Big problem for Libertarianism - Woods, Murphy, Rothbard ALL get Henry George Wrong

[febo]

Of course, this formula does not account for value of land if a business moves in across the street. The guy that started the business wants your land too, and he will get it now, because you won't be able to afford the new LVT. So, the business guy wins, you move your house or just leave (because moving a house is very expensive) and he takes that land as desired to expand his business.

edit: Or you could burn his business down and claim that your LVT should go down because of the stinky smoke smell.

Stand back, drop the sarcasm for a moment. What to libertarians want? No taxes. What does LVT give you? 1 tax. Hey, not bad for a bureaucratic reform eh?
Who pays most of the LVT? Landowners - ie the very richest - the 1%, the Donald Trumps to be specific. That's not bad either eh?(?) Who no longer pays any tax? Workers and businesses - that's good for the economy and for employment levels.
Now, can you see any voting potential in all of this, can you see any peaceful-revolutionary potential in it? Can you see why the land got written out of economics and why Henry George got written out of history?

[febo]

Question for you febo:

Let me first say I don't necessarily disagree with. I actually probably agree more than disagree. However, I'm not that all well read on Georgist theory. So my question is, how should LVT be assessed? Should it be based on a percentage of the land value? If so, how do you determine the value and what is the correct percentage? This is not meant to be rhetorical in any sense. I'm sure there are many answers here but I'd like to know what you consider a good answer.

Good to hear that.
Precentages - no idea, but that work has been done.

[febo]

This may shock you, but most of this site's regulars require a bit more than "nyuh-uhhhhh!" when it comes to counterargument.

Imagine a land mass. Imagine it has coasts, fertile plains, arid plains, mountains - all the usual variations we have on earth. Now imagine everyone gets thier own plot of land - assigned by lottery, or a land grab, it doesn't really matter. Each person can work thier land as they see fit so long as they don't harm anyone else. There are no taxes. Is everyone equally well off? Is that liberty?
No - the guys on the arid plains are struggling to feed themselves whilst some of the others are doing rather well - they've got fish nearby, or wood to use, good soil, water, minerals etc. So the poor move off thier land and become - serfs.
That's human history, that's progress and poverty and you can solve it with Georgist reforms. You cannot have liberty without these reforms.

[ProIndividual]

No, this is incorrect. Value is subjective. Some scarce things (like cat urine) are not valued by anyone. If there was infinite land-per your example-specific pieces of land would be considered more valuable than others for various reasons-nearby schools, climate, etc.

Actually it's not incorrect, and it acknowledges value is subjective (which is part of my point). Also, you are calling a scarcity of "better" land to be a non-scarcity. Scarcity of clean air is not the same as a scarcity of air altogether. A scarcity of preferable plots to other plots is still a scarcity...if all plots of land were of equal type, size, etc., and there was no way to tell them apart, and they were infinite in number, then no scarcity exits to create value. It's precisely why you don't have a market for air right now. Also, if there were infinite land of even varying kinds, there would still be no value on "better" plots, because they would be infinite...it just isn't the only kind infinitely available. In other words, the better land is not able to carry a market value, or the subsequent price, because anyone can get one for free. Just because infinite land isn't of equal type, size, etc., doesn't mean the "best" plots are in short supply of any kind. It just means you have a variety to choose from, all choices are infinitely available to you. Reread what I wrote:

To ascertain land value you must first value land, based on the utility it maximizes compared to other choices you have, and then to what degree you value it will be determined by scarcity of that land.

Maybe it wasn't explicit, but I'm certainly arguing you must value something before scarcity matters. I'm simply arguing that if there is demand for something, then the supply of it will only hold value IF it isn't ubiquitous (which makes it free, like air). If there is no scarcity for that thing at all, it won't have a value on the market. In this way, air is very "valuable" to all of us, yet has no value on any market because of its complete lack of scarcity. When pollution becomes extremely bad, and clean air is scarce, it then has a value on the market, and valuation as a society (based on millions of individual assessments of value) on clean air can be quantified (how much it is worth to a population to clean their air). BUT, until it is scarce, it has no determinable market value - it's essentially free and valueless (you may enjoy ubiquitous clean air, but it has no value on any market until it becomes rare).

You can have scarce things no one values, which would mean they lack any market value that can be determined.

You can have ubiquitous things no one values, which would mean they lack market value that can be determined.

You can have scarce or ubiquitous items that an individual first values, which would place market value that can be determined on only the scarce item (the ubiquitous item will be free).

So, yes, individuals must value something for a market value to occur...but it must also be scarce. If either thing is lacking, there is no market value.

