The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

[MattintheCrown]

LVT vs. CVT

I think that land is a legitimate subject of ownership, so it is unavoidable for me to believe taxing it would be theft. Just so, you would believe that taxing me for using a computer would be theft, I think.

You may think that, but you're wrong. You cannot justify such a belief.

The LVT advocates will claim that it is not the worst thing in the world to lose your land due to inability to pay your LVT. If you cannot pay, there is some very good reason for that. It will be due to taxes increasing but the profitability of your use of the land remaining stable, or perhaps even the profitibility of your land use going down, or any scenario wherin the tax of the land becomes more than the value you're getting from the land.

Let's take the example of a farmer on the edge of an expanding city. He's a hold-out, he wants to keep farming, but "society" would find it more valuable for his land to be converted to condos. Now under my own preferred system of freedom, he can just keep farming as long as he likes, forever, no one can stop him. They can offer him huge wads of money to change his mind, but they cannot use force. That's the best situation for him. But under LVT, if the tax is high that means there are a number of buyers lined up willing to pay a high price for the land, and so our recalcitrant farmer can take their money and use it to buy double the acreage somewhere else. Not too bad a deal, eh?

Right. More importantly, the farmer, along with everyone else, greatly benefits by living a society where land is allocated efficiently. The returns he gets to his labor, along with the returns everyone else gets to their labor, are much greater if land is allocated efficiently.

That's the whole point. I suggest you read Book IX, Chapter I of Progress and Poverty to get a fuller idea of just how true this is.

So I agree with LVT advocates that this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But neither would it be the worst thing if you had this same set-up for capital goods. You charge a CVT (capital value tax) on capital goods, determined based on assessors, market prices, and some sophisticated computer model Roy L. has. Just like LVT. The owners of injection molds and CNC lathes would then pay an annual tax. Normally, as long as they were putting them to reasonably good use they'd be able to afford the tax. If the tax is high and the factory can't afford the tax, there is some very good reason. We can assume there are many buyers waiting in line to pay the higher price of the machines. Perhaps society needs every available unit of a specialized machine the factory has, in order to produce the new iPhone which is in a desperate shortage. The owner is lucky to be in such a position! With the money, he can buy even better machines and twice as many, and manufacture to his heart's delight.

But if you believe in an absolute property right in capital goods, such a CVT would still be theft.

Right. Aside from considerations of utility, it's morally wrong. A man cannot satisfy his desires without the right to claim what he produces, just as he can't satisfy his desires without use of the earth.

One other thing I wanted to respond to is the alleged metaphysical difference between a factory and land, that of the land already being there, while the factory, allegedly, isn't.

But it is. It's already there. It's already been built. The factory's existence is a fact of life. It's a done deal. The same efficiency argument applies to it as to the land: it's there anyway, so let's tax whoever owns it to force them into increased efficiency by lowering their profit margins. Taxing the factory doesn't make the factory disappear, any more than taxing land makes it disappear. It just gets run more efficiently. In fact, remember, if the factory were to be abandoned, it eventually would become philosophically land. In Will Smith's "I Am Legend" New York, (leaving aside the property rights of the zombies) all the skyscrapers, the cars, the gasoline, the canned food... these are all "land" for him. They are all just provided to him by nature as far as from an ethical or economic point of view. So why wait for it to be abandoned? Tax it now!

But you're about to undermine your argument:

Now taxing factory owners does provide a disincentive going forward to build *more* factories, but so does taxing the Universe provide a disincentive going forward to open up more parts and resources of the Universe to productive use.

Half-right. From a utilitarian standpoint, your CVT fails as well, because it will indeed result in a diminution of the stock of capital. Taxing land, by value, will not.

And while land and factories may be metaphysically unable to disappear, yet you tax them too much and even the existing land and factories will be abandoned, and crumble or go fallow. They will cease to exist in the economy. This goes back to what I keep saying: the amount of land in the economy can increase or decrease, and does all the time. It's not fixed at all!

Taxing land at a rater higher than 100% of the rent would indeed cause people to abandon it, which is why no one would do that. It's literally in no one's interest to try.

So all our disagreements really just come down to the moral question: Is land a legitimate subject of ownership?

I also believe this is wrong. There's two sides to the issue: a moral side, and a utilitarian side. If we agree that taxes must be collected, but that any tax is morally wrong, we should at least resort to taxes which are the least obstructive to the economy. LVT wins here, hands down, because it does not burden production, as other taxes do.

