# News & Current Events > Economy & Markets >  The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

## JohnLVT

As the other thread was getting over long with too much flaming. I though it best to start another. I have put my posts in first.

Land Value Taxes create wealth, it promotes it, especially when income tax is reduced or eliminated, as in dynamic Hong Kong and Taiwan, etc, All implementations around the world have done so. It is well proven not a wild theory.  LVT dragged Taiwan from a backward agricultural country to a dynamic high-tech world force. 

We stupidly tax a man's labor via income tax. This is retrograde, as it prevents enterprise from flourishing.  It prevents money from circulating.  Income Tax makes him poorer taking a part of his income at source - income tax was a temporary tax to fund the British Army and Navy in the Napoleonic wars which Tory Land owners got made permanent to push taxes from their lands onto the people. The USA followed in 1913?  Currently wealth laying idle, locked up in land, is not taxed.  We tax the fruits of the the labors of those who need least to be taxed - the wealth creators. That is why most wealth of a society ends up in the hands of the top few percent. 

The top 1% in the USA own more wealth than the bottom 90%. That indicates there is a systemic failure in the economy. LVT will balance it in a *fair* way.  Yet it does not change business behavior. It can work with any ism, probably apart from North Korea.  LVT prevent boom and busts as it pegs land speculation. Land speculation was the root cause of the 1929 and 2008 world-wide crashes.



*Economist Fred Harrison....*

"Any good economist will tell you, *as people's real disposable incomes rise, that money ends up in one place, and one place only, the LAND MARKET*. As there is growth land values rise, and it should rise. Except, the problem occurred when that increase in value went into private pockets instead of going into services: highways, hospitals, schools and so on, that created that value in the first place"
..
..
"*This is the sources of our problem*, not bankers, big bonuses, sub-prime mortgages in America and the other excuses they have. *This is the heart of the problem of the market economy*, we have to address it. There has to be political consensus, there has to consensus, with no body playing party politics"

The above is at. 3 min 35 secs

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## JohnLVT

There are shanty towns in the USA again as foreclosure has thrown millions out of their homes. Many shanty towns overlook empty homes. 




LVT would have prevented all this.  The English economist clearly states the case.

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## JohnLVT

Firstly, Geoism is *not* compatible with anarchism.  It rolls back the state for sure and reduces the state in our affairs.  Geoism can fit into any political ism as I have previously stated on this thread. 

_"George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes."
_- Professor Mason Gaffney (US economist)




> Likewise I do not believe my government should own, control or tax land that is private.


LVT does no such thing. LVT reclaims community created wealth that soaks into land.  This is basic economics.  You have to understand where the value in land comes from - it didn't drop in from the sky. LVT as the *Single Tax* leaves private wealth in private hands - no Income Tax, Sales Tax, Property tax on your buildings, inheritance tax, etc. Read my previous posts in this thread on this point.

Whether you like it or not, the state ultimately owns all the land.  This is non-point in LVT and a detraction.  What the community does with LVT is *reclaim* community created wealth while leaving private wealth in private hands.  Very Republican. LVT as the *Single Tax*, no other taxes, is not rent to the government.  Currently the state taxes your home, bricks & wood. Make it larger and they tax you more.  This is ludicrous. Do you want them to tax your washing machine as well?

BTW, you have to pay for community services wherever you live, unless you live on Mars.

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## JohnLVT

Geonomics is an economic philosophy and ideology that holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly *land*, belong equally to all.


Land Value Taxation *does not* tax the land you occupy.  Community created economic growth soaks into the land and crystalizes as land values - *that is where land values come from*. This is economics, not an opinion. Land Value Tax merely reclaims that growth and puts it back into the cycle to fund the infrastructure that aided the creation in the first place. Currently the cycle is cut and a giant sluice is inserted taking away that wealth in the form of windfalls in the land market - socially created wealth is privatized. It needs to be 180 degrees the other the way around. LVT *reclaims* community created wealth to pay for community services. 

Many Geoists observe two prime negative points of current taxation in modern states:
*Privately created wealth is socialized -* via Income Tax, sales tax, etc.*Socially created wealth is privatized -* community created land values are extracted by individuals and organizations.The Geoists rightly argue the opposite should be the case in that a Single Tax using only Land Value Tax will:
*Socialize socially created wealth -* socially created land values are taxed and used for community revenues.*Privatize privately created wealth -* no Income Tax is levied, hence people keep the fruits of their labor.Geoists view the Single Tax (no Income Tax, tax on buildings, sales tax, etc) as only using socially created wealth to fund social and state services, with an individual retaining 100% the fruits of their labor. This appeals to many across the political spectrum.

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## JohnLVT

> Wouldn't it be easier (and more fair) just to have absolutely no taxes on property?


Yes, if the property is just the bricks and wood, the building (the CAPITAL). The land (LAND & RESOURCES) is separate.  LVT *reclaims* community created wealth that soaked into the land.  Value the landowner never created as the community did. The building depreciates in value like a car. The Land appreciates as it is inelastic.

LVT is easy to collect, as land's location is known to the inch. It cannot be taken off-shore.  So an Athens mansion, or one in NY, would have to pay the tax.  LVT is very cheap to collect.

LVT is known as the *Single Tax*. Only one tax, no enterprise killing Income Tax, Property Tax, Sales Tax, etc). LVT is a misnomer it is really a site reclaim levy.

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## JohnLVT

Johannesburg, South Africa has no tax on buildings. The entire property tax is on land. Mason Gaffney, a highly respected land economist and Professor of Economics at UC Riverside, visited Johannesburg. This is what he said about it.

"The miracle of Johannesburg: Jo-burg is a Bootstrap City. It should have died when its gold mines played out, like a proper mining boomtown; instead it remains as the economic capital of its nation and half a continent."Johannesburg defies most laws of urban economics, e.g. that mines create no great cities. Explainers still site the mines, but its mines have played out; it should now be a ghost town. It has no harbor, no water transportation, nor even any gravity water supply. It is, in fact, on a ridge top, the Rand or "reef," at an elevation of 5,000 ft. Unlike Chicago or Boston, it has no sunburst of rail lines, except perhaps what it has attracted itself. It is "on the main rail line," Explainers say, but so are 1000 miles of other sites. The natural site lacks outstanding amenities, and certainly can't hold a candle to Cape Town. Jo-burg has no governmental economic base. Surrounding farmland is poor. 

Why Johannesburg? Why is it the largest city, the center of finance, industry, commerce, and international air travel? As a public finance economist I may overvalue incentive taxation, but Jo-burg has it. _The property tax is on site value only_, and at a high rate: they tell me it is 4%. This is what makes Jo-burg distinctive. Challenge and response: Jo-burg had to do something right in order to survive, and that is what it did. It not only survived, it became and remains Number One. Give me a better explanation and I'll back off. I haven't heard one yet."

Unhappily, the ANC forced Jo-Burg, against its will, to drop taxation on land values (1918 to 1996).  The city is now mired in disinvestment and unemployment.  Similar situations occurred in Pittsburgh (Land Value Tax (LVT) dropped in 1990), NYC (LVT was dropped in the late 1930s) and declined until WW2 brought full employment.

However these examples do show the stark difference of the before and after. But the detractors will no doubt blame the transition from apartite and the world slumps (2008 and the 1930s) but not the real reason for the decline - *the removal of LVT*.

Mason's observations are spot on. Jo-Burg is in a God forsaken part of South Africa and had no right to be the economic super-city for all Southern Africa below the equator. Nothing was going for it at all. It comes across as an artificial creation I suppose like Brasilia. Mason hit the nail on the head in defining the success of this anomaly.  *Land Value Tax (LVT) can makes cities prosper where they have no right to.*

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## Travlyr

Phony baloney. 

Colorblind private individual land ownership without property tax creates the most secure prosperous societies. Sure the State virtually starves and that is liberating.

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## JohnLVT

A differentiation must be made between *property* (CAPITAL) and *land* (LAND & its RESOURCES).  Taxing the property, the building, is like taxing a washing machine - ludicrous, yet that is what happens.

Community services (inc the army, police, etc) have to be paid for. It is best to pay it out of wealth created by the community - via community created land values - and leave the individuals wealth alone.

The USA is not an economically secure society as the 2008 crash demonstrated. The USA has shanty towns.

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## JohnLVT

*How Harrisburg in Rust Belt PA, USA was transformed through a Land Value Tax* 

In the United States, many local authorities, including Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, operate a so-called split-rate tax system, in which buildings and land are taxed separately. Some bias it towards buildings and others towards land. The evidence is that the more it is biased towards land, the more this benefits the local economy  which is what would be predicted by the theory of land value tax  because the more that land is taxed the more this provides an incentive to invest capital on the land in the form of buildings and other economic activities. That is precisely what happened in Harrisburg after the city authorities more than doubled the tax rate on land, while reducing the rate on buildings, such that the rate for land was three times that for buildings.
*In 1982, before the change, Harrisburg, with a population of 52,000, was listed as the second most run-down city in the US.* Since then, following the change, empty sites and buildings have been re-developed, with the number of vacant sites by 2004 down by 85 per cent. The city authorities have issued over 32,000 building permits, representing nearly $4 billion of new investment  nearly 2,000 were issued in 2004 alone. Over 5,000 housing units have been newly constructed or rehabilitated, and the number of businesses has jumped from 1,908 to 8,864, with unemployment down by 19 per cent. Furthermore, crime has fallen by 58 per cent, and the number of fires has been reduced by 76 per cent, which the authorities say is due to more employment opportunities, and the elimination of derelict sites, making vandalism less likely. 

They list 40 other positive benefits, including much improved public amenities. More recently, the bias towards tax on land is now six to one compared with three to one originally. This will likely further enhance the trends from which the city has already benefited. Meanwhile, the heightened economic activity has increased public revenues, not only from land and buildings, but also from other taxes, thus benefiting public services. And it has increased quite dramatically both the value of land and that of buildings, from around $400 million in 1982, in todays prices, to $1.7 billion now. This has enabled the authorities to reduce the rate of tax on both land and buildings. Not surprisingly, this system of taxation has been politically popular, with Mayor Steven Reed Jr being re-elected continuously since 1982.
One constraint has been the fact that 47% of the land in Harrisburg is occupied by state, federal, educational and charitable institutions, which, anomalously, are exempt by State law from property taxes. However, some of that lost revenue has been clawed back through charges on water, gas and electricity supplies, which are publicly owned  perhaps another lesson that we can learn from Harrisburg.Meanwhile, another city in Pennsylvania, namely Pittsburgh, has gone in the opposite direction with its split-rate tax system. In 2000, it reduced the rate of tax on land to the same lower rate as that for buildings. Voters were persuaded that they would pay less tax. In fact, for most, taxes have increased, because the council has had to raise the tax rate on buildings to make up for the revenue lost through lowering the tax on land. *Within just the first two years, it led to new construction falling by 21 per cent, and businesses moving out of town on a regular basis  which, again, is what would be predicted by land tax theory.*

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## JohnLVT

An enterprising, productive man goes to a realtors office in a town wanting to build a factory, so needs some land for the factory. 

The agent says: "I have the ideal plot". She takes him 45 minutes out of town via a fast highway, 30 minutes down a small road, 10 minutes across track and points to the land surrounded by scrub.  "There it is", she states, "$5,000".He said: "there is nothing here. No electricity, roads, water, buildings, people, nothing".She says "I have another the size you want." They drive back to town. 

The plot is in town near to:

A rapid-transit rail station,A fast road with modern tramcars on it,Bus routes,A housing estateGreat schools,A world renowned hospital,Excellent university,Police station - Crime is low because of the excellent well funded police force,Fire House - the fire department is top rated and swift to emergencies,All utility services are adjacent to the plot, etc.A pool of high skills - skills base of the people is very high, 

She says: "it has all the top class services you need here".He says: "ideal, wonderful, who do I make the $5,000 out to?".She says: "it is $1,005,000, as it has all the top class services".He said: "It is the same size as the first plot. But mmm, well OK, I'll pay that, as it is ideal, who are the people, and their addresses, I send the cheques to who provide these wonderful top-class service?".She says: "no you have to pay the $1,005,000 to a man who lives near the beach in the Florida and lays on it most of the day".He says: "well its the same size as the out of town $5,000 plot, so I will send him $5,000 and cheques to those who provide the top-class services".She says: "no all has to go to the landowner laying on the beach in Florida".He says: "how do these people pay to provide all these services then?"She says: "well you pay Property Tax, Income Tax, Sales Tax on the goods you sell, tax to the council and government and all sorts of other fees and taxes, and they provide the services".He replies: "well I pay for these services twice then, that doesn't sound fair at all".She says: "well yes, you pay once to the landowning man laying on the beach in Florida and again to the authorities. He does not pay taxes on this plot as it is not used".

Land Valuation Tax (LVT) on the urban plot would pay for the services. The value is higher on the urban plot than the out of town plot which will pay less LVT as its value is less because of the lack of demand because of no services.

The winner is the free-loading landowner who got rich in his sleep and laying on the beach, who paid sweet nothing for the services that made his land valuable.  *The man of enterprise and production is paying twice.*

Next time you buy land or a house, think of that.  It is not an American thing to pay twice for something.

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## Travlyr

> An enterprising, productive man goes to a realtors office in a town wanting to build a factory, so needs some land for the factory. 
> The agent says "I have the ideal plot". She takes him 45 minutes out of town via a fast highway, 30 minutes down a small road, 10 minutes across track and points to the land surrounded by scrub.  "There it is", she states, "$5,000". 
> He said "there is nothing here. No electricity, roads, water, buildings, people, nothing". 
> She says "I have another the size you want." They drive back to town. 
> The plot is in town next to a rapid-transit rail station, a fast road with modern tramcars on it, bus routes, a housing estate nearby with great schools, a world renowned hospital, excellent university, crime is low because of the excellent well funded police force, the fire department is top rated and swift to emergencies, skills base of the people is very high, all utility services are adjacent to the plot, etc. 
> She says, "it has all the top class services you need here". 
> He says, "ideal, wonderful, who do I make the $5,000 out to?".
> She says, "it is $1,005,000, as it has all the top class services".
> He said, "It is the same size as the first plot. But mmm, well OK, I'll pay that, as it is ideal, who are the people, and their addresses, I send the cheques to who provide these wonderful top-class service?".
> ...