And that brings me to the point of what I originally said...the OP cannot determine an exact market value for land in any objective way, and therefore can't determine how much of someone's wealth, income, or market share is "earned' or "unearned" because it can be shown to be derived via land use (and this can get all "6 degrees of separation" real quick, making tentative at best connections). If he can't quantify the value, the share of value that is earned vs unearned, etc., then I can't really even debate the theory. To claim there is some kind of coercion you have to quantify it (show it to be direct and measurable). Otherwise every little thing that offends people will be considered "harm".

[fisharmor]

Imagine a land mass. Imagine it has coasts, fertile plains, arid plains, mountains - all the usual variations we have on earth. Now imagine everyone gets thier own plot of land - assigned by lottery, or a land grab, it doesn't really matter. Each person can work thier land as they see fit so long as they don't harm anyone else. There are no taxes. Is everyone equally well off? Is that liberty?
No - the guys on the arid plains are struggling to feed themselves whilst some of the others are doing rather well - they've got fish nearby, or wood to use, good soil, water, minerals etc. So the poor move off thier land and become - serfs.
That's human history, that's progress and poverty and you can solve it with Georgist reforms. You cannot have liberty without these reforms.

So, I wouldn't expect you to know this, because it's only been plastered all over this site for a couple weeks now, but a bunch of regular people with rifles just chased a bunch of federal agents off of.........................
.......................
.......................
.......................an arid plain....
.....which is clearly worth more to some people than you think it should be.


At some point every statist has to back up and realize that facts trump hypotheticals.
If I'm trying to figure out how to treat my fellow man, and whether to send unbalanced sociopaths with guns and a burning desire to take out their problems on random strangers to extract money from him, then ​I'm not that likely to rely on my imagination.

[febo]

I wouldn't expect you to know this

The Bundy thing clearly points the way forward - people will get up and fight for the land, a deep connection is still there. This is why Libertarianism needs to reconnect to the land, why it needs Henry George.
"It's the Land Stupid".

[brandon]

Good to hear that.
Precentages - no idea, but that work has been done.

Meh, kinda disappointing. It sounded like you really thought this through at first.

[febo]

Meh, kinda disappointing. It sounded like you really thought this through at first.

If you want a number - it's 6%.

watch this from 21:15

[brandon]

I don't want to watch a movie and I don't think there is an exact percent that is right. I was more interested in reading well reasoned arguments about possible practical solutions.

[brandon]

My initial thoughts are that the tax would have to be a flat per acre fee to make it fair. The fee would obviously have to differ from rural farm land to NYC, so I think the fee would have to be assessed by the most local level of government. So now we only have tax money going to your municipality or city. And we may have two guys in the same city paying the same tax while one lives in a swamp next to a factory and the other lives on a mountain top with sweeping vistas.

I dunno just some food for though. There is no easy solution obviously. Seems like it would be necessary for the LVT code to get pretty complicated to be fair and work.

[erowe1]

1. The failure to tax land values is the most important reason for the many problems we face today from inequality to unemployment, from imperialism to environmental destruction, and it lies at the heart of our debt problem.

So you don't just see this tax as an improvement over the status quo. You see it as a positive good?

[erowe1]

2. Because, as the Bundy affair is highlighting one of the foundations of individual liberty is land. A society of free individuals on the one hand must defend the right to own (monopolise) land but on the other must give everyone an equal stake in the value of all land.

But you don't propose giving everyone an equal stake on the value of all land. You propose giving that to one little subset of the population, the state. It might as well be the Mafia.

[Ronin Truth]

Taxation is theft (aggression), regardless of whether it's only one tax or a hundred.

[febo]

I don't want to watch a movie and I don't think there is an exact percent that is right. I was more interested in reading well reasoned arguments about possible practical solutions.

I recommend Fred Harrison - the UK's best economist, the first economist to predict the housing crash of 08.

[Paul Or Nothing II]

Stand back, drop the sarcasm for a moment. What to libertarians want? No taxes. What does LVT give you? 1 tax. Hey, not bad for a bureaucratic reform eh?
Who pays most of the LVT? Landowners - ie the very richest - the 1%, the Donald Trumps to be specific. That's not bad either eh?(?) Who no longer pays any tax? Workers and businesses - that's good for the economy and for employment levels.
Now, can you see any voting potential in all of this, can you see any peaceful-revolutionary potential in it? Can you see why the land got written out of economics and why Henry George got written out of history?

Well, this right here is the crux of the matter! Many "Libertarians" (ones that support Ron Paul, Austrian Economics, etc) support equal rights & fairness for ALL, they don't support use of force against ANYBODY (rich or poor), they don't think that being rich is a negative thing or seek to punish the rich or to steal from them; on the other hand, Georgists are basically your typical class-warfare-waging progressive commies...... with a weird fetish for land! So it shouldn't surprise anybody with an iota of functional brain that libertarians don't give a $hit about George.

Taxation is theft (aggression), regardless of whether it's only one tax or a hundred.

Bingo!