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I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking,

I’ve read it and you still are just engaging in nonsensical special pleading. In Smith’s conception, a free market was to be built on freedom from rent seeking, where labor and capital are deployed to productive ends and not siphoned off to unproductive ones by rentiering. Go watch this talk by UCL economist and historian Mariana Mazzucato for better context. https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato-capitalism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=short https://iai.tv/video/the-value-of-everything-mariana-mazzuca...

roenxi 2y ago
> Go watch this talk... She makes some good points, but now you have the problem that even though Smith has left us a large body of work to refer to, you can't support your claims by referring to it. On the other hand, if you look to to Volume 3 Chapter 2 you'll notice that Smith actually dealt with this specific topic (see: "Taxes upon the Rent of Houses") and drew the conclusions that I suggested he would. He breaks the rent up into "ground rent" (aka economic rent, the part that is economically damaging) and "building rent" (the return on capital) and concludes that ground rent should be taxed out of existence but that building rent is necessary and not all that much of a problem (he anticipates it settling at a fair premium of maybe 2% above interest rates, which seems like a reasonable guess that is in line with the actual rent I tend to have paid). He is advocating a demise of rent on land (hence the more classic and literal landlord). Rent on houses (modern urban landlords) is a topic that he has a reasonable and balanced view on that acknowledges the necessity of a return on capital after dealing with the component of the rent that is for land.
- bugglebeetle 2y ago
  Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! No modern landlord would support the demise of rents on lands, which is why they the same as the parasitic feudal dullards Smith elsewhere decries. Modern, urban landlords want to reap what the do not sow, i.e. the value derived from the productive activity of cities where they buy up houses to maintain an (individually partial, collectively large) monopoly on the availability and use of land. They generally in fact go one step further and leverage this monopoly to obtain loans, premised on the inflated valuations derived from the constraint of supply, and extend it even further. In a Georgist arrangement, they would be forced to reinvest rents on properties into making said properties more economically productive…which is why no modern landlords are Georgists!

roenxi 2y ago

> Go watch this talk... She makes some good points, but now you have the problem that even though Smith has left us a large body of work to refer to, you can't support your claims by referring to it. On the other hand, if you look to to Volume 3 Chapter 2 you'll notice that Smith actually dealt with this specific topic (see: "Taxes upon the Rent of Houses") and drew the conclusions that I suggested he would. He breaks the rent up into "ground rent" (aka economic rent, the part that is economically damaging) and "building rent" (the return on capital) and concludes that ground rent should be taxed out of existence but that building rent is necessary and not all that much of a problem (he anticipates it settling at a fair premium of maybe 2% above interest rates, which seems like a reasonable guess that is in line with the actual rent I tend to have paid). He is advocating a demise of rent on land (hence the more classic and literal landlord). Rent on houses (modern urban landlords) is a topic that he has a reasonable and balanced view on that acknowledges the necessity of a return on capital after dealing with the component of the rent that is for land.

bugglebeetle 2y ago
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! No modern landlord would support the demise of rents on lands, which is why they the same as the parasitic feudal dullards Smith elsewhere decries. Modern, urban landlords want to reap what the do not sow, i.e. the value derived from the productive activity of cities where they buy up houses to maintain an (individually partial, collectively large) monopoly on the availability and use of land. They generally in fact go one step further and leverage this monopoly to obtain loans, premised on the inflated valuations derived from the constraint of supply, and extend it even further. In a Georgist arrangement, they would be forced to reinvest rents on properties into making said properties more economically productive…which is why no modern landlords are Georgists!