I'm guessing if you can't tell the difference between JohnLVT and me, English is likely not your first language.Originally Posted by Yieu
You must admit it is odd that there would be two people who only post on one fairly obscure issue for such long times and not even try to address each other on the subject and not be on at the same time. The thread is far to long to go through and find you both saying the same things but I seem to recall that happening.
No, that is false and absurd.
No, that is a bald fabrication on your part. I have stated many times that landownership removes the individual right to LIBERTY, not PROPERTY.- and here's why: Roy himself believes that property rights (his version) are indeed being CURRENTLY being destroyed by the State -- via landownership.
?? That is perfectly right, but entirely irrelevant. We were not making mere unquantified generalizations. We were making statements about government as such. His claim is that government AS SUCH destroys property rights; that it is inherent in the nature of government to destroy property rights. While it is certainly true that there are cases where government has done so, the number of cases is insignificantly small compared to the number of cases where government has protected (and even invalidly extended) property rights. His claim was equivalent to, "Carpenters use hammers to kill." While there are no doubt such cases, overwhelmingly, carpenters use hammers to drive nails, not to kill.Can't have it both ways. Saying "government does not destroy property rights" is like saying "carpenters do not kill using hammers". There is nothing inherent in carpenters or hammers that make them incapable of destruction, or solely capable of construction.
Ignoratio elenchi. The claim was not what governments can do but what they do do. And overwhelmingly, they defend and even extend property "rights."Likewise, governments can reconcile property rights (by whatever definition, positive or normative, "rights" are reckoned), just as they can destroy them (again, by anybody's individual definition). That's not absurd garbage, nor was it made up. It's true on its face, as evinced by hundreds of different governments on Earth that currently deal with the subject of property rights in different, often mutually exclusive ways - defensive and/or destructive of property rights to varying degrees.
No, I would identify the fact that in securing a privilege of property in land, it had removed the individual right to liberty without just compensation.And yet if government secured exclusive landownership, and codified and recognized it as a right (not subject to ad valorem tax), I would state that government has indeed secured and reconciled property rights (as I view them - in the normative), while Roy would state (from his own premise, using his own normative rationale) that property rights, as he defines them, were neither secured nor reconciled.
No, you are lying again, Steven. There is nothing collectivist in the individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor, and you know that.Whenever Roy uses the term "property rights" without qualification he means only the collectivist geolib LVT definition of property rights
We have already established that attempting to justify what the state does purely by the fact that it does it is begging the question, and therefore fallacious. You resort to that fallacy over and over again.as he views them (normative/should/ought only, since they are not recognized or codified by the state).
Correct, because that is what they are, just as state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners.Meanwhile, the actual property rights that do exist (positive/IS), which are now recognized and codified by the state are referred to by Roy as "landowner privileges".
Wrong. The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact.Not objective reality in either case.
No, you are merely ASSUMING that normative statements cannot be based on positive fact. While that view is widespread, I have shown that it is itself not based on positive fact but on assumptions that evolutionary psychology has overturned over the last few decades.Thus, neither of Roy's views can be positive statements (i.e., accurate statements of what actually is now) - both are normative.
No. That is a lie. I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.It is only positive if we all stand in Roy's head and acknowledge that landscape as "reality". As it is. But within his head only. He's saying what "ought to be" as if it already was - taking his own rationale and trying to pass it off as if it was already fact. This is argument FROM (not to) the premise.
As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"Too bad, because you can't have a rational discussion with anyone on that basis - not without at least a willingness to accurately state what is, however distasteful it might be to the one communicating.
I have posted on other issues; but the land question is far more important, and I accordingly devote proportionally more time to it. JohnLVT's name pretty much states where his interests lie.
I think I recognize JohnLVT from another forum. If it is him, he knows my positions and that it is futile to dispute them. For my part, I have deliberately avoided responding to him, even when he said things I didn't entirely agree with, because I wanted to see what others said, and how he would respond.and not even try to address each other on the subject
I don't know that we weren't. I never noticed.and not be on at the same time.
If it did, it was because he realized I said something better than he could say it. I do sometimes encounter other people on the Net using specific wording I first wrote many years before. But you'll notice, e.g., that JohnLVT often uses the expression, "value soaks into the land," which I don't use, as I think the watery image distracts from the concept of rent as economic advantage.The thread is far to long to go through and find you both saying the same things but I seem to recall that happening.
On what basis, other than our broad agreement on the desirability of recovering land rent for public purposes? Certainly any observant person should be able to see his English skills are inferior to mine.
You don't seem to realize how comprehensively (though not as conclusively as I would have) you just refuted yourself. Thanks for the laughs.
Any time, Roy, any time.
Thank you for the info.
Semantics - you believe landownership removes not "liberty", generically and broadly speaking, but a specific subset of a certain type of liberty which you believe should be (but is not now) a right - one of property usage. And this type of liberty that you refer to is NOT a right, positively speaking, no matter how many times you try to slip that in as a qualifying term.