If it is, then the free land party is right. If it is not, then the proposals of the socialize land party, while they will cause economic destruction (land being abandoned and going fallow as mentioned above, among other problems) at least they have a moral basis of sorts: no human can justly own land, so we should have the government (a group of such humans) own the land. One can see the moral logic. Kind of.

It's not that the government would own the land, it's that the government would manage the land in the best interests of society. Like a trustee does with an asset. It's the only way equal rights can be reconciled, because equal rights include the right to liberty, and exclusion from parts of the earth limits those rights. Compensation, then, is due.

[MattintheCrown]

Wow. Well, for the first time, I am officially embarrassed for you. Those are not the words of a businessman or an economist, and you are so far off on this this one it's pathetic. Rather having me go out and Google things for you, why not just post and cite a couple of your favorite and most authoritative examples? Because you have inventory and supply reversed, along with a seriously distorted and incorrect view of market supply and how it is counted.



If you did any actual Googling yourself, you would see myriad examples that define supply as:

"The total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase at a given price."

http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm

Not at any price; at any given, or specified, price. In economics you can't even begin to talk about supply without a specific reference price in mind. From there we can take all possible prices and make a supply curve for that particular thing. If a thing is not for sale at a given price it is not counted as part of the "supply available to the market" at that price.



The owner's decision not to sell at a given price is precisely what EXCLUDES it from being counted as available to the market (supply) at that price. You are attempting to count the aggregate total of a thing in existence that might possibly otherwise be available AT ANY POSSIBLE PRICE (or at any possible time in the future) and calling that "the entire supply available to the market". That is absolutely incorrect. That's how a supply curve is created, NOT how supply itself is counted.

So to rephrase your words so that they read accurately:

"Being already in someone's possession does not mean a thing is no longer part of the supply. In economics the determining factor as to whether or not a thing is counted as part of the available supply is the price the owner would be willing to accept - and this is true for all goods and services in a free market - a price that is somewhere between zero and infinity. Above a given price, it may be counted as part of the supply. Below that same given price it may not be counted as part of the available supply. This price, and not mere possession, is the very basis of the supply curve in economics, upon which curve multiple quantities of the same thing can be theoretically plotted."

Since actual supply available to the market is dependent upon the quantity sellers are willing to part with for a given price, supply is plotted as individual coordinates on a supply curve, the plot points of which are specified reference prices -- not the entire curve, not the maximum supply possible on that curve, and not the aggregate total based on the possibility that any of it could sell if the price was high enough.

Whatever sellers will not part with at a given price, for ANY REASON, is not counted on that part of the curve as part of the supply for that price. That includes land that is publicly or privately withheld from the market at a given price for any reason whatsoever -- even if the reason for withholding it from sale is not related to price.

If you have an economist, economics paper or textbook entry that states otherwise, cite the source, as I would very much like to read it. Show me otherwise. Don't tell me, using your own rationale and trying to pass that off as basic economics. Show me. Arguments backed by actual sources.

I'll answer your other post after we settle this once and for all. Good luck.

The supply curve for land is a vertical line. Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.

[Roy L]

Rather having me go out and Google things for you, why not just post and cite a couple of your favorite and most authoritative examples?

Here's one from Investopedia, YOUR OWN SOURCE:

"Definition of 'Supply'
A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1slRO3sIy

Because you have inventory and supply reversed, along with a seriously distorted and incorrect view of market supply and how it is counted.

Supply is the available amount.

If you did any actual Googling yourself, you would see myriad examples that define supply as:

"The total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase at a given price."

http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm

Ah, I see: you don't understand what "price" means, either. That is also a very common misapprehension among the economically naive. Price is what a thing trades for. IF AN ITEM DOES NOT TRADE FOR A GIVEN AMOUNT, THAT IS NOT ITS PRICE. You probably hold the naive view that if a store has a price sticker on an item, that is its price. But in fact, that is only its price if someone actually buys it for that amount. Otherwise, it is just a hope. Similarly, we can only say that a given amount of money is the "price" of a parcel of land IF THE LAND TRADES FOR THAT AMOUNT. That is what makes the supply of land fixed: ALL THE LAND TRADES FOR ITS PRICE, NO MORE AND NO LESS, because price is defined as the amount an item trades for.

Here's another reference:

"supply
Definition
The total amount of a good or service available for purchase;"

http://www.investorwords.com/4822/supply.html

Not at any price; at any given, or specified, price.

See above. All land trades at any given price, because its price IS what it trades for. A number pulled out of the air is not a price, it's just a hope, or a guess.

In economics you can't even begin to talk about supply without a specific reference price in mind.

Nonsense. Economists talk about the supply of gold, for example, meaning the total amount available in above-ground stocks, not the amount trading at one particular price.

