The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[MattintheCrown]

That's also Roy's supposition and assertion, one that I believe is as bizarre as it is ignorant of market dynamics and the very nature of any monopoly in its ability to manipulate scarce resources in ways dictate floor prices that are higher than what otherwise have been a normal ceiling in a market with multiple competing sellers.

The "single firm" problem of determining market value in the absence of competition between owners is not dealt with under any version of LVT that I've seen -- except to deny that such a problem even exists. Market rates vary dynamically, up and down, between floors and ceilings. Sellers competing with one another establish floor prices, while buyers competing with each other establish ceilings. This many-to-many relationship between multiple buyers and multiple sellers helps to establish fair market value. With LVT you are removing a critical component; namely, the relationship between multiple sellers who set floor prices, as well as the competition between sellers required to find that floor.

With LVT the entire land rental market becomes a one-to-many relationship. A single seller to many buyers. The only "competition" is between buyers, with a single seller that is somehow presumed to be neutral, and will ostensibly do nothing whatsoever in an attempt to make its own market value determinations, create artificial scarcity, or do anything else that might otherwise establish a raised floor price on anything. Whether a single seller would exercise such power or not, it should at least be acknowledged that such a power would indeed exist.

Nope. Land is a natural monopoly. Holding land out of use would only act to reduce aggregate rent, as it would limit production.

This begins by begging the question, with the implied assumption that the liberty to use all land is in fact a just claim, or right (even though you avoided the use of that word) to which everyone is entitled, and therefore something that indeed should be be compensated when/where/if denied. Even the word abrogation implies a right, given that it is most often used in that context.

We have an equal right to liberty, which private ownership of land violates.

You are referring, of course, to allocations of specific land parcels to specific landholders, of course. This is kind of like saying that no apartment complex owner wants to allocate individual apartments. As the reasoning goes, allocations would instead be decided by the tenants themselves, who would be free to allocate it for themselves, as they "freely choose" which apartments they wanted to occupy.

Your statement ignores the biggest Allocation Elephant in the room, as all geoists I have ever read do indeed want a single prior allocation of all land within a taxing jurisdiction to itself -- which would then be administered (politician/bureaucrat managed/administered) by that taxing jurisdiction. This land, once it has been annexed (allocated to the taxing jurisdiction), could then be reallocated, as it would have the equivalent of For Rent signs put on it, as renters/landholders would then be "free" to decide which land they wanted to use exclusively in exchange for a perpetual rental fee paid to that jurisdiction.

I have no idea what you're saying here. I won't even hazard a guess.

Another problem lies in how "full market value" of the land is determined. If that involves a government-created formula, or government-paid land value assessors, that is one more way in which the land would in fact be politician managed. Another would be zoning laws, or land-use restrictions.

No, the land would not be "managed" by assessments. That's just ridiculous. And zoning laws and land-use restrictions apply now, without LVT.

In principle, this is no different than the landownership market now. You pay more, you get more (of a combination of quantity and quality of land). The difference in your example is that you are beginning with a landlord/tenants relationship that is already settled.

Say instead of renting the house, we found the house abandoned. In that scenario, the rooms could be allocated by bidding against one another. Stupid people would do this as a one-time payment. Smart people would realize that a one-time payment for ongoing benefits is insufficient for fairness. The bidders should make their bids for how much they're willing to pay each month for use of the better rooms. In that way, the resource nature provided freely for the 3 friends would be equally beneficial: those who got the lesser rooms would be compensated.

In today's world, people can choose to own, wherein the price paid can eventually, theoretically, come to an end, or you can choose to rent, wherein you remain on a perpetual treadmill and pay rents indefinitely. In other words, to borrow from Izzy Izzard's routine, it is RIGHT NOW a choice between Cake or Death.

The choice now is be a slave or a slavemaster.

Under LVT there would be no provision for ownership. Where the choice was once Cake or Death, it is now reduced to "or Death". The difference: the Landlord State would be spraying back at least some of that rent tax on wonderful infrastructure and other value, back onto the community as a whole.

Yes, and reducing or eliminating taxes on production, which you seem to have forgotten. Instead of being robbed of my production, I'm paying society for the benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land. And that's fair.

What exactly is a privilege, and what is it, precisely, that is being "handed out"?

