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Interesting line of thought. What’s your take on Henry George? (Arguing for distributing land rent equally, which would counter your concerns somewhat)
by CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
Interesting line of thought. What’s your take on Henry George? (Arguing for distributing land rent equally, which would counter your concerns somewhat)
- logfromblammo 7y agoI think Georgism has a calculation problem, and furthermore I don't believe one can model the supply of land as a perfect vertical supply curve. I don't think that it is possible to fairly assess the value of a location separately from the permanent improvements to the land. And I don't like systems that produce scenarios wherein a hostile party could potentially make adversarial plays to force a disadvantageous sale onto a cooperating person and profit from it. I'm not entirely sure that the problem George was trying to tackle is even fixable. A human as an economic entity is a bundle of connections that are sometimes dependent upon distance, and sometimes dependent upon time, and other times dependent on information. These threads tangle in a way that cannot be easily unraveled. And frankly, I'm not convinced that land value is even the most significant keystone factor in modern economies any more. The new land rush seems to be in intellectual property. Having already perfected the extraction of rents from the biological necessities of breathing, drinking, eating, and sleeping, the rentiers have climbed higher on the hierarchy of needs by establishing privileged positions in education, social connections, and entertainment.