I think you have the wrong forum. Socialism is not what we are looking to accomplish on this forum. This is a liberty forum where property ownership is respected, including land, natural rights are inherent, and competition is encouraged.

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## JohnLVT

> I think you have the wrong forum. Socialism is not what we are looking to accomplish on this forum. This is a liberty forum where property ownership is respected, including land, natural rights are inherent, and competition is encouraged.


Firstly understand the point of the short story. It is not an American thing to pay twice for anything. I am preaching the free-market, I have not once mentioned socialism. Understand the points being put across. Does Republicanism mean unfairness in your eyes?

Understand what is:
*Common to all* - Commonwealth*What is private* - Private wealth. 

When the two are mixed unfairness results.  Catastrophic financial crashes also occur - one is still here.

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## Travlyr

> He says: "how do these people pay to provide all these services then?"
> She says:"well you pay Property Tax, Income Tax, Sales Tax on the goods you sell, tax to the council and government and all sorts of other fees and taxes, and they provide the services".


These are not proper functions of government in a free society. They are socialist constructs.

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## JohnLVT

> These are not proper functions of government in a free society. They are socialist constructs.


All city services in the USA are socialist constructs?  That is new to me. Then all US cities and towns must be bastions of Socialism.  Understand what is being put across, and get this cold war red-under-the-bed stuff bouncing around your head sifted out.

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## JohnLVT

Socialism and Capitalism in their purest forms simply do not work. Note the 2008 crash and its hasn't gone away.

Geonomics is the perfect system that appeals to elements of the far right and far left and all in between.  It is not a political ism.  _Geoism is an economic movement_, able to fit into any political ism. 


_"George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, 
until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally 
consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes."_
- Professor Mason Gaffney (US economist)

_Land should be taxed as much as possible, and improvements 
as little as possible._ 
- Milton Friedman (economist)

_"In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the 
unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of 
many, many years ago."_
- Milton Friedman (economist)

_I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of 
land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter 
I am of that policy._ 
- Winston Churchill

_"The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was against 
the British landlords."_ 
- Fred Harrison (economist)

_"Solving the land question means the solving of all social 
questions Possession of land by people who do not use 
it is immoral - just like the possession of slaves."
_- Leo Tolstoy

_"Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land 
got hold of it. They simply seized it by force, afterwards 
hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case 
of the enclosure of the common lands, which was going on 
from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even 
have the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were 
quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, 
upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power 
to do so."_ 
 George Orwell. 

_"Except for the few surviving commons, the high roads, 
the lands of the National Trust, a certain number of parks, 
and the sea shore below high-tide mark, every square inch 
of England is `owned' by a few thousand families. These 
people are just about as useful as so many tapeworms.  
It is desirable that people should own their own dwelling houses, 
and it is probably desirable that a farmer should own as much 
land as he can actually farm."_ 
 George Orwell.

Geonomics:
Spreads the proceeds of a societys productivity more evenlyPrevents financial crashesPrevents land housing booms and bustsKeeps land and housing highly affordableRewards personal effortAllocates the fruits of a society more JUSTLY.Reduces the scourge of the speculator on society (speculation in vital land and its resources). They were responsible for the 1929 & 2008 crashes.Creates a level, stable free-market playing field promoting free enterprise creating wealth overall for all.Reduces land prices overall creating highly affordable homes.Pulls back dependency on the welfare state.Creates higher wages.Encourages full productive use of land.Collects full tax as land cannot be taken off-shore.

For the politically focused - Geonomics:
*Promotes an unrigged free-market as its core -* appeals to the right*Keeps private income in private hands -* appeals to the right*Keeps commonly created wealth in common hands -* appeals to the left*Commonly created wealth is used to pay for public services -* appeals to the left & right*Promotes a fairer society -* appeals to the left and I hope most of the right

But Geoists do not care about right and left. 

The board game Monopoly was originally designed to teach people LVT. The game was highjacked:
http://en.wikipedi.../wiki/The_Landlord's_Game

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## eduardo89

> Phony baloney. 
> 
> Colorblind private individual land ownership without property tax creates the most secure prosperous societies. Sure the State virtually starves and that is liberating.


This. 

/thread

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## Steven Douglas

I think the geoists really think they're so onto something that it's bound to appeal to libertarians.  Just convince them that the LVT is nothing more than a "measure of advantage" (but not an actual cost, perish the thought), and entice them with a promise of being able to keep all their labor, and PRESTO!! The perfect tax. 

*Why, think of it - a single tax!* 

Yippee. As if we believed it, even if we thought it was a fair tax.  LVT and property taxes have the dubious distinction of being ones that are imposed without regard to your circumstances or ability to pay. No income, no income tax.  No purchases, no sales tax. But with a property tax or LVT it's "Oh, problems with orders this month? $#@! you, pay me. Business not so good this month? $#@! you, pay me, or out you go."

No wonder the LVT gives the illusion of prosperity - it naturally and automatically flushes and sweeps all the human debris (read=anybody facing hardships) to the outskirts.  Out of sight, out of mind, no brain, no headache. 

*It doesn't cost, it actual creates wealth by returning community created wealth back to the community!*  

Ah, the promise of a political mechanism for wealth creation. Now if that doesn't resonate with libertarians, nothing will.

I agree with Travlyr and eduardo.

/thread

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## JohnLVT

> I think the geoists really think they're so onto something that it's bound to appeal to libertarians.


There are Geolibertarians.  




> *Why, think of it - a single tax!* 
> 
> Yippee. As if we believed it, even if we thought it was a fair tax.  LVT and property taxes have the dubious distinction of being ones that are imposed without regard to your circumstances or ability to pay. No income, no income tax.  No purchases, no sales tax. But with a property tax or LVT it's "Oh, problems with orders this month? $#@! you, pay me. Business not so good this month? $#@! you, pay me, or out you go."


Current property taxes do not take into account your ability to pay.  With LVT, if you can't pay then you move, like what happens now. But with LVT you can move to an internal tax haven by relocating to a lower LVT rated district or town/area.  With Income tax it stays the same level of extraction wherever you move.  LVT can be deferred until sale of land or death. There are exemptions as well.  Winston Churchill described your points as the Old Widow Bogey.

The fact is LVT is proven to work in the real world while the current economic system does not.  

Martin Wolf Chief economist of the Financial Times...


The essential point is quite simple: the value of resources is created by the economic activity of other factors of production. The owners of these resources can become hugely wealthy and are often untaxed on that increase in wealth: the Duke of Westminster is the richest Englishman simply because he owns a large amount of land in a valuable part of London. So why should he have command over the labour of so many other people? 

*That wealth is, in the strictest sense, unearned*. If that rise in wealth were taxed away, other taxes - those on labour, capital and entrepreneurship - could fall. This would be both efficient (because taxes on rent do not create distortions, as Ricardo showed) and also just, because the wealth was unearned. Now, surprisingly, the UK allows foreign landowners to enjoy the increase in value created by the British economy, entirely tax-free. This is utterly crazy.

Let me add four other points.

First, throughout history, the main source of wealth was land-ownership. The parasitic landowner became wealthy on the efforts of others - peasants, tenants and even developers. Sometimes the parasite was also a farmer or developer, but that does not change the fact that these are two distinct economic roles. *The parasite built fine castles and palaces and often sponsored music and culture. But he was still a parasite.* The beauty of capitalism is that many of the wealthiest are no longer parasites. This is good. But many of the wealthy still are parasites. Moreover, now everybody wants to get rich by being a mini-landowner. That is a huge diversion of effort.
Second, the financial system's ills are the result of unchecked credit-creation. Yes. But unchecked credit-creation would be impossible without collateral. Land is always the principal form of collateral (buildings are a depreciating asset). That is why financial bubbles that do not create credit booms (like the dotcom bubble) are economically benign, *while property bubbles are potentially catastrophic*. When the value of collateral collapses, the financial system implodes.
Third, there is really nothing new about this understanding of the role of resource rents. They were central to the classical system, from which modern economics, in its various forms, derives. Ricardo's analysis of rent remains intellectually impeccable. 
Finally, as Herman Daly has noted, today economically valuable resources are much more than just land (and what lies below it). They include all the services of the biosphere - those that are appropriated, those that are appropriable and those that are non-appropriable. If we do not think seriously and intelligently about how to price resources, we are likely to go seriously adrift, perhaps even into disaster. Here land is the least of our problems - it is appropriable and, by and large, appropriated. So, at least, the price mechanism works, even though the distribution of the gain is grossly unjust. But, in other cases, no appropriation is possible, or at least it is not easy. Nobody can appropriate the atmosphere. It is nigh on impossible to appropriate the oceans. How do you own species diversity? These are serious challenges. 

So, I conclude where I started: resources matter. It was a great mistake to exclude them from the canonical neo-classical model. It is also a great mistake not to tax their owners to the hilt.

Martin Wolf gave his conclusions on a very long LVT Internet debate:


_This ended up as a heated debate. Nobody will be surprised if I conclude that the result of the debate (often surprisingly ill-tempered) was pro-LVT 10, anti-LVT zero. I am surprised by some of what the anti-LVT proponents have said. I would have thought they would wish to open their minds a bit. I did and was persuaded of the case, as a result. Is not the purpose of such exchanges to learn from one another?
_

Take heed of the last sentence by Martin.

http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exch...mics/#comments

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## Yieu

> I think the geoists really think they're so onto something that it's bound to appeal to libertarians.  Just convince them that the LVT is nothing more than a "measure of advantage" (but not an actual cost, perish the thought), and entice them with a promise of being able to keep all their labor, and PRESTO!! The perfect tax. 
> 
> *Why, think of it - a single tax!* 
> 
> Yippee. As if we believed it, even if we thought it was a fair tax.  LVT and property taxes have the dubious distinction of being ones that are imposed without regard to your circumstances or ability to pay. No income, no income tax.  No purchases, no sales tax. But with a property tax or LVT it's "Oh, problems with orders this month? $#@! you, pay me. Business not so good this month? $#@! you, pay me, or out you go."
> 
> No wonder the LVT gives the illusion of prosperity - it naturally and automatically flushes and sweeps all the human debris (read=anybody facing hardships) to the outskirts.  Out of sight, out of mind, no brain, no headache. 
> 
> *It doesn't cost, it actual creates wealth by returning community created wealth back to the community!*  
> ...


Great post.  I underlined the parts I find the most concerning about property-based taxes such as this one (land is property).

Having a tax on property (or land, if you want to call it that, but it is still property) really only encourages those who make less to stick with apartments, because property-based taxes raise the economic floor of who can afford to have a house to a higher economic class.  Which helps to reduce the size of the middle class by lowering their standard of living due to increased costs across the board for both houses and apartments, due to an artificial bubble in apartments caused by property taxes and the housing bubble putting houses above their market value, which was another government manipulation.

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## JohnLVT

> I underlined the parts I find the most concerning about property-based taxes such as this one (land is property).


Your first underlining was answered by me, the second is pure distorted opinion.

Land is referred to as property, so is the building on the land,. The two are very different. Land is in elastic and provided by nature.Man never made land.

The building is CAPITAL
The land is LAND (land and resources, inc air, water, electromagnetic spectrum)

You appear not to understand this simple basics of economics - and unfortunately many here do not.

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## ClydeCoulter

Opinion or no, the problem is always corruption, not the pure basis of a form of society which is usually (not always) somewhat benign in it's conception.
Freedom helps offset corruption, at least gives an individual and his friends a chance.

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## Yieu

> Your first underlining was answered by me, the second is pure distorted opinion.
> 
> Land is referred to as property, so is the building on the land,. The two are very different. Land is in elastic and provided by nature.Man never made land.
> 
> The building is CAPITAL
> The land is LAND (land and resources, inc air, water, electromagnetic spectrum)
> 
> You appear not to understand this simple basics of economics - and unfortunately many here do not.


I understand the difference between the land and the human structures placed upon it.  But the land itself is owned as property in the same way that the human structures or a couch are property.

The fact of the matter is, a tax based on the land-property or house-property that you own, either way, they raise the barrier of entry to own a house, and that cannot be denied.

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## The Gold Standard

If people want public services they should be able to pay for them voluntarily. I'm not concerned with finding ways to raise revenue for the state. They can go to hell. The state has zero right to anyone's property, be it income, land, labor, capital, or otherwise.

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## Steven Douglas

> Current property taxes do not take into account your ability to pay.  With LVT, if you can't pay then you move, like what happens now.


Thank you, that's all I needed to hear.  I don't need to hear the virtues and upsides of forced eviction from land you can never own under LVT.  And the fact that nature provides land, and that we didn't make land, is NOT an argument for someone else's entitlement to it.    

Abolish property taxes and keep the LVT camel's nose out of the tent at all costs.  Individuals should act as a matter of recognized and protected rights - and all others, including the corporations, unions, collectives, foreigners, the state, and even that nebulous ridiculous zombie called "community" that some try to anthropomorphize, give life to, and become spokespeople for, can all tread softly around the only the beings that actually have rights, not privileges, and the only beings that truly matter.

----------


## Seraphim

I'll conceed that a single LVT is better than what we have now.

But the RP movement is not about picking the lesser of evils - it's about starring it in the face, saying "I will not accept you" and vanquishing it.

LVT is just another way in which the collective can take from the individual under the auspice of the greater good. Reality is such a broken $#@!in' record...