There was no justification or rationale involved in anything I wrote, - I just stated positive facts.We have already established that attempting to justify what the state does purely by the fact that it does it is begging the question, and therefore fallacious. You resort to that fallacy over and over again....as he views them (normative/should/ought only, since they are not recognized or codified by the state).
No, it was the right, not privilege, of slave owners. That is a positive statement of fact, and has nothing to do with agreement or rationale of any kind. I can see that you are substituting the word privilege for right for rhetorical effect, but it changes the statement from a positive to a normative - and that's been your fallacy all along.Correct, because that is what they are, just as state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners.
It's obvious what you're trying to do, given your objective. The problem for you is that it's much more difficult to say, "I think this type of liberty should be recognized as a right." Much easier to simply refer to it (REPEATEDLY even) as a "right to liberty" that is being deprived. After all, the reasoning goes, if you can establish that not only is the kind of liberty you are referring to is an actual "RIGHT" that is being denied, the only question that remains is how to "right" a "wrong". After all, who isn't in favor of rights? Or "liberty" (generically, unqualified)?
You really are stuck with a rhetorical dilemma, because that type of liberty is not a right. That is a positive statement you want not to be true. You want it to be recognized and codified as a right, but it is not now. But you persist in repeatedly asserting that a "RIGHT" to liberty is being denied...not just a certain type of liberty...rather than honestly acknowledge that no such right is recognized in this society, while you then (just as honestly) explain why you think it should be.
Again you misstate a positive statement of fact by substituting privilege instead of right, slipping in your normative, given that you would PREFER that landownership (your OUGHT) be referred to as a privilege - when in fact it is codified and recognized right now as a right.Wrong. The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact.
Incorrect. Normative statements CAN be "based on" positive facts, on that we have no dispute. They cannot, however, be conflated with positive facts, as if they were one and the same. That is your error, your consistent fallacy throughout the thread, to wit:No, you are merely ASSUMING that normative statements cannot be based on positive fact.
1) "landownership removes the individual right to LIBERTY" -- incorrect, and a conflation - as landownership removes a certain type of liberty, which is not a "right".
2) "state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners" -- incorrect, as it was at that time a right, not a privilege. Whether it leaves a bad taste in your mouth to refer to it accurately as such is irrelevant. Slave ownership was, in fact a legal right, one that it was later decided conflicted with what most felt was a moral right to liberty (from physical enslavement), which then became recognized and codified as a legal right to liberty for former slaves, which exists today. But not then.
3) "The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact." -- incorrect, as landownership -- right now -- is recognized and codified as a right, not a privilege. That has nothing to do with how anyone feels about it - landownership as a matter of right is an indisputable fact of objective reality - while your rhetorical normative, as when you refer to landownership rights as "landowner privilege" is nothing but a normative statement.
If you want to argue that it's a MORAL RIGHT, go ahead - but moral rights are, by their very nature, NORMATIVE - not positive, and as such cannot accurately be referred to as "indisputable 'facts' of objective reality". I know that puts a pit in your stomach, but dems da breaks.
Gibberish. Evolutionary psychology doesn't "overturn" anything but itself. Interesting, perhaps, but entirely moot. Stop trying to peddle the soft sciences as if they were on the same foundations and footing, with the same rigor and scientific objectivity as the hard sciences.While that view is widespread, I have shown that it is itself not based on positive fact but on assumptions that evolutionary psychology has overturned over the last few decades.
Hardly, as shown above when you conflate what really are indisputable facts with your own rhetorical, normative slant, as if they too could magically pass off (as a free rider) and become part of an indisputable fact by simply (and repeatedly) stating it in the same sentence, or as part of the same term or phrase.I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.
Last edited by Steven Douglas; 04-13-2012 at 03:00 PM.
I noticed a couple weeks back that the previous thread was brought to up on a LVT forum which explains the "Georgist invasion".
You think I'm Roy too?
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/
http://www.wealthandwant.com/
http://freeliberal.com/
Same here. Most other issues besides the issuance of money are almost trivial in comparison.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/
http://www.wealthandwant.com/
http://freeliberal.com/
<sigh> Wrong. Just as the money you pay for the groceries you take home from the supermarket is a voluntary payment, so is the money you pay for what you take from society by depriving others of their liberty to use the land.
No, it isn't. It is better in a few cherry-picked categories like cell phone coverage.Actually Somalia now is better than before the state collapsed in nearly every measurable category.
If only you had any intention of being logical! You aren't comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state. You are comparing Somalia under one of the worst governments of the 20th century to Somalia without the state. While few African governments earn any merit badges, try comparing Somalia to an African state that actually makes an effort to do government's job, like Botswana.You have to be logical, which is to say comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state...you can't compare Somalia to another country and get a logical conclusion.
ROTFL!! You can't even see that fool's blatant illogic, such as attributing to statelessness the beneficial effects of Somalia's huge foreign remittance flows, which the video itself acknowledges amount to several thousand dollars per household per year, an amount that dwarfs even the foreign aid the Siad Barre government was living on. Your hero also delicately avoids mentioning the fact that Somalia is home to the world's leading pirate fleet, which feeds Somalia's economic "miracle" with booty and ransoms from peaceful trading nations.Please watch:
As you can see in the presentation, your red herring is a failure.