From there we can take all possible prices and make a supply curve for that particular thing. If a thing is not for sale at a given price it is not counted as part of the "supply available to the market" at that price.

If a thing exists, it is available to the market. If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its price.

The owner's decision not to sell at a given price

Self-contradiction. It that is its price, he sells it for that price by definition.

is precisely what EXCLUDES it from being counted as available to the market (supply) at that price.

No, the fact that the owner doesn't sell it proves that isn't its price.

You are attempting to count the aggregate total of a thing in existence that might possibly otherwise be available AT ANY POSSIBLE PRICE (or at any possible time in the future) and calling that "the entire supply available to the market".

That is exactly right, because that is what "price" means.

That is absolutely incorrect. That's how a supply curve is created, NOT how supply itself is counted.

The supply curve IS supply, and the supply curve for land is a vertical line, meaning the supply of land is fixed: whatever the price, it all trades at that price, no more and no less.

Since actual supply available to the market is dependent upon the quantity sellers are willing to part with for a given price, supply is plotted as individual coordinates on a supply curve, the plot points of which are specified reference prices -- not the entire curve, not the maximum supply possible on that curve, and not the aggregate total based on the possibility that any of it could sell if the price was high enough.

Any price is by definition high enough. The only point of talking about supply at a given price is that for products of labor, a higher price will stimulate additional production. But as land is not produced, its price is irrelevant to supply.

I suspect you will not be able to wrap your head around that.

Whatever sellers will not part with at a given price, for ANY REASON, is not counted on that part of the curve as part of the supply for that price.

If that's the price, the sellers DO part with it, by definition. PRODUCERS MIGHT JUST NOT DECIDE TO PRODUCE IT.

That includes land that is publicly or privately withheld from the market at a given price for any reason whatsoever -- even if the reason for withholding it from sale is not related to price.

There is no such thing as "withholding from the market" at a given price. It is self-contradictory. There is only such a thing as DECIDING NOT TO PRODUCE at a given price -- but that means the item IS TRADING for that price.

If you have an economist, economics paper or textbook entry that states otherwise, cite the source, as I would very much like to read it. Show me otherwise. Don't tell me, using your own rationale and trying to pass that off as basic economics. Show me. Arguments backed by actual sources.

I'll answer your other post after we settle this once and for all. Good luck.

Show me an economist, economics paper or textbook that says a price is any amount other than the amount a thing trades for.

[Steven Douglas]

Beautiful. Let's roll.

Here's one from Investopedia, YOUR OWN SOURCE:

"Definition of 'Supply'
A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1slRO3sIy

Supply is the available amount.

You omitted the most important part. Here's the entire paragraph from that source you accepted:

A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers. Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph. This relates closely to the demand for a good or service at a specific price; all else being equal, the supply provided by producers will rise if the price rises because all firms look to maximize profits.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#ixzz1spRrFHGp

Price is what a thing trades for. IF AN ITEM DOES NOT TRADE FOR A GIVEN AMOUNT, THAT IS NOT ITS PRICE.

Correct! And if it does not trade for a given amount, it cannot be considered "available to the market", given that it never traded for that amount. See how that works?

You probably hold the naive view that if a store has a price sticker on an item, that is its price. But in fact, that is only its price if someone actually buys it for that amount. Otherwise, it is just a hope.

Thank you. And no, I understood completely, and knew that's where you would go with it. We don't have a conflict on the definition of price, Roy. We have a conflict on the definition of SUPPLY, and your misuse of the word. Keep reading.

Similarly, we can only say that a given amount of money is the "price" of a parcel of land IF THE LAND TRADES FOR THAT AMOUNT.

Thank you again, and you are correct again. We're getting somewhere!

That is what makes the supply of land fixed: ALL THE LAND TRADES FOR ITS PRICE, NO MORE AND NO LESS, because price is defined as the amount an item trades for.

And you were doing fine until this. Your wagon wheels fall off with your misapprehension of supply as it relates to price. It also explains why you might have left out the complete quote I provided, which comes in very handy, because now we are talking about supply as it relates to price:

Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph.

The problem is, where do we plot the supply of something that exists but has never traded for a price, or isn't available for trade at any price? Technically we can't even plot it, because it has never traded, and therefore has yet to have a price established.

If a thing exists, it is available to the market. If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its price.

Oops. Remember? That "isn't its price" because it hasn't traded.

I accept your premise, for the sake of discussion, that anything that already exists COULD trade on the market. But that does not change the economic definition of supply, and is also where your price trap slams shut on you.