Private use of some part of the United States is a privilege, and the USG handed it out, fairly willy-nilly.

One other problem I see that geoists seem to have a tough time dealing with, and that is the disparity between different types of commerce, the very productivity of which is on a spectrum. On one extreme, productivity is fully land-value based (e.g., farming/mining), while on the other end, there is commerce the productivity of which is not in any way tied to land-value. That's on the payment side. On the collection and spending side, what is "infrastructure" and other state expenditures? That can be a "handout" of "privileges" which have nothing whatsoever to do with land or land improvements.

Once again, no idea what you're trying to say. You're tying yourself in knots trying to avoid abandoning your beliefs.

So it is conceivable that a taxing jurisdiction could be collecting the most revenues from those whose productivity is dependent on land, and land value, while "returning" (redistributing) value to those whose productivity is not in any way tied to land value. How do you reconcile that?

You're not taxing production. You're taxing the benefit of using the land.

That presumes, of course, that such land is available. In Roy's particular version of LVT all land would simply be available -- because that's how he envisions it. That's also how he deals with the deadweight losses associated with monopolies as manipulate values based on artificial scarcity, as could come about through land use restrictions (locking out massive amounts of otherwise available and unused lands), zoning laws, etc.,

In your geoist version is there any room for artificial manipulations such as these, or do you even acknowledge the dynamics I just mentioned?

The dynamics you mentioned are wrong. And the government can always be set up suboptimally, but so what?

That's a projection, I think, one that ignores reality.

It's a fact. Only a few sociopaths like to live out in the middle of nowhere and have no contact with society. People like the Unabomber.

An enormous part of the population is hive-minded, of that there is no doubt, as seen by so many who cluster in and around the more metropolitan areas. But to say "No one, really" is to ignore the reality of a massive part of the population that really does prefer not to be part of a massive hive -- with all its attendant madness (including political attempts to manipulate and control the more rural from the more concentrated areas).

I like how you try to denigrate human nature every chance you get. You act as though the fact that humans are social animals is somehow shameful. It's just a fact. People who aren't social have mental problems. You're not a sociopath yourself, are you?

There, I fixed it for you so that it's more accurate, without casting such a broad blanket over so many to which your original statement would not apply.

Thank you. God forbid we forget about the sociopaths.

I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario, while a real phenomenon, is also a straw man. It marginalizes a serious problem facing geoists. We're really talking about competing interests in lands, and taxing jurisdictions, and how that plays out in cases where the population concentration is not so great, and not enough competition between land users exists to create any meaningful value for an LVT to even exist. In other words, if I have enough, and you have enough, and all my neighbors are content and feel that they have enough, nobody will see a need to pay anybody anything. No competition, we're all content.

Such "wide open" rural areas, would openly compete, and serve as a check and a balance on any areas where LVT rates are high. And if that's the only source of revenue for the taxing jurisdiction, MANY would weigh their options, and MANY would opt to DISPERSE, rather than to collect and concentrate into areas where the costs are higher.

What would the LVT have to do with that? They're paying to live there in any case, so what does it matter whether they pay via LVT, or by buying or renting land? The reason those values are high is because people want to live there.

Capital flight is a real danger facing all taxing jurisdictions, which compete with each other for population and revenue sources. That alone places a strong incentive for the taxing jurisdictions that depend on LVT for revenues to make such lands completely unavailable - to increase revenues by artificially preventing capital flight.

But they'd fail, because the rents are a reflection of desirability. Forcing people to live where they don't want to live would just make them less productive, which would just reduce aggregate production, and thus aggregate land rents.

[MattintheCrown]

No. Politicians represent a small part of the electorate-the part with enough money to bribe the politicians. If you really think representatives care about EVERYONE in their respective districts, you aren't very familiar with the system.

LOL, I like how the first thing Carlin mentions when he talks about the rich and powerful owning you, is that they own all the important land. Yep. But he's wrong about the schools. They're really not all that bad. That's a common misunderstanding.

[Roy L]

No. Politicians represent a small part of the electorate-the part with enough money to bribe the politicians. If you really think representatives care about EVERYONE in their respective districts, you aren't very familiar with the system.

Oh, man. You are actually rubbing your own nose in it, and you STILL can't smell it.

