The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[MattintheCrown]

Never lost sight of it, and you're absolutely wrong. Those things you are calling "opportunities and amenities provided by the community" take on myriad forms, and are not exclusively enjoyed as land rent.

What in god's name is this supposed to mean?

The rain falls and the sun shines on everyone. Opportunities and amenities benefit everyone in the community in different ways; not just landowners, and for that matter not just members of the community. Pointing out increases in land rents is as incidental as it is an unfair isolation.

Opportunities and amenities provided by the community are one of the sources of land rent. They're why people are willing to pay money for use of land. What part of that do you not understand?

Increases in labor and foreign commerce opportunities also abound, among other incidental perks in a thriving community, but I don't hear any argument from you that either of those should be taxed on that basis.

They show up as land rent. Hello?

So much the better for landowners (which, of course, anyone can become), but they are far from the only ones benefiting, and there is no rational reason that they should be singled out.

Except, of course, for the fact that they get to charge the community for those benefits.

The state does not own the market, and has no claim on "opportunities and amenities" that are privately-provided-but-publicly-available.

But the community does have a claim on them, and the only way to recover them for the community is via the community's agent: government.

Again, you're still doing it from a paradigm that implies as its premise that the state is the owner of the market,

That's a lie. I've never said or implied any such thing.

and you're still talking about entities that are singled out for their particular benefits, as if no other value increases or other benefits existed for anyone else.

Also a lie. I've never said nor implied that, either. What I said was that landowners are privileged to collect value created by society.

Which means non-landowners get a completely free ride.

No, of course they don't. They have to pay landowners to live and work there. How else would they get access to the benefits?

This presupposes that landowners are truly a different class, and not just decision-makers as to their investments, in a state where the benefits of the rights of landownership are freely available to everyone - to the degree that they can and want to afford them.

No, that's also false. It supposes, correctly, that landownership is a privilege.

Are you suggesting that landownership and said titles would remain intact under LVT? If the state asked you for the pink slip on your car, which you own outright, and revised it so that it read, in effect, Rental Contract - your ownership title would be effectively REVOKED. No, not made up at all. Not even a little bit.

Land ownership is contingent upon payment of property taxes right now. I know of nowhere on earth where land is allocated according to your idiotic ideals.

If other opportunities exist, especially pathways that lead to landownership? Of course. Then sharecropping is optional - a choice that anyone could make. Or not.

Not if it's all you can afford. Many were sharecroppers their whole lives, and not by choice. It's still slavery if you have a "pathway" to buy your freedom.

If, on the other hand, pathways to landownership are artificially barred, or blocked, such that sharecropping becomes the only option - then no. But it's not that sharecropping would be wrong. Rather the artificial blockage from the liberty to have the opportunity to become a landowner - that would be the wrong.

Nope. Not paying for a privilege is wrong.

Exemptions. For "enough land to live on" - but you're not talking about a fixed quantity of land - you're talking about an exemption amount, whatever that might be - one that would be established by the state or taxing jurisdiction, which could then be applied as an exemption to land rent payments. That's a nebulous Promise Plum not worth jumping for, and the camel's nose in the proverbial tent, as he promises to play nice if you'll agree. Like a mafia bribe - you'll get a little taste if you promise to keep your trap shut and go along with the plan.

What a stupid, nonsensical response.

Then there's the real world. Like North Dakota. Several Billion in surpluses from 30+ different revenue streams with 3 billion in a state savings account that grows every day, and $400 million set aside for property tax relief (to a VERY angry and stressed electorate) to help with a property tax that isn't even needed (or an income tax for that matter). And the relief that is set aside (but not allocated yet) will only keep the people at the angry level. Not the absolute OFF WITH THEIR HEADS level. Meanwhile, property values are on the rise. Not real. State assessed. Despite all the very vocal anger, assessments are going way up: 30% increase IN ONE YEAR for agricultural lands, residential property up 13 percent and commercial property up 20 percent - all so that local governments can increase spending without touching state surpluses.

It's probably going up because greedy speculators think they can get the tax burden reduced or removed entirely.

Meanwhile, ad valorem exemptions are the root of all land and property tax abuse evils - because they aren't just given to individuals. Their real political corrupting power is when they are doled out to commercial interests - CRONY CAPITALISM. So-called "Enterprise Zones". Line up for your free ride - the state is the landlord, and can give exemptions away.

It can also round up all the Jews and gas them. So what?

Nah. An exemption for "an amount enough to live on"? I'll pass. Just give me access to land I can own, and I'll pay for my own exemption, in a truly free market, to some former landowner as I take his place, thanks.

Fact: you have to buy your freedom in your system, but it's guaranteed in mine.

With landownership you are buying your freedom, and your security, both of which have costs.

Right. But whereas government actually secures your freedom and security, you pay a landlord. You see that? Not only are you making a one-time payment for ongoing benefits, you're also paying the wrong party.

In this case, the cost is finite.

The payment is finite, but the costs are ongoing. Which is a reason a one-off payment for land is unjust.

There is such a thing as a final payment, after which you OWN your freedom, and your security. With LVT some are exempt (whatever that means), but nobody is ever truly free. That's why it's nothing but slavery - as a rule, all exceptions notwithstanding.

Nope. You get enough land to live on free of charge. You pay for any extra you may want.

Under real slavery you're forced onto the plantation, forced to labor against your will for someone else's benefit. With an LVT view, someone who is excluded from the plantation is somehow "enslaved".

This continues to make no sense.