Like you said, there is no price until a thing actually trades. Thus, for a thing to be considered "available to the market at a specific price (since we are talking about supply as it relates to economics) - there has to be an actual trade! That's how you know it was "available" to the market at that price.

So to correct your sentence once again for completeness and accuracy:

If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its the price at which it is considered available to the market.

The supply curve IS supply...

Circular reference, and also the source of your misapprehension - your incomplete understanding of supply. You can't use the same word to define a word, and you can't jump conveniently from a economic definition to a common definition. It doesn't work that way. The curve itself is nothing but a string of individual "quantity per specific price" points, each with their own meaning as it relates to supply. You can only pull points off the curve to see what the supply was at a given price. You can't take an entire supply curve and extrapolate a "supply" meaning that simply isn't there, because for each SPECIFIC PRICE point the QUANTITY SUPPLIED answer will be different!

That's what I meant when I said "collectivized" reasoning. You're trying to collectivize a curve into a single answer, which is absolutely meaningless. Saying "the supply curve IS supply" is like saying "the speedometer IS the speed", or "the voltmeter IS volts!".

Some more reading for you:

Economists have a very precise definition of supply. Economists describe supply as the relationship between the quantity of a good or service consumers will offer for sale and the price charged for that good. More precisely and formally supply can be thought of as "the total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase at a given price."

What Supply Is Not:

Supply is not simply the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, such as '5 oranges' or '17 pairs of boots', because supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good. The specific quantity desired to sell of a good at a given price is known as the quantity supplied. Typically a time period is also given when describing quantity supplied.

Read more at http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm

So just as supply is not the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, it is also not the amount of land, total or parceled, Earth has on its shelf. You cannot even discuss supply of a thing in economic terms except in terms of its relation to a specific given price -- the amount a thing actually trades for -- which then establishes the "quantity supplied".

...and the supply curve for land is a vertical line...

Absolutely incorrect. Land is parceled, and different parcels trade for different amounts (read=are supplied at a given price) at different times. Some land never trades at all. You can say "that's not its price", but that's silly, because price, by economic definition, requires a trade. And actual transaction.

...meaning the supply of land is fixed: whatever the price, it all trades at that price, no more and no less.

Gibberish - which is understandable, given your utter lack of understanding of the economic concept of supply, which is to say amount available to the market and its dependent relationship on price (what it actually trades for).

There is no such thing as "withholding from the market" at a given price. It is self-contradictory.

Incorrect in the absolute. To sum up:

a) Supply is defined as "quantity made available to the market at a specific price". Hence,
b) Supply is a dependent relationship between the quantity of a thing AT the price it actually trades for.
c) Omit price and you are no longer talking about the economic definition of supply.
d) Like you said, price is not established until a trade actually occurs. Ergo,
e) The "quantity made available to the market" (supply, or quantity supplied), which is completely dependent on price, is also not established until a trade actually occurs.

Are you getting it yet?

Since price is dependent on an event that occurs in real time, real market supply is nothing but an historical snapshot in time based on actual transactions - a quantity traded at a given price. If it wasn't traded at a given price, it cannot appear as "quantity supplied" at that price.

BONUS ROUND

But as land is not produced, its price is irrelevant to supply.

And that's where you went off the deep end, because the economic definition of supply is inextricably linked to and wholly DEPENDENT on price (which is, as you correctly pointed out, dependent on an actual trade). So it price is not just "not irrelevant" - it is absolutely dependent, and has nothing to do with whether it is produced by anyone or not. Land, like fixed quantities of works of dead artists, is no exception to the supply rule. That's another huge source of your misapprehension (love that word).

I produce widgets for the semiconductor industry. But I also purchase and resell surplus widgets - at a MUCH higher profit margin (most factors of production paid for by someone else, once upon a time). Lots of them. A small warehouse full, in fact. These were already produced, sold, used by industry and later discarded as junk. I buy at junk prices, clean and recalibrate them because of my special knowledge, equipment and skills, and put them on my shelf as part of my inventory, as they wait to become part of the actual "supply" (as defined in economics).

Sometimes I get these widgets as finished goods, still in their original packaging. Like parcels of land, I "might" put some capital and labor into the widgets (factors of production to finished goods) to make them more saleable - sometimes not, but never much in either case. The "supply" of these widgets available to the market is based on the amount that I actually trade them for at a given price (the actual economic definition of supply). And I have FULL control how much I choose to make available for supply at any specific price level. That has nothing to do with whether or not I produced them, or whether that price level (my willingness to offer it for sale at that amount) will be established as the actual price based on a transaction.

