3 ms·

I'll just quote from Adam Smith as to the problem. I think the proposed solution is good. I think "best option" is needlessly specific, and subjective. No need

by drekk 2y ago

I'll just quote from Adam Smith as to the problem. I think the proposed solution is good. I think "best option" is needlessly specific, and subjective. No need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which, when land was in common, cost the labourer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the licence to gather them, and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land, and in the price of the greater part of commodities, makes a third” ― Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

EnigmaFlare 2y ago
Fundamentally that's the problem of allocating scarce resources. If they're not allocated to whoever pays the most, it would be some other way which still excludes people. Maybe it's to the people who promise to fight for the king, or the winners of a lottery but at the end of the day, those other ways aren't better because someone still misses out.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  A marginal and vacant property tax allocates the scarce resource based on whoever can use it most productively.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    It also creates disincentives for letting land lay unused. Why would we have forests or parks or homesteads when we have to pay taxes based on what someone else thinks the potential value generation of the land is? And how to we make sure that such a tax doesn't just push us further down the path of using as many natural resources as we can? A land tax is based on the assumption that all land should be used to its maximal financial value. I don't know about you, but I fundamentally disagree with that and don't want to live in a world where we've codified the need to use up whatever we have.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      The western US states all have urban growth boundaries for this reason. > just push us further down the path of using as many natural resources as we can? Using more surface area is using as many natural resources as we can. Energy = mass * distance. The further people live away, from each other, the more energy is consumed, for doing everything. A land value tax would incentivize density, and density reduces the use of as natural resources. The people living in 10x10x10 homes in Honk Kong are using magnitudes less natural resources than hundreds of millions of people in US suburbia and exurbia.
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        > Energy = mass * distance. The further people live away, from each other, the more energy is consumed, for doing everything That only holds if things stay just as centralized as they are today. If people live further from each other they have more potential for producing their own goods. That also means everyone around then has that potential as well. For example, living in a dense area means any lumber you buy was shipped in, and likely even crossed national borders. Living in a less populated area can mean access to lumber from a local lumber yard that processes trees grown locally. I think the real challenge we have today is that we are stuck in the middle, our society is neither designed for dense populations or low density populations. There's nothing that I've seen that can definitively show that dense populations will always work better than less dense, more independent populations. Either can work well and either can be much better utilized than what we have today. What I really take issue with is a central authority forcing one approach on us. Because we can't show why one path has to be the best, and because we don't know what we don't know, the decision should never be made at all by those in charge. The beauty of a federal model is to allow smaller regions to go their own way and try different approaches. I wouldn't balk at all if Los Angeles wanted to try a land value tax, let's see what happens. I personally don't think it will work well and I think there isn't a good answer for how to appropriately value the land, but I also don't live there and as long as my federal tax dollars aren't given to LA I have no dog in that fight.
        lotsofpulp 2y ago
_heimdall 2y ago
Fair, I didn't intent to zero in on the word "best" there. I think its still important to know why its the best of the options we have today though. There's a huge blind spot in only applying that Adam Smith quote to private landlords - the government. Functionally they own all land, between property taxes which act much like rent, and more extreme measures like eminent domain, the government has staked a claim to all land and offers us the privilege to live on it as long as we play by their rules. We have to pay rent in the form of property taxes. We have to pay taxes on any value crested from the land, and often have to get licensed and/or inspected when doing so. Adam Smith's writings are much better used as an argument against many of today's government structures rather than against private land owners renting it out to other private citizens. And it makes sense, Smith was writing in opposition to the monarchy of his time. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of terrible private landlords or that our housing market seems reasonable. But if we stop complaining about private land ownership at the point of the individual we haven't gone far enough. The government shouldn't be claiming ownership over everything and everyone within its borders. Fix that, then we can really worry about what any one land owner does with the smaller pieces of land they own.

by drekk 2y ago

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

Fundamentally that's the problem of allocating scarce resources. If they're not allocated to whoever pays the most, it would be some other way which still excludes people. Maybe it's to the people who promise to fight for the king, or the winners of a lottery but at the end of the day, those other ways aren't better because someone still misses out.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
A marginal and vacant property tax allocates the scarce resource based on whoever can use it most productively.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  It also creates disincentives for letting land lay unused. Why would we have forests or parks or homesteads when we have to pay taxes based on what someone else thinks the potential value generation of the land is? And how to we make sure that such a tax doesn't just push us further down the path of using as many natural resources as we can? A land tax is based on the assumption that all land should be used to its maximal financial value. I don't know about you, but I fundamentally disagree with that and don't want to live in a world where we've codified the need to use up whatever we have.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The western US states all have urban growth boundaries for this reason. > just push us further down the path of using as many natural resources as we can? Using more surface area is using as many natural resources as we can. Energy = mass * distance. The further people live away, from each other, the more energy is consumed, for doing everything. A land value tax would incentivize density, and density reduces the use of as natural resources. The people living in 10x10x10 homes in Honk Kong are using magnitudes less natural resources than hundreds of millions of people in US suburbia and exurbia.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      > Energy = mass * distance. The further people live away, from each other, the more energy is consumed, for doing everything That only holds if things stay just as centralized as they are today. If people live further from each other they have more potential for producing their own goods. That also means everyone around then has that potential as well. For example, living in a dense area means any lumber you buy was shipped in, and likely even crossed national borders. Living in a less populated area can mean access to lumber from a local lumber yard that processes trees grown locally. I think the real challenge we have today is that we are stuck in the middle, our society is neither designed for dense populations or low density populations. There's nothing that I've seen that can definitively show that dense populations will always work better than less dense, more independent populations. Either can work well and either can be much better utilized than what we have today. What I really take issue with is a central authority forcing one approach on us. Because we can't show why one path has to be the best, and because we don't know what we don't know, the decision should never be made at all by those in charge. The beauty of a federal model is to allow smaller regions to go their own way and try different approaches. I wouldn't balk at all if Los Angeles wanted to try a land value tax, let's see what happens. I personally don't think it will work well and I think there isn't a good answer for how to appropriately value the land, but I also don't live there and as long as my federal tax dollars aren't given to LA I have no dog in that fight.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago

_heimdall 2y ago

Fair, I didn't intent to zero in on the word "best" there. I think its still important to know why its the best of the options we have today though. There's a huge blind spot in only applying that Adam Smith quote to private landlords - the government. Functionally they own all land, between property taxes which act much like rent, and more extreme measures like eminent domain, the government has staked a claim to all land and offers us the privilege to live on it as long as we play by their rules. We have to pay rent in the form of property taxes. We have to pay taxes on any value crested from the land, and often have to get licensed and/or inspected when doing so. Adam Smith's writings are much better used as an argument against many of today's government structures rather than against private land owners renting it out to other private citizens. And it makes sense, Smith was writing in opposition to the monarchy of his time. I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of terrible private landlords or that our housing market seems reasonable. But if we stop complaining about private land ownership at the point of the individual we haven't gone far enough. The government shouldn't be claiming ownership over everything and everyone within its borders. Fix that, then we can really worry about what any one land owner does with the smaller pieces of land they own.