Wrong on all counts. His titles ARE legitimate. That has nothing to do with right or wrong. It is morally wrong in my estimation because they draw a lasso around vast areas of lands that include whole populations. Just...like...geolibs want to do. Like I said, just change the name from Duke of Westminster to "LVT Taxing Jurisdiction Inc." Thus, I equate geolibs with the Duke of Westminster. You want to do PRECISELY what he is doing, only you think, "at least it's for noble and just reasons".

The Duke of Westminster pockets the money. That's not what I want to do. I want to spend it on services and infrastructure that benefit the community that creates it. Government extends a train and the rents in the serviced area rise? Rents are spent on funding the train.

I have no idea why you morally object to the Duke though. There's no reason you should. What's puzzling is why you believe that the Duke of Westminster, or any landowner anywhere, deserves to pocket the value created by the community and government.

That would be you, not me. Remember? I'm not in favor of ANYONE, public or private, artificially cutting off opportunities for individual landownership and freedom from paying land rents to anyone. YOU ARE.

Who said anything about cutting anything off? Using your theory, a man could theoretically buy up all the land. Sure, he could sell some of it off, but he doesn't have to. It's up to him.


But then, that's pretty much the end-game of your system, isn't it? If there's no tax due on land, the best way to get rich is to own as much of it as possible. And the more you own, the more you can afford. Result? Concentration of all land into the hands a few. Feudalism. If you own all of England, why sell the land off? Just have a handful of loyal lords, who charge rent to serfs.

You're simply advocating feudalism. Obviously, violence and economic stagnation would result.

I don't think you even know what the word monopoly means, to be honest. That showed when you wrote the very strange "land is a natural monopoly". I think you think monopoly is somehow synonymous with finite in quantity, or scarce. That may be wrong, but if it is right, that isn't it at all.

I already answered this several pages back - you didn't respond then, but you're now making the same bogus claims I already responded to. Go back, read what I wrote (especially about the scarcity of actual people in a position to pay land rents, and the finite quantity of RIGHT NOW money available for land rents), and respond to and argue against the points I already made. Then we can have a discussion about it.

If you want to dredge it up again, I'll refute it.

[Steven Douglas]

Opportunities and amenities provided by the community are one of the sources of land rent. They're why people are willing to pay money for use of land. What part of that do you not understand?

I understand it perfectly. Opportunities and amenities provided by the community really are one of the sources of land rent. That isn't difficult to understand, nor is it at issue.

However, that particular "source of land rent" also has sources. It's not "the community". It's mostly non-collectivized, non-socialized private interests. Both landowners and non-landowners contribute and benefit in different ways, and for which there is no collective claim on it by anyone.

You want to throw a lasso around it, stick a flag in it, and claim collectivized ownership of that value on behalf of "the community", or state. In other words, you want PRIVATELY CREATED "opportunities and amenities" to be collectivized and socialized - imputed as PUBLICLY (READ=STATE) OWNED value. You want to do this by labeling those mostly privately created and provided opportunities and amenities "COMMUNITY PROVIDED". Using those words almost gives it a pseudo-air that makes it sound "public" (like "federal" or "NPR" or "PBS"). Not because it's state-owned or controlled, but because it's simply "in the public", or "offered to the public".

Nothing doing. It's still private. Stick your flag somewhere else, the vast majority of those opportunities and amenities are incidental benefits enjoyed by the public at large. Whichever opportunities are the result of bought-and-paid-for infrastructure - aren't there to be rented out to landowners at a profit to the state.

The fact that they "show up as land rent" is but one part of the picture. They also show up as increased labor and commerce opportunities, even for people who are not part of the community. And those who get those opportunities and amenities, both landowners and non-landowners (and foreigners) alike, ALL get to "charge the community" for those benefits. Not just landowners. EVERYONE. But you want landowners to become "landholders" so that they can be singled out for payment, while everyone else gets a free ride.

Land ownership is contingent upon payment of property taxes right now.

Perhaps not for long. Times be a-changing.

Not if it's all you can afford. Many were sharecroppers their whole lives, and not by choice. It's still slavery if you have a "pathway" to buy your freedom.

If you can buy or work off your freedom then it's more like indentured servitude. Which has an end point. An actual light at the end of the tunnel. True slavery, as would exist under LVT, is where there are NO pathways to even buy your freedom.

Fact: you have to buy your freedom in your system, but it's guaranteed in mine.

Yeah, guaranteed locked out forever. Only available as an "exemption". And "exception to the slavery rule".

But whereas government actually secures your freedom and security...

Bwahahaha! Oh, it actually does, huh? Well, I want my government to protect me from enemies, foreign and domestic, public and private, as I take the opportunity to secure these rights and liberties for myself, thanks.

you pay a landlord. You see that? Not only are you making a one-time payment for ongoing benefits, you're also paying the wrong party.

Yes, I see it - a one-time payment for ongoing benefits. That is what one-time payments for anything durable should receive. Nothing special there. It works for goods as well as land. A cast-iron griddle in my family, handed down through five generations. A one-time payment, materials and labor included, purchased more than a hundred years ago, with ongoing benefits to my family, generations even, to this very day (pancakes and eggs last night, no less). AND my great-great-grandfather paid the right person, and for the right reasons - not for the conditional use for a time, which would be a not-so-bright option, but an option, but for as long as it remained in our family - for as long as we actually own it.

So on the one hand, I can pay a landlord a one time payment for ongoing benefits of land and become that landlord myself (just like anyone else can), or I can pay the state under your LVT regime the first of a serious of never-ending, probably ever-increasing, payments. Payments which never end, so long as the land is held. All to the state-landlord - the only entity actually permitted to own land, as everyone else is either a) on the treadmill FOREVER, or b) an exception to the forever treadmill rule that you would like established as the default rule.

