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It makes no sense in a world where collectives of people can make sane decisions in a timely manner. We don't live in that world - for anything to get done, th
by mwint 3y ago
It makes no sense in a world where collectives of people can make sane decisions in a timely manner.
We don't live in that world - for anything to get done, there must be a very small group of people with authority to decide what color to paint the bike shed. Land ownership is important exactly because it gives responsibility over what happens in a geographic area to a single entity, and excludes most people from providing paralyzing "input".
- tshaddox 3y agoDon’t collectives of people still need to decide how property rights work and how they’re enforced?
- mwint 3y agoIndeed - but it's much easier to get a collective of people to discuss something once in general terms ("property rights") than every little decision ("we can't build the factory until we agree on the color of the paint in the breakroom")
- xbar 3y agoCollectives make a lot of decisions in a timely manner. Why not, specifically, about land use? When did the collectives all "run out of time" to decide who gets to manage land, as a specific resource? 1980? 4000 BC?
- nunuvit 3y agoYou'll get more out of the article if you read it as more of a philosophical exploration than a literal policy proposal. You can share similar values without reaching the same conclusion.
- mwint 3y agoThese philosophical explorations have a really nasty pattern of being picked up as the policy platform of political strongmen riding a wave of discontentment to power. Then the philosophical exploration becomes poorly-implemented policy.
- nunuvit 3y agoMaybe future historians will appreciate your explanation of something that everyone today knows. Nobody is stopping you from talking about what you value and how to incorporate those values into policy design. Other people are participating in public discourse the way they want. If you don't participate the way you want, that's on you.
- kqr 3y agoMaybe you don't live in that world, but I sure do. Only few people actually care enough to show up for any decision, and they can usually come to agreement fairly quickly. The only times I have experienced trouble has been when people have had the prejudice that "democracy obviously doesn't work" so they make a big stink about not getting their way (how ironic!) instead of focusing on the decision at hand. Those people can usually be trained out of that mindset with a little skilled facilitation. Those that cannot are free to move somewhere where a third party owns the land they're on.
- nabergh 3y agoThe article proposes taxing the unimproved value of land at 100% which I think gets around that problem totally.
- mindslight 3y agoI agree with your sentiment, but it's not really relevant here. Georgism doesn't say much about restricting the right to use a piece of land. Rather it's about what it costs to maintain that right (and isn't actually a huge departure from the current state of things where that cost is generally nonzero except in the rare cases of allodial title). For example, homeowners associations are a significant source of tyranny, that often literally regulate what color you can paint your shed. It's probable that under Georgism the lack of desire to keep one's abstract property value high would lead to a lot fewer of them, and homeowners would actually end up more free.