----------


## zyphex

Read pp. 934-937, 1196-1211 of Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market to see how Murray Rothbard demonstrates that the "Single Tax" would not only cause economic havoc, but would also generate ZERO revenue.

If that doesn't give you your fill, also read pp. 575-586, 593-597 of Economic Controversies by Murray Rothbard.

Although the tax may have intuitive appeal compared with other forms of taxation, it is simply one of the worst (if not THE worst), from both the viewpoint of the citizen and the tax-collector, as Rothbard demonstrates. The lack of revenue it generates and the level of economic havoc it causes is probably unparalleled.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Opinion or no, the problem is always corruption, not the pure basis of a form of society which is usually (not always) somewhat benign in it's conception.
> Freedom helps offset corruption, at least gives an individual and his friends a chance.


The point is LVT not corruption. Not that I am in favor of corruption.

----------


## eduardo89

> The point is LVT not corruption. Not that I am in favor of corruption.


All taxation leads to corruption. The basic premise of taxation is already morally corrupt.

----------


## JohnLVT

> I understand the difference between the land and the human structures placed upon it.  But the land itself is owned as property in the same way that the human structures or a couch are property.


Which is not classic economics.  It is the corrupted version put there by vested-interests, that creates world-wide crashes.  Land is NOT CAPITAL...it is LAND




> The fact of the matter is, a tax based on the land-property or house-property that you own, either way, they raise the barrier of entry to own a house, and that cannot be denied.


Property tax is LAND & CAPITAL.  LVT is LAND only.  LVT will stabilize land prices and keep them low.  It will not make LAND an item of speculation.  Taxing the building is like taxing your washing machine, it is that silly.

----------


## eduardo89

> Which is not classic economics.  It is the corrupted version put there by vested-interests, that creates world-wide crashes.  Land is NOT CAPITAL...it is LNAD
> 
> 
> 
> Property tax is LAND & CAPITAL.  LVT is LAND only.  LVT will stabilize land prices and keep them low.  It will not make LAND an item of speculation.


Land only tax, property only tax, any type of tax still relies on coercion, intimidation and force.

----------


## Zippyjuan

Value of the land depends on what it is used for. Put a bigger house on it and it becomes worth more so you can't separate out what is on the land from its value. And on what should the value of the land be based? On what I was willing to pay when I bought it or at what somebody thinks it may be worth today? Say I bought mine 20 years ago and the prices of land around me have gone up considerably. Should my taxes be based on what I paid or what those around me paid? Thankfully I live in California where property taxes are based on what I paid and not "current value".  Otherwise, my price gets adjusted not based on what I was willing to pay and the seller of the land was willing to accept but on what others today are willing to accept.  If it is the latter, then as the value of my land goes up, so do the taxes I pay on it.  I don't get to realize any of the gains on the value of the land until I actually sell it so why should I be taxed based on gains I haven't received? This can lead to people having their taxes rise to a level they cannot aford and are forced to lose their property- when they have done nothing wrong.  

Consider if you bought gold and had to pay an annual tax on it. Same thing.  You bought something but have to pay a fee to be able to keep it. Now does it sound different?  The price of gold goes up- the "gold fee" goes up- even if you haven't sold your gold and made any money off it.  Eventually the fee may exceed what you paid for the gold in the first place. Is that fair and equitable to gold owners?  Or property owners? 

If you really do want to tax property, it should be only on the profits made when it is transfered to another person- not on somebody who is not selling anything. If you want to tax property.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Land only tax, property only tax, any type of tax still relies on coercion, intimidation and force.


LVT is different as it *reclaims* community created wealth for community services.  The rest are bad taxes. LVT is a good, positive tax.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I think the geoists really think they're so onto something that it's bound to appeal to libertarians.  Just convince them that the LVT is nothing more than a "measure of advantage" (but not an actual cost, perish the thought), and entice them with a promise of being able to keep all their labor, and PRESTO!! The perfect tax. 
> 
> *Why, think of it - a single tax!* 
> 
> Yippee. As if we believed it, even if we thought it was a fair tax.  LVT and property taxes have the dubious distinction of being ones that are imposed without regard to your circumstances or ability to pay. No income, no income tax.  No purchases, no sales tax. But with a property tax or LVT it's "Oh, problems with orders this month? $#@! you, pay me. Business not so good this month? $#@! you, pay me, or out you go."
> 
> No wonder the LVT gives the illusion of prosperity - it naturally and automatically flushes and sweeps all the human debris (read=anybody facing hardships) to the outskirts.  Out of sight, out of mind, no brain, no headache. 
> 
> *It doesn't cost, it actual creates wealth by returning community created wealth back to the community!*  
> ...


Did you notice he quoted Tolstoy?  Tolstoy was a Christian anarchist and didn't recognize the State as legitimate-thus leaving no mechanism to even collect an LVT.  Deception by omission.  Orwell was a socialist and aside from this issue, he disagreed with the geoists.  Cherry-picking for convenience and deception.

----------


## eduardo89

> LVT is different as it reclaims community created wealth for community services.  The rest are bad taxes. *LVT is a good, positive tax*.


That doesn't exist. No tax is "good and positive". Intimidation, coercion and force are never "good and positive". 

And who is the "community". Government? Government did not create any wealth. If you seem to think the government has a right to "reclaim" some wealth then basically what you're arguing is to transfer landownership from private individuals and corporations to government. Your basic premise then is that government owns all land. 

Community services are not wealth, most times they are provided through taxation, which, again, is intimidation, coercion and force. Privatize "community services", make those services available on a voluntary basis and you don't need any tax. 

Privitization shows that LVT is unnecessary. Morality shows that LVT is wrong.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

Wow, what a hard time it is discussing things when words are so twisted.

Yieu says,  



> But the land itself is owned as property in the same way that the human structures or a couch are property


JohnLVT says in response to Yieu,



> Land is NOT CAPITAL...it is LAND


P1 says, "Orange is beautiful".
P2 says, "Orange is not green, it is Orange"

----------


## JohnLVT

> Value of the land depends on what it is used for. Put a bigger house on it and it becomes worth more so you can't separate out what is on the land from its value.


Two identically sized plots next to each other, with a factory on each. One makes washing,machines, the other scaffolding.  Take away the buildings out of the calculations, and the land of both is near the same in values.




> If you really do want to tax property, it should be only on the profits made when it is transfered to another person- not on somebody who is not selling anything. If you want to tax property.


Geoists do not want to tax property (CAPITAL) only the LAND. If someone is not selling then his business is ion big trouble.  Taxing what they produce is taxing production, which is retrograde - a bad tax.

----------


## eduardo89

> Geoists do not want to tax property (CAPITAL) only the LAND. If someone is not selling then his business is ion big trouble.  Taxing what they produce is taxing production, which is retrograde - a bad tax.


Th fact that geoists *want* to tax already disqualifies them as being pro-liberty. 

Geoism = fail

----------


## JohnLVT

> Wow, what a hard time it is discussing things when words are so twisted.


There was nothing twisted with what I wrote. Very simple and straight.  A couch is CAPITAL, Land is LAND (LAND & RESOURCES).  Understand what that means.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Two identically sized plots next to each other, with a factory on each. One makes washing,machines, the other scaffolding.  Take away the buildings out of the calculations, and the land of both is near the same in values.
> 
> 
> Geoists do not want to tax property (CAPITAL) only the LAND. If someone is not selling then his business is ion big trouble.  Taxing what they produce is taxing production, which is retrograde - a bad tax.


How would you calcluate the value of a piece of land without taking into consideration the value of things on it?  The only way to do that would be to have a tax based on acerage.  But then how do you compare land with water and minerals on it vs ones that don't?  What if my land has gold underneath but I don't dig the gold out? Am I taxed based on what gold I COULD have dug up? One of the biggest problems is that the tax is not based on what I personally paid for my piece of land.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Th fact that geoists *want* to tax already disqualifies them as being pro-liberty. 
> 
> Geoism = fail


What a strange thing to write.  Read m,y posts again. Geoists want the state rolled back.  Greater enterprise will reduce welfare dependency, etc, etc.

Geoism has been a massive success wherever it has been implemented. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, PA, USA, Denmark, etc.  It is a tried and proven method.  It projected Taiwan to world a technological power from a backward agricultural backwater.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> There was nothing twisted with what I wrote. Very simple and straight.  A couch is CAPITAL, Land is LAND (LAND & RESOURCES).  Understand what that means.


Money is capital. A couch or building is not capital. I can use capital to aquire things like land.

----------


## JohnLVT

> How would you calcluate the value of a piece of land without taking into consideration the value of things on it?


Easy. Real estate agents and insurance companies do it very well. This is not a theory. It works in practice around the globe.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> There was nothing twisted with what I wrote. Very simple and straight.  A couch is CAPITAL, Land is LAND (LAND & RESOURCES).  Understand what that means.


Land is Land until someone attempts to define how it is used, or, in your case, taxed.  
You were assuming Yeiu defines all property as capital, as though they are synonomous.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Money is capital. A couch or building is not capital. I can use capital to aquire things like land.


REad back on my pots, they explain the factors of production. CAPITAL is all man made things: money, couch, building, etc. LAND & its Resources was made by nature and is inelastic.

You can take cheap Labor from Alabama to NY
You can take cheap capital (couches) from Alabama to NY.
*You can't take cheap LAND from Alabama to NY.*

----------


## eduardo89

> What a strange thing to write.  Read m,y posts again. Geoists want the state rolled back.  Greater enterprise will reduce welfare dependency, etc, etc.
> 
> Geoism has been a massive success wherever it has been implemented. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, PA, USA, Denmark, etc.  It is a tried and proven method.  It projected Taiwan to world a technological power from a backward agricultural backwater.


Do you support taxation?

If yes, you are anti-liberty, pro-state, pro-coercion, pro-intimidation, pro-theft, pro-violence.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Land is Land until someone attempts to define how it is used, or, in your case, taxed.  
> You were assuming Yeiu defines all property as capital, as though they are synonomous.


CAPITAL is CAPITAL it is well defined. LAND & Resources is well defined.

----------


## Zippyjuan

If you include buildings and equipment then capital can also include land. 
http://www.investorwords.com/694/capital.html



> *capital* 
> 
> 
> Definitions (3)
> 
> 
> 1. Cash or goods used to generate income either by investing in a business or a different income property.
> 
> 2. The net worth of a business; that is, the amount by which its assets exceed its liabilities.
> ...


Now the demands of government rise with the growth in size and demands of the population so government spending has a tendency to rise.  The supply of land is fixed. That means that if a government is going to finance itself only via taxation on the value of land then the taxes must rise.  Where is the fairness to a person who bought land they could afford but now cannot afford it due to higher taxes?  (Isn't this supposed to somehow be a "fairer" form of taxation? )

Isn't this in practicality any different from having the government actually owning all land and merely renting it to its residents and businesses?

----------


## Yieu

> Land is Land until someone attempts to define how it is used, or, in your case, taxed.  
> You were assuming Yeiu defines all property as capital, as though they are synonomous.


Yeah... capital is not the same thing as property.




> Money is capital. A couch or building is not capital. I can use capital to aquire things like land.


This is the difference between capital and property.  Capital is used to acquire property.  Capital is used to acquire land, which is property.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Do you support taxation?


NO.  But community services have to be paid for. Modern civilization will not exist without them.  LVT is a misnomer, as it _reclaims_ community created economic growth that soaks into the land crystalizing as land values, to pay for community services.  The best "tax" is the land value tax - a progressive tax. Although the word *tax* is contentious.

----------


## eduardo89

> NO.  But community services have to be paid for. Modern civilization will not exist without them.  LVT is a misnomer, as it _reclaims_ community created economic growth that soaks into the land crystalizing as land values, to pay for community services.  The best "tax" is the land value tax - a progressive tax. Although the word *tax* is contentious.


It is still a tax, it relies in force of government to enforce. Government is not owed anything, the "community" is not owed anything because neither government nor the community owned the land to begin with. All taxation is morally wrong. LVT is a tax. 

"Community services" should be paid for through voluntary contracts.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Yeah... capital is not the same thing as property.


Get it firmly in your mind:

The building = CAPITAL
The Land = LAND & RESOURCES. 

Property is a word that authorities use wrongly the combine the two to tax you.  Geoists regard property as the CAPITAL, the building.

LAND is not property.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> NO.  *But community services have to be paid for.* Modern civilization will not exist without them.  LVT is a misnomer, as it _reclaims_ community created economic growth that soaks into the land crystalizing as land values, to pay for community services.  The best "tax" is the land value tax - a progressive tax. Although the word *tax* is contentious.


You're starting from the assumption that services have to be paid for collectively.  In reality, land owners could pay for the upkeep and maintenance of land more effectively because-unlike regimes of any size-such people can understand market signals and have the rational self interest to do so.  There's no reason in reality that various services like road building and maintenance have to be socialized-it's just been the accepted (arbitrary) norm since before living memory.  

We also know from the Plymouth colony experiment that private property solves the problems you complain about best.

----------


## JohnLVT

> It is still a tax, it relies in force of government to enforce.


A tax is different. It takes away what you have earned.  LVT does not. It reclaims what the community earned. 

It doesn't make any difference who owned the land. The community reclaims its the wealth it created to pay for its services. 

Community services paid for through voluntary contracts?  Is this the Disney school of economics :-)

BTW, in the UK, it was calculated that a man who earned approx $70,000 per ann. would pay about £6,000 less in taxes per ann. using LVT, and the government would have more than  enough to pay for its services.  But the economy would increase with LVT reducing the welfare bill and the LVT would automatically be lower as less will be going out - self regulating by the land values per ann. With the USA it is more difficult to asses as the USA has a state system.

