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Funny how this utopian sounding idea is just a regular market economy without sales and income tax. Like the US before 1913. Too bad every time one interacts w

Funny how this utopian sounding idea is just a regular market economy without sales and income tax. Like the US before 1913. Too bad every time one interacts with someone else people with guns and prisons demand about 50% of the transaction. Set income and sales tax to zero and this could easily happen everywhere. It would be cool if some decent sized country would try it and use a land tax to fund the government.

cornholio 8y ago
A land tax trickles down as increased agricultural and housing prices. So it's strongly recessive, that is, it affects the poor to a much greater proportion than the rich. The US before 1913 was a largely agricultural nation with strong equality due to fair capital allocation, free land distributed to homesteaders, manifest destiny and all that. Dispensing current means of income redistribution would mean reverting to a much more feudal, almost primitive state. The vast majority of people would have no agricultural property and no capital, just wages paid by immensely wealthy global capitalists that wouldn't owe any taxes.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  The idea that all taxes are ultimately paid for by consumers is dangerous, stupid and misleading. If companies/people could charge you more for whatever you are buying, they would. Taxation is largely paid for by reduced profitability, not increased prices. Land taxes are one of the only ways to tax non-productive, rentier style wealth that has lots of fixed assets, and merely sits on them extacting money with very little positive economic input. Since it is they who are typically the most responsible for soaring housing and real estate prices (they buy properties and then do nothing with them, often times not even renting them out), to suggest such taxes are "strongly regressive" is pretty much exactly the opposite of reality. Under a system with strong land taxes, such parties are incentivised strongly to either sell to people who want the land more (can make more money off of it by increasing density, thus pay more taxes) or to do so themselves. In a world without property tax, they are incentivised to just sit on the property forever, and do nothing to it, waiting for a huge payday far into the future.
  - cornholio 8y ago
    Agricultural producers have razor thin margins almost anywhere in the world and face strong international competition. The rent seeking landowner gouging consumers through food prices is an ideological fantasy. Quite the opposite, there is a strong tendency to overproduction and subsidies. A large land tax in such an ECON101 postcard-perfect market will immediately increase the costs of inputs to the point where production no longer makes economic sense. Either through decreased production or tariff protectionism the food prices will rise, passing the tax to consumers. That's not say taxes are always passed down to consumers, that's a pure straw-man you conjure to hurl insults. But in these two cases, they are, to an overwhelming degree.
    - haihaibye 8y ago
      A land tax would reduce the price of land, and farmers would borrow less in the future to buy it. In effect it would probably be a one off hit to real estate prices. I think the distortions of a land tax are better than others and support it. I own real estate but it's only 5x my wage, the current system sucks - taxing human effort and creativity is about the worst thing you can tax.
      - cornholio 8y ago
        Clearly, a tax on arable land would devalue it. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't also be reflected in food prices - and that is the absolute worst thing you can tax. As for income taxes, they don't really tax creativity and human effort, except if you think of the world as a perfect meritocratic utopia where everyone has infinite positive liberties. But in that case, you wouldn't really need to tax anybody. The revenue of an individual is generally strongly dependent on the social infrastructure they use to generate it. The same person, transplanted into another area of the world with less functional social institutions will generate orders of magnitude less money. For example, an American or British medic moving to the peaceful and English speaking country of Ghana: same creativity and effort, 5-10x less revenue, purchasing parity adjusted. It's only natural then for him to pay for his access to the rich society, thus enabling the public investments that allow such a rich society to exist in the fist place.
yourapostasy 8y ago
Co-ops can establish private currency linked to trust scoring along many different criteria among a group-selected and group-maintained trust ontology (different types of exchange transactions can be scored along different trust metrics). Link an exchange rate to the "outside" currency that is adjusted by the high trust factor, and due to a far more frictionless trust environment, argue that a price in the private currency is 1/100 X, while the price in the outside currency is X. Today's currencies fail to drag along with them all the logistical details market participants are really interested in about an exchange; that's why we have crude hacks like review platforms, credit scoring, insurance claims reports, etc. They're extremely information lossy exchange mechanisms, and these logistical details only hazily emerge after a long time in a fast-moving market, always a rear-view mirror picture of the market.

