Originally Posted by
Steven Douglas
Thank you, Roy. Now I know that you're a lying, state-worshiping, wealth-worshiping shill for fascism, and privilege for wealth, which you conflate as being synonymous with productivity. By your reckoning, banks and insurance companies are among the most "productive hands" in the world.
When it comes to land, you don't give two $#@!s about individual liberties, or individual rights of any kind. You have co-opted all of these as being neatly collectivized, owned by "society", or "the state" - as if they were the same, and as if that also meant individuals.
You see private landlords evicting people who have long occupied their dwellings, and don't have any problem with this at all. You are not opposed to rents, nor are you even in favor of giving people a mechanism that would allow them to free themselves from paying rent. You only want to change landlords to one that is public, which you think would be more benevolent. You want to change the dynamic so that government executes all evictions at the behest of the rich (who may or may not be productive), and only because government -- the state -- stands to gain from it.
I would actually do quite well under your plan, Roy. Not the poor, or any of the laboring productive hands, which you would marginalize and squeeze into little boxes, while allowing me to lay out a red carpet for myself, with enormous "low density", higher value land area. Not as a matter of right, but privilege -- like I can already do now. That's the privilege of wealth, Roy. It works much better than rights. Thank you.
Not a wealthier "society", Roy. A wealthier state.
I know you can't wrap your collectivist head around this, but society and the state are not the same thing; they never were, and never will be, regardless of the political regime, even if it pretended (as ours pretends now) to be "democratic". And what you propose is neither communism nor is it socialism, as some have charged. It is fascism. You are a fascist, Roy. You would reward whomever does best for the good for the state, which is not the people, and not the rights of productive individuals, including their putative "natural liberty right" to land use.
The smallest part of the LVT you propose only indirectly goes back to "productive hands", Roy. Hell, the banks, insurance companies and our current government combined can and DO make all of those claims now -- that every good thing that was siphoned away from them was ostensibly spent on something that benefited them: land sequestered by the BLM, warfare, welfare, infrastructure, you name it. Politicians can boldly claim that this was all done in the interests of those who are either a) most productive, or b) suffer the most. With the middle class left in limbo, forced to be either one or the other, naturally and by design.
Even moneys used to "build infrastructure" results in something much better for me, as an owner of firms, than it ever could be for the actual productive hands who work for me. Only a TINY portion of that so-called "publicly created value" goes back to those who are actually most productive, who you claim need to be compensated for their deprivation, as they are dispossessed of land they cannot afford to occupy or even work under your system. The rest - the real wealth - goes to the state, and to whomever has the best political and economic ties with the state. (which I seriously doubt would be you)
That is A Very Good Deal for me, Roy. I can employ a thousand "productive hands", as a small part of my LVT goes to pay for cheap, high density, vertically-stacked cracker boxes on the outskirts. Like Hong Kong. And they will still have to pay rent, given that their exemption won't be any guarantee that they can actually live anywhere rent free.
Meanwhile, I can keep a giant spacious penthouse with a gorgeous view of Hong Kong bay for myself. Why? Because my employees - the people that I also rent, who actually are productive, in my name and on my behalf - aren't nearly as productive as your system presumes that I am. I don't have to compensate them for anything you think I have stolen from them - I can compensate the state instead, because the individual people themselves are presumed to be the least contributors of all that "publicly created value". The only evidence they can possibly have that they "contributed more" is wealth itself. Hard specie. Show us the money. Most will never be able to do that, and barring that, we can safely assume that they contributed very little to all the "publicly created value".
Thank you, Roy, and good luck getting to where I would be under this wonderful system of yours, because I don't think you would be "productive" enough OR politically connected enough, even under your own system, to enjoy a piece of what I would have as a matter of privilege.
Your system is nothing more than a symbiosis of commerce pyramids and a fascist state, in a way that feeds both. It siphons actual productivity from people while claiming to act in their interests, all under color of protecting their collectivized "natural liberty rights".
As for the poor and working classes -- let them eat infrastructure.
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