----------


## eduardo89

> A tax is different. It takes away what you have earned.  LVT does not. It reclaims what the community earned. 
> 
> It doesn't make any difference who owned the land. The community reclaims its the wealth it created to pay for its services. 
> 
> Community services paid for through voluntary contracts?  Is this the Disney school of economics :-)
> .


/facepalm

Can one opt-out of LVT? What happens if I don't pay it? 

LVT relies on the monopoly of force of the state. It is a tax. 

Community services can be paid for through voluntary contracts. If I want fire protection I pay the local fire department $x per month, if I want garbage disposal I pay $x to a waste management company, if I want a newly paved road I pay $x to a paving company....

No need for LVT. LVT is just another form of taxation and therefore statism. 


I really prefered you when you were Roy, you were more fun.

----------


## Yieu

> Get it firmly in your mind:
> 
> The building = CAPITAL
> The Land = LAND & RESOURCES. 
> 
> Property is a word that authorities use wrongly the combine the two to tax you.  Geoists regard property as the CAPITAL, the building.
> 
> LAND is not property.


We just disagree on this point.  I believe that ultimately, God owns all land and everything on it.  As it is owned, it is property.

----------


## JohnLVT

> You're starting from the assumption that services have to be paid for collectively.


I fail to see who else will pay fro collective services. 




> In reality, land owners could pay for the upkeep and maintenance of land


Landowners are responsible for their own land. 

Henry George initially wanted all land to be stated owned - no private ownership - and leased out. Hong Kong does this. However reversing l;and ownership would be an impossible task, so the notion of reclaiming community created wealth from land values came in. Own as much land as you like, but you pay LVT.  SORTED! Well land ownership should be subject to Monopoly commissions.

When transferring from Communism to the free-market, Russia was advised by US and UK advisors not sell off land and lease it out like Hong Kong.  They were in an ideal situation to project the country massively forwards. The greed of the Oligarths took hold and land was sold off.  Now look at Russia.

----------


## JohnLVT

> We just disagree on this point.  I believe that ultimately, God owns all land and everything on it.  As it is owned, it is property.


The building = CAPITALThe Land = LAND & RESOURCES.

The above two are indisputable. Basic economics. You are disagreeing with economics not me.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> A tax is different. It takes away what you have earned.  LVT does not. It reclaims what the community earned. 
> 
> It doesn't make any difference who owned the land. The community reclaims its the wealth it created to pay for its services. 
> 
> Community services paid for through voluntary contracts?  Is this the Disney school of economics :-)
> 
> BTW, in the UK, it was calculated that a man who earned approx $70,000 per ann. would pay about £6,000 less in taxes per ann. using LVT, and the government would have more than  enough to pay for its services.  But the economy would increase with LVT reducing the welfare bill and the LVT would automatically be lower as less will be going out - self regulating by the land values per ann. With the USA it is more difficult to asses as the USA has a state system.


Interesting theory.  Forcing me to give you money because I own something does not take away what I have earned?  Where did I get the money to pay the tax? I had to earn it someplace.  The land is not by itself giving me money though I can use it in ways which may generate money (a business) or not (by living on it). Is a tax on what you have better than a tax on what you produce?

I would owe money because I existed not because I had any income.

----------


## Yieu

> The building = CAPITALThe Land = LAND & RESOURCES.
> 
> The above two are indisputable. Basic economics. You are disagreeing with economics not me.


But you can own land, which also defines it as property.  Also:




> *Landowners* are responsible for their *own** land*.


If you *own* the land, as a *landowner*, then it is your property.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I fail to see who else will pay fro collective services.


People who want services will pay for them.  There was a story published a while back on RPFs about a woman whose house was allowed to burn down because she did not pay the subscription fee for community fire service.  She took a risk, but she also wasn't coerced into paying.  

Eduardo is right.  Not only is your new sock puppet less fun, Roy L, it's also many times less interesting and much dumber.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Can one opt-out of LVT? What happens if I don't pay it?


If you do not pay the same occurs if you do not pay anything owed to the authorities.  Once again, a tax is different. It takes away what *you* have earned. LVT does not. It reclaims what the *community* earned.  The two are very different.




> Community services can be paid for through voluntary contracts. If I want fire protection I pay the local fire department $x per month,


A lesson from history proved this is unworkable.  In England, insurance companies wopuld install a plaque on the wall for the fire brigade to see if the house was insured against fire. If there was afire and no plaque then the stood and watched the house burn down.  Some services are best run collectively by the community. What next? Private armies?  We did have those and the British used tem against the British Colonists in America.  It insensed them. 

For your info, I am John not Roy. It says in my handle.  Get understand something so fundamentally simple.

----------


## eduardo89

> If you do not pay the same occurs if you do not pay anything owed to the authorities.  Once again, a tax is different. It takes away what *you* have earned. LVT does not. It reclaims what the *community* earned.  The two are very different.


lol, "owed to the authorities", you're well versed in the language of statism.

*LVT is a tax, taxation is morally wrong.*

----------


## WilliamC

> If people want public services they should be able to pay for them voluntarily. I'm not concerned with finding ways to raise revenue for the state. They can go to hell. The state has zero right to anyone's property, be it income, land, labor, capital, or otherwise.


I approve of this statement.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> For your info, I am John not Roy. It says in my handle.  Get understand something so fundamentally simple.


  It's called a sock puppet account, and you're not the first to create one.  Fire11 is the most famous (and hilarious) sock-puppeter of RPFs for the time being.

----------


## WilliamC

> All taxation leads to corruption. The basic premise of taxation is already morally corrupt.


I also approve of this statement.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Eduardo is right.  Not only is your new sock puppet less fun, Roy L,


You do not have a case, hence the childish comments.  You would allow a house to burn down? This stinks of extreme brainwashed right-wing USA thinking. Me, me, me, and screw the rest.  Fortunately most people in the USA are not so inhuman.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> If you do not pay the same occurs if you do not pay anything owed to the authorities.  Once again, a tax is different. It takes away what *you* have earned. LVT does not. It reclaims what the *community* earned.  The two are very different.
> 
> 
> 
> A lesson from history proved this is unworkable.  In England, insurance companies wopuld install a plaque on the wall for the fire brigade to see if the house was insured against fire. If there was afire and no plaque then the stood and watched the house burn down.  Some services are best run collectively by the community. What next? Private armies?  We did have those and the British used tem against the British Colonists in America.  It insensed them. 
> 
> For your info, I am John not Roy. It says in my handle.  Get understand something so fundamentally simple.

----------


## JohnLVT

> I also approve of this statement.


The thought of an anarchic society is frightening.

----------


## JohnLVT

> ..


You have been out-argued for sure hence the childish silly pictures.  You have no case to argue.

----------


## eduardo89

> You do not have a case, hence the childish comments.  You would allow a house to burn down? This stinks of extreme brainwashed right-wing USA thinking. Me, me, me, and screw the rest.  Fortunately most people in the USA are not so inhuman.


It's called personal responsibility. If you don't want to take the risk of your house burning down, pay for protection. Why should I be allowed to steal from my neighbor to pay for my laziness, apathy or stinginess?

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You do not have a case, hence the childish comments.  You would allow a house to burn down? This stinks of extreme brainwashed right-wing USA thinking. Me, me, me, and screw the rest.  Fortunately most people in the USA are not so inhuman.


LMAO!!!  I have a clear case-you just choose to ignore it, as a typical statist-and Roy L's alter-ego.  I would let the house burn down.  People who have the opportunity to subscribe to a service (and it was a cheap service anyone in the neighborhood could afford in the story when it was posted a few months back) but do not have only themselves to blame.  

There's this thing called personal responsibility.  Use it, or become a slave of the State.

----------


## eduardo89

> You have been out-argued for sure hence the childish silly pictures.  You have no case to argue.


And your case has been argued and failed the test of scrutiny by means of logic and morality.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You have been out-argued for sure hence the childish silly pictures.  You have no case to argue.


lolz, wishful thinking.  You've been pulverized and are lashing out.  Bring back your Juicy G alter-ego, plz.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> If you do not pay the same occurs if you do not pay anything owed to the authorities.  Once again, a tax is different. It takes away what *you* have earned. LVT does not. It reclaims what the *community* earned.  The two are very different.


Well that is a relief.  I don't have to pay my land value (property taxes) from money I earned- the community will on what they earned. I thought you wanted my money.  Whew!  I like it when somebody else pays for things for me!




> a tax is different


Doesn't the "T" in LVT stand for tax? 




> It takes away what you have earned. LVT does not.


Again I will ask- if the money to pay the LVTax does not come from money I earned- where does it come from?

----------


## JohnLVT

> Interesting theory.  Forcing me to give you money because I own something does not take away what I have earned?


You _never_ earned the value in the land.  The community did.  That is basic economics.  
For those who strangely want no state services then LVT is ideal.  It is not a tax, LVT _reclaims_ community created wealth.  As the Single Tax, and you do not want to pay LVT, then rent.  You pay sweet nothing whatsoever to the state, council or whatever.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You _never_ earned the value in the land.  The community did.  That is basic economics.  
> For those who strangely want no state services then LVT is ideal.  It is not a tax, LVT _reclaims_ community created wealth.  As the Single Tax, and you do not want to pay LVT, then rent.  You pay sweet nothing whatsoever to the state, council or whatever.


Rent from whom?  (and "communities" do not create wealth.  Economic actors do.  There is no such thing as "intrinsic value" in land, gold, or anything else-and communities do not create objective value)  And why does the community _deserve_ anything from me?  The members could much more easily just ask me for something.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Well that is a relief.  I don't have to pay my land value (property taxes) from money I earned


Ultimately, that statement is correct. _You pay it from wealth created by the community_ not what _you_ earned via your Labor.  

Buy a car (CAPITAL) and the value drops every year.  Buy land and the value rises. LVT *reclaims* that rising value which you never created.




> Doesn't the "T" in LVT stand for tax?


Please read what I write, LVT is a misnomer.  It really is Community Value Reclaim (CVC). It should have been retitled a long time ago.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Rent from whom?


Any non-state person you want to rent from.  Your choice.




> and "communities" do not create wealth.


That statement is total nonsense, displaying total ignorance of basic economics. 


Economic actors do.  There is no such thing as "intrinsic value" in land, gold, or anything else-and communities do not create objective value)[/QUOTE]

----------


## Zippyjuan

> You _never_ earned the value in the land.  The community did.  That is basic economics.  
> For those who strangely want no state services then LVT is ideal.  It is not a tax, LVT _reclaims_ community created wealth.  As the Single Tax, and you do not want to pay LVT, then rent.  You pay sweet nothing whatsoever to the state, council or whatever.


Renting does not allow you to excape paying property taxes. The cost of the property taxes are included in the rent. You are not getting off free.  And if land is owned by a business who has to pay property taxes the cost of those taxes will be included in whatever I purchase from them.

----------


## eduardo89

> Any non-state person you want to rent from.  Your choice.


I really think you're on the wrong forum. We aren't statists here, you clearly are though.

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## heavenlyboy34

> Any non-state person you want to rent from.  Your choice.


Then there's no point in the LVT and we can end the discussion here.  






> That statement is total nonsense, displaying total ignorance of basic economics.


You're the one spouting nonsense and displaying ignorance of basic econ here, Mr sock puppet.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Ultimately, that statement is correct. _You pay it from wealth created by the community_ not what _you_ earned via your Labor.  
> 
> Buy a car (CAPITAL) and the value drops every year.  Buy land and the value rises. LVT *reclaims* that rising value which you never created.
> 
> 
> 
> Please read what I write, LVT is a misnomer.  It really is Community Value Reclaim (CVC). It should have been retitled a long time ago.


Actually it is not correct.  I cannot pay the taxes unless I have some source of income. It is true that it is not calculated based on my income but without income it will be difficult to pay the taxes. 

The guy down the street making more money (which increases the wealth of the community) is not going to help me pay my own taxes. 

The "community" is the sum of all of the individuals.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Then there's no point in the LVT and we can end the discussion here.


The community reclaim the wealth it created from the landowner, not the tenant.

Any more child insults to come?  Read what I wrote in this thread and UNDERSTAND them.  It is not that difficult.

----------


## Zippyjuan

Let's say I am on a fixed income but own my property.  Incomes in the community are rising. Should my property taxes go up because the wealth of the community increased even though mine didn't? I also did not get any of the gains in the value of my property since I did not sell it. Has the community created any wealth for me which they can "take back"?

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## JohnLVT

> Actually it is not correct.  I cannot pay the taxes unless I have some source of income.


Assuming the value increase is high enough, you can go to bank and get a loan, payable on sale of land or death.  Many retired people do this to tap into the wealth locked up ion the land under their feet.

You will have lots of income to pay the smallish LVT, as you will not be paying Income Tax, Sales Tax, Property Tax, etc.




> The guy down the street making more money (which increases the wealth of the community) is not going to help me pay my own taxes.


What he earns from his labor is his and only his and not yours to take.




> The "community" is the sum of all of the individuals.


Correct and the some of the combined wealth they create soaks into the land crystalizing as land values.  They reclaim it to pay for community services.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Any more child insults to come?


When dealing with child-like people, it's not an insult to talk to them as adults talk to children.   Plz go back to being Roy L.  This puppet account is too dumbed down to be any fun.

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## eduardo89

> Assuming the value increase is high enough, you can go to bank and get a loan, payable on sale of land or death.  Many retired people do this to tap into the wealth locked up ion the land under their feet.
> 
> You will have lots of income to pay the smallish LVT, as you will not be paying Income Tax, Sales Tax, *Property Tax*, etc.


Yes you will, it will just be called LVT instead...

----------


## JohnLVT

> Let's say I am on a fixed income but own my property.  Incomes in the community are rising. Should my property taxes go up because the wealth of the community increased even though mine didn't?