No, it's an absurd fabrication. Do you think the annual taxes some states charge on automobiles make them rented, not owned?This was in response to :By what right would you ever be an owner of what neither you nor anyone else ever produced, and which everyone would otherwise be at liberty to use?
"All tax makes you a property renter, not owner. "
This is simply logical fact.
Blatant question begging fallacy. What would make it "your land"?If you do not pay taxes on your land you are evicted from it and it is taken from you and sold to pay the taxes.
More garbage. Pretty much any asset can be seized for any debt. If you don't pay your credit card debt, the credit card company can seize your house. Does that mean you are renting your house from the credit card company? Oops, you are also renting it from the mortgage company, and from the government too.If you do not pay rent you are evicted by the landlord and are sued for the owed money, which can result in your property being sold to pay the difference. Hence, it is illogical to consider yourself an owner of any property being taxed.
Your claims are just absurd, dishonest nonsense.
No, it indisputably isn't.It is clearly rented from the state.
Wrong again.This also ignores imminent domain laws....which further make you a renter.
Assertion lacking any factual support. There is no basis on which an individual can claim ownership of natural resources that does not also apply to collectives.Collectives and species do not own natural resources.
Assertion lacking any factual support other than the fallacious, "it's the law."Individuals own property and all natural resources on it.
No, that's a lie on your part. Geoist principles support the individual right to property in the products of one's labor.All this geoism nonsense is anti-property.
No, that's you lying about what I plainly wrote, congratulations. It is property in land and natural resources that is theft, because it forcibly deprives people of what they would otherwise have. Property in products of labor doesn't, because products of labor did not otherwise exist.Proof?:
That's you saying property is theft...congratualtions.Do you want to be a "renter" or a thief? Most people want to be thieves.
You will now refuse to know that fact.
I repeat: it is only the improvement value portion of property taxes that have a deadweight loss. Remove that, and tax only land value, and there is no deadweight loss because supply is fixed.Any part of a tax that has DWL will cause distortions in the market with consequences...so if you have DWL the tax is even worse.
Yes, they are.No, they aren't wrong.
There is no non-coercive way to allocate exclusive land tenure. It is IMPOSSIBLE.Deontological ethics hold until extreme circumstances where consequentialist ethics overrule them in an attempt to limit harm in a situation where no non-coercive choice exists.
No, YOU want to coerce to enable greedy, idle, parasitic landowners to steal from the productive. I am merely willing to know the fact that what you want is to coerce, and that there is no alternative to coercion if anyone is to enjoy exclusive land tenure.You want to coerce, with or without extreme circumstance.
Except when the coercion is sanctioned by law, such as slavery and landowning.And even in extremes, coercion is a crime...it's just punished differently when there are mitigating and corroborating circumstances.
No, it is fact.Again, this is anti-property collectivism.Extortion is a demand for an unearned benefit, backed by a threat to deprive you of what you would otherwise have. Exclusive tenure to land is not something you would otherwise have, and land rent is a benefit government and the community have earned, but you haven't.
Blatant question begging fallacy. That is exactly the same "logic" that slave owners used to justify slavery: "No gubmint owns mah niggahs. I do."No community owns my land, I do.
You are lying. The entire unimproved value of "your" land is a gift from government and the community.And no state is benefiting me.
Not property "rights" in land. Indeed, there was no known legal tradition of private property in land until Roman times. Before that, there had always been a recognition that the landholder was a tenure holder only, not the owner of the land.Property rights preceed states in history; see anthropology.
More accurately, no one is impressed by your puerile name calling. There has been no private ownership of land in Hong Kong for over 160 years, yet it has been a beacon of liberty, justice and prosperity, and no one but a stupid, lying ignoramus would claim it is an "anti-property collectivist statist society."No one is better off in your anti-property collectivist statist society.
Unlike my consensual contracts, your anti-justice feudal "contracts" demand UNwilling participants: the enslaved who have been forcibly deprived of their rights to liberty without just compensation.If you want anti-propertry collectivist social contracts among willing participants, have at it...
Land value taxation is a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction: you pay market value for the economic advantage that government and the community secure to you, and of which you deprive others. You just don't want to pay for what you are taking, because you are accustomed to receiving it as a gift.but this precludes tax from existing (again, at that point, voluntary government not a state, all payments by the willing are donation or payment for service rendered).
Nope.Again you make a false comparison.
No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again. Somalia is only approximately as bad without the state as it was under the horrendous Siad Barre -- who at least didn't infest the sea lanes around the Horn of Africa with pirates.As surely as stateless Somalia is better and improved w/o the state,
Laughable. While the US government has its problems, the notion that it would be better on the Somali model is hilarious.stateless America would be better and improved w/o the state.
Actually, apples and oranges can usefully be compared in a number of ways.You compare apples to oranges and call that logic.
While claiming one of them is a coconut...I compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
LOL! As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"Nice try. Please look up "informal logical fallacies" to continue argumentation while simultaneously having logic on your side.
You are not interested in getting anything straight, as you are about to evade the false claim you made by trying to change the subject.So let me get this straight...