No thank you. I'll pay a fellow landlord, as anyone should have the equal right to do, to receive ongoing benefits for a one-time payment.

The payment is finite, but the costs are ongoing. Which is a reason a one-off payment for land is unjust.

By costs, you mean privately paid for infrastructure as needed and wanted and paid for, of course. That's a separate issue. No LVT required for that. A bond or a special assessment (wherein I pay for benefits directly received, as a ONE-TIME cost each time), or any number of other revenue mechanisms is sufficient for that. No need to make the state or anyone else a partner -- or an overlord.

Nope. You get enough land to live on free of charge. You pay for any extra you may want.

Yeah, that's Roy's Personal Guaran-damn-tee as well.

I have no idea why you morally object to the Duke though. There's no reason you should.

For the exact same reason I morally object to LVT in the first place. Acquiring massive areas of populated lands acquired, publicly or privately makes no difference to me - FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Blocking off access to landownership while making rent payments the rule, only to rent it out to those already in possession, in exchange for the promise to "give back" infrastructure, all of which can be paid for in full as needed, without all the slavery attached. No, screw the Duke, and screw anyone who wants to enslave an entire population in that way. It's not the ownership. It's the monopoly on ownership that I object to. The claim of ownership for one (public or private) that is artificially denied to another - so that rents can be collected in perpetuity. Screw that noise forever.

What's puzzling is why you believe that the Duke of Westminster, or any landowner anywhere, deserves to pocket the value created by the community and government.

I told you the difference in my last answer. The landowner next door to me is not artificially barring me from the opportunity to acquire land for myself. That's the difference between a landowner and an absolute scoundrel - it doesn't matter if that scoundrel does it under public or private auspices. That is the defining difference between a homeowner or farmer and a private Duke or his LVT public counterpart who wants the same power for different [stated] reasons.

Who said anything about cutting anything off? Using your theory, a man could theoretically buy up all the land. Sure, he could sell some of it off, but he doesn't have to. It's up to him.

Sure, and in reality it doesn't work that way at all, does it? As evinced by the sheer number of landowners in the US, and the sheer availability of good lands for purchase. Right now, and always.

But then, that's pretty much the end-game of your system, isn't it? If there's no tax due on land, the best way to get rich is to own as much of it as possible.

Firstly, the land market can't be cornered. Not without a Queen Victoria granting a title, or some scoundrel in America pushing for the sequestration of lands for a state-run monopoly. And then there's the fallacy of thinking that the rich secure their fortunes by burying them. Land, by itself, is a HEDGE against a debauched currency. MOST land, economy-wide doesn't actually "earn" anything. It just holds its value. Exceptions to that would be scarcer lands like beachfront lakeside or downtown area real estate. But for as much as that is, those are most definitely not the rule, and nobody's getting a lock on what it takes for the average person to survive in the process.

If you own all of England, why sell the land off? Just have a handful of loyal lords, who charge rent to serfs.

OR...you could run amok with that completely unfounded fear (as shown above), as this isn't England, there are no handful of Lords for a Crown to give out landowning titles to. You could bypass all that and jump straight to LVT. Then everyone is a serf (yours and Roy's personally guaranteed exemption notwithstanding), and serfdom and rent payments become the rule of the day.

If you want to dredge it up again, I'll refute it.

No, and likewise. I already did the refuting, and put the ball squarely back in your court. No need for me to go chase it down for you. If you want to refute it, go get it.

[Roy L]

Nature doesn't "provide for all".

Whom do you claim nature has excluded?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right: those who have proved, by not owning land, that "nature" considers them fit only to be enslaved or murdered.

That's a decidedly human construct.

No. It's human understanding -- something you lack -- of what nature is.

Nature provides for "any", and "some", at times, and never in equal quantities, types, configurations or proportions.

That is a lie. Nature grants the liberty of her gifts to all, and does not exclude anyone.

No, just socialization of land rent. Same as you.

Because society creates it, not the landowner. You just want landowners to be privileged to take for themselves the value that society creates.

Libertarians certainly don't preach socialization of products of labor OR ad valorem taxes of any kind.

Feudal libertarians, like you and Helmuth, preach socialization of costs and risks, and privatization of the resulting benefits as a welfare subsidy giveaway to the rich and privileged at the expense of the honest and productive.

Both taxes are generally despised and rejected for different reasons.

But we've seen where the priority is: abolish property taxes, not income taxes. Or worse, abolish corporate, property, estate and income taxes, and fund government entirely on sales taxes.

And rejecting both of these taxes is not a rejection of concept of revenue for funding necessary services that the people provide to themselves via their governments which act as agents and servants with limited delegated and enumerated powers on their behalf, to serve their common needs and interests.

Right. It is only a rejection of the concept that those who get the benefits should be the ones paying for them.

[Roy L]

Beautiful. Originally a military title for a ruling class, the Duke of Westminster is an extension of the Crown, or State. The title itself (Duke of Westminster) was created by Queen Victoria in 1874.

In fact, the Duke of Westminster's title has nothing to do with any military or government service. It was created purely because the man's landholdings in London made him so rich and powerful.

My great grandfather was a Cockney "magic lantern" maker in London who lived on the original Duke's land. So it's like saying, "If that money was collected by the government instead of the government...".

Nope. Wrong. The Duke of Westminster's ancestor was a PRIVATE, UNTITLED LANDOWNER who became rich and powerful by collecting rent on land that started out as a modest 500-acre farm west of London in Tudor times. Over the centuries, the family became immensely rich by following three simple rules: collect the land rent; use it to buy up more land; don't sell land.