Not property tax, land value tax.  If the value rises then yes you pay more, but you pay no other taxes, being overall more wealthy than now.  If the value drops you pay less LVT. Simple. If the district you live in rises in prosperity and you are left behind then, as now, you may have to move. But you will move to lower OVT district - an internal tax haven.




> I also did not get any of the gains in the value of my property since I did not sell it. Has the community created any wealth for me which they can "take back"?


You can always remortgage or a loan payable on sale of land or death.

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## JohnLVT

> Yes you will, it will just be called LVT instead...


Your comprehension is limited for sure. Property Tax is the CAPITAL (buildings) and the LAND combined. It is not difficult. So understand and stop regurgitating the same lines.  At least try.

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## JohnLVT

> When dealing with child-like people,


You, amongst many here can't understand where l;and values come from. You are also extremely childish. Grow up!

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## eduardo89

Much simpler and better: abolish all taxes, and allow voluntary exchange of goods and services and personal responsibility to prevail?

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## heavenlyboy34

> Your comprehension is limited for sure. Property Tax is the CAPITAL (buildings) and the LAND combined. It is not difficult. So understand and stop regurgitating the same lines.  *At least try.*


 Well, since you keep regurgitating the same (incorrect) lines, why should anyone else make an effort to change?

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## heavenlyboy34

> You, amongst many here can't understand where l;and values come from. You are also extremely childish. Grow up!


You have demonstrated an utter failure of understanding value.  Everyone here has been patient in trying to teach you.  I'm only impatient with you because I've dealt with your alter-ego so extensively.  You don't offer anything new and every time someone demonstrates you are wrong, you insult them.  You clearly didn't come here to have an adult conversation.

FYI, I'm already grown up, but I don't speak to children the way I speak to adults.

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## heavenlyboy34

> Much simpler and better: abolish all taxes, and allow voluntary exchange of goods and services and personal responsibility to prevail?


This^^

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## eduardo89

> This^^


Garbage!! Lies!!!


I miss that...

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## heavenlyboy34

> Garbage!! Lies!!!
> 
> 
> I miss that...


LOLZ!!  For a trip down memory lane, you can always go here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...55#post4148655

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## JohnLVT

> Much simpler and better: abolish all taxes, and allow voluntary exchange of goods and services and personal responsibility to prevail?


LVT is not a tax. It reclaims wealth created by all. Understand that.  Once you do it is easier.

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## Zippyjuan

> Not property tax, land value tax.  If the value rises then yes you pay more, but you pay no other taxes, being overall more wealthy than now.  If the value drops you pay less LVT. Simple. If the district you live in rises in prosperity and you are left behind then, as now, you may have to move. But you will move to lower OVT district - an internal tax haven.
> 
> 
> 
> You can always remortgage or a loan payable on sale of land or death.


There is little difference between property taxes and LVTs. If we improve what is on the land, the value of the land goes up so as I pointed out earlier, it is next to impossible to separate the two. 

Why should I have to go into debt (borrow to pay my taxes) or move away from where I have lived for possibly decades because I could not keep up with the Jones? What additional costs did I impose on the community becasue my wages did not rise as quickly?  That is a very elitist attitude.

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## Zippyjuan

> LVT is not a tax. It reclaim. Understand that.


What exactly is being reclaimed?  What did I as a land owner receive which is being taken back?

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## heavenlyboy34

> There is little difference between property taxes and LVTs. If we improve what is on the land, the value of the land goes up so as I pointed out earlier, it is next to impossible to separate the two. 
> 
> Why should I have to go into debt (borrow to pay my taxes) or move away from where I have lived for possibly decades because I could not keep up with the Jones? What additional costs did I impose on the community becasue my wages did not rise as quickly?  That is a very elitist attitude.


*
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Zippyjuan again. *

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## JohnLVT

> Well, since you keep regurgitating the same (incorrect) lines,


I know exactly what I am writing.  Firstly try to understand where land values come from. After you understand tat then all after will be simple.

I have the impression most here do not like societies or people and are extremely self-centered.  LVT can accommodate you though.  You pay no tax on your labors and the goods you buy.

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## heavenlyboy34

> I know exactly what I am writing.  Firstly try to understand where land values come from. After you understand tat then all after will be simple.
> *
> I have the impression most here do not like societies or people and are extremely self-centered.*  LVT can accommodate you though.  You pay no tax on your labors and the goods you buy.


  Actually, we do like societies. (We're self-interested, not self-centered.  There's nothing selfless or virtuous about LVT, FYI)  That's why we oppose statism (which your LVT regime requires)-the number one _destroyer_ of societies.

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## Zippyjuan

It is just that a land value tax is a bad form of taxation compared to others. The value of land is arbitrary in most cases and a true value cannot be determined until it is actually sold and two parties agree on what they are willing to pay for it and sell it for.  If the value of the land changes and the taxes on it are also changed, then the owner is paying taxes on unrealized gains- I don't get to enjoy the increase in the value of my property until I actually sell it. The tax is not based on what I may or may not be able to pay while an income tax is based on actual gains and if I earn more then I have more money to pay taxes with while the value of my property may go up while my wages don't so I get forced to pay a higher percent of my earnings in the form of taxes.  I may even end up losing something I worked and saved for simply because somebody else thinks it may be more valuable.  Can't get closer to actually stealing than that.

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## JohnLVT

> There is little difference between property taxes and LVTs. If we improve what is on the land, the value of the land goes up so as I pointed out earlier, it is next to impossible to separate the two.


Totally incorrect.  A line of about 50 houses in road. All the same.  Value of them all inc land building is $300,000.  The land values will be the same in all of them.  In the centre of the row of houses, one is burnt down. The house is cleared and the vacant plot is sold.  The insurance company stated the rebuild cost is $100,000.  Guess what the plot will sell for?  $200,000. Yes, $200,000. 

Other houses may extend out the back and the cost of the extension is $20,000.  The house/land price will be $320,000.  The land value with the extension?  $200,000. Get it?

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## JohnLVT

> It is just that a land value tax is a bad form of taxation compared to others. The value of land is arbitrary in most cases and a true value cannot be determined until it is actually sold


This is laughable. Real estate agents manage very well in valuing land and house.  This display a complete lack of knowledge of how land and houses are valued.

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## Zippyjuan

Still waiting for an explination of what is being "reclaimed" via the LVT.

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## WilliamC

> LVT is not a tax. It reclaims wealth created by all. Understand that.  Once you do it is easier.


Oh, so once I agree with you and your definitions then it all becomes easy?

Why I can just _take_ what _I_ want by re-defining it as belonging to _everybody_, then I'll just claim to act in _their_ interest and _not my own_!

Collectivism at it's finest here on display

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## JohnLVT

> That's why we oppose statism


So does LVT. It has no taxes on production and people's labors. LVT rolls back the state. 

Your comprehension is very poor. *It is best for you to start reading my posts on this thread from the beginning.  But understand them. What you do not understand get back to me. *

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## Zippyjuan

> This is laughable. Real estate agents manage very well in valuing land and house.  This display a complete lack of knowledge of how land and houses are valued.


My agent may tell me my home and its lot is worth $200k but that does not matter if I cannot find a buyer willing to pay $200k for it. They may have an idea, but that is not necessarily what it will eventually sell for. It is a guess.  And once again, how can I be taxes at a higher rate if I have not made any profits by selling it?  What gains have I actually made?

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## JohnLVT

> Oh, so once I agree with you and your definitions then it all becomes easy?


They are not my definitions. It is basic economics,. You have been told this.  It will be easier once you understand the basics.  Your confusion will dissipate.

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## Zippyjuan

> So does LVT. It has no taxes on production and people's labors. LVT rolls back the state. 
> 
> Your comprehension is very poor. *It is best for you to start reading my posts on this thread from the beginning.  But understand them. What you do not understand get back to me. *


The state is not necessarily "rolled back" by changing the way it collects revenue.  The state gets "rolled back" only by reducing its size. If they can get the same amount of revenues- even if it is from a different source- they don't have to get smaller.

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## eduardo89

> So does LVT. It has no taxes on production and people's labors. LVT rolls back the state.


How is a tax on land not statist?

Why not simply abolish ALL taxes and fund your community services through user fees?

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## eduardo89

> They are not my definitions. It is basic economics,. You have been told this.  It will be easier once you understand the basics.  Your confusion will dissipate.


You sound like a great indoctrination professional....err...I mean college economic professor.

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## heavenlyboy34

> This is laughable. Real estate agents manage very well in valuing land and house.  *This display a complete lack of knowledge of how land and houses are valued*.


Look who's talking!  Sounds like you've never bought real estate.  One thing I will agree with you is that LVT is the "least evil" tax (as Rothbard called it)-however, this is not the same thing as "good".  Nor is it justifiable_ just because_ it is less evil than other taxes.

A brief lesson for you:
http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/valuation/...my_land_valued
*How is my land valued?*Property sales are the most important factor considered when determining land values.
Most land is valued using the mass valuation approach, where properties are valued in groups called components. The properties in each component are similar or are expected to reflect changes in value in a similar way.
Representative properties are selected from components and individually valued as at 1 July each year to determine how much the land value has changed from the previous year. This change is then applied to all properties in the component to determine their new land values. Sample valuations are then checked to confirm the accuracy of the new values.
During the valuation process, valuers analyse sales of both vacant land and improved properties, making adjustments for the added value of improvements.
The value of improvements is their worth as reflected by the real estate market in an area. The value of improvements is generally not equal to their replacement or insurance value.

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## JohnLVT

> My agent may tell me my home and its lot is worth $200k but that does not matter if I cannot find a buyer willing to pay $200k for it. They may have an idea, but that is not necessarily what it will eventually sell for. It is a guess.


The agent will know quite accurately if he works in the area.  It may go fro more or even less, as the market shifts.  This is basics that most people understand.




> And once again, how can I be taxes at a higher rate if I have not made any profits by selling it?  What gains have I actually made?


Taxing when you sell it, is sales tax. *LVT is a reclaiming "value".*  A massive difference.  You need to stop now and go back to the beginning a get the basic of LVT. It is on this thread.

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## heavenlyboy34

> How is a tax on land not statist?
> 
> Why not simply abolish ALL taxes and fund your community services through user fees?


But you won't stop teh evil free riderz and rent seekerz!!111!!!1!

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## JohnLVT

> Look who's talking!  Sounds like you've never bought real estate.


I am in my 5th   I know how they are valued.

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## eduardo89

> Look who's talking!  Sounds like you've never bought real estate.  One thing I will agree with you is that LVT is the "least evil" tax (as Rothbard called it)-however, this is not the same thing as "good".  Nor is it justifiable_ just because_ it is less evil than other taxes.


I'm going to disagree. LVT is still plenty evil, as evil as a "regular" property tax. It still implies that you do not own your land, you're still a serf at the mercy of the government. I'd say in that respect a sales tax is less evil. 

Doesn't change the facts though, all taxes are immoral.

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## ClydeCoulter

> You _never_ earned the value in the land.  The community did.  That is basic economics.  
> For those who strangely want no state services then LVT is ideal.  It is not a tax, LVT _reclaims_ community created wealth.  As the Single Tax, and you do not want to pay LVT, then rent.  You pay sweet nothing whatsoever to the state, council or whatever.


This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard.  The community earned some perceived value in my property?  Kiss my ever lovin' a**.

This is what the community did for me a** f****.  Raised the price of plywood and lumber and nails when Katrina hit, so it cost me almost twice as much to buiild my house!

I designed and built my house, and the cabinets, and ran the electrical wires, and installed the wood stove.  Not the f***ing community.

And it is worth what I deem it worth to me (PERIOD).!

Now for all those a** h*** that want to buy and sell for profit (called speculators) driving up the price of everything, who cares, one day it will all be gone, and so will all those hi folluten names of various social constructs that humans so love to enslave others so they can sit of their fat a**es and collect all the best AAAAA filet minions on their plate that they can barely get off the plate to their f***ing mouths.

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## WilliamC

> They are not my definitions. It is basic economics,. You have been told this.  It will be easier once you understand the basics.  Your confusion will dissipate.


Please, please keep posting. You are a great source of enlightenment as to how insanity sounds.

No, I am not joking. Your mind on display is...fascinating.

Thank you.

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## GeorgiaAvenger

Well I am an opponent of property taxes because I believe people should have the option to be truly free of taxes if they choose. 

I saw your argument that it would not tax flowing money, which makes sense. However that means the tax on property would likely be so high that nobody would purchase land, or if that is not the case, then government will not have a steady stream of revenue which could lead to disastrous inconsistencies. No thanks.

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## heavenlyboy34

> I'm going to disagree. LVT is still plenty evil, as evil as a "regular" property tax. It still implies that you do not own your land, you're still a serf at the mercy of the government. I'd say in that respect a sales tax is less evil. 
> 
> Doesn't change the facts though, all taxes are immoral.


Oh, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.  But on a sliding scale, it is less evil than other taxes.  Income tax, for example, assumes you don't own yourself or the fruits of your labor.

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## heavenlyboy34

> Now for all those a** h*** that want to buy and sell for profit (called speculators) driving up the price of everything, who cares, one day it will all be gone, and so will all those hi folluten names of various social constructs that humans so love to enslave others so they can sit of their fat a**es and collect all the best AAAAA filet minions on their plate that they can barely get off the plate to their f***ing mouths.


Speculating isn't necessarily bad.  It's only bad when the risk is socialized.  Hell, buying into a business is a type of speculating.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> The agent will know quite accurately if he works in the area.  It may go fro more or even less, as the market shifts.  This is basics that most people understand.
> 
> 
> 
> Taxing when you sell it, is sales tax. *LVT is a reclaiming "value".*  A massive difference.  You need to stop now and go back to the beginning a get the basic of LVT. It is on this thread.