There are companies, on the other hand, that would like to buy these widgets for $500 a piece, as they have full control over their demand, or amount they would be willing to purchase for a given price level. But I don't make these widget available for $500, so they never actually trade at that amount, and cannot therefore be considered that price, let alone the supply at that price. I would like to get $2,000 a piece for them, but since absolutely none of my customers are willing to pay that amount, none of these widgets are ever considered part of the economic supply at that price either. The optimum price, historically, is around $750 per widget. That is about 70% of new, and the price at which the profits and quantity sold PER UNIT OF TIME are maximized.

Your biggest problem with understanding this as it relates to land is that while you may argue that land may not be produced (cannot be considered a factor of production), you cannot argue that it is immune to the laws of supply and demand, or the economic definition of supply -- else there could be no LVT to even propose. The "supply" of land, economically speaking, is not fixed because the economic definition of supply is absolutely dependent on quantity at a given price -- the actual quantity of land that actually trades for a specific price at a given point in time.

Show me an economist who thinks that land (or any scarce, finite resource) has a different economic definition when it comes to supply.

[oyarde]

Obviously , I have not read this thread , otherwise , I would have to get , at , least one bottle of 100 proof Old Grand Dad and drink it before I shot myself . However , let us not stray . Liberty , no person , but Jesus , should get a free pass to tax my lands . If you feel you must , I offer you only the revolver , the Whiskey is for me to celebrate after you are gone . For those that disagree , I have a plan to satisfy all , the govt owns most lands , they can tax the living fuck out of themselves at whatever rate they see fit and deduct it from govt employee checks, not authorized , by Article One , Section Eight . If anyone disagrees , please send me a pm and I will give you an address to mail donations to my Foundation . Thank you and good night all .

[Steven Douglas]

The supply curve for land is a vertical line. Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.

There are two cases I can think of in a free market where a supply curve would be truly vertical, in that the supply is available at all prices:

1) Quantity supplied by the seller is FREE (e.g., freeware or donations in exchange for something, where you may pay nothing or anything you want), or
2) An auction, where the quantity supplied may be any amount at any price, as buyers compete, and the seller accepts any outcome.

In the case of LVT the supply curve for land (to begin with at least) could be truly vertical. Emphasis on 'could be'. This would ONLY be true on the condition that LVT behaves purely as an auction, with ABSOLUTELY NO FLOOR (no minimum bid or reserve requirement of any kind). If there is no provision made for ZERO PRICE as an acceptable outcome, then the supply curve is anything but vertical. But let's pretend that a penny (or whatever is the absolute smallest unit of monetary exchange) counts as nothing, so that we have a vertical straight line supply curve that's "close enough for government work". If someone bids .01 cent (per unit of time per specific quantity of landholding), and nobody else answers that with a higher bid, and the "provider/controller" of the supply accepted this amount, that would then be counted as the economic "supply" or quantity of land at that specific price.

The vertical supply curve rule, however, would only remain true if each subsequent auction began with the same conditions: no floor, no minimum bid, no reserve amount (a penny notwithstanding or quibbled over). Otherwise we would have a supply curve (over time) that is anything but vertical.

That's the PRICE component of the supply curve. The QUANTITY AVAILABLE component is also a factor of economic supply, which cannot be disregarded. Whatever land is not available at a given price, for any reason, cannot be counted as part of the "available supply" at that [proposed] price. (Roy's semantics games on price and inability to understand how it affects supply notwithstanding)

The community capital building lawn and the local park, for example, will not have supply curves that are vertical. The community is likely not going to be charging itself for land rents on these lands, nor is it going to respond favorably to my .01 cent offer for any of them. If I offer a gazillion for use of those particular lands accommodations would likely be made, and even these lands would likely be made available, but the supply curve would also not be vertical, but rather somewhere between .01 cent and a gazillion per unit of land per time.

The problem with using the vertical supply curve scenario for land as a rationale for LVT is that it DOES NOT APPLY to a propertarian landownership regime. Which is also I'm sure why Roy doesn't want to think in terms of anything but an anti-propertarian framework, which is the only 'reality' he wants everyone to consider. In a landownership regime the supply curve for almost all land is anything but vertical, as it is not in most cases treated as a no-floor/no-minimum-bid-or-reserve auction, and the seller is not forced to make anything available to the market at any proposed price. As such, the supply curve behaves much the same way for land as it would any other scarce/finite resource.

[Roy L]

LVT vs. CVT

I think that land is a legitimate subject of ownership,

For the exact same reasons slave owners think slaves are legitimate subjects of ownership. Right.

so it is unavoidable for me to believe taxing it would be theft.