You will notice the total absence of any contribution to production or society.

Your criticism of the Duke is that he "provides them with nothing" while collecting money, but that's not what makes his position and the money he collects truly insidious in my mind, nor is it any kind of reflection of the American "homesteading principle". Grosvenor's particular holdover from European feudalism was monopolistic hereditary STATE titles (House of Lords) of VAST all-encompassing land areas, along with the prohibition on landownership by any but the nobility or ruling classes (which were in turn exclusive of anybody not born into them).

That's a flat-out lie. The Grosvenor estate was not vast, only a farm -- a homestead -- of about 500 acres. But London grew over it, and it became fabulously valuable. By collecting the rent of that little area, never selling off any of it, and using the money to buy up land elsewhere, the Grosvenors became the richest family in Britain, next to the royals.

What made titled landowning by nobility in England truly oppressive:

1) Vast areas of land (WHOLE COMMUNITIES) designated by the states as belonging to an extension of the State/Crown.

As proved above, that is false. The area was modest, and there was no community living on the land at the time the duke's PRIVATE LANDOWNER ancestors acquired ownership of it.

2) Perpetual rents paid in exchange for nothing but the privilege of using land,

As private landowners are privileged to charge.

AND 3) No avenue available without a political title (no landownership possible) for freedom from such rent payments.

That's another flat-out lie. Landowning has pretty much always been an option for ordinary Britons. IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO BUY IT. Just as liberty was pretty much always an option for slaves, if they could afford to buy their liberty from their owners.

Geolibs LOVE the concepts of:

1) Sequestering vast areas of land (whole communities), designated as belonging to extensions of the larger state, and
2) Perpetual rent payments paid to the subdivision/taxing jurisdiction of the state as a wealth redistribution mechanism, and
3) No avenue available to anyone except an extension of the state for landownership that would facilitate freedom from such rent payments.

All three of which I have proved were not characteristic of the British "landed gentry."

They like the ENTIRE CONCEPT of what happened in England

Again, and as usual, you have no choice but to lie about what we have plainly written.

- they just don't like WHO those rent payments are going to, and the fact that those rents aren't the sole revenue source of the State.

Which is about as honest as saying that you like income tax, you just don't like who the payments are going to.

The homesteading concept in England is in profound contrast to the homesteading principle in America. In America the landownership became a right to all Citizens by virtue of their (very different) titles,

Absolute garbage. Vast areas of private land grants by European colonial powers were recognized by the US government at the time of independence, and later when additional territories were purchased or annexed. The great majority of privately owned land value in the USA was NOT obtained by homesteading, and is now corporate-owned.

Your claims are reliably the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.

[MattintheCrown]

I understand it perfectly. Opportunities and amenities provided by the community really are one of the sources of land rent. That isn't difficult to understand, nor is it at issue.

However, that particular "source of land rent" also has sources. It's not "the community". It's mostly non-collectivized, non-socialized private interests. Both landowners and non-landowners contribute and benefit in different ways, and for which there is no collective claim on it by anyone.

Landowners, as landowners create nothing. Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production.

You want to throw a lasso around it, stick a flag in it, and claim collectivized ownership of that value on behalf of "the community", or state. In other words, you want PRIVATELY CREATED "opportunities and amenities" to be collectivized and socialized - imputed as PUBLICLY (READ=STATE) OWNED value. You want to do this by labeling those mostly privately created and provided opportunities and amenities "COMMUNITY PROVIDED". Using those words almost gives it a pseudo-air that makes it sound "public" (like "federal" or "NPR" or "PBS"). Not because it's state-owned or controlled, but because it's simply "in the public", or "offered to the public".

Nothing doing. It's still private. Stick your flag somewhere else, the vast majority of those opportunities and amenities are incidental benefits enjoyed by the public at large. Whichever opportunities are the result of bought-and-paid-for infrastructure - aren't there to be rented out to landowners at a profit to the state.

The fact that they "show up as land rent" is but one part of the picture. They also show up as increased labor and commerce opportunities, even for people who are not part of the community. And those who get those opportunities and amenities, both landowners and non-landowners (and foreigners) alike, ALL get to "charge the community" for those benefits. Not just landowners. EVERYONE. But you want landowners to become "landholders" so that they can be singled out for payment, while everyone else gets a free ride.

What a stupid evasion this is.

The question is still this: why should the landowners get to pocket the benefit that society creates? You can't answer that, you you throw out a big wall of nonsensical BS text. Furthermore, you ignore that a great deal of the land rent is attributable to services and infrastructure provided by government.

Perhaps not for long. Times be a-changing.

More evasion.

If you can buy or work off your freedom then it's more like indentured servitude. Which has an end point. An actual light at the end of the tunnel.

If you have to buy your freedom you're a slave.

True slavery, as would exist under LVT, is where there are NO pathways to even buy your freedom.

But, you know this is false, because the LVT can secure each person land enough to live on through exemptions or dividends. Unlike your system, where landless are, by your own admission, akin to indentured servants, who can only get their freedom by purchasing it from landlords.

Yeah, guaranteed locked out forever. Only available as an "exemption". And "exception to the slavery rule".

More stupid nonsense.

Bwahahaha! Oh, it actually does, huh? Well, I want my government to protect me from enemies, foreign and domestic, public and private, as I take the opportunity to secure these rights and liberties for myself, thanks.

Indecipherable.

Yes, I see it - a one-time payment for ongoing benefits. That is what one-time payments for anything durable should receive. Nothing special there.

Services aren't durable. Duh.

