6 ms·

> I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. The argument is that good business spot

by lmm 3y ago

> I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If anything taxing space use makes more sense than taxing profits; a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone. From the article: > “A car wash does not provide a lot of jobs for the community, and they take up a lot of space,” Broska said. “If you want to invest your dollars into a car wash, then God bless you. But at the same time, I’m responsible for 17,500 people and have to be cognizant of their wishes.” > the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site

BenFranklin100 3y ago
To add to this, LVTs encourage more homes near job rich areas of the city. This in turn means more people can live nearby and have a shot at a job.
brailsafe 3y ago
> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone. I think that attributes a lot more to profitability than such a metric deserves. Perhaps in a more narrow and ruthlessly capitalistic sense profitability signifies that a business is doing what it's trying to do well, but it's a big leap to get from there to how well its serving whatever is considered to be a community these days. Among other problems, just because some tiny amount of that money conceivably stays around in the region and people can buy stuff does not mean that the cost of the business being there isn't quite a lot higher, hence the term tragedy of the commons and the hollowing out of let's say America
bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well This argument reminds of the argument googlers to explain why placing paid ads ahead of organic results is better for the user: they say thay if someone can pay more for an ad than means that can get more money from the user, and therefore the user likes it more. Lol No, profit is profit, it doesn't mean anything else.
- brhsagain 3y ago
  What’s wrong with that argument? Doesn’t getting more money from the user mean that the user is choosing to pay more, which reveals their preference?
  - gotbeans 3y ago
    No, it does not. That the users end up paying more in no way means or should be implied that they _choose_ to pay more. If cheaper options are made less accessible or clearer, and customers are intentionally mislead to more expensive products, as a result they will pay more too.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ufocia 3y ago
      Also, there is a cost associated with searching. Consumers may intentionally forego the effort for perceived low marginal gains (especially in nominal rather than percentage terms, e.g. "I'm not going to waste my time to save a quarter." even if the quarter is a significant percentage difference). This is one of the factors in the success of Amazon. People "value" convenience.
    - Gormo 3y ago
      But people will not pay more than a product is worth to them. The fact that they are willing to purchase the product at a higher price point indeed does imply that that price point is still lower than the consumption utility of the product for them.
  - kmacdough 3y ago
    *In a healthy competitive market with a consumer-base that's well educated on potential consequences of their purchases. I do agree with the principle that a space-hogging marginally profitable business is detrimental to a community. Just that the opposite is not necessarily true; profitability does not imply beneficiality. Humans do not fit the model of "rational self-interested agent" commonly applied for economic models. Gambling and addictive substances are two hugely profitable business sectors that would not exist if it we're remotely accurate. I'll also preempt someone's inevitable assertion that the burden of verification should lie on the consumer. In informationally antagonistic environment, it's absurd to expect each individual to individually vet every service and product. That's a phenomenal waste of labor that favors only well-funded organizations practiced in deception. Any rational group would pool resources and have a single org do the research and share it with everyone. Oops we've reinvented a government.
OJFord 3y ago
> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it? I don't understand saying it's such valuable land and detaching that from what a business was actually able to pay for it.
- ufocia 3y ago
  Low value is not synonymous with low profit. Also, the arguments made against car washes are the same as those made against bank branches which also generate relatively little sales tax. Anyway, if there is a surplus of car washes they will eventually dry up.
  - a_gnostic 3y ago
    Bank branches can be replaced with technology. Maybe the problem of car washes has a similar solution, or maybe it ain't a problem.
- lmm 3y ago
  > If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it? The land continues to appreciate, so the business can hold it based on its value. Especially if they've locked in a mortgage at a low rate. The car wash "business" can profit through land appreciation, which they don't pay any tax on (another flaw in the regulatory regime), and free-ride while the spot becomes more valuable through the efforts of others.
kriops 3y ago
You can't just assert that it makes sense when answering why it makes sense. If you are right, then the owner is losing out on money by operating a car wash, which by the way is their moral and legal right. If you think you can provide more value with the same space – offer to buy it.
- justwool 3y ago
  [flagged]
Gormo 3y ago
> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything? > If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying more for it. The law of supply and demand already does what you are proposing. How does paying additional fees to a separate institution with its own perverse incentives add anything to the equation? > the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site This was the personal opinion of a local bureaucrat who thought his personal opinion should be policy. That's why the company is suing.
- lmm 3y ago
  > I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything? Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land. > But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying more for it. The law of supply and demand already does what you are proposing. Supply and demand doesn't work for land because there's no new supply. No matter how much the price goes up, people aren't going to make more.
  - Gormo 3y ago
    > Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land I don't see how there's anything particularly special about land that warrants construing it as something fundamentally different from any other scarce resource. > Supply and demand doesn't work for land because there's no new supply. I'm not sure that I agree that there is no new supply of land in an economic sense -- developments that increase the productivity of land use are functionally equivalent to those that increase the physical supply -- but regardless, the law of supply and demand operates the same whether the supply on the market is new or old.