See 0:50 of YOUR OWN VIDEO.

It is landowners who pocket the entire value of public spending on services and infrastructure.

It is landowners who have the money to buy politicians.

Politics (especially local) is all about giving away publicly created land value to rich, greedy, parasitic private landowners WHO DO NOT GIVE A {U(|< ABOUT YOU.

[Roy L]

But let's say...this is a crazy island. It is subdivided like slices of a pie and miracle of miracles, all 10 slices are identical in every economic sense of the word. In such a case, would there be a LVT?

The inhabitants might agree to all pitch in an equal amount for some common amenity like a boat they could take turns using to fish.

Guess what I'm getting at is that I worry that a LVT would be applied above and beyond what is necessary to rectify the wrongs created by government irresponsibility subdividing and delegating ownership of land. For example, in Wisconsin, the 'education' system spends 8k to 19k per student per year. To me this is a blackhole...and is financed...yes not by the LVT...but the property tax which is a cousin of the LVT.

Few American public schools get more than a modest fraction of their total spending from property taxes, and WI's public schools are actually not that bad. The quality and proximity of local public schools is one of the best predictors of land value. If you don't recover that value to pay for the schools, you are subsidizing landowners. Why do you insist that landowners must be given a welfare subsidy? Are they so poor that they need one?

IMO the amount of money we pay directly and indirectly in property taxes is above and beyond the privilege created by disproportionate land ownership (which comes from government).

Objectively wrong. Land value exactly measures how much LESS it is.

Then even if this amount was correct...our politicians are too stupid to fairly reallocate this to the public at large.

But they are not too stupid to want more revenue next year. The only way they can get it is by creating value through public expenditures.

Other question would be about future generations...returning to the 10 people, 10 sections of land analogy...what if two of the people reproduced 10 more people...turns out this was irresponsible overpopulation as the island was not properly equipped to serve this many people.

It's mainly a question of competent and responsible management of the available natural resources to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to use them. While there are a few known cases of overpopulation like Easter Island, the problems there arose because of private appropriation of the resources and lack of competent public management to conserve them for all. More people are generally advantageous to the rest of the population, as each mouth comes with two hands and a brain, and more population enables a more efficient division of labor.

Would it be fair to tax the individuals who acted responsibly and didn't over-populate and to force them to support those who did not practice proper judgment?

LVT never forces anyone to "support" anyone else. It just requires them to recognize their equal rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

[Roy L]

Myself, I would say why have gov't allocating it at all?

LVT enables the market of productive users to allocate the land, not government. Government merely administers the system. You know this. Stop lying about it.

Homesteading should allocate it.

I.e., forcible theft should allocate it.

You know that your notion of "homesteading" that does not violate others' rights is nothing but a fabrication on your part. You know that you cannot name a single square inch of land anywhere on earth whose current title can be traced in an unbroken line of consensual transactions to the first person to "homestead" it. You know that when I challenged you to identify such a land parcel, the best you could come up with was some remote corner of Utah that a local warlord invited some Mormons to settle on -- and that you could not demonstrate the warlord spoke legitimately for all who were at liberty to use the land (hint: he didn't), you could not demonstrate that the warlord came to possess the land by consent of its previous users, and you had to ignore the fact that possession of the land was later disputed by force, and settled only by the conclusive intervention of the US Army.

[Xerographica]

IT IS NO LONGER MY MONEY.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT THE GROCERY STORE TO BE IN CHARGE OF HOW THE MONEY YOU PAID IT FOR A LOAF OF BREAD IS SPENT?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE "INVISIBLE HAND" ARGUMENT?

LVT CREATES AN INVISIBLE HAND FOR PUBLIC EXPENDITURES.

The invisible hand means that you get to choose which groceries you spend your money on. The visible hand means that I get to choose which groceries you spend your money on. The invisible hand means that you would get to choose which public goods you spent your taxes on. The visible hand means that congress gets to choose which public goods you spend your taxes on.

You understand that you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk...yet you don't understand that you should also have the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education. How do you explain this disparity?

The problem is obvious. Clearly you don't understand why you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk. You've taken this freedom for granted. You've never taken the time and effort to understand it. If you had taken the time and effort to understand it then I wouldn't have to take the time and effort to try and help you understand the value of having the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education.

