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You don't see any alternatives because you are not challenging the premise of private property enforced by a state. That is a very strong assumption that preclu
by danharaj 11y ago
You don't see any alternatives because you are not challenging the premise of private property enforced by a state. That is a very strong assumption that precludes most possibilities. And state property is just a degenerate form of private property where one entity owns everything.
- CydeWeys 11y agoSo what exactly are you proposing then? If no one can own anything then the best available will be little more than tents; think nomadic hunter-gatherer societies.
- danharaj 11y agoThat's an incredible statement, what's your support for it?
- CydeWeys 11y agoHow about you answer one of my questions before you ask me yet another one. What exactly are you proposing if neither people nor government are allowed to own property? I'm not aware of any such scheme in all of modern civilization. The onus is on you to explain.
- danharaj 11y agoI think that's a very open ended question, but a very good scholarly source describing alternative systems to governing resources that isn't too radical but is also substantially different from privatization and market systems is "Governing the Commons" by Elinor Ostrom. She's got a Nobel prize in economics if that lends her work any credibility.
- tamana 11y agoLand-Value Tax. Landlord makes money by improving the land and providing services to residents, not by merely owning land in perpetuity. Land is common wealth.
- CydeWeys 11y agoSo I'll admit that personally I'm intrigued by land-value tax, but it's not an answer to the other guy's question. He was precluding all public and private land ownership. There can't be taxes on land of any kind if no one owns anything and no ownership is enforced.
- undersuit 11y agoWhy can't there be taxes on land and no ownership? You can't tax land use? Are all the shelters floating above the land? No records? What's the problem that makes taxing land with no ownership untenable?
- CydeWeys 11y agoThere wouldn't be any shelters on unowned land because it would be foolish to improve it if anyone could take your improvements from you at a moment's notice. Now you need a government to enforce exclusive use of the land by a given person, and guess what, that's ownership.
- undersuit 11y agoBut you're paying taxes on the shelter. Your shelter. If someone takes your improvement from you that's theft. We have laws regarding theft in most countries do we not?
- CydeWeys 11y agoIf something can be stolen from you, then you own it. You're trying to have it both ways by playing with semantics. A land value tax charges taxes for owning land. Now you're saying that it wouldn't be taxes on the land, but rather, taxes on improvements. Then it's no longer a land value tax at all then. The whole point of a land-value tax is that the tax reflects the potential value of the land, regardless of any improvements that might be on it, e.g. the Empire State Building or a flat parking lot would owe the same amount of LVT in midtown Manhattan. What you are proposing is a regular property tax, which does take improvements into account.