by lmm 3y ago

BenFranklin100 3y ago

To add to this, LVTs encourage more homes near job rich areas of the city. This in turn means more people can live nearby and have a shot at a job.

brailsafe 3y ago

> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone. I think that attributes a lot more to profitability than such a metric deserves. Perhaps in a more narrow and ruthlessly capitalistic sense profitability signifies that a business is doing what it's trying to do well, but it's a big leap to get from there to how well its serving whatever is considered to be a community these days. Among other problems, just because some tiny amount of that money conceivably stays around in the region and people can buy stuff does not mean that the cost of the business being there isn't quite a lot higher, hence the term tragedy of the commons and the hollowing out of let's say America

bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago

> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well This argument reminds of the argument googlers to explain why placing paid ads ahead of organic results is better for the user: they say thay if someone can pay more for an ad than means that can get more money from the user, and therefore the user likes it more. Lol No, profit is profit, it doesn't mean anything else.

brhsagain 3y ago
What’s wrong with that argument? Doesn’t getting more money from the user mean that the user is choosing to pay more, which reveals their preference?
- gotbeans 3y ago
  No, it does not. That the users end up paying more in no way means or should be implied that they _choose_ to pay more. If cheaper options are made less accessible or clearer, and customers are intentionally mislead to more expensive products, as a result they will pay more too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ufocia 3y ago
    Also, there is a cost associated with searching. Consumers may intentionally forego the effort for perceived low marginal gains (especially in nominal rather than percentage terms, e.g. "I'm not going to waste my time to save a quarter." even if the quarter is a significant percentage difference). This is one of the factors in the success of Amazon. People "value" convenience.
  - Gormo 3y ago
    But people will not pay more than a product is worth to them. The fact that they are willing to purchase the product at a higher price point indeed does imply that that price point is still lower than the consumption utility of the product for them.
- kmacdough 3y ago
  *In a healthy competitive market with a consumer-base that's well educated on potential consequences of their purchases. I do agree with the principle that a space-hogging marginally profitable business is detrimental to a community. Just that the opposite is not necessarily true; profitability does not imply beneficiality. Humans do not fit the model of "rational self-interested agent" commonly applied for economic models. Gambling and addictive substances are two hugely profitable business sectors that would not exist if it we're remotely accurate. I'll also preempt someone's inevitable assertion that the burden of verification should lie on the consumer. In informationally antagonistic environment, it's absurd to expect each individual to individually vet every service and product. That's a phenomenal waste of labor that favors only well-funded organizations practiced in deception. Any rational group would pool resources and have a single org do the research and share it with everyone. Oops we've reinvented a government.

OJFord 3y ago

> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it? I don't understand saying it's such valuable land and detaching that from what a business was actually able to pay for it.

ufocia 3y ago
Low value is not synonymous with low profit. Also, the arguments made against car washes are the same as those made against bank branches which also generate relatively little sales tax. Anyway, if there is a surplus of car washes they will eventually dry up.
- a_gnostic 3y ago
  Bank branches can be replaced with technology. Maybe the problem of car washes has a similar solution, or maybe it ain't a problem.
lmm 3y ago
> If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it? The land continues to appreciate, so the business can hold it based on its value. Especially if they've locked in a mortgage at a low rate. The car wash "business" can profit through land appreciation, which they don't pay any tax on (another flaw in the regulatory regime), and free-ride while the spot becomes more valuable through the efforts of others.

kriops 3y ago

You can't just assert that it makes sense when answering why it makes sense. If you are right, then the owner is losing out on money by operating a car wash, which by the way is their moral and legal right. If you think you can provide more value with the same space – offer to buy it.

justwool 3y ago
[flagged]

Gormo 3y ago

> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything? > If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying more for it. The law of supply and demand already does what you are proposing. How does paying additional fees to a separate institution with its own perverse incentives add anything to the equation? > the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site This was the personal opinion of a local bureaucrat who thought his personal opinion should be policy. That's why the company is suing.

lmm 3y ago
> I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything? Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land. > But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying more for it. The law of supply and demand already does what you are proposing. Supply and demand doesn't work for land because there's no new supply. No matter how much the price goes up, people aren't going to make more.
- Gormo 3y ago
  > Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land I don't see how there's anything particularly special about land that warrants construing it as something fundamentally different from any other scarce resource. > Supply and demand doesn't work for land because there's no new supply. I'm not sure that I agree that there is no new supply of land in an economic sense -- developments that increase the productivity of land use are functionally equivalent to those that increase the physical supply -- but regardless, the law of supply and demand operates the same whether the supply on the market is new or old.