It works for goods as well as land. A cast-iron griddle in my family, handed down through five generations. A one-time payment, materials and labor included, purchased more than a hundred years ago, with ongoing benefits to my family, generations even, to this very day (pancakes and eggs last night, no less). AND my great-great-grandfather paid the right person, and for the right reasons - not for the conditional use for a time, which would be a not-so-bright option, but an option, but for as long as it remained in our family - for as long as we actually own it.

But a privilege to exclude others from use of the earth is not a durable good: it's a government service.

So on the one hand, I can pay a landlord a one time payment for ongoing benefits of land and become that landlord myself (just like anyone else can), or I can pay the state under your LVT regime the first of a serious of never-ending, probably ever-increasing, payments. Payments which never end, so long as the land is held. All to the state-landlord - the only entity actually permitted to own land, as everyone else is either a) on the treadmill FOREVER, or b) an exception to the forever treadmill rule that you would like established as the default rule.

No thank you. I'll pay a fellow landlord, as anyone should have the equal right to do, to receive ongoing benefits for a one-time payment.

Right: you don't want a value-for-value transaction. You want to rob society.

By costs, you mean privately paid for infrastructure as needed and wanted and paid for, of course. That's a separate issue. No LVT required for that. A bond or a special assessment (wherein I pay for benefits directly received, as a ONE-TIME cost each time), or any number of other revenue mechanisms is sufficient for that. No need to make the state or anyone else a partner -- or an overlord.

No, I mean the costs of defending your privilege of exclusive use of the land.

Yeah, that's Roy's Personal Guaran-damn-tee as well.

Unresponsive.

For the exact same reason I morally object to LVT in the first place. Acquiring massive areas of populated lands acquired, publicly or privately makes no difference to me - FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Blocking off access to landownership while making rent payments the rule, only to rent it out to those already in possession, in exchange for the promise to "give back" infrastructure, all of which can be paid for in full as needed, without all the slavery attached. No, screw the Duke, and screw anyone who wants to enslave an entire population in that way. It's not the ownership. It's the monopoly on ownership that I object to. The claim of ownership for one (public or private) that is artificially denied to another - so that rents can be collected in perpetuity. Screw that noise forever.

See Roy's post.

I told you the difference in my last answer. The landowner next door to me is not artificially barring me from the opportunity to acquire land for myself. That's the difference between a landowner and an absolute scoundrel - it doesn't matter if that scoundrel does it under public or private auspices. That is the defining difference between a homeowner or farmer and a private Duke or his LVT public counterpart who wants the same power for different [stated] reasons.

Unresponsive. Try again.

Sure, and in reality it doesn't work that way at all, does it? As evinced by the sheer number of landowners in the US, and the sheer availability of good lands for purchase. Right now, and always.

Luckily, the most people aren't as foolish as you are, and we have taxes on land. Our fee simple system recognizes the inherent power in land ownership, and that it must be limited, and cannot be treated like other property.

Firstly, the land market can't be cornered.

Sure it can, as history proves. What's stopping it from being cornered?

Not without a Queen Victoria granting a title, or some scoundrel in America pushing for the sequestration of lands for a state-run monopoly. And then there's the fallacy of thinking that the rich secure their fortunes by burying them. Land, by itself, is a HEDGE against a debauched currency. MOST land, economy-wide doesn't actually "earn" anything. It just holds its value. Exceptions to that would be scarcer lands like beachfront lakeside or downtown area real estate. But for as much as that is, those are most definitely not the rule, and nobody's getting a lock on what it takes for the average person to survive in the process.

Any land that people want to use generates a rent: the owner can just lease it to others. You're just flat-out wrong here.

Why do you think, Steven, that countries have gone to war historically?

OR...you could run amok with that completely unfounded fear (as shown above), as this isn't England, there are no handful of Lords for a Crown to give out landowning titles to. You could bypass all that and jump straight to LVT. Then everyone is a serf (yours and Roy's personally guaranteed exemption notwithstanding), and serfdom and rent payments become the rule of the day.

Nope: land rents being spent on society is the opposite of feudalism. You want landowners to collect land rents, which is feudalism.

No, and likewise. I already did the refuting, and put the ball squarely back in your court. No need for me to go chase it down for you. If you want to refute it, go get it.

Have it your way.

[Roy L]

Not-so-subtle sleight-of-hand, but you said it entirely wrong.

You will now prevaricate.

Geoism makes privately-created value public.

Nope. Wrong. Geoism recovers publicly created value for public purposes and benefit. The only privately created value that it recovers (the land value that privately produced opportunities and amenities create) cannot be made public by geoism because it is ALREADY public WITHOUT geoism: it has already moved out of its private producers' hands and settled on nearby land. That is very much the point. It is just currently being taken by landowners who had nothing to do with its creation.

Remember? You listed "opportunities and amenities provided by the community", which includes a BUTTLOAD of privately owned, privately controlled value-providing entities, and simply made them "public". Tsk tsk, naughty naughty.

No, it does no such thing, you are LYING, tsk tsk, naughty naughty. NONE of the privately owned opportunities and amenities are made public, that is just a flat-out lie from you, as usual. It is the ALREADY-PUBLIC LAND VALUE they create that is recovered rather than being given away to landowners. The amenities stay in private hands, and their value stays in private hands; it is only the value they give to nearby land, which the privately produced amenities' owners weren't able to recoup anyway, that LVT recovers.

1. there's no sequestering of land
BUZZZZ...thanks for playing! Under LVT, if landownership titles are revoked, all land considered to be part of an LVT taxing jurisdiction are "sequestered" for that purpose.