See? You are dishonestly changing the subject, which was not "coerced monopolies" but your false and unsupported claim that the market will provide all necessary and desirable services cheaper, more efficiently and with better accountability than a public provider. See your post #503 in this thread.your understanding of modern economics is that coerced monopolies
Strawman fallacy. No one said anything about not being subject to competition.that aren't subject to competition
You are just lying about what I plainly wrote. Apologists for greed, privilege and injustice always have to lie. ALWAYS.
Right. Especially when private competitors are perfectly at liberty to enter the market, the public provider has democratic accountability, and the alternative is a private monopoly not subject to competition, but WITHOUT democratic accountability.DON'T cause higher prices, lower quality services, and no accountability?
It is fact. You just don't know any economics, and imagine that your infantile "meeza hatesa gubmint" Austrian school websites have something honest and factual to offer.That's some interesting economic understanding you have there...LOL.
<yawn> Nice attempt to change the subject. Try saying something relevant to your false and unsupported claim that the market will provide all necessary and desirable services cheaper, more efficiently and with better accountability than a public provider.Every bit of empirical evidence exists and shows that in the absence of coerced monopolies (not to be confused with voluntary monopolies) and monopsonies lower prices prevail, higher quality goods and services prevail, and more accountability exists than in the coerced monopolizaed situation.
ROTFL!! I have read millions of words on economic theory and history, dumpling, and millions more on the theory and history of taxation. You have not.Simply pick up a few books and you'd know this.
And Maxwell's equations aren't modern physics. But they're still good enough for most practical purpose -- and the results of modern physics give much more reason for thinking it is an improvement on Maxwell than the results of modern economics give for thinking it is an improvement on George.Georgism isn't modern economics my friend.
ROTFL!!! Excuse me while I laugh at your rhetorical incompetence, and demolish you utterly:Excuse me while I destroy your argument here
<yawn> When would that have been? The only communally owned buffalo I know of are in Wood Buffalo National Park -- and they constitute the majority of buffalo in existence, as private appropriators and owners of buffalo had hunted them to the brink of extinction....when buffalo were communally owned
<sigh> They were slaughtered to near extinction by private interests intent on appropriating an unowned and unmanaged natural resource as private property.they were slaughtered to near extinction.
You are destroyed.
ROTFL!! Your ignorance is astounding. Virtually ALL the increase in buffalo population since the low point of the late 19th century was achieved by the Canadian government, managing the communally owned herd in Wood Buffalo National Park.When they are owned privately they are brought back from the brink of extinction.
You are destroyed. You are destroyed utterly and completely, comprehensively and conclusively. Nothing you can possibly say can make any difference any more, because you have just made such an absolute fool of yourself (OK, I helped a bit).
When was that? Provide some evidence for your claim of collective ownership, like a collective plan of management or allocation of use.When streams natives fished were collectively owned
Thought not.
Please provide a credible reference for this just-so story.they were depleted and the fish got smaller and smaller because people always took the largest fish for themselves. When the tribes owned the fish individually as opposed to all tribes equally claiming ownership, the streams were managed so that everyone was only permitted to fish small fish so the breeding selectively tended to make the fish larger and more plentiful. Soon taking the smallest fish was equal to the past of taking the largest fish, as the entire stock got larger.
Garbage refuted above.The stock uof the natural resources got MORE plentiful under property rights, and less plentiful and more polluted under collective ownership.
Ah. That must explain the flourishing state of fish stocks worldwide through small private interests appropriating and managing the resource.When collectives own property, the smaller the collective the better managed the resources. Why? Because the closer you get to individual property rights the better management occurs, and the farther you get from individuals (the closer you get to larger and larger collective groups) the worse the management becomes.
We'll add market failure to the economics of which you are known to be ignorant.Why? Because not having any percieved individual stake in the common property leads to market failure.
Like I said, you are ignorant of the economics of market failure, of which the state is most definitely not an example.Market failure is when individual rational pursuits result in collectively irrational outcomes...like when everyone has this thing called a state and they all push for "free" goodies on someone elses dime...
You are also ignorant of monetary economics. Check.this naturally results in deficits and debts,
And you claim Georgist economics is not up to the modern standard? ROTFL!!and when the debt grows to say, idk, 15 trillion dollars, no one wants to give up their goodies (rationally) but the end result is collapse of the economy (collectively irrational. Hence nothing is more susceptible to market failure than the state. Why? Precisely because of it's extortion powers (tax). This is no different in practice than the fish and stream example among natives.
No, they do not. They must pay landowners full market value for access to them.Lastly, the free-rider problem is obvious. Around 50% of citizens in the state curently pay 0$ in net income tax, but recieve a disproprtionate amount of the servies...essentially free.
Why are you lying that income tax is the only tax people pay?So about half of people under the state are free-riders.
I said no such thing. Free riders are the least of Somalia's problems.So how is it you can use the 'free-rider problem' criticism to suggest in anarchy this problem would be a cataclysmic aspect that would lead to the collapse of such a stateless system?
More accurately, it is dishonest garbage that you made up.Of course, this is logical nonsense.