Here's how it works...you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk because only you know whether you need a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk. It would be a waste of your limited resources to spend your money on a loaf of bread if you already have a loaf of bread. Same thing with a cartoon of milk. The fact of the matter is that you respond to shortages of the things that you value. We all respond to shortages of the things we value. If there is no shortage of something we value then we don't respond.

Now that I've explained econ 101 to you...aka supply and demand...do you now understand that taxpayers should have the freedom to respond to shortages of the things they value in the public sector? Do you now understand that the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing and everything to do with the spending?

In order to hedge my bets...would anybody else like to try and explain to Roy L why we should have the freedom to choose whether we spend our limited money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk?

[Steven Douglas]

Nope. Land is a natural monopoly.

That's complete gibberish and totally incorrect. Land is naturally scarce, but that is not the definition of a monopoly. A monopoly by definition is exclusive possession or control over a commodity or service in trade. Artificial in nearly all cases. I had to think about whether such a thing as a 'natural monopoly' could even exist. By definition, it would have to be exclusive control over something by virtue of nature. One example of that would be Christopher Walken, who enjoys a natural monopoly on his unique face and voice.

Holding land out of use would only act to reduce aggregate rent, as it would limit production.

Are you confusing production as somehow being a de facto corresponding LVT payment to a taxing jurisdiction? LVT is tied to land value only - not production - and you are overlooking the fundamental fact that not everyone is a farmer, miner or resort on a beachfront with a pretty view of the harbor. Only certain types of production are even tied to land, land value, or a need for the best available lands.

For example, Hershey invested heavily into its automated plants so that its factors of production would not be dependent on land, location or labor costs. So Hershey keeps plants in the small Pennsylvania town by that name, but chooses Oakdale, California, and Smiths Falls, Ontario as its rural targets for 'real production', and global production expansion. Local governments in both new places attempted to extract their usual pound of commerce-siphoning flesh anyway, but Hershey isn't some relatively powerless local. It has the means to leave both places in the proverbial dust, which it does, as it relocates its plants to Mexico -- and leaves a land value vacuum temporarily behind in its place.

An LVT "single tax" regime with lands wide open for use would remove the incentive for Hershey to relocate to Mexico, but that doesn't mean they'd plop down in the middle of Metropolis land competition madness and start bid on the best lands there. Their entire business plan is designed to avoid that kind of revenue expectation madness. Instead of moving to Mexico, Hershey could move its automated plant to an American LVT version of Mexico - to the outskirts of a small rural community where the available land is plentiful, the land rent is naturally close to zero, and there is a sufficient low cost labor pool (less than a thousand, no real skills required on the whole). And, insofar as possible, like they do already in Mexico, Hershey could pay for and maintain much of its own private infrastructure, bought and fully paid for without government, in the process. Now you could argue that this still increases the value of that land, but under LVT, Hershey owns all its improvements. Another company bidding for Hershey's landholding would have to reimburse Hershey for all its real improvements, so it's a zero sum gain, as Hershey could immediately grab another plot of nearby land with no land rent to speak of and relocate there. Just like the other company could anyway.

Land value in itself has everything to do with desirability of different types of competing lands, and competition for the best lands between people who actually have money, and/or are productive and can therefore pay rents. Without competition for scarce lands there is no land value. The greater the competition (demand), the scarcer the resource (supply), the greater the price ceiling. Reduce the number of competitors, and/or increase the supply of available land, and the price ceiling is also reduced -- both locally AND in the aggregate, since the new price ceiling increase in another (low rent) area would not be in proportion to the downward pressure placed on the price ceiling for the area that was abandoned, and now has one less competitor bidding for that land.

You also seem to overlook another fundamental fact, and that is that the very entities that are in a position to pay rents are naturally scarce. They really are finite in any given moment. If you opened up land reserves and allowed these people to expand into them, the competition for the once-concentrated lands will be naturally diffused. Their productivity on cheaper lands does not mean a corresponding increase in LVT, as less competition places downward pressure on aggregate rent for the taxing jurisdiction they leave. These are market fundamentals which exist today, and would not go away under LVT.