Actually, that's nothing but a massive non sequitur fallacy.

Just so, you would believe that taxing me for using a computer would be theft, I think.

You mean the way Bill Gates taxes people for using computers? Could be.

The LVT advocates will claim that it is not the worst thing in the world to lose your land due to inability to pay your LVT.

No, the LVT advocates merely observe that there is no way it could ever rightly have become "your" land in the sense that the product of your labor is rightly yours. We also observe that far from being the worst thing in the world when an unproductive user yields possession of a resource to a more productive user, such improved efficiency of allocation is actually one of the benefits of living in a free market system. You just do not want a free market system. You want a system of forcible theft, where a greedy, privileged, parasitic minority of thieves takes from the productive and contributes nothing in return.

If you cannot pay, there is some very good reason for that. It will be due to taxes increasing but the profitability of your use of the land remaining stable, or perhaps even the profitibility of your land use going down, or any scenario wherin the tax of the land becomes more than the value you're getting from the land.

I.e., where someone else will use the land more productively, and you decide you don't want to subsidize your own inefficiency out of your other assets.

Let's take the example of a farmer on the edge of an expanding city. He's a hold-out, he wants to keep farming, but "society" would find it more valuable for his land to be converted to condos. Now under my own preferred system of freedom, he can just keep farming as long as he likes, forever, no one can stop him.

But as you know, that is not a system of "freedom" at all. You are just lying. Your farmer is forcibly depriving others of their freedom to use the land, a freedom they would certainly enjoy if he did not deprive them of it, and is making no effort to compensate them for what he is depriving them of.

They can offer him huge wads of money to change his mind, but they cannot use force.

Right: under your preferred system of plunder and enslavement, he is the one who is privileged to use force against others, and they are deprived even of their right of self-defense. They must meekly allow him to murder them, just as private landowners murder millions of innocent people every year.

That's the best situation for him.

Right. And because under your system he has rights and others do not, the fact that it is not the best -- is indeed a horrible -- situation for them is ignored. Your basic principle is that it is better for millions of non-landowners to be murdered than for even one single landowner to suffer the intolerable inconvenience of moving to land better suited to his needs and means.

Of course, it is possible that there is a more evil view on land than that. I'm just trying to think of one....

Nope. Couldn't do it. Sorry.

But under LVT, if the tax is high that means there are a number of buyers lined up willing to pay a high price for the land, and so our recalcitrant farmer can take their money and use it to buy double the acreage somewhere else. Not too bad a deal, eh?

Not quite. LVT removes the exchange value of land. The willing buyers will be paying the high price to the community for the value it created, not him. Why on earth would they pay him? He didn't do anything to earn the money.

So actually, under LVT he can sell the fixed improvements he has made (in your scenario they will likely be worth little or nothing), but he can't charge others for the land value the community created. This means landholders will be subject to the same free market discipline that currently encourages capitalists and entrepreneurs to invest in capital wisely and efficiently, and not to waste resources on equipment, buildings, etc. that won't pay for themselves.

So I agree with LVT advocates that this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But neither would it be the worst thing if you had this same set-up for capital goods.

But it would nevertheless be a much worse thing than having that set-up for land, for reasons that have been demonstrated to you many times: taxing capital goods will reduce the supply of capital goods below an efficient level; taxing land will not reduce the supply of land at all. In fact, it will make more land available as speculators disgorge what they are hoarding out of use.

You charge a CVT (capital value tax) on capital goods, determined based on assessors, market prices, and some sophisticated computer model Roy L. has. Just like LVT.

Except that the value of capital goods comes from their producers, and therefore ultimately from the people who paid the producers to produce them. You seem to lose track of little details like that rather easily, Helmuth.

The owners of injection molds and CNC lathes would then pay an annual tax. Normally, as long as they were putting them to reasonably good use they'd be able to afford the tax. If the tax is high and the factory can't afford the tax, there is some very good reason. We can assume there are many buyers waiting in line to pay the higher price of the machines. Perhaps society needs every available unit of a specialized machine the factory has, in order to produce the new iPhone which is in a desperate shortage. The owner is lucky to be in such a position! With the money, he can buy even better machines and twice as many, and manufacture to his heart's delight.