You need to stop using the word, "logically."It no more collapses the state now on it's own than it would anarchy. In fact, w/o legalized extortion (tax) the free-rider problem would DECREASE logically because no one could get "free" goodies at their neighbors expense w/o their neighbors consent.
You clearly have no idea how the privileged use their privileges to make others hand them things.Everyoe would have to at least show to others they were attempting to pull their own weight, or no one would hand them anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2SkSo all three of these economic criticisms effect the state far more than anarchy, logically.
He was correct.I don't care what his intention was...his intention was wrong.
Refuted above. And by YOUR OWN EXAMPLE.The fact stands that collective stewardship is far less efficient and far more detrimental to "commons" than private ownership.
See above. You buffaloed yourself, chum.BTW, I was aware that a commonly used leftist criticism of markets was in fact anti-privatization...I simply show how it's a bad argument.
LOL!! Hilariously wrong. Your ignorance is monumental.Also, Orwell intended 1984 to be a story about showing one world government was preferable to multiple nations.
Orwell in no way intended 1984 to be "statist." You are just makin' $#!+ up.Unfortunately for him (but fortunaely for mankind) people saw the point as "wow, the state can be scary". It's now considered a great work of fiction that was intended to be statist, but ended up resulting in the best argument for libertarianism (anarchism).
Hey! Look! I wonder if your reputation is badder than my own? They should just make it a number instead so we can know for sure who is the most hated member.
helmuth_hubener told me to come visit this thread and do battle with you or something. Remember that time when you posted in one of my very first threads about pragmatarianism... Confessions of a Libertarian? Oh the good old days.
So...pragmatarianism says absolutely nothing about the taxing and the LVT says absolutely nothing about the spending. So it's not really like the two are mutually exclusive. I just don't promote the LVT because I don't think the problem has anything to do with the taxing. Why do you think the problem is with the taxing rather than with the spending?
Do you RSS subscribe to Mark Wadsworth's blog?
Last edited by Xerographica; 04-13-2012 at 06:22 PM.
I am, because I am promoting the real threat to greed, privilege, injustice and evil. The evil therefore hate me more than anyone.
At least he knows when he is overmatched.helmuth_hubener told me to come visit this thread and do battle with you or something.
Ah, another thread ruined by Reiver's monumental tediousness.Remember that time when you posted in one of my very first threads about pragmatarianism... Confessions of a Libertarian? Oh the good old days.
Wrong. LVT recovers the value the spending creates. If the spending is wasteful or corrupt, LVT won't raise as much revenue.So...pragmatarianism says absolutely nothing about the taxing and the LVT says absolutely nothing about the spending.
There are problems with both, but you can't solve the spending problem until you solve the taxing problem, because the incentive to pocket publicly created value will be too strong. No matter what you do, without LVT, landowners will force excessive and inefficient spending to line their own pockets. Remove that problem, and it becomes possible to address spending.So it's not really like the two are mutually exclusive. I just don't promote the LVT because I don't think the problem has anything to do with the taxing. Why do you think the problem is with the taxing rather than with the spending?
I know of Wadsworth, of course, but I don't subscribe to his blog. He has done a pretty good job demolishing some stupid anti-LVT garbage.Do you RSS subscribe to Mark Wadsworth's blog?
Can I spend your money "better" than you can?
Maybe. But that's not the point. When you have paid the supermarket for the groceries you took home, it is not your money any more. It's the supermarket's money, because they earned it by providing you with commensurate value, for which you voluntarily exchanged your money. In exactly the same way, when you voluntarily choose to take land and the associated advantages from the community of those who would otherwise be at liberty to use them, and compensate them justly for taking it from them, the money you paid in compensation is not your money any more.
What is happening here is very simple, Xero: government and the community have been giving the landowner a welfare subsidy, financed by taxes that rob the productive. I have identified the fact that this system is unjust and economically destructive, and propose that instead, those who get the benefit of government spending should be the ones who pay for it. You oppose this idea because you are accustomed to getting your welfare subsidy giveaway, and do not want to pay for it. You oppose justice and economic efficiency, and are in favor of injustice and inefficiency, as long as you benefit by them. You do not care that others' rights are violated, that they are forced into poverty, that millions of them are killed every year by the system you profit from. Considerations of right and justice and simple human decency are of no more interest to you than they are to Steven or Helmuth or Eduardo or any other apologist for greed, privilege, injustice and evil.
The landowner has a magic button that puts a dollar into his bank account and kills a random poor person he doesn't know every time he presses it. He is happy to press that button all day long, and to scream stupid lies about socialism, statism, collectivism, property rights, blah, blah, blah if anyone suggests his magic button is an evil thing that no one should be pressing, or even possess.
Right. The only other one of comparable significance is intellectual property monopolies, which have increased in importance relative to land as government and the courts have broadened them, and will almost certainly continue to do so. As technology advances faster and faster, and affects more and more of what people do, it will become difficult even to participate in society without paying off IP protection racketeers.
Hey, I made the list!
