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> Georgism is fundamentally flawed in its precepts, and would result in a rent-seeking political state acting as a monopolist landlord. Why would a democratic

> Georgism is fundamentally flawed in its precepts, and would result in a rent-seeking political state acting as a monopolist landlord. Why would a democratic society tax itself needlessly? LVT is by definition limited to a certain proportion. The entire thesis of my OP is that the last 200 years of protections of property rights are now quickly leading to a "rent-seeking state by a plurality of various oligarchies". At least the political state uniformly distributes power instead of dividing the country between land/home owners and renters. > People should have a right to use the property they own in the way that generates maximum value for them A LVT only encourages you to do so efficiently... you could easily move to a rural/undesirable area and have all that freedom and now much lower overall tax rate. If you aren't paying the LVT back to society you are by definition depriving someone else of the very freedom you wanted to protect. It's a fantasy to think that everyone can have the property freedoms you describe.

Gormo 3y ago
> Why would a democratic society tax itself needlessly? LVT is by definition limited to a certain proportion. There is no such thing as a democratic society, only democratic states, where the state is a single institution within society, not some distillation of the whole. Political states are administered by particular fallible humans, operate under a complex of incentives that is not necessarily aligned with the interests of the surrounding society, and operate under processes that are often subject to manipulation by factions with ulterior motives. The examples of democratic political states acting in ways that are either unrelated to or even antagonistic to the presumed interests of the societies they operate within are endless, and arguably much more prevalent than examples of markets producing outcomes that are not aligned with the interests of their particpants. > The entire thesis of my OP is that the last 200 years of protections of property rights are now quickly leading to a "rent-seeking state by a plurality of various oligarchies". I'd attribute that outcome to the last 200 years of erosion of property rights, largely by well-intentioned people making severe mistakes on account of failing to reconcile theoretical propositions with concrete reality. It seems very bizarre indeed to recognize the problem of a "rent-seeking state by a plurality of various oligarchies" and to propose as a solution that the very state in question should act as everyone's de facto landlord.

Gormo 3y ago

> Why would a democratic society tax itself needlessly? LVT is by definition limited to a certain proportion. There is no such thing as a democratic society, only democratic states, where the state is a single institution within society, not some distillation of the whole. Political states are administered by particular fallible humans, operate under a complex of incentives that is not necessarily aligned with the interests of the surrounding society, and operate under processes that are often subject to manipulation by factions with ulterior motives. The examples of democratic political states acting in ways that are either unrelated to or even antagonistic to the presumed interests of the societies they operate within are endless, and arguably much more prevalent than examples of markets producing outcomes that are not aligned with the interests of their particpants. > The entire thesis of my OP is that the last 200 years of protections of property rights are now quickly leading to a "rent-seeking state by a plurality of various oligarchies". I'd attribute that outcome to the last 200 years of erosion of property rights, largely by well-intentioned people making severe mistakes on account of failing to reconcile theoretical propositions with concrete reality. It seems very bizarre indeed to recognize the problem of a "rent-seeking state by a plurality of various oligarchies" and to propose as a solution that the very state in question should act as everyone's de facto landlord.