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It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form o

by kiba 1y ago

It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form of copyright, patents, even domain names, the orbitals in the sky, the electromagnetic spectrum. Capital can be used to produce more capital, but you cannot produce more land, more electromagnetic spectrum, more orbitals, etc. The housing crisis is a restriction on what activity are allowed on land, and incentive structure that prioritize hoarding of land over engaging in societal beneficial activities. I suggest you read up Georgism, the tax ideology that had largely disappeared from political life in the west.

skissane 1y ago
I’m sympathetic to your overall point - I’m not a convinced Georgist but I’m open-minded about the idea - but I’d question some of your specific examples > even domain names, With an alternative DNS root, you can have any domain name you like, except for legal constraints such as trademarks, defamation, obscenity, etc. The problem is none of the alternative roots ever took off, in part because the browser vendors didn’t want to get on-board (they saw it as a high risk low reward feature)-and alternative browsers offering that feature failed in the market. This really isn’t comparable to land, in that the scarcity isn’t imposed by the laws of nature or laws written by government, it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market. > the orbitals in the sky Orbit is huge and while it is getting more congested, I don’t think that congestion is (as yet) a significant barrier to new entrants. The primary barrier remains the launch costs. The governments of major spacefaring powers don’t see orbital slots as a revenue source, their regulation of them is purely about avoiding conflict, and the fees they charge are about recovering the cost of that regulation, not contributing to general revenue. Some equatorial states tried to claim geostationary orbit slots over their territory as part of their territory, in order to charge for access to them - but the claim failed because the major spacefaring states refused to accept it, and these states lacked the geopolitical power to compel anyone else to take this claim seriously-and, anyway, with the growth of LEO constellations, geostationary orbit arguably isn’t as economically important as it was when those claims were first asserted
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market It's a network effect. The same reason it's easy to build a facebook clone yet nearly impossible to get it off the ground.
  - kiba 1y ago
    What I meant is the network effect enjoyed by Facebook and Amazon. That network effect is ripe for taxation and regulation.
    - skissane 1y ago
      I don’t understand what taxing “network effects” has to do with Georgism though - Georgism argues land should be taxed specially because (1) there is fundamentally a finite quantity of it, (2) it is natural not human-made. Network effects don’t seem particularly similar on either front, and hence even if there is an argument for specially taxing them, that argument isn’t clearly Georgist - a Georgist could consistently reject it. Closer to land are things like mining rights, water rights, fishing rights, pollution rights - taxing them is an obvious extension of the Georgist idea of land taxation, and it would be difficult for a consistent Georgist to oppose them, at least in principle
986aignan 1y ago
At some point, I would imagine the distinction between capital and land becomes blurry, though. Economic rent can be had from either if the barrier to competition is high enough. Domain names are a good example, because as skissane said, you could just make another DNS root. The trouble is convincing people (browsers) to use it. The problem in attempting to overturn Facebook isn't mainly the coding, either, but having a critical mass care. Those barriers don't seem like absolutes the way land is; they're just very high, high enough for those who control them to extract economic rent.
- kristianbrigman 1y ago
  And there is lots of land - just not in close proximity to existing economic activity. It’s a common pattern.
  - billfor 1y ago
    There’s not enough land that has enough water resources.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  In the same way, you could build a new city somewhere. Land is expensive near cities.

by kiba 1y ago

skissane 1y ago

I’m sympathetic to your overall point - I’m not a convinced Georgist but I’m open-minded about the idea - but I’d question some of your specific examples > even domain names, With an alternative DNS root, you can have any domain name you like, except for legal constraints such as trademarks, defamation, obscenity, etc. The problem is none of the alternative roots ever took off, in part because the browser vendors didn’t want to get on-board (they saw it as a high risk low reward feature)-and alternative browsers offering that feature failed in the market. This really isn’t comparable to land, in that the scarcity isn’t imposed by the laws of nature or laws written by government, it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market. > the orbitals in the sky Orbit is huge and while it is getting more congested, I don’t think that congestion is (as yet) a significant barrier to new entrants. The primary barrier remains the launch costs. The governments of major spacefaring powers don’t see orbital slots as a revenue source, their regulation of them is purely about avoiding conflict, and the fees they charge are about recovering the cost of that regulation, not contributing to general revenue. Some equatorial states tried to claim geostationary orbit slots over their territory as part of their territory, in order to charge for access to them - but the claim failed because the major spacefaring states refused to accept it, and these states lacked the geopolitical power to compel anyone else to take this claim seriously-and, anyway, with the growth of LEO constellations, geostationary orbit arguably isn’t as economically important as it was when those claims were first asserted

fc417fc802 1y ago
> it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market It's a network effect. The same reason it's easy to build a facebook clone yet nearly impossible to get it off the ground.
- kiba 1y ago
  What I meant is the network effect enjoyed by Facebook and Amazon. That network effect is ripe for taxation and regulation.
  - skissane 1y ago
    I don’t understand what taxing “network effects” has to do with Georgism though - Georgism argues land should be taxed specially because (1) there is fundamentally a finite quantity of it, (2) it is natural not human-made. Network effects don’t seem particularly similar on either front, and hence even if there is an argument for specially taxing them, that argument isn’t clearly Georgist - a Georgist could consistently reject it. Closer to land are things like mining rights, water rights, fishing rights, pollution rights - taxing them is an obvious extension of the Georgist idea of land taxation, and it would be difficult for a consistent Georgist to oppose them, at least in principle

986aignan 1y ago

At some point, I would imagine the distinction between capital and land becomes blurry, though. Economic rent can be had from either if the barrier to competition is high enough. Domain names are a good example, because as skissane said, you could just make another DNS root. The trouble is convincing people (browsers) to use it. The problem in attempting to overturn Facebook isn't mainly the coding, either, but having a critical mass care. Those barriers don't seem like absolutes the way land is; they're just very high, high enough for those who control them to extract economic rent.

kristianbrigman 1y ago
And there is lots of land - just not in close proximity to existing economic activity. It’s a common pattern.
- billfor 1y ago
  There’s not enough land that has enough water resources.
HPsquared 1y ago
In the same way, you could build a new city somewhere. Land is expensive near cities.