Equivocation fallacy. You were shrieking stupid lies about land being held out of use to force up rents. That makes no economic sense. Now you are trying to switch to a different sense of "sequester" that does not hold land out of use, but is merely a legal term for a type of asset transfer other than contractual exchange. It's just deceitful and despicable crap.

2. there's no wealth redistribution
Strike two. Whether you're for or against LVT, the fact that rents charged are a form of wealth redistribution is not at issue.

More equivocation. When apologists for greed, privilege, injustice and evil shriek their lies about geoist "wealth redistribution," the accusation is that LVT introduces wealth redistribution where there was none before. But of course, that is false. The current system of landowner privilege is itself a system of wealth redistribution: it redistributes wealth from the productive to idle landowners. LVT REMOVES that system of wealth redistribution, enabling the productive to keep the full fruits of their labor. Therefore, to claim that LVT is "wealth redistribution" is logically equivalent to claiming that restoring stolen property to its rightful owners is "wealth redistribution." Yes, you could say it is wealth redistribution -- but only if you first ASSUME that the wealth is rightly owned by those who stole it.

3. freedom from payments would simply be settling on land that has no rent
Strike three.

LOL! You just fouled out.

Just like Roy, wherein HIS particular theoretical version of LVT would have all lands available and open for usage, with plenty of lands in which no rent payments are due.

The simple fact is, almost everyone would end up paying much less both for land (i.e., being FREER from land rent) and in taxes than they do now. You just don't want that, because it would mean no more money being shoveled into greedy, idle, parasitic landowners' pockets in return for nothing.

But I don't hear the opening up of all lands, the abolishing of zoning laws, or anything that would prohibit the state from making land artificially scarce, as ANY part of the LVT propaganda - except to make bogus claims that it's somehow not in the state's interest to do that.

There's nothing bogus about it. It's straightforward economics. You just don't understand it, because you do not know any economics.

Presumably not all lands would be opened up because the government needs some for military purposes, some would be kept as parks, some is too vulnerable to erosion or flooding, etc. But there would certainly be millions of acres of good, usable land available for those who wanted to use a modest amount of land for free -- i.e., PERMANENTLY FREE OF RENT.

Zoning would not disappear but would become far more rational, and geared to enabling the most efficient use of natural features and infrastructure, rather than to shoveling money into politically connected landowners' pockets. Your strident demands that all lands must be opened up, all zoning abolished, blah, blah, blah is just your usual ignorant "meeza hatesa gubmint" nonsense.

[Steven Douglas]

Landowners, as landowners create nothing. Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production.

Ah, the very premise that productivity (read=labor? capital? both?) is somehow the determinant for a moral claim on a value return from control over natural resources - but only when that resource is land, which is fixed in quantity and space. That "deserving by virtue of productivity" trap is precisely where I believe Henry George and Karl Marx were in perfect ideological agreement, as a mattered of core shared principle. They both favored labor, or "productivity" which they saw from a labor-not-capital lens, but each had different ideas on the best methods for how to protect that kind of politico-economic favoritism. And each, with their fatally flawed premises, created their own unintended consequence trappings as a result.

Let's go to one version of Brave New LVT World, where everyone thinks in those terms.

My landholding in the hilly boondocks of LVTinyHills was ugly and remote. Nobody else wanted my parcel, so it had practically no land rent value. But it was natural, peaceful, and far away from the mad hustle and bustle of MegaLVTopolis, so I was comfortable and liked it very much.

One day, while digging in my little backyard, I found a 20 lb. lump of gold in its natural state. Biggest find ever. The gold that I "produced" (as in kicked over some loose dirt and picked it up with a grunt) was a single massive lump. Nothing productive about it, really, and not part of a vein of any kind. But wow!

I ran to my lifelong friend and neighbor Jed and told him about it. Jed immediately went to his backyard, kicked and poked around, and found some nuggets on his landholding. Why, Me and Jed, neither of us created a thing, but I'm rich, and Jed might be too!

We're a small tight community, and word gets out quickly, as our fellow geolibertarian neighbors saw me walk into to the assayer's office with my gold. And while I did incur everyone's envy, I also had their respect, and got a full pass. That gold was 100% mine, free and clear by virtue of my exemption, and primarily because it's no longer part of the fixed land, and I can walk off with it all at once -- before the land rents increase as result of that find.

Well, being a devout community of Patriotic Geoists, the friendly LVT bidding war commenced almost immediately. Within a month my land rent quintupled. Nobody else wanted access to it before, but now virtually everyone wanted their fair crack at it - as is their natural liberty right, of course. Jed's landholding as well. Gold fever speculation caused his land rent and the land rents of surrounding neighbors to skyrocket as well.

Now me, I'm not so greedy. Never was, but now I don't have to be. I'm now the richest man in the community, and could easily outbid everyone to hold onto the land, but I have more than enough already, and gold mining isn't my thing anyway. I won't fight for space with strangers in a big city, so I'm not about to fight for space in a little community of people I care for dearly. Time to move on, I think to myself. Let everyone else have their shot at some of that good stuff. So I vacate my landholding to the highest bidder - who just happens (not so coincidentally or surprisingly), to be the second richest man in the community - which is evidence, of course, of how much more productive he was to begin with anyway.

I take my gold, my store of wealth and the evidence of my productivity, and move completely out of my old community, as is also my natural liberty right. I move to the nearby coast, and settle on an out-of-the-way piece of land that few people want using just my LVT exemption. I then used some of my gold to buy a nice big boat - my own piece of artificial floating land-but-not-really-land, with no land rent payable to anyone, since nobody was deprived. I also use some of the money to buy several more boats. I rent these out to those who can't afford to buy a boat outright, but don't want to wait to live the same life. Nothing wrong with that, of course. That kind of 'enhanced liberty' always comes at a price. And because it's not land, the economic advantages I receive from those boats belong exclusively to me. In this way, I can continue to receive value long after my one-time payments, and for little more than the cost of upkeep - which I factor into the rental costs anyway.

