The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[heavenlyboy34]

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

No. The "great societies" were products of tinkerers working alone in their workshops and then sharing ideas with people who in turn added on to those ideas. For example, no one man invented the symphony as we now know it (baroque "symphonies" were only a few minutes long), generations of men tinkered around with existing ideas in their writing shops-each one-upping the last. Same can be said of any major field. (this is one reason why IP is a fundamentally flawed idea, but that's for another thread)

[MattintheCrown]

No. The "great societies" were products of tinkerers working alone in their workshops and then sharing ideas with people who in turn added on to those ideas. For example, no one man invented the symphony as we now know it (baroque "symphonies" were only a few minutes long), generations of men tinkered around with existing ideas in their writing shops-each one-upping the last. Same can be said of any major field. (this is one reason why IP is a fundamentally flawed idea, but that's for another thread)

This is utter nonsense.

[heavenlyboy34]

This is utter nonsense.

Which part needs to be broken down into little words for you to understand?

[MattintheCrown]

Which part needs to be broken down into little words for you to understand?

It's just stupid nonsense. Obviously, the concentration of humans made such innovations possible.

[Steven Douglas]

Obviously, the concentration of humans made such innovations possible.

You have the cause and effect exactly backwards. Innovations facilitate concentrations of humans.

A magician first creates an act and then draws a crowd. The crowd did not make the magician possible. The magician made the crowd possible. The seed is the magician, not the crowd.

An author writes a book. Whether it sells a million or remains unpublished and unread, the innovation itself was not the product of readers, but writers only. No concentration of humans required.

One innovative guy designs a Disk Operating System. An even more innovative guy buys it for a song, licenses it, and gathers in thousands more innovators who innovate at his direction and on his behalf -- who then feed hundreds of millions who use it in their computers. If you want to trace "operating system" back, there are individual innovators all along the way (the shoulders of giants), and while they can be viewed with an aggregate lens, it was NOT the concentration of humans, but rather innovative THOUGHTS within individual humans that made all innovations possible.

[Roy L]

The invisible hand means that you get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.

Just as, with LVT, you get to choose which government services and infrastructure you spend your money on when you choose the land parcel(s) you wish to deprive others of. Don't want to pay for schools? No problem: don't deprive others of access to the schools. Don't want to pay for roads? Fine. Don't deprive others of access to the roads.

The visible hand means that I get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.

You say that like you imagine it has some relevance. It doesn't. Under LVT, you get to choose which government services and infrastructure you spend your money on. You just don't get to tell the grocery store what it should spend the money you paid it for a loaf of bread on. Your choice ends when you have chosen what you want. You don't get to tell the store how to provide it, or what to put on the shelves.

The invisible hand means that you would get to choose which public goods you spent your taxes on.

Which you do when you choose which parcel of land to exclude others from.

The visible hand means that congress gets to choose which public goods you spend your taxes on.

Once you have paid the grocery store for what you are taking, the money is no longer yours. Your brain just seems to be absolutely impervious to that fact.

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.

I understand it just fine, as you would know if you had read the post to which you purport to be responding. When you choose a land parcel, you can pick one that is near transit, or near schools, and thus pay for the mix of services and infrastructure that you want.

How do you explain this disparity?

You're dyslexic?

The problem is obvious.

Indeed: the problem is obviously that you want to have an argument with somebody who is advocating a tax other than LVT, and have mistakenly wandered into the wrong thread.

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.

Clearly you don't understand that when you choose a land parcel to use, you are choosing to spend your money on the bundle of government services and infrastructure that are conveniently accessible from that parcel.

You've taken this freedom for granted.

No. YOU have taken for granted that LVT is like other taxes, and is not related to benefits received. But it is. It is EQUAL to benefits received through landholding. The unimproved value of land is IDENTICALLY EQUAL to the minimum value of what the landholder expects to take from society and not repay in taxes. When you pay for land, you are paying for government. You are just paying the wrong party.

You've never taken the time and effort to understand it.

You have never taken the time and effort to read the posts to which you purport to respond.

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.

LOL! Are you trying to provoke me into calling you what you are acting like, Xero?

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?

You mean like, by paying market value for the government services and infrastructure they want the benefit of, as they would with LVT?

Do you now understand that the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing and everything to do with the spending?

Please read the posts to which you purport to be responding. As long as the productive are forced to pay for government twice in order that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing, the problem will be with the taxing, not 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?

Would anybody else like to try and explain to Xero that this thing works better if you read the posts to which you purport to respond?

[Roy L]

He was talking about the elites and politically well-connected, not land owners in general.

He was talking about the power over others that ownership of the important land confers. Corporations own about 70% of the land in the USA by value. The richest 1% own about 70% of corporate stock by value. You do the math.

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.

Listen to the video.

People who actually watch the video and pay attention to context will know you're full of it.

They will know I am correct and you are lying.