Hence, because Highly Productive Hershey is not dependent on exclusive use of the best lands, or even "good land", the only way to pressure them into paying any kind of meaningful LVT is to limit the available lands Hershey has to choose from. Hard to do with a well funded corporation, which really can move to Mexico at any time - much easier with small companies and residents that are tied to a community.

We have an equal right to liberty, which private ownership of land violates.

Same trap as Roy - same fallacy of composition, as you employ the generic term "liberty" with a broad brush, without qualifying that it is not "liberty", per se, but a particular subset of liberty you are advancing, but want lumped in as simply "liberty". Likewise with the term "right" as it applies to that particular kind of liberty. You must be referring to a moral (normative, subjective, debatable) right, since that particular kind of "right to liberty" does not exist in any codified form, and thus no such "right" to that kind of liberty has been violated.

Stupid people would do this as a one-time payment. Smart people would realize that a one-time payment for ongoing benefits is insufficient for fairness.

No True Scotsman fallacy as well as ad hominem - like saying that smart people prefer landownership as a matter of right, and don't buy into geoist delusions of 'fairness', because those who favor landownership as a right see (clearly and smartly) that true landownership rights are the only path to freedom from slavery. Stupid people, on the other hand, fall for LVT, because of their short-sightedly simplistic idea that the inability to use someone else's land has 'enslaved' them, along with the truly stupid notion that they can turn landowners, who they see as slave masters, into renters, which of course tickles their highly distorted and quite primitive fairness sensibilities.

The choice now is be a slave or a slavemaster.

And by slave you mean in part, of course, "renter". And its a false choice either/or, as you left out altogether the free person who is neither slave nor master; the landowner who pays no rent to anyone, makes productive use of his own land, and charges no rent to anyone. The only way to define such a landowner as a slavemaster is by way of geoist rationale; to take that moral "right to liberty" (that everyone supposedly has to that current landowner's land) and reason it in such a way that this deprivation has somehow "enslaved" others. This, along with the false assumption that they have 'taken/robbed' the community of the infrastructure it presumes to own by virtue of not paying perpetual rent for it.

Renters are slaves only insofar as they are artificially deprived of options to not be renters. They are not slaves to the extent that they have pathways open to them to become free of rent. To the extent that these pathways are artificially blocked, however, they are indeed slaves. Under LVT the only choice is slavery - by degree.

Yes, and reducing or eliminating taxes on production, which you seem to have forgotten. Instead of being robbed of my production, I'm paying society for the benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land. And that's fair.

All normative (should/ought), but we're not arguing that someone should not be robbed of their production. On that we agree. It's not an either/or for me. Where we have profound disagreement is "benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land", as well as your subective "that's fair". For me and many others, that's arguing from the premise of some extremely unconvincing geoist gibberish.

It's a fact. Only a few sociopaths like to live out in the middle of nowhere and have no contact with society. People like the Unabomber.

Ignoring the No True Scotsman/Ad Hominem/Straw Man, look at the Hershey example instead. They actively SEEK to be productive "out in the middle of nowhere", away from all densely populated areas with their productivity and equity siphoning government tentacles. Is the number one confectioner in the entire world now the exception to the rule - likened to a reclusive Unabomber?

I like how you try to denigrate human nature every chance you get. You act as though the fact that humans are social animals is somehow shameful. It's just a fact. People who aren't social have mental problems. You're not a sociopath yourself, are you?

News Flash: people who live in the lower populated more rural areas are arguably MUCH more social creatures than the hive-minded who are highly in favor of policies that force people to cluster and densely pack together in major population centers, many of whom don't even know - or care about - their neighbors. From Shanghai and NYC to Podunk and Punxsutawney, I don't have such a narrow view of the human population on the whole. I denigrate what I see as a systemic phenomenon based on human nature taken to extremes, based on what I see as a product of artificial manipulation of human nature to begin with -- not human nature itself. And by "hive-minded" I am not denigrating all those who live in densely populated areas. I'm denigrating the positions of those with a normalcy bias toward this, who think of this as "normal", and attempt to advance this as a society manipulating social engineer's model for all human living. You, instead, view one aspect of human living, and call that "society" and "human nature", as if you've defined it all -- all else being the anomalous exception to your personal "society" and "human nature" rule.