Back to LVTinyHills and The Miniature Gold Rush:

Jed competed well, and hung onto his landholding because the nuggets he found in the first week allowed him to at least compete with the more "well healed" pillars of the community without incurring any debt. The increased land rent payments cost him most of the gold he had. This meant he was under pressure now to produce, so that he could continue making those increased land rent payments. But Jed felt confident, as he was finding new nuggets, and was willing to take that risk and continue to compete.

Our surrounding neighbors were poor to begin with, just like Jed and I once were, and could not even begin to compete. Half the neighbors living closest to us wanted to get loans from the bank on speculation - but unfortunately they had no assets, and were not able to compete with the more credit-worthy, who posed less risk to banks - or had privately accumulated capital of their own. The other half of our neighbors didn't want to take on any risk or incur any debt anyway so that wasn't a problem. So all but Jed were all forced to vacate their landholdings, to make way for those who had sufficient capital to pay the massively increased surrounding land rents.

It did break the neighbors' hearts to be forced to move off land where they had buried their kin and had lived for generations. It was more than just an inconvenience to them, but fair is fair, and that's the price you pay for making sure that equal liberty access to better lands is secured for those who are in a position to pay more for the advantages they believe they will receive. The former landholders were at least compensated for their shacks, and their LVT exemption was sufficient for enough good land to live on - away from the 'better lands' closer to and associated with the new find.

EPILOGUE

What nobody knew at the time of my find, but would later learn: I had 20 lbs. of gold on my landholding, and Jed had not quite 5 lbs. of gold on his, all told. Total. That's all the gold there was for hundreds of miles. The gold on Jed's landholding was spread out, not all on the surface, and took ten years and a lot of hard work to extract it. But talk about some Real Productivity. Part of that gold went to compensate the community for the increased land rent he enjoyed. Another part of it went to buy equipment and provide employment, because he really did need a lot of resources and help from others. In the end, after all factors of production were paid for, a part of all of that was Jed's to keep. Not much, but Jed had no complaints. His family was fed, his bills were paid, and he was now a pillar of the community.

The new neighbors who helped drive up the land rents (for themselves) had no gold on their newly acquired landholdings, so they really didn't receive any of the economic advantages they paid for and expected from the land. But that's the nature of land speculating anyway. Some gave up early, but most lost a fortune in the process, even as several went bankrupt. Local banks lost a fortune in that process, and one even went belly-up. Eventually the land rents returned to a fraction of their former levels, given that most of the land was destroyed in the process of digging for all the gold that wasn't there.

In the end, the one who got his early and bugged out without a single land rent payment or compensation to anyone but himself - was me. The slot machine called my former landholding had only one jackpot in it, and by making way for others to access the land, I made out like a two-armed bandit. So did the community, which received compensation for the temporary skyrocket in increase value.

I realized, as many Good Honest Productive Geolibertarians like myself did, that if you don't want to pay for the advantages that are afforded by land rents paid to a community, it's not a problem. No shame in that, just don't use those them. Step aside and make them available to others instead. By not competing, and thus not driving up land rents for others, I serve an extremely valuable role to fellow landholders, as I help more people to receive the same economic advantages at a much lower cost.

As for my little enterprise, a lot of people were employed making those boats for me, and I'm sure the local boating community was compensated for a lot of land rents there. And what I paid out was returned manifold back, as I profited perpetually from those who worked hard (or kicked the ground and found some gold of their own) to pay me rents on my boats. I took the value that I freely received from nature, from land, and invested that, not into more land, but the best floating assets my productive money could buy. It was important to me that my investments especially and specifically not be tied to land that is fixed in space. That way I leave others to enjoy the advantages of the best lands at a lower cost, even as I am the one who gets a return of value from my property long after the one-time initial costs are borne. It is in this way that I am able to live on rents, but remain land-rent free.

If you have to buy your freedom you're a slave.

Freedom is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a matter of degree, and there is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a price to freedom. To think otherwise is to be a slave. Under your scenario freedom is not even for sale. It's for rent! Only. A conditional exemption from a non-freedom rule is for all practical purposes freedom destroyed.

But, you know this is false, because the LVT can secure each person land enough to live on through exemptions or dividends. Unlike your system, where landless are, by your own admission, akin to indentured servants, who can only get their freedom by purchasing it from landlords.

Everyone should have full access to the opportunity to be their own landlord - with none above them. One of the few valid reasons for the existence for the State in my mind is to guarantee that nobody stands in the way of another's pursuit of this kind of freedom -- from all would-be enslaving landlords and overlords, foreign and domestic, public and private - who want to cut off access to others for this equal status under the law.

More stupid nonsense. Indecipherable. Services aren't durable. You want to rob society. Unresponsive. See Roy's post. Unresponsive. Try again. Luckily, the most people aren't as foolish as you are... You're just flat-out wrong here.

Another turing machine, anyone?

[MattintheCrown]

Ah, the very premise that productivity (read=labor? capital? both?) is somehow the determinant for a moral claim on a value return from control over natural resources - but only when that resource is land, which is fixed in quantity and space.

There's no way to puzzle any semblance of meaning from this. You've devolved into utter nonsense in your attempts to avoid knowing the truth.