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.

There is no central planning involved in LVT, stop lying. Tax collectors and tax spenders are not the same people. Government will spend money fairly under LVT because LVT aligns government's financial incentives with the public interest: waste money, and there will be less revenue next year.

Hong Kong, Roy's favorite example, had a net budget (revenues-expenditures) of -3.8 BILLION in 2010/11. Some success!

And what was the US deficit for 2010/11...?

Most governments have deficits in most years. Hong Kong continues to be an exemplar of freedom, justice and prosperity without any private landowning.

[Roy L]

You have the cause and effect exactly backwards. Innovations facilitate concentrations of humans.

Nope. False. Innovation happens when there are a lot of ideas in the air and a lot of interaction between innovative people.

A magician first creates an act and then draws a crowd. The crowd did not make the magician possible.

Yes, it did. The magician could never have created his act without the help of society, especially all the previous magicians who created illusions, and the institutions that transmitted their ideas to later generations.

The magician made the crowd possible. The seed is the magician, not the crowd.

Wrong again. The crowd is just looking for something to watch. If not the magician, then something else.

An author writes a book. Whether it sells a million or remains unpublished and unread, the innovation itself was not the product of readers, but writers only. No concentration of humans required.

As a professional writer, I can tell you that you know nothing, repeat, NOTHING about the process of writing. A writer must first of all be a reader. And that takes a vast community of other writers.

You could not be more wrong.

One innovative guy designs a Disk Operating System. An even more innovative guy buys it for a song, licenses it, and gathers in thousands more innovators who innovate at his direction and on his behalf -- who then feed hundreds of millions who use it in their computers.

With the help of government-issued and -enforced monopolies.

If you want to trace "operating system" back, there are individual innovators all along the way (the shoulders of giants), and while they can be viewed with an aggregate lens, it was NOT the concentration of humans, but rather innovative THOUGHTS within individual humans that made all innovations possible.

Utter garbage. See Jane Jacobs's towering works on the central role of cities in economic life.

[helmuth_hubener]

Homesteading should allocate it.

I.e., forcible theft, [murder, and annual double-holocaust] should allocate it.

You know that your notion of "homesteading" that does not violate others' rights is nothing but a [dastardly] fabrication on your part.

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 helps 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

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.

http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php

The various imaginary borders that various nation-states drew around the continent were of little relevance to St. George -- nor to the rest of the Mormon colonies in what is now Utah, but we are focusing on St. George for now, and just a few square inches within St George at that. Take your pick of which inches from the above page, just let me know which ones you're claiming were got by aggression.

Which other tribes were previously possessing and occupying St. George, whom Paiutes "forced out"? In what way did the Mormons in St. George use aggressive force to steal St. George from the Paiutes, or from anyone else?

Just pick one of the lots, and explain to me in simple words exactly who was dispossessed of this lot, and when. Your position is that the history of the lot (as with all lots) is an unbroken line of bloodbath after bloodbath, holocaust after holocaust, with robbery, aggression, and other rights-violations mixed in. So: Show me the Blood!

http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php

In fact, there were no rights violations which occurred in connection with the homesteading of any of the listed lots in St. George, so far as I am aware and history records. Homesteading works. Mutual respect for other human beings works. Mutually acknowledging each other's land claims works. Works all the time.

Aggression happens too. Not as often as the programmer of Roy imagined (i.e.: always), but quite frequently. The frequency of this aggression will lessen the more my own political philosophy -- the philosophy of liberty, the non-aggression principle -- takes hold and wins out over dead and dying cobbled-together Franken-philosophies like Georgism/Geoism and nation-statism.

To a bright tomorrow and an ever-growing cadre of youthful anarchocapitalists! Lift your glasses and three cheers!

Noli Me Tangre!

Liberty!

FREEEEEDOOOMMMMMMM!!

[Xerographica]

You have never taken the time and effort to read the posts to which you purport to respond.

Please read the posts to which you purport to be responding. As long as the productive are forced to pay for government twice in order that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing, the problem will be with the taxing, not the spending.

I reread your post THREE times and am really confident that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk. Just to be ridiculously certain...I read your post a FOURTH time and am now extremely certain that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.

You know how you can be certain that I know what your argument is? Because I'm the guy that added Hayek's and Friedman's positive perspectives on "voting with your feet" to the Wikipedia entry on foot voting. You didn't add their perspectives...I did. Why didn't you add their perspectives? Why did I add their perspectives? Here's a link to a new article in the NY Times about foot voting...Competition is Good for Governments, Too. Why did I share that link with you?

I have no problem with the concept of foot voting. Why would any libertarian argue against foot voting? I'm not arguing against foot voting...so why are you defending it?

Rather than defending foot voting...please explain to me exactly why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk. You ignored this request once...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But each time you ignore this simple request I'll become more and more convinced that you lack an understanding of basic economics.