You cannot reclaim an increase in the value of something until the value has actually been realized.   Again the gold example I used earlier- can I be taxed because the price of gold has gone up since I bought it if I have not sold that gold and actually made any profits off owing it?  I don't get any checks I can send to the community for the increased perceived value of my land. The community has not given me any money to be "reclaimed".

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## GeorgiaAvenger

The title says it is a tax...yet he claims it isn't?

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## heavenlyboy34

> The title says it is a tax...yet he claims it isn't?


 Welcome to the fantasy land of cognitive dissonance that is Roy L.

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## ClydeCoulter

> Speculating isn't necessarily bad.  It's only bad when the risk is socialized.  Hell, buying into a business is a type of speculating.


I don't think investment is the same as what I'm calling speculating.  I consider investment as something that is more for the longer term.  It doesn't drive the prices up, it only says, "hmmm, this is a widget that I think people will buy, I'll invest in the company to help build them, and I may profit".  That is the kind of investment Ron Paul was talking about in his latest debates.

Speculating is for quick profits on the dime.  Only for the sake of making money.  You know, the kids that think they should have some of your candy when you get on the buss with some.

----------


## eduardo89

> Welcome to the fantasy land of cognitive dissonance that is Roy L.


But he's JohnLVT now! It says so in his username!

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## JohnLVT

> But you won't stop teh evil free riderz and rent seekerz!!111!!!1!


Spot on!  People who rent their home, pay taxes on income and goods just as we all do and receive various benefits, through such things as free education for their children, free hospital treatment and so on. But the tax the renters have paid is gone, they do not get it back.

However, people who own their home are a privileged elite. Say they earn $50k and the taxes payable is about $15k. Thus far they are the same as a renter.

Average annual house price increase was say 10%. So a $250k house, which is affordable to someone on a $50k salary, gained $24k in a value in a boom year alone. Thus their tax payment of $15k per ann, has been effectively refunded to them with an added bonus of $9k! Owners can either cash in on this rise and fund current expenses, or leave it to accumulate for later use, but both are tax-free gains.

Our comfortably-off home owner receives the use of the transport system, schools and hospitals for nothing. He is the classic free rider. He rides on the back of the tax-paying tenant family that is not able to store up capital gains for a glorious spend-up in the future.

I am not blaming homeowners for this incredible and perverse injustice that is inbuilt into our supposedly 'redistributive' tax system - I am a householder too. He indicts the weakness of our politicians who have access to top advisers and, despite knowing that better solutions for tackling endemic poverty and unfairness have been around for 200 years, are too timid to enact fairer laws.

Land Value Tax would stop this injustice and many advisors tell them so.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I don't think investment is the same as what I'm calling speculating.  I consider investment as something that is more for the longer term.  It doesn't drive the prices up, it only says, "hmmm, this is a widget that I think people will buy, I'll invest in the company to help build them, and I may profit".  That is the kind of investment Ron Paul was talking about in his latest debates.
> 
> Speculating is for quick profits on the dime.  Only for the sake of making money.  You know, the kids that think they should have some of your candy when you get on the buss with some.


Ah, you mean "short term" or "short selling" speculators.  Yes, those sort do cause distortions in the market.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Spot on!  People who rent their home, pay taxes on income and goods just as we all do and receive various benefits, through such things as free education for their children, free hospital treatment and so on. But the tax the renters have paid is gone, they do not get it back.
> 
> However, people who own their home are a privileged elite. Say they earn $50k and the taxes payable is about $15k. Thus far they are the same as a renter.
> 
> Average annual house price increase was say 10%. So a $250k house, which is affordable to someone on a $50k salary, gained $24k in a value in a boom year alone. Thus their tax payment of $15k per ann, has been effectively refunded to them with an added bonus of $9k! Owners can either cash in on this rise and fund current expenses, or leave it to accumulate for later use, but both are tax-free gains.
> 
> Our comfortably-off home owner receives the use of the transport system, schools and hospitals for nothing. He is the classic free rider. He rides on the back of the tax-paying tenant family that is not able to store up capital gains for a glorious spend-up in the future.
> 
> I am not blaming homeowners for this incredible and perverse injustice that is inbuilt into our supposedly 'redistributive' tax system - I am a householder too. He indicts the weakness of our politicians who have access to top advisers and, despite knowing that better solutions for tackling endemic poverty and unfairness have been around for 200 years, are too timid to enact fairer laws.
> ...


Wow, changing your screen name also destroyed your sarcasm detector. lolz

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

How does this ensure a steady stream of revenue for the government, whatever the size?

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## ClydeCoulter

No, I don't think so.
I have a house on 11 acres, I grow my own garden, hay for the cows, work in my shop and on my computer writing softare for NYC.  All of this would cost me more with LVT.  I pay 1500 per year property tax (which I hate).  I only make about 20k+ per year.  I built this house and the shop, I grow my own garden.
I'm tired of the idea that "because I exist, therefore I pay".  All the a*** holes up there need to go work the land and see if they can get some understanding.

----------


## JohnLVT

> What exactly is being reclaimed?  What did I as a land owner receive which is being taken back?


Are you really so slow?  Economic growth created by community activity, public and private, soaks into land and crystalized as land values. The value in land was not created by the landowner, read Winston Churchill on this.  This community created wealth is *reclaimed*.  Understand that before writing anything.  

I will have to give up on you as I am going around in circles, as your comprehension is almost zero. How old are you?

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Ah, you mean "short term" or "short selling" speculators.  Yes, those sort do cause distortions in the market.


I think there is a difference in "Short Term" and "Short Selling".  Isn't short selling betting against a rise?

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

What happens when a flood devastates a community?

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Spot on!  People who rent their home, pay taxes on income and goods just as we all do and receive various benefits, through such things as free education for their children, free hospital treatment and so on. But the tax the renters have paid is gone, they do not get it back.
> 
> However, people who own their home are a privileged elite. Say they earn $50k and the taxes payable is about $15k. Thus far they are the same as a renter.
> 
> Average annual house price increase was say 10%. So a $250k house, which is affordable to someone on a $50k salary, gained $24k in a value in a boom year alone. Thus their tax payment of $15k per ann, has been effectively refunded to them with an added bonus of $9k! Owners can either cash in on this rise and fund current expenses, or leave it to accumulate for later use, but both are tax-free gains.
> 
> Our comfortably-off home owner receives the use of the transport system, schools and hospitals for nothing. He is the classic free rider. He rides on the back of the tax-paying tenant family that is not able to store up capital gains for a glorious spend-up in the future.
> 
> I am not blaming homeowners for this incredible and perverse injustice that is inbuilt into our supposedly 'redistributive' tax system - I am a householder too. He indicts the weakness of our politicians who have access to top advisers and, despite knowing that better solutions for tackling endemic poverty and unfairness have been around for 200 years, are too timid to enact fairer laws.
> ...


The renter and homeowner alike are paying the same taxes. They aren't getting any "free ride" off the other. The homeowner has to pay property taxes (along with all of their other taxes) and the renter pays the property taxes for the person he or she rents from. 

That $9,000 increase in the value of their home? As I have been trying to point out, is not money they actually can get to spend on whatever they want to ('cash it in") until they sell their home. Then they need a new place to live.   I own my own home (will have it free and clear by the end of the year aside from property taxes and homeowner's fees) but I am hardly elite. My income is just below the national median.  The benefit I do receive is to get something in exchange for the money which could be spent on simply paying rent.

----------


## eduardo89

> I think there is a difference in "Short Term" and "Short Selling".  Isn't short selling betting against a rise?


Short sellings is better on a fall.

----------


## JohnLVT

> No, I don't think so.
> I have a house on 11 acres, I grow my own garden, hay for the cows, work in my shop and on my computer writing softare for NYC.  All of this would cost me more with LVT.


You would pay less overall with LVT.  All studies indicate so.

----------


## eduardo89

> What happens when a flood devastates a community?


No more LVT because the land is worthless!!!

----------


## eduardo89

> You would pay less overall with LVT.  All studies indicate so.


Care to source the study on the effect of LVT on his land?

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## JohnLVT

> The renter and homeowner alike are paying the same taxes. They aren't getting any "free ride" off the other. The homeowner has to pay property taxes (along with all of their other taxes) and the renter pays the property taxes for the person he or she rents from. 
> 
> That $9,000 increase in the value of their home? As I have been trying to point out, is not money they actually can get to spend on whatever they want to ('cash it in") until they sell their home.


You are some sort troll or a complete idiot. You have been answered on this and many other points and yet come back with the same nonsense.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Care to source the study on the effect of LVT on his land?


Your local Georgist centre will help you there. The USA has quite a few, where they teach it.

----------


## eduardo89

> You are some sort troll or a complete idiot. You have been answered on this and many other points and yet come back with the same nonsense.


The real Roy is coming out of his shell

----------


## JohnLVT

> What happens when a flood devastates a community?


If the land values drops so does the LVT accordingly.  It is self-regulating - the market decides the value of the land.

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

> No more LVT because the land is worthless!!!


Exactly.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Are you really so slow?  Economic growth created by community activity, public and private, soaks into land and crystalized as land values. The value in land was not created by the landowner, read Winston Churchill on this.  This community created wealth is *reclaimed*.  Understand that before writing anything.  
> 
> I will have to give up on you as I am going around in circles, as your comprehension is almost zero. How old are you?


I do understand that the community can grow in its wealth and that this can increase the value of the property.  The point - which you are missing badly- is that I am not receiving anything for the increased value of my property. I don't have any extra money to spend on anything simply because on paper my land is worth more.  I only get that money if I sell it while the value is up.  I have not received anything financial from the community so I don't have any monetary gains for them to "reclaim" as long as I still own my property. I only get those increases in value when it is sold. 

My home is worth twice today what I originally borrowed to pay for it but I don't have that extra money it is currently worth. If you buy it from me today at that price, then I will.  Otherwise those gains are only on paper. 

Thank you for your concern as to my age. Since you feel the need to ask, which makes you sound a bit childish perhaps,  I am pretty certain that  I am older than you are and have a double degree from a major University including Economics as one of my majors.

----------


## eduardo89

> It the land values drops so does the LVT accordingly.  It is self-regulating.


You mean it's regulated by unelected bureaucrats who decide what your land is worth so they can tax you and have their salaries and benefits paid, right?

----------


## JohnLVT

> How does this ensure a steady stream of revenue for the government, whatever the size?


All land is taxed on its value.  I acre in the middle of the desert will next to nothing, while one opposite Central Park in NY will pay a hell of a lot.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> You are some sort troll or a complete idiot. You have been answered on this and many other points and yet come back with the same nonsense.


It won't let me -rep you anymore...dang  
Stop calling people names.
And what he is saying is only nonsense to those without it.

----------


## JohnLVT

> You mean it's regulated


It is regulated by the market, not bureaucrats of the state.

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

> All land is taxed on its value.  I acre in the middle of the desert will next to nothing, while one opposite Central Park in NY will pay a hell of a lot.


Government revenue is dependent on land sales, right?

----------


## JohnLVT

> is only nonsense


Repetitive nonsense is well...nonsense.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Government revenue is dependent on land sales, right?


And any apparent improvement everyone (community) makes.  Stop planting those flowers, and removing your old cars, we'll all pay more LVT!

----------


## JohnLVT

> Government revenue is dependent on land sales, right?


That is sales tax.  Please read the thread from the beginning.  It is all there.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> It the land values drops so does the LVT accordingly.  It is self-regulating.


 The income tax was sold to people using similar lies.  I don't see any reason to trust the government with this tax either.  Self-regulating. Surrrre.

----------


## eduardo89

> Repetitive nonsense is well...nonsense.


Except when you're posting, right?

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

> That is sales tax.  Please read the thread from the beginning.  It is all there.


That is what I thought. So when land sales become stagnant then the government ceases to be funded. And they will become stagnant. 

A recipe for disaster.

----------


## eduardo89

> It is regulated by the market, not bureaucrats of the state.


But this market rate has to be interpreted by someone. The market doesn't send the government a fax with the correct number. It would be government employees (unelected bureaucrats) who interpret what they believe the market rate is. The same unelected state employees who depends on LVT revenue to pay their salaries, benefits and pensions. No chance of corruption there...

----------


## WilliamC

> Economic growth created by community activity, public and private, soaks into land and crystalized as land values.


That's quite poetic actually. Does the wealth of all this economic growth first rain down onto the land, followed by the warming, nurturing good-will of the vibrant community spirit, which soaks into the land, resulting in the bountiful harvest of the crystallized land value?

When you can't bully them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$#@! eh?

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> That is what I thought. So when land sales become stagnant then the government ceases to be funded. And they will become stagnant. 
> 
> A recipe for disaster.


No, what JLVT is saying is it's a property not property tax, in other words, you pay a Land Tax that is based on what your neighbors have done with their property or businesses or common values such as hospitals, roads, etc....

----------


## WilliamC

> You would pay less overall with LVT.  All studies indicate so.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

So, would the highest priced land be where there is the lowest LVT?

----------


## Zippyjuan

> You would pay less overall with LVT.  All studies indicate so.


Facinating. Can you perhaps provide link to such studies? Given that nearly half don't pay any income taxes today that would be interesting to see how they came up with that figure.  Negative tax rates perhaps?   Thank you for looking for the info to share. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_886293.html



> Nearly half of American tax filers will pay no federal income taxes this year, according to data released by the Tax Policy Center.
> 
> Some 76 million tax filers, or 46.4 percent of the total, will be exempt from federal income tax in 2011.
> 
> But with the help of the government, a similar percentage of filers -- many of them among the bottom 40 percent of earners -- have legally avoided paying federal income tax for the past several years.


The studies I have seen looked at changing from a property tax to LVT- not replacing an income tax with it.

Here is one for Altoona PA: http://www.urbantoolsconsult.org/upl...%20%202011.pdf  In that case, the tax burden was switched from residential owners to commercial owners by going to a LVT. Total tax collections from all payers was higher (this would depend on the tax rate implemented of course).