That is roughly the line of reasoning Louis XIV's finance minister, Colbert, used to justify a 10% tax on capital (being evil, he of course opposed taxing land). The result of this tax was that over the course of about the next 50 years, France was effectively de-industrialized, and the mantle of industrial, economic and technological leadership passed to England (a similar process is occurring now, as the USA deindustrializes itself in favor of more-geoist China by such measures as property tax reductions, massive subsidies to greedy parasites in the financial and real estate sectors, etc.). A few decades later, the relentlessly increasing poverty and oppression of the ancien regime plunged France into revolution and the Terror. Something similar will also happen in the USA. People who claim a tax on land is like a tax on capital are always very willing to destroy their own countries to preserve the unearned wealth and incomes of the greedy, privileged parasites they serve. But of course, in the end it never works, and all are swept away by either the anger of the oppressed or the competition from more enlightened societies.

But if you believe in an absolute property right in capital goods, such a CVT would still be theft.

But not as unambiguously as landowning is theft.

One other thing I wanted to respond to is the alleged metaphysical difference between a factory and land, that of the land already being there, while the factory, allegedly, isn't.

The distinction, more accurately, is that the land is already there without any help from its owner or anyone else. The factory most certainly isn't. It has to be built. That is indisputable. However, I am aware that you need to contrive some way of not knowing the fact that a factory is produced by labor and land is not.

But it is. It's already there. It's already been built. The factory's existence is a fact of life. It's a done deal.

Not like the presence of the land is a done deal: the land's existence was a done deal long before the factory's. You know this.

The same efficiency argument applies to it as to the land: it's there anyway, so let's tax whoever owns it to force them into increased efficiency by lowering their profit margins.

Garbage. The factory is not "there anyway." That is just a lie from you. It has to be maintained. Tax it, and the owner will start thinking about insurance, arson, and putting his money into a safe and profitable untaxed investment like land, instead. Of course, that's just fine with you. Who needs factories when landowners, those Heroes of Entrepreneurial Productivity, can produce any amount of value they like by just bidding up the prices of each other's land? It certainly worked for Japan in the 1980s. I was there, and they thought just the way you do: "It's great that Japan's landowners are getting rich for doing nothing! Our banks are the biggest and strongest, and the money is just flowing like water! We'll buy up the whole world by just borrowing against our own constantly rising land values!"

Taxing the factory doesn't make the factory disappear, any more than taxing land makes it disappear.

That's what Colbert thought. But he was grotesquely, catastrophically wrong, and so are you.

I guess as you have never read any economics other than stupid propertarian sites like mises.org, you are unaware of the famous example of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ottoman ruler of Egypt, who decided it would be a good idea to tax date palms -- and then wondered why there was a shortage of dates after the people cut down all the date palms.

It just gets run more efficiently. In fact, remember, if the factory were to be abandoned, it eventually would become philosophically land.

And thus relieved of the burden of taxation. Which is very much the point. The practical results of your idiotic anti-economic nonsense can be seen in every blighted neighborhood full of abandoned buildings and trash-filled vacant lots in any major American city.

In Will Smith's "I Am Legend" New York, (leaving aside the property rights of the zombies) all the skyscrapers, the cars, the gasoline, the canned food... these are all "land" for him. They are all just provided to him by nature as far as from an ethical or economic point of view. So why wait for it to be abandoned? Tax it now!

Maybe because we don't want factories to be abandoned?

Now taxing factory owners does provide a disincentive going forward to build *more* factories, but so does taxing the Universe provide a disincentive going forward to open up more parts and resources of the Universe to productive use.

No, it does not. It provides precisely accurate incentives to utilize every resource in the most efficient and appropriate way.

And while land and factories may be metaphysically unable to disappear,

Wrong. Factories are very metaphysically able to disappear.

yet you tax them too much and even the existing land and factories will be abandoned, and crumble or go fallow.

LVT cannot tax land too much (assuming it is administered competently), because it cannot exceed the land rent.

They will cease to exist in the economy. This goes back to what I keep saying: the amount of land in the economy can increase or decrease, and does all the time. It's not fixed at all!

Wrong again. Even if it is unused, land is still very much "in the economy," as any land speculator could inform you, if you were willing to be informed.

So all our disagreements really just come down to the moral question: Is land a legitimate subject of ownership?

Nonsense. You just refuse to know the facts of economics that demonstrate the crushing superiority of LVT over other taxes independently of the moral status of landowning.

If it is, then the free land party is right.

No, because making land private property is the very antithesis of "free land." The actual free land party is the LVT + individual exemption party, because that really does make good land free: free to acquire, and free to use exclusively, for everyone. Calling the land appropriation party the "free land" party is like calling the atmosphere appropriation party the "free air" party: having to pay a greedy parasite rent for air to breathe is not "free air" any more than having to pay a greedy parasite rent for land to live on is "free land." To claim otherwise is grotesquely dishonest.