cornholio 8y ago

A land tax trickles down as increased agricultural and housing prices. So it's strongly recessive, that is, it affects the poor to a much greater proportion than the rich. The US before 1913 was a largely agricultural nation with strong equality due to fair capital allocation, free land distributed to homesteaders, manifest destiny and all that. Dispensing current means of income redistribution would mean reverting to a much more feudal, almost primitive state. The vast majority of people would have no agricultural property and no capital, just wages paid by immensely wealthy global capitalists that wouldn't owe any taxes.

throwaway2048 8y ago
The idea that all taxes are ultimately paid for by consumers is dangerous, stupid and misleading. If companies/people could charge you more for whatever you are buying, they would. Taxation is largely paid for by reduced profitability, not increased prices. Land taxes are one of the only ways to tax non-productive, rentier style wealth that has lots of fixed assets, and merely sits on them extacting money with very little positive economic input. Since it is they who are typically the most responsible for soaring housing and real estate prices (they buy properties and then do nothing with them, often times not even renting them out), to suggest such taxes are "strongly regressive" is pretty much exactly the opposite of reality. Under a system with strong land taxes, such parties are incentivised strongly to either sell to people who want the land more (can make more money off of it by increasing density, thus pay more taxes) or to do so themselves. In a world without property tax, they are incentivised to just sit on the property forever, and do nothing to it, waiting for a huge payday far into the future.
- cornholio 8y ago
  Agricultural producers have razor thin margins almost anywhere in the world and face strong international competition. The rent seeking landowner gouging consumers through food prices is an ideological fantasy. Quite the opposite, there is a strong tendency to overproduction and subsidies. A large land tax in such an ECON101 postcard-perfect market will immediately increase the costs of inputs to the point where production no longer makes economic sense. Either through decreased production or tariff protectionism the food prices will rise, passing the tax to consumers. That's not say taxes are always passed down to consumers, that's a pure straw-man you conjure to hurl insults. But in these two cases, they are, to an overwhelming degree.
  - haihaibye 8y ago
    A land tax would reduce the price of land, and farmers would borrow less in the future to buy it. In effect it would probably be a one off hit to real estate prices. I think the distortions of a land tax are better than others and support it. I own real estate but it's only 5x my wage, the current system sucks - taxing human effort and creativity is about the worst thing you can tax.
    - cornholio 8y ago
      Clearly, a tax on arable land would devalue it. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't also be reflected in food prices - and that is the absolute worst thing you can tax. As for income taxes, they don't really tax creativity and human effort, except if you think of the world as a perfect meritocratic utopia where everyone has infinite positive liberties. But in that case, you wouldn't really need to tax anybody. The revenue of an individual is generally strongly dependent on the social infrastructure they use to generate it. The same person, transplanted into another area of the world with less functional social institutions will generate orders of magnitude less money. For example, an American or British medic moving to the peaceful and English speaking country of Ghana: same creativity and effort, 5-10x less revenue, purchasing parity adjusted. It's only natural then for him to pay for his access to the rich society, thus enabling the public investments that allow such a rich society to exist in the fist place.

yourapostasy 8y ago

Co-ops can establish private currency linked to trust scoring along many different criteria among a group-selected and group-maintained trust ontology (different types of exchange transactions can be scored along different trust metrics). Link an exchange rate to the "outside" currency that is adjusted by the high trust factor, and due to a far more frictionless trust environment, argue that a price in the private currency is 1/100 X, while the price in the outside currency is X. Today's currencies fail to drag along with them all the logistical details market participants are really interested in about an exchange; that's why we have crude hacks like review platforms, credit scoring, insurance claims reports, etc. They're extremely information lossy exchange mechanisms, and these logistical details only hazily emerge after a long time in a fast-moving market, always a rear-view mirror picture of the market.