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> Facinating. Can you perhaps provide link to such studies? Given that nearly half don't pay any income taxes today that would be interesting to see how they came up with that figure.  Negative tax rates perhaps?   Thank you for looking for the info to share. 
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_886293.html


That's not really fair to JLVT, since we know that everyone pays the inflation tax, and sales tax.......

----------


## zyphex

JohnLVT, you know, as I provided the appropriate links before, that Murray Rothbard already demolished the idea of the LVT or "Single Tax"? I guess it is probably better to ignore it so you can carry on with your pipedream about an idea that has been  thoroughly  demolished. I'll repost the information since it is evident you haven't read into it. Hopefully you'll give up the zombie worship and read Rothbard.

Read pp. 934-937, 1196-1211 of Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market to see how Murray Rothbard demonstrates that the "Single Tax" would not only cause economic havoc, but would also generate ZERO revenue.

If that doesn't give you your fill, also read pp. 575-586, 593-597 of Economic Controversies by Murray Rothbard.

Although the tax may have intuitive appeal compared with other forms of taxation, it is simply one of the worst (if not THE worst), from both the viewpoint of the citizen and the tax-collector, as Rothbard demonstrates. The lack of revenue it generates and the level of economic havoc it causes is probably unparalleled.

----------


## JohnLVT

> JohnLVT, you know, as I provided the appropriate links before, that Murray Rothbard already demolished the idea of the LVT or "Single Tax"?


I have read Rothbard and he is clearly on another planet...along with all the other Austrians.  Karl Marx also said he demolished the Single Tax as well. And was as wrong as Rothbard as well.

----------


## JohnLVT

> So, would the highest priced land be where there is the lowest LVT?


That clearly would not follow.  The reverse would be true.

----------


## Dr.3D

Oh crap, not another pointless thread on this subject.   Sheesh.... if nobody would respond to this crap, the subject would die a well deserved death.

----------


## WilliamC

> I have read Rothbard and he is clearly on another planet...along with all the other Austrians.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Oh crap, not another pointless thread on this subject.   Sheesh.... if nobody would respond to this crap, the subject would die a well deserved death.


True.  I was just trolling the troll for lolz.   Notice I even pointed him to Roy L's (his alter-ego) other silly thread on this topic, yet he insisted on continuing.  Unless something major happens, I'm dropping the topic now.

Please reassume your JuicyG alter-ego.  You were much less annoying, pretentious, abusrd, and boring back then.

----------


## zyphex

> I have read Rothbard and he is clearly on another planet...along with all the other Austrians.  Karl Marx also said he demolished the Single Tax as well. And was as wrong as Rothbard as well.


Well, after your substantive critique, I can't help but find you as worthless as the LVT. If we taxed the value of your criticism of Rothbard, it would generate as much revenue as the LVT.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I have read Rothbard and he is clearly on another planet...along with all the other Austrians.  Karl Marx also said he demolished the Single Tax as well. And was as wrong as Rothbard as well.


Now that's preaching to the choir for sure, as I can't think of any better way of persuading sound money, anti-tax libertarians than saying that Rothbard and all Austrians are on another planet, and then linking them to Karl Marx of all people!  

Let me guess, you took a Carnegie course, didn't you.

----------


## Roy L

> Colorblind private individual land ownership without property tax creates the most secure prosperous societies.


Nope.  Never has, never will.



> Sure the State virtually starves and that is liberating.


Ask the Somalis how liberated they feel.  "Oh, joy, we get to be robbed by pirates!"

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Come on, keep it all in one thread.  Mods?

Thread ended.

----------


## Roy L

> Government revenue is dependent on land sales, right?


Wrong.

----------


## Roy L

> And any apparent improvement everyone (community) makes.  Stop planting those flowers, and removing your old cars, we'll all pay more LVT!


Because such improvements MAKE US WILLING TO PAY.  The neighborhood is nicer.  Why is this so hard to grasp?  It's a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay transaction, like paying for the things you take out of the grocery store.  You pay because you want the benefits.  If you pay more, it is because what you are getting is WORTH more in the market's judgment.

----------


## Roy L

> But this market rate has to be interpreted by someone.


It has to be measured using price data from actual transactions.



> The market doesn't send the government a fax with the correct number. It would be government employees (unelected bureaucrats) who interpret what they believe the market rate is.


Almost certainly, it would be a computer program.



> The same unelected state employees who depends on LVT revenue to pay their salaries, benefits and pensions. No chance of corruption there...


Pretty much not, as all the data would be public.  Corruption requires secrecy.  Like current tax systems.

----------


## Roy L

> The income tax was sold to people using similar lies.


No, it was not, stop makin' $#!+ up.  We are not telling any lies, and the income tax was sold using quite different and entirely bogus arguments.



> I don't see any reason to trust the government with this tax either.  Self-regulating. Surrrre.


LVT is self-regulating because it is a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay transaction.  If government tries to overcharge, people won't use the overpriced land and revenue will drop.  LVT is the only possible revenue system that aligns government's financial incentives with the public interest.

----------


## Roy L

> That is what I thought.


HE JUST TOLD YOU IT WASN'T.



> So when land sales become stagnant then the government ceases to be funded. And they will become stagnant.


LVT revenue is not dependent on land sales, and the market will be more liquid, not less liquid.

----------


## Roy L

> You are some sort troll or a complete idiot. You have been answered on this and many other points and yet come back with the same nonsense.


Welcome to LVT discussions on the Internet.

----------


## Roy L

> Come on, keep it all in one thread.  Mods?


ISTR that long threads cause a software problem for the host because the whole thread has to load when someone opens it.  That slows the site down.  I don't know why the other LVT thread hasn't been closed for renovations ;^)

----------


## Roy L

> Exactly.


That's Rothbard's error, so at least you are in "good" company.

----------


## Roy L

> Actually it is not correct.  I cannot pay the taxes unless I have some source of income.


You can pay out of other assets, or use the land to generate income.



> It is true that it is not calculated based on my income but without income it will be difficult to pay the taxes.


The idea is that LVT stimulates every landholder to make the most appropriate and productive use of the land, and not just hoard it so others can't use it.

----------


## Roy L

> I would let the house burn down.


That's been tried.  Google "Marcus Licinius Crassus" and start reading.  No, he was not one of the good guys, and he ended very badly indeed.



> People who have the opportunity to subscribe to a service (and it was a cheap service anyone in the neighborhood could afford in the story when it was posted a few months back) but do not have only themselves to blame.


OMG.  And whom do your clients blame when a fire you didn't stop when it was small gets too big to stop at all, hmmm?

God, some people are dense.



> There's this thing called personal responsibility.  Use it, or become a slave of the State.


<yawn>  Crassus was a crooked slave dealer, too...

----------


## Steven Douglas

> The idea is that LVT stimulates every landholder to make the most appropriate and productive use of the land, and not just hoard it so others can't use it.


Mmmm, you making "hoard it so that others can't use it" sound so delicious! 

Two, please! And also two of whatever Roy L. is smoking.

----------


## Roy L

> Renting does not allow you to excape paying property taxes.


But it does allow you to escape paying LVT, which is borne entirely by the landowner.



> The cost of the property taxes are included in the rent.


No, it is not.



> You are not getting off free.


True: you still have to pay rent.  But you don't have to pay any taxes on top of that.



> And if land is owned by a business who has to pay property taxes the cost of those taxes will be included in whatever I purchase from them.


Nope.  LVT cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to tenants, consumers, employees, or anyone else.  This is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years, and is not disputed by any competent economist.

----------


## Roy L

> It's called personal responsibility. If you don't want to take the risk of your house burning down, pay for protection.


That's what LVT does, and far better than private fire protection ever could.



> Why should I be allowed to steal from my neighbor to pay for my laziness, apathy or stinginess?


That is exactly what we are asking you.

----------


## Roy L

> Then there's no point in the LVT and we can end the discussion here.


No, you just can't wrap your head around the fact that you are now paying for government twice, while with LVT you would only pay for it once.



> You're the one spouting nonsense and displaying ignorance of basic econ here, Mr sock puppet.


No, you have proved many times that you refuse ever to know the relevant facts of economics.

----------


## Roy L

> Let's say I am on a fixed income but own my property.  Incomes in the community are rising. Should my property taxes go up because the wealth of the community increased even though mine didn't?


Sure.  What you are depriving others of is more valuable now.



> I also did not get any of the gains in the value of my property since I did not sell it.


You got -- and deprived others of, remember -- access to all the advantages that make it worth more.



> Has the community created any wealth for me which they can "take back"?


Yep: the value others are willing to pay for even if you aren't.

----------


## Roy L

> Much simpler and better: abolish all taxes, and allow voluntary exchange of goods and services and personal responsibility to prevail?


Yeah, that's working so well for the Somalis...

----------


## Roy L

> You have demonstrated an utter failure of understanding value.


No, you have.  Value is what an item can be exchanged for.  Austrian subjective value theory is incoherent gibberish.

----------


## Roy L

> There is little difference between property taxes and LVTs.


No, they are entirely different, because property taxes consist of two opposite taxes: a tax on improvement value, which measures what the owner is contributing to the wealth of the community, and a tax on land value (LVT), which measures what the community is contributing to the wealth of the landowner.



> If we improve what is on the land, the value of the land goes up so as I pointed out earlier, it is next to impossible to separate the two.


Wrong.  Improvement does not affect unimproved land value, which is what LVT taxes.  It is easy to separate the two, in fact it is far easier to measure land value than improvement value, as any competent appraiser can tell you.



> Why should I have to go into debt (borrow to pay my taxes) or move away from where I have lived for possibly decades because I could not keep up with the Jones?


Because you are depriving the Joneses of opportunities they would otherwise be at liberty to use.



> What additional costs did I impose on the community becasue my wages did not rise as quickly?


Your wages have nothing to do with it.  That is the point.  The LVT charge is purely for what you deprive others of. 



> That is a very elitist attitude.


First we are accused of socialism, then elitism.  <yawn>

----------


## Roy L

> What exactly is being reclaimed?  What did I as a land owner receive which is being taken back?


The value of the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location.

----------


## Roy L

> There's nothing selfless or virtuous about LVT, FYI)


LVT is extremely virtuous because it is pure justice.



> That's why we oppose statism (which your LVT regime requires)-the number one _destroyer_ of societies.


Absurdity.  LVT does not require "statism," and it is injustice that destroys societies, not states.  Landowner privilege has destroyed more societies than "statism."

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, you have.  *Value is what an item can be exchanged for.*  Austrian subjective value theory is incoherent gibberish.


Can be exchanged for, or is?

I can exchange a dollar for your car, but my brother says he can exchange it for ten dollars. Hard cashola, baby, crisp new bill right from the bankie. Made me stand down, I think it's too high, myself. But I guess we are both right. Then again, we both just realized that you might have some say in the matter, as you can exchange your car for a billion dollars - if'n its offered and you accept (and whoo-boy you'd be crazy not to!). 

So to settle the dispute, what is the value of your car?

----------


## JohnLVT

> Welcome to LVT discussions on the Internet.


Yep, closed minds. Unable to comprehend something very simple.

----------


## JohnLVT

How the poor currently line the pockets of the rich and few notice.  LVT will sort that out....

----------


## JohnLVT

> LVT is extremely virtuous because it is pure justice.
> 
> Absurdity.  LVT does not require "statism," and it is injustice that destroys societies, not states.  Landowner privilege has destroyed more societies than "statism."


Rome fell because the land was in the hands of a few people.  It can be said a similar thing occurred with the British Empire. 0.3% of the population own 70% of the land in the UK.  The entrepreneurs, the mercantilists, who created the Industrial Revolution and made the empire work, turned to being large estate owners after making fortunes in the Empire, joining the idle landed aristocracy.  Rent went up as the rent takers took hold.  Home production waned being curtailed and unmodernized - a downward spiral.  I see similarities emerging in the USA. 

The UK Liberal Party attempted to reverse the problem and eliminate the large poverty strata in the UK - the largest empire ever seen - by attempting introduce Land Valuation Taxation in 1909.  This would have kept the British Empire supreme even to this day if implemented in the UK and the empire (it was in a small way like in Hong Kong and Singapore).  

LVT caused the biggest political and constitutional ructions for hundreds of years.  

*Economist say there is no silver bullet to solve the economic crisis.*

*There is.  A tax reform to that will make us all richer.*

It is had been adopted 10 years ago it would have prevented the housing boom spiralling into a financial catastrophe, and Britain would be leading the way to prevent the global environmental crisis.

All we have to do is reverse the 16th century coup against the people of England by the aristocracy.

As back 1066 people paid for the public services out of the surplus income from their land.  It contains the solutions to so many of society's problems. 

3/4 of public revenue were still being raised from land income right into the 17th century. Then the aristocracy executed their coup. They hijacked the tax system so that they could pocket the land income of the kingdom.  By the middle of the 19th century just 4% of revenue came from land, as the powerful landowners push taxes onto people's labors in introducing Income Tax.   The first attempt at a counter-coup was in the electrons in the early 20th century. Parliament became a scene of a violent political clash over the budget of 1909. 

But the House of Lords was full of powerful landed aristocrats in their country mansions, they proved too powerful. They were able to defeat the will of the people. So government had to raise revenue by penalizing the people by taxing their wages. 100 years repressed growth followed as the tax burden crushed the working population.  The bad taxes destroyed jobs,  wrecked the natural environment, rewarding the polluters while penalizing the producers.

Governments know that taxes damage the economy. They implement stealth taxes to camouflage the impact.

100 years ago Winston Churchill tried to shift taxes back onto land owners. If Gordon Brown had implemented this in 1997, by now national income would be greater for every man, woman and child by £15,000, and we would have avoided the property boom & bust and Credit Crunch Crash.

