Originally Posted by
J-Lib
People who reflexively oppose the Georgist idea (as I did for years, on the quest for the mythical "allodial title" or whatever form many libertarians and constitutionalists suppose to confer the absolute, inalienable right to own unlimited land with no tax or fee) should take the time to research what the great classical liberal economists / philosophers including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, and John Locke thought about the rightness of using land as a revenue source for public/common goods, or the "absoluteness" of the claim of an individual to appropriate land with no obligation to the greater good.
Heck, just look at the revenue clause in the Articles of Confederation.
They should also research what Milton Friedman, William Buckley Jr., and Albert Jay Nock had to say about the issue.
I think the choice really comes down to this. We can either a) use LVT or a similar method to stop speculation in land (which makes a free market economy impossible), and to replace destructive taxes, or
b) just accept always having blight and underdevelopment in our towns and cities, severe economic inequality, an anemic free market undermined by speculation, a boom-bust economy, an oppressive welfare state, and .... massive taxes on our productivity.
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