But they'd fail, because the rents are a reflection of desirability. Forcing people to live where they don't want to live would just make them less productive, which would just reduce aggregate production, and thus aggregate land rents.

Completely incorrect. Rents are a reflection of some combination of necessity, desirability, available supply and competition between renters (among other things) - but not necessarily productivity. Rent is a form of consumption - the payments of which may be evidence of the fruits of productivity - but not productivity itself as a result of what is rented, to wit: A man driving a leased Bentley and living in a leased castle on a thousand acres of leased land is not necessarily more productive because of any of these things. Unless he's making a living offering Bentley rides, nature hikes and tours of his castle, in most cases the productivity comes from elsewhere. But that's not the geoist mindset. In the geoist mindset, exclusive use of lands = more productivity.

[heavenlyboy34]

Oh, man. You are actually rubbing your own nose in it, and you STILL can't smell it.

See 0:50 of YOUR OWN VIDEO.

It is landowners who pocket the entire value of public spending on services and infrastructure.

It is landowners who have the money to buy politicians.

Politics (especially local) is all about giving away publicly created land value to rich, greedy, parasitic private landowners WHO DO NOT GIVE A {U(|< ABOUT YOU.

He was talking about the elites and politically well-connected, not land owners in general. He also talked about corporations in the broadest sense. But feel free to bend his words to mean what you want-just quote him directly instead of putting words in his mouth. People who actually watch the video and pay attention to context will know you're full of it.

ETA: another failure in the LVTers' reasoning is the assumption that the tax collectors will know how (or want) to distribute LVT monies "fairly". We know they won't, as voluminous literature over 100+ years on central planning demonstrates. Hong Kong, Roy's favorite example, had a net budget (revenues-expenditures) of -3.8 BILLION in 2010/11. Some success!

[MattintheCrown]

Before I start, stop being so needlessly verbose. This is nearly a filibuster.

That's complete gibberish and totally incorrect. Land is naturally scarce, but that is not the definition of a monopoly. A monopoly by definition is exclusive possession or control over a commodity or service in trade. Artificial in nearly all cases. I had to think about whether such a thing as a 'natural monopoly' could even exist. By definition, it would have to be exclusive control over something by virtue of nature. One example of that would be Christopher Walken, who enjoys a natural monopoly on his unique face and voice.

Each site on earth is unique.

Are you confusing production as somehow being a de facto corresponding LVT payment to a taxing jurisdiction? LVT is tied to land value only - not production - and you are overlooking the fundamental fact that not everyone is a farmer, miner or resort on a beachfront with a pretty view of the harbor. Only certain types of production are even tied to land, land value, or a need for the best available lands.

Irrelevant. How much society produces as a whole is contingent upon how efficiently it produces. Inefficiently allocate resources, and production will be checked. Though the LVT doesn't tax production, it is dependent on how productive society is as a whole.

For example, Hershey invested heavily into its automated plants so that its factors of production would not be dependent on land, location or labor costs. So Hershey keeps plants in the small Pennsylvania town by that name, but chooses Oakdale, California, and Smiths Falls, Ontario as its rural targets for 'real production', and global production expansion. Local governments in both new places attempted to extract their usual pound of commerce-siphoning flesh anyway, but Hershey isn't some relatively powerless local. It has the means to leave both places in the proverbial dust, which it does, as it relocates its plants to Mexico -- and leaves a land value vacuum temporarily behind in its place.

Why you put "for example" before all this nonsense, the world will never know.

An LVT "single tax" regime with lands wide open for use would remove the incentive for Hershey to relocate to Mexico, but that doesn't mean they'd plop down in the middle of Metropolis land competition madness and start bid on the best lands there. Their entire business plan is designed to avoid that kind of revenue expectation madness. Instead of moving to Mexico, Hershey could move its automated plant to an American LVT version of Mexico - to the outskirts of a small rural community where the available land is plentiful, the land rent is naturally close to zero, and there is a sufficient low cost labor pool (less than a thousand, no real skills required on the whole). And, insofar as possible, like they do already in Mexico, Hershey could pay for and maintain much of its own private infrastructure, bought and fully paid for without government, in the process. Now you could argue that this still increases the value of that land, but under LVT, Hershey owns all its improvements. Another company bidding for Hershey's landholding would have to reimburse Hershey for all its real improvements, so it's a zero sum gain, as Hershey could immediately grab another plot of nearby land with no land rent to speak of and relocate there. Just like the other company could anyway.

