.

I once asked a fellow libertarian to consider the following scenario:

There is an island where one man lives. Since he was there first he claimed the island as his property. One day another man who is shipwrecked shows up on the island. The first man declared that if the second man is to stay he must become his servant.

What did the fellow libertarian say? He said the first man had every right to make the second man his 'bitch'. I was appalled.

This is not true. People are limited in how much land they own by how much money they earn. All men have equal rights, but not all men are created equal. Since you start with this faulty premise, the rest also falls apart.

ETA: Your use of the labor theory of value here is poor. It's not labor alone that gives a man a title to property. Otherwise, the workers would own the means of production, and we would be living in the mythical workers' paradise.

[redbluepill]

I'm not pro-IRS, but until we transition away from the prevailing system, we've got to work with what we've got. It took more that 100 years to get here, and it's not going to be fixed overnight.

Agreed. Too radical of a change too soon may have a negative rather than positive effect.

[redbluepill]

This is not true. People are limited in how much land they own by how much money they earn. All men have equal rights, but not all men are created equal. Since you start with this faulty premise, the rest also falls apart.

ETA: Your use of the labor theory of value here is poor. It's not labor alone that gives a man a title to property. Otherwise, the workers would own the means of production, and we would be living in the mythical workers' paradise.

Except when you work for a business you are agreeing to forfeit any ownership of what you create and get reimbursed through wages, benefits, etc. But we cannot trace back the creation of natural land to any single person or company. Therefore, land is different from capital and therefore must be treated differently.

Not all men are created equal? So I assume you disagree with the Declaration of Independence?

[helmuth_hubener]

You also must acknowledge the right of others around you to have equal access to land.

I must not and do not acknowledge any such outlandish thing.

You know perfectly well the homesteading theory. If potential property is unowned, you come in and claim it, in the case of land by fencing it off and making use of it. It's straightforward, you just disagree with it, on the grounds of some "enough and as good" tripe.

I have just one question for you, because this is what all Georgist conversations come down to. If I fly up to space and claim a small asteroid, are you going to force me to pay land tax on it? Have I somehow violated the rights of the poor and land-less by owning the asteroid? Or under your philosophy may I own the asteroid, absolutely, free and clear?

[LibertyEagle]

I don't like a tax where if unpaid, they can take your land. It's my land, and they should have no power over any of it. All property taxes should be abandoned.

Quoted for truth.

[redbluepill]

I must not and do not acknowledge any such outlandish thing.

Right, so outlandish that libertarians, paleoconservatives and classical liberals like Frank Chodorov, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, Libertarian Party Founder David Nolan, William F. Buckley, Stephen Moore, Fred Foldvary, and Albert Jay Nock have voiced their support for geoist theory.

You know perfectly well the homesteading theory. If potential property is unowned, you come in and claim it, in the case of land by fencing it off and making use of it. It's straightforward, you just disagree with it, on the grounds of some "enough and as good" tripe.

Most homesteaders lived a hard life because all the good land was immediately horded by those before them.

Born in Wisconsin of a farming family, familiar with the related questions of land and poverty through actual experience on Iowa and Dakota farms, [Hamlin Garland] was ready, when he picked up by chance a copy of the Lovell edition of Progress and Poverty on a Dakota homestead, to accept the truth of George's ideas. "Up to this time," he wrote later in his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border, "I had never read any book or essay in which our land system had been questioned. …I caught some glimpse of the radiant plenty of George's ideal Commonwealth. The trumpet call of the closing pages filled me with a desire to battle for the right. . . ." For some time he had been searching for the cause of the misery and poverty which he saw about him in the lives of the homesteaders, and with Henry George as his guide he discovered the answers for which he searched. In Boston a few years later he heard George address a meeting in Faneuil Hall (an experience he described in detail in A Son of the Middle Border), and he came away convinced that he now knew the cause of poverty. He shortly joined the Anti-Poverty League which had sprung up under George's influence, spoke from the platform in defense of the movement, and did his best to convince his friends, among them William Dean Howells, of the need for economic and social reform. He had not yet turned his mind to literature, but when Joseph Kirkland, the author of Zury, a grimly realistic novel of farm life, encouraged him to "write the truth" about what he saw, he began in 1887 to write stories of the life he had known in the Midwest, drawing upon his own experiences for the background of his work and upon Henry George for its controlling philosophy.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism....nd-george.html

I have just one question for you, because this is what all Georgist conversations come down to. If I fly up to space and claim a small asteroid, are you going to force me to pay land tax on it? Have I somehow violated the rights of the poor and land-less by owning the asteroid? Or under your philosophy may I own the asteroid, absolutely, free and clear?

No one else is living on that asteroid. Not an issue.

Let me ask you about a similar scenario: Suppose you are on a spaceship that malfunctions and crashlands on an asteroid. Now suppose another man is already living on that asteroid. He says you have now right trespassing on his asteroid and must leave. Of course you can't because your ship is no longer operational. Since it is his asteroid and you have 'no right' to be there he says you may stay as long as you remain his servant (hey, better than being shot for trespassing on his rock right?)

[redbluepill]

Depression Hits Robinson Crusoe's Island
by Mrs. Mary Atterbury

"Friday," said Robinson Crusoe, "I'm sorry, I fear I must
lay you off."

"What do you mean, Master?"

"Why, you know there's a big surplus of last year's crop. I
don't need you to plant another this year. I've got enough
goatskin coats to last me a lifetime. My house needs no
repairs. I can gather turtle eggs myself. There's an
overproduction. When I need you I will send for you. You
needn't wait around here."

"That's all right, Master, I'll plant my own crop, build up
my own hut and gather all the eggs and nuts I want myself.
I'll get along fine."

"Where will you do this, Friday?"

"Here on this island."

"This island belongs to me, you know. I can't allow you to
do that. When you can't pay me anything I need I might as
well not own it."

"Then I'll build a canoe and fish in the ocean. You don't
own that."

"That's all right, provided you don't use any of my trees
for your canoe, or build it on my land, or use my beach for
a landing place, and do your fishing far enough away so you
don't interfere with my riparian rights."

"I never thought of that, Master. I can do without a boat,
though. I can swim over to that rock and fish there and
gather sea-gull eggs."

"No you won't, Friday. The rock is mine. I own riparian rights."

"What shall I do, Master?"

"That's your problem, Friday. You're a free man, and you
know about rugged individualism being maintained here."

"I guess I'll starve, Master. May I stay here until I do? Or
shall I swim beyond your riparian rights and drown or starve
there?"

"I've thought of something, Friday. I don't like to carry my
garbage down to the shore each day. You may stay and do
that. Then whatever is left of it, after my dog and cat have
fed, you may eat. You're in luck."

"Thank you, Master. That is true charity."

"One more thing, Friday. This island is overpopulated. Fifty
percent of the people are unemployed. We are undergoing a
severe depression, and there is no way that I can see to end
it. No one but a charlatan would say that he could. And if
any ship comes don't let them land any goods of any kind.
You must be protected against foreign labor. Conditions are
fundamentally sound, though. And prosperity is just around
the corner."

http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell...0409/0030.html