I'm a bit unsure as to what Mr. X. did to deserve to be on the list, as he seems quite open to and happy about LVT, but you are both internet addicts so it must be something he said on some other forum, probably years ago.
As for my own part, my posts were not screaming. They were obviously lies and were unceasingly stupid, but screaming they were not. No, I pride myself that I did not respond in kind to your vitriol, except for one time and that was only as a joke to try to show you how ridiculous your tactics are (it didn't work). There are many of your posts, however, which are just over-the-top with rage, epithets, and fury. Righteous fury, of course, at my ceaseless lies and stupidity, but certainly fury.The landowner has a magic button that puts a dollar into his bank account and kills a random poor person he doesn't know every time he presses it. He is happy to press that button all day long, and to scream stupid lies about socialism, statism, collectivism, property rights, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, just wanted to make sure to keep the record straight. Carry on.
In this article, I will criticize the followers of Henry George, or Georgists, from a libertarian perspective. I see Georgism as a problematic philosophy incompatible with a free society.
There are a couple issues the Georgists have to deal with. First, to summarize the Georgist position: Land was not created by any human, thus it cannot be owned by any human and all landowners are really usurpers and thieves, depriving their poor fellow humans of the land they so ruthlessly claim.
Now, if the Georgists really believe this and if they really believed in justice and morality, it would follow that all land must be held in common forever and ever, amen. There can be no private land monopolization. Instead, they propose a land-value tax. This land-value tax is a fee paid in order to secure permission to rip people off! To steal land from the masses! If we are seeking justice and morality, we do not base our society on handing out a phony "right" to steal and rip people off in exchange for money. Why not have the whole mass of people own the land in common and have the workers' council make all land decisions? Because the Georgists understand the incentive problem and perhaps they understand some of the other problems also involved in collective ownership.
So the first point to realize is that Georgism is a philosophy about expedience and utilitarianism. Absolute rights and justice are sacrificed right off the bat. They will get very excited about how landowners are thieves and property (in land) is theft, but do they call for an end to this theft? You know, I criticize theft because I am against it. Are they? Not at all! The solution they propose is: "because landowners are all thieves, we have to allow them to keep thieving but have them pay a recurring fee to 'society' for the right to continue their brigandry." Look, if landowners are thieves, they're scum. The immoral looting needs to be abolished, not taxed. One gets the feeling they would call for taxation on the owners of chattel slaves in order to pay back society for their crime and that such a tax would make everything OK.
The second issue is physical. In Georgism as in economics generally, land is defined as the entirety of the raw universe, excluding our bodies and the goods we create. That is, every ocean, every planet, every star, every bit of stray hydrogen, and the vast expanse of space in the cosmos. In Georgism, no one can own any of that. As soon as they improve it, they do own the improvement, but they still can never own the "land", that is, the space and matter which nature provided.
So, if a man homesteads a section of forest, cuts down some trees, and uses them to build a house there, he now owns the house, but not the land it sits on. Even if he fundamentally changes the make-up of the land by, e.g. planting a wheat field or digging a big hole, the underlying land can never be owned, only the improvements. That in and of itself seems fair and consistent. The man didn't create the land, he just happens to be using it (and thus preventing any of his equally-deserving fellows from using it, by the way) so how could he have any just claim to own it? The wheat, on the other hand, he very much had a hand in. The wheat would not exist without him, he created it with his laboring, and so it rightfully can be said to be his absolute property.
The problem becomes apparent when one realizes that not only is the wheat field making use of the matter and space provided for free via the existence of the universe, the wheat itself is making use of that free matter and space as well. The matter that was originally in the soil has been percolated up through the wheat stalk to become the kernel. One cannot simply create matter out of nothing. As Carl Sagan said: “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” I think we can all agree, then, that everything in existence, no matter how man-made, has land as one of its major components. That is, everything consists of raw matter gotten from the universe and of space for it to occupy.
Let us consider two different assets: a parking lot, and a chain saw. Both are considered fully ownable by libertarians, and indeed by most people. Georgists consider only the chain saw to be fully ownable. That is because the parking lot has a strong "land" ( land in the common sense, not the economic sense) component while the chain saw does not. Now the parking lot qua parking lot is ownable, the Georgists would be quick to clarify. The pavement, the painted lines, all of that is an improvement and thus ownable. The land that it is blanketing, however, is not ownable. That raw land should be taxed according to whatever its value would have been were it not leveled, tamped, and covered with pavement.
To be consistent, the same reasoning must apply to the chain saw. The chain saw should be taxed according to whatever value the ore, petroleum, etc. would have had were it not refined, cracked, made into steel, made into plastic, cast, injection-molded, and assembled into a chain saw. The raw elements composing the chain saw are just as much a part of the universe as the raw elements composing the parking lot.
But Georgists do not apply the same logic to the chain saw as to the parking lot. Part of this doubtless is because of their placement of expediency above the concepts of justice or consistency. The land in the case of the parking lot is big, static, and, as they are fond of pointing out, impossible to hide from the tax man. The land tucked away in the chain saw is small, portable, and can be hidden from the tax man. Thus, the Georgists want to tax the land of the parking lot, but not the land of the chain saw, because of the ease of taxation and for other practical reasons. Thus, when they speak of land-value taxation they mean only that very particular class of land that lays horizontally at the surface of the Earth and upon which men walk.
