We can still do that under a land value tax system. Property managers are good; the argument being made here is that a "house" is really two assets: the land, a

We can still do that under a land value tax system. Property managers are good; the argument being made here is that a "house" is really two assets: the land, and the capital of the building itself. The latter is a depreciating asset, the former doesn't behave like capital at all, because, among other reasons, it can't be produced. Property managers receive a return on their labor (services to their tenants) and their investments of capital (maintenance and improvements to the building). Conventional landlords are a mixture of property managers and "pure" landlords. A "pure" landlord makes money only off of gatekeeping access to the land. The fact that it is entirely possible for a landlord to outsource property management to a 3rd party and still have a profitable venture is a telling sign. In a land value tax system, you would only be able to profit from property management, not from "pure" landlordism of holding a scarce asset nobody can make and waiting for it to go up in value or collecting rent to let people access it. I was interviewed by Jerusalem in the piece and have written an in-depth series with many citations from the empirical literature about this subject: www.gameofrent.com