But by Hershey being more productive there, it would leave others to be more productive in other ways in other places. If their use of resources was truly more efficient, aggregate production would be augmented, and people in jurisdictions where land values were high would pay more. You have an inability to understand that the LVT doesn't tax production. You're stuck inside the 'tax on production' box. It's more of a tax on societal benefit. Society benefits from ideal use of resources.

Land value in itself has everything to do with desirability of different types of competing lands, and competition for the best lands between people who actually have money, and/or are productive and can therefore pay rents. Without competition for scarce lands there is no land value.

Nope. Proximity would provide advantages, even if land in general were not scarce. Consider the value of having a retail shop in a big city, versus having the same shop in the suburbs.

The greater the competition (demand), the scarcer the resource (supply), the greater the price ceiling. Reduce the number of competitors, and/or increase the supply of available land, and the price ceiling is also reduced -- both locally AND in the aggregate, since the new price ceiling increase in another (low rent) area would not be in proportion to the downward pressure placed on the price ceiling for the area that was abandoned, and now has one less competitor bidding for that land.

Nope. You continue to fail to understand the nature of the land market.

You also seem to overlook another fundamental fact, and that is that the very entities that are in a position to pay rents are naturally scarce. They really are finite in any given moment. If you opened up land reserves and allowed these people to expand into them, the competition for the once-concentrated lands will be naturally diffused. Their productivity on cheaper lands does not mean a corresponding increase in LVT, as less competition places downward pressure on aggregate rent for the taxing jurisdiction they leave. These are market fundamentals which exist today, and would not go away under LVT.

It would make society as a whole more productive, and areas where there was tax would see tax increase, as the benefits of living there increased. You seem to not understand that a place which is artificially over-crowded could possibly see rents decrease due to that over-crowding.

Hence, because Highly Productive Hershey is not dependent on exclusive use of the best lands, or even "good land", the only way to pressure them into paying any kind of meaningful LVT is to limit the available lands Hershey has to choose from. Hard to do with a well funded corporation, which really can move to Mexico at any time - much easier with small companies and residents that are tied to a community.

It's just irrelevant.

Same trap as Roy - same fallacy of composition, as you employ the generic term "liberty" with a broad brush, without qualifying that it is not "liberty", per se, but a particular subset of liberty you are advancing, but want lumped in as simply "liberty". Likewise with the term "right" as it applies to that particular kind of liberty. You must be referring to a moral (normative, subjective, debatable) right, since that particular kind of "right to liberty" does not exist in any codified form, and thus no such "right" to that kind of liberty has been violated.

Gibberish. Let me make the point simple: no one has any right to forcefully prevent others from using the resources nature provided.

No True Scotsman fallacy as well as ad hominem - like saying that smart people prefer landownership as a matter of right, and don't buy into geoist delusions of 'fairness', because those who favor landownership as a right see (clearly and smartly) that true landownership rights are the only path to freedom from slavery. Stupid people, on the other hand, fall for LVT, because of their short-sightedly simplistic idea that the inability to use someone else's land has 'enslaved' them, along with the truly stupid notion that they can turn landowners, who they see as slave masters, into renters, which of course tickles their highly distorted and quite primitive fairness sensibilities.

Nonsense. It's just manifestly better for people to pay for ongoing benefits with ongoing payments. You haven't even tried to argue otherwise, because you know I'm right.

And by slave you mean in part, of course, "renter".

No, I mean the person who gives his production in return for nothing.

And its a false choice either/or, as you left out altogether the free person who is neither slave nor master; the landowner who pays no rent to anyone, makes productive use of his own land, and charges no rent to anyone.

No such thing. The landowner receives the product of others' labor in exchange for nothing.

The only way to define such a landowner as a slavemaster is by way of geoist rationale; to take that moral "right to liberty" (that everyone supposedly has to that current landowner's land) and reason it in such a way that this deprivation has somehow "enslaved" others. This, along with the false assumption that they have 'taken/robbed' the community of the infrastructure it presumes to own by virtue of not paying perpetual rent for it.