If it is not, then the proposals of the socialize land party, while they will cause economic destruction (land being abandoned and going fallow as mentioned above, among other problems)

Nope. That's just a stupid lie, refuted above. The only land that could be abandoned under LVT is land that has inefficiently been pressed into use by speculators holding the better land vacant. Some land SHOULD be abandoned, because the resources needed to make it productive would be more productively applied elsewhere. But there is probably very little of it.

at least they have a moral basis of sorts: no human can justly own land, so we should have the government (a group of such humans) own the land.

No, just administer its possession and use, as government does in any case, and as a trustee does.

[helmuth_hubener]

The supply curve for land is a vertical line. Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.

Consider exploration, and other expansionary acts, extending the reach of civilization to heretofore unreachable, and thus valueless and irrelevant, natural resources (also known as "land"). Oceanic voyages, oil drilling, space colonization, etc., all increase the amount of economically relevant land.

[Roy L]

Consider exploration, and other expansionary acts, extending the reach of civilization to heretofore unreachable, and thus valueless and irrelevant, natural resources (also known as "land"). Oceanic voyages, oil drilling, space colonization, etc., all increase the amount of economically relevant land.

But not the supply. Many factors increase the value of resources without increasing their supply. All the "irrelevant" land is merely available for a price of zero (unless speculators appropriate it and start charging in advance for access to whatever opportunities government and the community will create there in the future).

[Roy L]

There are two cases I can think of in a free market where a supply curve would be truly vertical, in that the supply is available at all prices:

1) Quantity supplied by the seller is FREE (e.g., freeware or donations in exchange for something, where you may pay nothing or anything you want), or
2) An auction, where the quantity supplied may be any amount at any price, as buyers compete, and the seller accepts any outcome.

For better or worse, reality and the facts of economics are not governed by what you can think of. Hope that isn't too much of a shock to your system.

In the case of LVT the supply curve for land (to begin with at least) could be truly vertical. Emphasis on 'could be'. This would ONLY be true on the condition that LVT behaves purely as an auction, with ABSOLUTELY NO FLOOR (no minimum bid or reserve requirement of any kind). If there is no provision made for ZERO PRICE as an acceptable outcome, then the supply curve is anything but vertical. But let's pretend that a penny (or whatever is the absolute smallest unit of monetary exchange) counts as nothing, so that we have a vertical straight line supply curve that's "close enough for government work". If someone bids .01 cent (per unit of time per specific quantity of landholding), and nobody else answers that with a higher bid, and the "provider/controller" of the supply accepted this amount, that would then be counted as the economic "supply" or quantity of land at that specific price.

And it's the same no matter what the price.

The vertical supply curve rule, however, would only remain true if each subsequent auction began with the same conditions: no floor, no minimum bid, no reserve amount (a penny notwithstanding or quibbled over). Otherwise we would have a supply curve (over time) that is anything but vertical.

No, we wouldn't.

That's the PRICE component of the supply curve. The QUANTITY AVAILABLE component is also a factor of economic supply, which cannot be disregarded. Whatever land is not available at a given price, for any reason, cannot be counted as part of the "available supply" at that [proposed] price.

You again prove you do not understand what price is. All land is available at its price.

(Roy's semantics games on price and inability to understand how it affects supply notwithstanding)

Fixed supply MEANS that price does not affect supply.

The community capital building lawn and the local park, for example, will not have supply curves that are vertical.

They will.

The community is likely not going to be charging itself for land rents on these lands, nor is it going to respond favorably to my .01 cent offer for any of them.

It effectively charges itself rent by foregoing the rent others would pay, and this would likely be recognized with appropriate entries in the community's accounts.

If I offer a gazillion for use of those particular lands accommodations would likely be made, and even these lands would likely be made available, but the supply curve would also not be vertical, but rather somewhere between .01 cent and a gazillion per unit of land per time.

The lands are already available, and are being used. Duh.

The problem with using the vertical supply curve scenario for land as a rationale for LVT is that it DOES NOT APPLY to a propertarian landownership regime.

Yes, it does, as explained.

Which is also I'm sure why Roy doesn't want to think in terms of anything but an anti-propertarian framework, which is the only 'reality' he wants everyone to consider. In a landownership regime the supply curve for almost all land is anything but vertical, as it is not in most cases treated as a no-floor/no-minimum-bid-or-reserve auction, and the seller is not forced to make anything available to the market at any proposed price.

You again prove you do not know what price is.

As such, the supply curve behaves much the same way for land as it would any other scarce/finite resource.

Any other NATURAL resource, which is fixed in supply and therefore has a vertical supply curve.