This inconsistency opens them up to all kinds of hypothetical absurdities and conundrums. What if a man were to fly to an asteroid and claim to own it? That claim would be invalid under Georgist thought, since the land of the asteroid is unownable. What if instead he were to carve a large chunk out of the Earth and launch it into space as an artificial asteroid? Since it becomes an artificial asteroid only through herculean human effort, it would seem to be fully ownable, for the same reasons the wheat kernel and the chain saw are fully ownable. Thus, a thousand years down the road, all the inhabitants on Asteroid B are enjoying full allodial property rights while on asteroid A they must pay land-value tax to humanity for the crime of monopolizing their pieces of the asteroid. But what is fundamentally different about these two asteroids at this point? Should the distant, murky past of the asteroids' respective beginnings really affect their property situation so?
What if I were to tunnel a shaft a mile down and at the bottom of it hollow out an enormous cavern. Would I then be responsible to pay land value tax? Would not this be essentially the same type of endeavor as the asteroid launch? One is putting solid mass where there is emptiness in order to create new livable square footage. The other is creating emptiness where there was solid mass in order to create new livable square footage.
If the artificial asteroid people and the hollow earth people can both escape the LVT via their shenanigans, what of those who drain swamps, manufacture islands, blow up mountains, or heat icy wastes and in so doing make these places habitable or useful when before they were not? The typical Georgist response to, e.g. the artificial island manufacturer, would be that while he may own the island, he does not own the land under the island and thus must pay tax on the value of the land under his island. But what about the land over the island? What about the land <i>in</i> the island which has merely been shuffled around? Why do we only care about what's underneath? Is land only land when it is "under" -- when men can stand on it? To figure out the taxable land do we simply calculate the surface area of the Earth's sphere, despite the fact that much of this is covered in ocean, making it impossible to "stand on" without application of improvements or technology?
The artificial island builder created the value of the land under his island, value which did not exist until he arrived. No one was using the land before him. For all practical purposes, it was not land. He has thus created new usable land, just as the Earth hollower created new usable land, and just as the asteroid launcher created new usable land. They have not created new land in an absolute sense if one defines land as the entirety of the universe, but they have changed the nature of the land. In doing so, they have created a valuable asset where none existed before. If the chain saw manufacturer, who does the same thing -- he rearranges the matter given by nature to create a new valuable asset -- if he can own his creation, these real-estate-improvers ought to be able to own their creations as well. To a lesser extent, the irrigator, the forest clearer, the mountain blaster, and the explorer all create value where there was none before. Their creations are tied to the horizontal surface of the Earth, true. That is a laughably arbitrary reason to deny them the fruits of their labors.
The chain saw monopolizes the scarce matter, or land, of the universe just as the parking lot does. The Georgists say that the parking lot owner must pay tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing, but the chain saw owner need pay no tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing. Why? Because one collection of matter is arranged in a way that the Georgists recognize as land -- dirt laid out horizontally at the surface of the Earth.
Georgists are guilty of not thinking three-dimensionally. For them, the world is still flat and horizontal land still holds some sort of almost mystical quality making it unownable. As technology progresses, very small or nontraditional real-estate, as well as very large manufactured items, blur the line between what is taxable land and what is not. One path forward to rigorize this school of thought would be to introduce the idea of taxing the underlying land in boats, hammers, and chain saws in the same way as the land underlying skyscrapers, fish ponds, and parking lots. Another path forward would be to admit that although man did not create the universe we will nevertheless allow the entire universe to pass into private ownership, since the alternative is to create some sort of tax on the universe, whose purpose and benefit would be singularly unclear.
You don't know if I can spend your money "better" than you can? The thing is...time is money and here you are spending your time promoting the LVT. Can I spend your time "better" than you can?
How angry would it be appropriate to be over two Holocausts a year, year after year?
I'm pretty sure you can't, or you would make more sense, and your posts would be more honest. But you never know, and in any case I have identified the fact that the money in question is not yours, so you are just repeating a previously refuted red herring.
Overactive conscience.The thing is...time is money and here you are spending your time promoting the LVT.
No, but I can spend my time better than by answering such puerile drivel.Can I spend your time "better" than you can?
Last edited by Roy L; 04-15-2012 at 01:21 AM.
Have not read the entire thread but the premise is interesting.
Government can indeed create unjust privilege in how it allocates and delegates private land. If a government had say awarded the entire continent of North America (to use an extreme) to one single landowner...this surely would be tyrannical as the dependency from the landless to the single landowner would create economic serfdom. 2 owners of North America would be almost as bad...as would say 4, 8, 16 and so forth... It would be statistically impossible to say that land and it's derivative benefits have been equally delegated from government to the people.
The benefit of private land is stronger though than from politician managed land ...it allows diverse and creative means in which the land can be used, subdivided and supported by long term contracts.