That "deserving by virtue of productivity" trap is precisely where I believe Henry George and Karl Marx were in perfect ideological agreement, as a mattered of core shared principle. They both favored labor, or "productivity" which they saw from a labor-not-capital lens, but each had different ideas on the best methods for how to protect that kind of politico-economic favoritism. And each, with their fatally flawed premises, created their own unintended consequence trappings as a result.

What was that fatally flawed premise? I mean, if labor doesn't earn it's reward, what does?

Let's go to one version of Brave New LVT World, where everyone thinks in those terms.

Amusing choice of titles for your stupid nonsense:

But to return to the future . . . If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque cooperative.

-Aldous Huxley in his forward to the second edition of Brave New World

<stupid nonsense ignored, snipped>

Freedom is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a matter of degree, and there is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a price to freedom.

Equivocation. There's a difference between having to defend freedom from those who wish to rob you and freedom being a commodity you must purchase from a privileged class.

To think otherwise is to be a slave. Under your scenario freedom is not even for sale. It's for rent! Only. A conditional exemption from a non-freedom rule is for all practical purposes freedom destroyed.

Nope. Under my system, anyone can use marginal land for free, or use supermarginal land with an exemption.

Everyone should have full access to the opportunity to be their own landlord - with none above them.

All you're saying is that you want each individual to be a sovereign. But that's just feudalism.

One of the few valid reasons for the existence for the State in my mind is to guarantee that nobody stands in the way of another's pursuit of this kind of freedom -- from all would-be enslaving landlords and overlords, foreign and domestic, public and private - who want to cut off access to others for this equal status under the law.

How could the state do that, if individuals are given absolute rights to land? If there's no cost to holding land, the smartest thing to do is to acquire as much of it as you can, and never sell it. And that's exactly what would inevitably happen. Inevitable result? Feudalism.

Another turing machine, anyone?

There's no other way to reply to your spew of inanity.

[helmuth_hubener]

Mr. theCrown,

I'm still waiting patiently for an explanation of the difference between the two statements. I'm sure you'll post one shortly. Thank you so much for your sincere educational efforts.

Expectantly Yours,

[Steven Douglas]

What was that fatally flawed premise? I mean, if labor doesn't earn it's reward, what does?

Um...capital? It's not either/or. It's either or both.

You wrote that, "Landowners, as landowners create nothing. Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production."

...as if "production" was somehow key to something you obviously think is important (deservedness?).

Landowners aren't the only ones who behave as landowners. If I buy a bunch of moving equipment (one time purchase, minimal upkeep) and do nothing but rent it all out - there's far more capital than labor involved, and not a whole lot productivity on my end. Just tools, offered for rent, to help someone with theirs.

Labor is not the only "deserving" game in town. That's the point.

<stupid nonsense ignored, snipped>

There's a difference between having to defend freedom from those who wish to rob you and freedom being a commodity you must purchase from a privileged class.

Geolib Gibberish. Geolibberish.

Under my system, anyone can use marginal land for free, or use supermarginal land with an exemption.

Excellent. But what happens after you die and it's no longer your system? You seem like a well-intending enough camel, but I'd kind of hate to let the camel's nose in the tent, because chances are it wouldn't be your nose to begin with. I know the history of the income tax. I get how that works.

LVT entails giving up all landownership rights, first and foremost, as a matter of first order principle, regardless how it's implemented, all best intentions and different versions notwithstanding and completely irrelevant to that fact. I don't care what your particular version is, there's no guarantee of anything afterward. Not for exemptions or dividend, nor that other taxes wouldn't continue to roll merrily along, side-by-side, as LVT is just yet another juicy revenue stream. Nothing.

2041 - News Editorial - "Did you know that LVT as originally proposed and implemented in 2018 had exemptions for individuals? It's true. Of course, we know now how impractical that is. Everyone knows there's no such thing as a free lunch. We all need to pull our weight. If that was attempted today, the loss in badly needed revenue for critical government services would come to a standstill. Think of the roads, think of the children, think of the elderly, blah blah blah..."

Not hard to imagine at all. We do it now, and people are genuinely surprised to learn that the income tax is not that old, and not anything like it was when implemented a hundred years ago. And those who objected that it would grow - that was dismissed as foolishness, with assurances that nothing like that could possibly happen.

All you're saying is that you want each individual to be a sovereign. But that's just feudalism.

The antithesis of feudalism, actually. Feudalism, by its very nature, allocated sovereignty titles, which included subjects who were bound -- and could not be -- sovereign. Artificial (Crown) selection and forced subjugation is what made feudalsim so oppressive. Today some try to claim that corporations are like feudal states. But they're obviously not. You're not bound to a corporation. And you can always start one of your own. That is what makes it not feudal in nature.

LVT is feudalism that grants title to a taxing jurisdiction, as opposed to an individual, with everyone a subject, or commoner.

How could the state do that, if individuals are given absolute rights to land? If there's no cost to holding land, the smartest thing to do is to acquire as much of it as you can, and never sell it. And that's exactly what would inevitably happen. Inevitable result? Feudalism.

If that was true, it should have happened by now. Land is amassed, land is bought as protection from a deliberately debauched currency. And yet go to realtor.com and pick ANY city - from the tiniest to the largest, and see how much land is available for sale. Right now. Some of it cheaper-than-cheaper-than cheap.

There are too many landowners in the United States for anyone to get a worthwhile monopoly on land. Most people aren't interested in selling and not buying again anyway. And monopoly on land would take too long, and would not be economically feasible. It would take literally trillions of dollars, most of which would be money sitting around doing nothing.

So no, your fear of that happening couldn't be more unfounded. If anyone has a shot at such a thing, it's those who are sitting on MASSIVE amounts of land titles now. The government, the Fed, and predatory lenders. Not people.