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I happen to think that if you want to maximize human potential across the board, you need to take away the threats to existence at the individual level - meanin

I happen to think that if you want to maximize human potential across the board, you need to take away the threats to existence at the individual level - meaning a place to live, food, healthcare, education. If your basic needs are met, theoretically, you're free to explore and innovate (or sit on your ass, but I think the propensity for that is overblown). That's not just to help poor people either, that could boost your middle class output as well - use me for an example, I'm educated, relatively advanced in my career for my age, but I'd probably be doing something different if I didn't have to worry about student loans to repay and a roof over my family's head. Maybe that something different would be more impactful, maybe it wouldn't, but it'd be different. I digress. I really hope to see UBI attempted somewhere to see if it works. We do already tax land in most (all?) of the developed world. I honestly have no idea of the tax structure on land in 15th century Florence, but I'm inclined to check that out after work today. Of course, goals vary across humans. Advancing the whole at the relative expense of another makes the people who are already ahead a bit nervous. That's not wrong, either, it's just human nature. Advance the baseline far enough and it begins to matter less.

huherto 10y ago
AFAIK, we have tax on property. We tax the land plus the value added to the land by building on it. IMH, we shouldn't tax the construction since that is disincentive for economic activity. But the land? Some land just becomes valuable because it is near other valuable properties.
- aaron-santos 10y ago
  Georgism gets a lot of support on HN, but how exactly would the unimproved value of land be determined? Similar to the appraisal system we have in place for houses, or something different?
  - huherto 10y ago
    It is definitely an interesting problem. Perhaps a function based on the travel distance from where the rest of the people are living or working ? Sort of like page rank.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      So land in Detroit and San Francisco, which have similar populations, should be valued about the same. (Yes, there are probably more people in the Bay area overall, but to a first approximation.) And coastal property on the southern Maine coast should have a low value. Ultimately, it's market value. You can subtract the value of the building but it's actually hard to separate the two.
      - huherto 10y ago
        Well San Francisco is on the coast. By sea, it has shorter travel times to all the cities in the West Coast, Vancouver and a continent called Asia.
      - vintermann 10y ago
        Instead of distance to people, how about distance to people times dollars?
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I think you would have to take the current market value of the land, then subtract an estimate of what it would cost to re-do the improvements at today's prices. The insured value of structures may be an easy way to get at that estimate. For instance, a lot with a house on it that costs $250k, when the structure would cost $180k to reconstruct from scratch, implies that an adjacent empty lot of the same size would be $70k. But that's not entirely unimproved. There still may be water, power, telecoms, and sewer utility hookups, which certainly qualify as improvements. So you estimate the cost to re-wire/re-pipe the entire neighborhood from the utility, and divide that across all the lots, weighted by area. And being close to a road is an improvement... Professional appraisers would most likely just make a plausible-sounding number up, and collude with one another to ensure consistency over an entire county. It's the easy way.
    - DasIch 10y ago
      The idea of land value tax is to create value by building on that land. Decreasing the tax when there is nothing on the land goes against that.
  - sgnelson 10y ago
    Just as an FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
> If your basic needs are met, theoretically, you're free to explore and innovate (or sit on your ass, but I think the propensity for that is overblown). It's a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. You also need world class free education, and a networking system that tries to bring the most inventive people together. I'm not sure if the propensity for empty hedonism is overblown or not. It's hard to imagine what would happen in a system with open economic freedom and self-determination, because it's never been attempted before. I've seen estimates that maybe only 10% of the population is even remotely innovative. A lot of people seem to want to have someone telling them what to do with their time. But is that because of the emotional scarring left by an economically abusive upbringing, or is it innate? No one knows.

huherto 10y ago

AFAIK, we have tax on property. We tax the land plus the value added to the land by building on it. IMH, we shouldn't tax the construction since that is disincentive for economic activity. But the land? Some land just becomes valuable because it is near other valuable properties.

aaron-santos 10y ago
Georgism gets a lot of support on HN, but how exactly would the unimproved value of land be determined? Similar to the appraisal system we have in place for houses, or something different?
- huherto 10y ago
  It is definitely an interesting problem. Perhaps a function based on the travel distance from where the rest of the people are living or working ? Sort of like page rank.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    So land in Detroit and San Francisco, which have similar populations, should be valued about the same. (Yes, there are probably more people in the Bay area overall, but to a first approximation.) And coastal property on the southern Maine coast should have a low value. Ultimately, it's market value. You can subtract the value of the building but it's actually hard to separate the two.
    - huherto 10y ago
      Well San Francisco is on the coast. By sea, it has shorter travel times to all the cities in the West Coast, Vancouver and a continent called Asia.
    - vintermann 10y ago
      Instead of distance to people, how about distance to people times dollars?
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I think you would have to take the current market value of the land, then subtract an estimate of what it would cost to re-do the improvements at today's prices. The insured value of structures may be an easy way to get at that estimate. For instance, a lot with a house on it that costs $250k, when the structure would cost $180k to reconstruct from scratch, implies that an adjacent empty lot of the same size would be $70k. But that's not entirely unimproved. There still may be water, power, telecoms, and sewer utility hookups, which certainly qualify as improvements. So you estimate the cost to re-wire/re-pipe the entire neighborhood from the utility, and divide that across all the lots, weighted by area. And being close to a road is an improvement... Professional appraisers would most likely just make a plausible-sounding number up, and collude with one another to ensure consistency over an entire county. It's the easy way.
  - DasIch 10y ago
    The idea of land value tax is to create value by building on that land. Decreasing the tax when there is nothing on the land goes against that.
- sgnelson 10y ago
  Just as an FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

> If your basic needs are met, theoretically, you're free to explore and innovate (or sit on your ass, but I think the propensity for that is overblown). It's a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. You also need world class free education, and a networking system that tries to bring the most inventive people together. I'm not sure if the propensity for empty hedonism is overblown or not. It's hard to imagine what would happen in a system with open economic freedom and self-determination, because it's never been attempted before. I've seen estimates that maybe only 10% of the population is even remotely innovative. A lot of people seem to want to have someone telling them what to do with their time. But is that because of the emotional scarring left by an economically abusive upbringing, or is it innate? No one knows.