In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other. If the land is errantly allocated such that 1 sailor got 70% and the rest had to split the remaining 30% this would be unjust...but I'm not sure a land tax is the best way to rectify this. For starters the 30% would have to pay a land tax...and even if they the islanders somehow manged to over-time re-equally allocate the island...they would still be paying the tax.
I've always liked the idea that you could escape to a cabin in the woods and as long as you kept care of yourself...you shouldn't be pestered to support the local pet causes of the month that politicians have invented. In this way a land tax is invasive.
But certainly I understand Henry George's point that land ownership can create privilege and false dependency. The problem is finding a right balance. Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance. The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.
Last edited by rpwi; 04-14-2012 at 09:06 PM.
.Economics and Sound Money thread?
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Myself, I would say why have gov't allocating it at all? Homesteading should allocate it.
That is, in fact, exactly what Roy L. proposes. It is also more or less what Steven Douglas proposes, interestingly enough.The problem is finding a right balance. Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance. The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.
Oh yes, exactly, I knew you'd say that. Like I say, I was just setting the record straight on who was figuratively "screaming" and who was not.
That's where I think you lose pretty much everyone, save the most unhinged, glassy-eyed and severely logically impaired.
Close. Even as the number of owners gets larger, the fact remains: the liberty to use all of the land has been abrogated, without compensation. The degree to which that injustice inflicts suffering may be attenuated by having more landowners, but the nature of the problem remains. And while 1 single landowner may be able to make de facto slaves of the rest of the population, the amount of rent can never be greater than if any number of landowners collected the market rent from producers. If a single landowner looked to get as much wealth from the population as he could, the best strategy would be to issue short-term leases, at market rates.
Politician-managed land is a strawman. No geoist wants land allocation to be done by the government. You've created a sort of false dilemma: aside from having land be private property or being directly allocated by the government, you can have land be sold on temporary leases, or treated as private property, contingent upon payment of market rent. An allodial title would be land as private property; the system we have now is fee simple, which is ownership with contingencies. Geoists generally want one of the contingencies to be that 'owners' of land pay the full market rent of their land in taxes.The benefit of private land is stronger though than from politician managed land ...it allows diverse and creative means in which the land can be used, subdivided and supported by long term contracts.
I disagree. Each part of the island is not the same as the other. More importantly, even if each of the shipwrecked agreed absolutely with the distribution, what of their children? Why are the children bound to such a contract? Keep in mind, we're not talking about a contract to use something the group created, but something that they found and chose to use in some manner, and more importantly, something which none of them can live without.In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other.
Think of it as compensation. Here's an example I think you'll find instructive: once I rented a house with 2 of my friends. Problem was, it had three bedrooms, and each had a different size. This was before I'd heard of geoism, but even then, the answer was obvious: I suggested that we bid against one another, with the highest bidder getting the biggest bedroom, and the lowest bidder getting the smallest. In this manner, one person did get the use of the best bedroom, but he also paid the most rent each month.If the land is errantly allocated such that 1 sailor got 70% and the rest had to split the remaining 30% this would be unjust...but I'm not sure a land tax is the best way to rectify this. For starters the 30% would have to pay a land tax...and even if they the islanders somehow manged to over-time re-equally allocate the island...they would still be paying the tax.
Carry that over to your island and your concerns about tax. They could have theoretically allocated land use however they wanted, but if they were smart, they would have determined a system of compensation, with those with use of the most-desired land compensating those who got the least desirable land. If they did that, it wouldn't matter if children were born, or people died: in any event, the system would adapt, and secure equal benefits for all. Not by some government fiat, but by market action: the individuals bidding against one another for use of resources rightly owned by no one.
On a larger scale, it's impossible to have each individual bid against everyone else for the use of land. But what is possible is to have landowners pay the market rent in tax, and to use the taxes to fund services and infrastructure that are beneficial to everyone. It's silly to hand out privileges that enrich some small part of the population due mostly to accidents of history, and then levy taxes on production. In fact, it's madness.
Yeah, but if you're on land no one else wants, you don't pay taxes. The LVT doesn't tax land use, it taxes the privilege the landowner enjoys. No privilege, no tax.I've always liked the idea that you could escape to a cabin in the woods and as long as you kept care of yourself...you shouldn't be pestered to support the local pet causes of the month that politicians have invented. In this way a land tax is invasive.
But really, who wants to live in such a way in the first place? No one, really. The fact that land near cities has such value is a proof as to the value individuals give to living proximate to society. I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario is instructive when considering theory: the LVT passes, because the man who takes nothing from society isn't forced to give anything to society. But, it's generally nothing more than a theoretical example, because the fact is that society is greatly beneficial to humans.
Roy's individual exemption is pretty good, IMO. By giving each individual a by-value exemption, you give him a bit of land to use anywhere in the tax jurisdiction which he can use rent-free.But certainly I understand Henry George's point that land ownership can create privilege and false dependency. The problem is finding a right balance. Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance. The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.
Heard of the Irish potato famine? Some examples are more obvious than others, but the grinding poverty that consigns millions to die each year is caused directly by landowner privilege. Private ownership of land denies individuals the product of their labor, and the inexorable consequent is poverty and death.
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