The value of land is a direct result of government spending and productivity of society. The landowner simply robs everyone of it, in exchange for nothing.

Renters are slaves only insofar as they are artificially deprived of options to not be renters.

Nope. They're slaves because their labor is taxed by government to fund services and infrastructure which benefits landowners.

Roy once produced one of my favorite quotes: The landowner effectively owns part shares in millions of part-time slaves called, "taxpayers."

They are not slaves to the extent that they have pathways open to them to become free of rent.

This is no different than claiming slaves with the option to purchase their freedom aren't really slaves. Obviously, that's stupid.

To the extent that these pathways are artificially blocked, however, they are indeed slaves. Under LVT the only choice is slavery - by degree.

Nope. Under LTV, everyone denied use of land is compensated for the deprivation.

All normative (should/ought), but we're not arguing that someone should not be robbed of their production. On that we agree. It's not an either/or for me. Where we have profound disagreement is "benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land", as well as your subective "that's fair". For me and many others, that's arguing from the premise of some extremely unconvincing geoist gibberish.

It's inarguable. Land values prove it.

Ignoring the No True Scotsman/Ad Hominem/Straw Man, look at the Hershey example instead. They actively SEEK to be productive "out in the middle of nowhere", away from all densely populated areas with their productivity and equity siphoning government tentacles. Is the number one confectioner in the entire world now the exception to the rule - likened to a reclusive Unabomber?

This is just dishonest. Hershey didn't locate factories in the middle of nowhere, as you well know.

News Flash: people who live in the lower populated more rural areas are arguably MUCH more social creatures than the hive-minded who are highly in favor of policies that force people to cluster and densely pack together in major population centers, many of whom don't even know - or care about - their neighbors.

We're not talking about rural areas. We're talking about the middle of nowhere. The original example was of someone living off in the woods somewhere, out of contact from society. Poor attempt at a bait-and-switch.

From Shanghai and NYC to Podunk and Punxsutawney, I don't have such a narrow view of the human population on the whole. I denigrate what I see as a systemic phenomenon based on human nature taken to extremes, based on what I see as a product of artificial manipulation of human nature to begin with -- not human nature itself. And by "hive-minded" I am not denigrating all those who live in densely populated areas. I'm denigrating the positions of those with a normalcy bias toward this, who think of this as "normal", and attempt to advance this as a society manipulating social engineer's model for all human living. You, instead, view one aspect of human living, and call that "society" and "human nature", as if you've defined it all -- all else being the anomalous exception to your personal "society" and "human nature" rule.

Human history shows that the great societies were a product of the "hive-mind" as you call it. Sorry, you just hate human nature.

Completely incorrect. Rents are a reflection of some combination of necessity, desirability, available supply and competition between renters (among other things) - but not necessarily productivity. Rent is a form of consumption - the payments of which may be evidence of the fruits of productivity - but not productivity itself as a result of what is rented, to wit: A man driving a leased Bentley and living in a leased castle on a thousand acres of leased land is not necessarily more productive because of any of these things. Unless he's making a living offering Bentley rides, nature hikes and tours of his castle, in most cases the productivity comes from elsewhere. But that's not the geoist mindset. In the geoist mindset, exclusive use of lands = more productivity.

You're failing to see the big picture. Your refusal to understand how society operates, and insistent focus on the individual blinds you. From where does the man who builds a vast castle and drives a Bentley derive his wealth? Sure: the same wealth production over a smaller area would mean higher rents. But decrease the land area, and you also decrease production. You're assuming all else is equal if land is held out of use, but all else isn't equal.

[Steven Douglas]

Before I start, stop being so needlessly verbose. This is nearly a filibuster.

How's this, then:

Geoist-inspired LVT is nothing but human enslavement. It is real slavery masquerading as a solution to a completely imaginary form of slavery.

Georgists think George somehow one-upped Marx, or distanced himself from him, when they're truly fundamentally no different from each other. Getting it on the land value side (the ground floor) with the state as a renter-not-seller of infrastructure and so-called "community created value" doesn't change the fact that it's collectivist ownership and state redistribution of productivity from it inception.

Socialism, Facism, Communism, Georgism -- all from the same festering cesspool of mass manipulating humanity control-freak thought.