When you shift taxes from working and saving to Land Values, you get rid of the distortions that make people work less and save less. And therefore people are operating in a more efficient fashion.

Political parties should stop fighting amongst themselves and unite in tax reform. That will not happen until people man the battlement and insist their ancient rights.  The landowning aristocracy betrayed the people of the UK by blocking the People's budget in 1909, 

Parliament must finish the business it started 100 years ago. 

In early 2009 the House of Lords discovered that 4 Lords were prepared to accept money to influence a law to further reduce the tax liability on landed property. 100 years after the People's budget scandal some Lords were still lining their pockets at the expense of the people.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Mmmm, you making "hoard it so that others can't use it" sound so delicious!


To speculators land hoarding was delicious. They made a killing and then caused a world-wide financial crash.  Land is to be used for productive reasons.  Not stopping others from using it.

----------


## JohnLVT

> LVT cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to tenants, consumers, employees, or anyone else.  This is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years, and is not disputed by any competent economist.


Correct. Currently the landowner is charging as much as he can right now. If LVT is introduced he can't charge any more than what the market dictates, as he is doing right now.  He cannot pass LVT onto the tenant.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Now that's preaching to the choir for sure, as I can't think of any better way of persuading sound money, anti-tax libertarians than saying that Rothbard and all Austrians are on another planet, and then linking them to Karl Marx of all people!  
> 
> Let me guess, you took a Carnegie course, didn't you.


You really don't get it do you?  Rothbard and the barking mad Austrians have influenced economics for sure. Since then we have had boom & busts and world-wide crashes.  It doesn't work and proven not to work with glaring evidence. While Geoism has an impressive track record with proven examples all over the world over the past 100 years or so. 

Take you pick. Either proven failed system introduced by yodeling Tyrolleans or one that works. I prefer systems that work.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> How the poor currently line the pockets of the rich and few notice.  LVT will sort that out....


Several fallacies engaged by this idiot. 

His first premise is that while everyone is paying taxes, and he admits freely that the wealthy pay progressively more, the landowners, he says, are more than getting this all "back" from increased land values.  -- then comes nothing but false gibberish on how infrastructure was responsible for this "value increase". 

Land values appreciate in the midst of any growing population with a growing economy, but that is not primarily due to "infrastructure".  Land itself is similar to hard specie. It is naturally rare, and therefore *inflation-proof*. A HEDGE against a debased currency, one that is deliberately diluted, and which depreciates in value, which hits the lowest income earners, who have no hedges, the hardest. 

He focuses on the fact that the lowest income earners tend not to be landowners (tend not have access to the same "hedging" security of landowners).   One response to this could be the obvious:  *Homestead.  Turn renters into owners.* Remove all artificial barriers to individual land ownership. AKA - FREE EVERYONE FROM EVIL $#@!ING RENT.  

But no, that would defeat his underlying aim and central purpose, because he also (and rightly) hates income taxes. Does he hate income taxes more than he hates rent?  NO.  He starts off by decrying rent, but that's really the last we hear of it. He's off in Georgist La-La land after that, because really - the one thing that he said hurts the poor is the very thing he wants to keep in place, and call for as the Grand Solution.  

See, the poor are hit by low taxes and high rents.  If they were not renters, they would just be hit by low taxes. His aim is not to allow the poor to make themselves inflation-proof, and RENT FREE (free of the ONLY thing he said hits them hardest), by making them landowners, freeing them from rents, and limiting (OR EVEN ABOLISHING) income taxes.  Not on your life.  His solution is, instead, just to make everyone renters!  Rich and poor alike.  Make the rich pay "their fair share" of RENT. Then all is well, and all the other taxes (magically, we promise and guaran-damn-tee it), go away.   

Land, like any scarce and valuable commodity, really does appreciate in value in a growing economy. The most important reason for appreciation, which can be seen as you move away from insane metropolitan centers, which should not be held up as examples or used as models, is that land simply does not DEPRECIATE in value _relative to a thoroughly and incessantly debauched currency_.  That's not "publicly created" value for the land, but rather "publicly AND privately DESTROYED" value for the currency itself.  

The solution is not LVT OR income tax. That's a FALSE CHOICE, as both should be abolished wherever they exist, and forbidden where they do not. Infrastructure does not require EITHER of these mechanisms as revenue streams to exist.   

The second solution (which is really the first in terms of importance): STOP DEBAUCHING THE CURRENCY.  

The third solution: STOP WITHHOLDING PUBLIC LANDS FROM LANDLESS INDIVIDUALS.  MAKE HOMESTEADING FOR INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT LAND A RIGHT.  
If you inherited land, or already have land, you're out of luck.  Declare your homestead, and it's INVIOLABLE.  

The fourth solution: ABOLISH THE PROPERTY TAX AND THE INCOME TAX.  Neither are necessary.   


But this nonsense of making everyone renters, paying perpetual rents on land they can NEVER own -- that notion can kiss my ass forever, along with all the collectivist, socialist fantasy-land rationale invented to support it. The solution is NOT to make everyone renters. It's the opposite - make it so that everyone can be landowners.  That is the ONLY solution that is sustainable, and that I would support.

----------


## WilliamC

> You really don't get it do you?  Rothbard and the barking mad Austrians have influenced economics for sure. Since then we have had boom & busts and world-wide crashes.  It doesn't work and proven not to work with glaring evidence. While Geoism has an impressive track record with proven examples all over the world over the past 100 years or so. 
> 
> Take you pick. Either proven failed system introduced by yodeling Tyrolleans or one that works. I prefer systems that work.

----------


## JohnLVT

> His first premise is that while everyone is paying taxes, and he admits freely that the wealthy pay progressively more, the landowners, he says, are more than getting this all "back" from increased land values.  -- then comes nothing but false gibberish on how infrastructure was responsible for this "value increase".


You do not understand basic economics for sure. A loose transcript below.  The highlighted and underlined pieces below - you need to get to grips with these and understand them, instead of dreaming things up.


*THE PROBLEM*

Three million children today are living in poverty. Successions of governments, of different parties, can't change this due to the tax system.  Children born to the poorest families suffer little or no social mobility.  

Are politicians to blame? 

The biggest scam in history was instigated on the people centuries ago by the Lords, Barons and Knights of the land.   Governments used the tax system to milk the poor.  

Why did they do it?

To enrich the people who own land. It is operated by all democratic governments around the world. The biggest winners are those who own land or homes in the best locations.  

People who rent pay rent to landlords and taxes to the government. People who rent pay taxes to fund the service that they receive: police, rail, roads, army, etc.  That sounds fair. They pay for what they receive.

Britain's top earners pay on average £1.25 million in taxes in their lifetime. The people who rent their homes are generally in the lowest income bracket. Over their working lives the poor pay over £0.25 million in taxes. The rich on average pay 5 times more in taxes.

That sounds fair. Doesn't it?

Income tax is the more you earn, the more you pay. Called Progressive taxes. Progressive taxes has exactly the opposite effect.

Rich people complain that they pay a lot of money to the government. But, the government pays it all back to them. 

How do they do this? 

*Governments spend our tax money on infrastructure, such as: Schools Universities Hospitals Rail networks Roads This infrastructure raises the productivity of the economy resulting in economic growth.* Because of the way the market economy works, those economic gains are crystallised as land values. Then these gains surface as windfalls or capital gains in the property market.

Those capital gains are not shared out equally amongst all of us, taxpayers who rent their homes for example, are excluded. 

The windfalls are pocketed by people who own land. The rises in property values more than offsets the taxes they pay into the public purse. Then who pays for the services the rich people use? The families on the lowest incomes.

Every increase in house value for top earners offsets any tax they contribute. During boom times it's possible to claw back a lifetimes taxes in just three years. Meanwhile...the lowest earners and those who pay rent, pay more overall. 

Families on the lowest incomes subsidise the lives of the rich.

Is that fair? 

There is only one way to make the tax system fair. Parliament has to tell the taxman to stop collecting taxes from people's wages.

We need a kind of tax reform that Winston Churchill and Lloyd George nearly introduced in Parliament 100 years ago. But, the landlords blocked them.

The only war Winston Churchill lost was the war against the British landlords. If we cancel the tax on people's wages, how do we pay for public services? By levying a charge on the value of land. People who live in valuable locations will pay much more than those who live in less expensive properties. That's fair. It also happens to be the most efficient way to fund the service we all share in common. 

*THE SOLUTION*

There is a simple solution to this injustice.
We should place the cost of public services on the values of land. Owners with houses in valuable locations would pay more than those who rent their homes. Owners with houses in valuable locations wouldn't be able to claw back their taxes. That way everybody pays for the services they receive and we are all treated as equals

The above clearly puts it across that the poor are subsidizing the rich - this applies equally to all western countries.   The rich are not paying their way. Hence why in the USA 1% of the pop'n own more wealth than the bottom 90%.  The land market is giant sluice to extract community created wealth into private rich pockets.




> He focuses on the fact that the lowest income earners tend not to be landowners (tend not have access to the same "hedging" security of landowners).   One response to this could be the obvious:  *Homestead.  Turn renters into owners.* Remove all artificial barriers to individual land ownership. AKA - FREE EVERYONE FROM EVIL $#@!ING RENT.


This is completely naive. Most people live in urban areas, and apartments, where owning your own homestead is just not possible. 




> But no, that would defeat his underlying aim and central purpose, because he also (and rightly) hates income taxes. Does he hate income taxes more than he hates rent?  NO.  He starts off by decrying rent, but that's really the last we hear of it. He's off in Georgist La-La land after that, because really - the one thing that he said hurts the poor is the very thing he wants to keep in place, and call for as the Grand Solution.


You just never got it! What hurts the poor was wealth being extracted by the very rich. LVT will stop that,which he puts across not mentioning LVT.




> But this nonsense of making everyone renters, paying perpetual rents on land they can NEVER own -- that notion can kiss my ass forever, along with all the collectivist, socialist fantasy-land rationale invented to support it.


Fred Harrison never suggested that all be renters.  You must concentrate and get points. Homesteads?  Should these city apartment dwellers move west in covered wagons; complete with long flock, bonnet wearing women? 


*Governments spend our tax money on infrastructure, such as: Schools Universities Hospitals Rail networks Roads This infrastructure raises the productivity of the economy resulting in economic growth.* Because of the way the market economy works, those economic gains are crystallised as land values. Then these gains surface as windfalls or capital gains in the property market.

Those capital gains are not shared out equally amongst all of us,

Understand the above - immediately above. That is a start for you.  Get the basics. Then talk about covered wagons.

----------


## JohnLVT

> ..


Take you pick. Either:

A proven failed system introduced by yodeling Tyrolleans.*One that works. I prefer systems that work - Geoism.*

----------


## Steven Douglas

Thank for all the propaganda, with all its faulty cause and effect attributions, and the unwitting defense of the necessity for Human Concentrate - with stacked housing and increased urban concentration.    

As for covered wagons - not needed.  The poor spend more on housing than any other expense.  Give them a way to avoid rent altogether (and not through Roy L.'s "exemption" dangled plum, but actual abolishment of public rent payments altogether, which would be about as useless as Section 8 "assistance" with all the insanity we still accept), and watch what happens to those precious apartments in the inner cities, all chock full of labor. You've heard of capital flight?  Watch for "Labor Flight", as labor flees to capital, one homesteader at a time.  And watch the other capital come sniffing right after them, looking to entice their share of the bounty. 

No, they don't have to "head out west" in a covered wagon.  If they can Homestead anywhere near a city center - (and not the completely insane megatropolis exceptions to the humanity rule), the amount they save in property taxes alone will more than pay for the occasional necessary commute - but more importantly, it will DIFFUSE the community, DECONCENTRATING the insanity of an inner city where rent is the ONLY OPTION -- FOREVER -- for lower income people. And that diffusion will result in smaller, less insane communities than the ones we have - the monster concentration models that you are actually attempting to encourage and FEED -- as somehow being a good thing.    

Oh, and "capital gains" is quite often a "currency value loss" in disguise.  

Don't ask me to accept your faulty dogma as passing off as "basics".   It's complete and utter rubbish, disconnected from reality, with leaps upon leaps of logic and faulty conclusions about what is responsible for the plight of the poor in the world.  Don't believe me? Get a lecture from Roy L. on Somalia and a few other choice spots on the planet.

----------


## WilliamC

> Thank for all the propaganda, with all its faulty cause and effect attributions, and the unwitting defense of the necessity for *Human* *Concentrate* - with stacked housing and increased urban concentration.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> 


And the final piece of the puzzle falls right into place.

Geoists are cannibals!  A "geolibertarian" is someone who wants to liberate..."the earth". 

Holy Moly, it all makes sense now. 

"To Serve Man" 

Marinated in LVT sauce, no doubt.

----------


## WilliamC

If you ever read the "Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson about the exploration/colonization of Mars, there is a character, Ann I believe, who is essentially a Geoist of Mars since her entire agenda is to keep Mars as human-free and pristine as possible. Her followers, obviously, are called the Reds, as opposed to the Greens who want to terraform Mars and make it as liveable as possible for humans.

 What makes this interesting is that there is not even any pretense of Ann or the Reds being motivated by any sort of respect or understanding of the importance of a biosphere, as on Earth where there is a very good argument to be made for essentially leaving Nature alone so that the Earth, in some sort of Gaia fashion, can maintain and replenish the biosphere which makes human life possible. 

On Mars they just felt that somehow the lifeless dirt and rock had some sort of right to exist and that humans were interfering with this 'right to rocks' by trying to live there.

Interesting parallels to some of the Earth-firsters and those who actually think humans are a plague on the planet.

Well, in a way we are but I'm just hopeful the cure is a long-term sustainable symbiosis instead of extinction.

----------


## eduardo89

This is just too good. We have two guys complimenting each other and the best part is they're actually the same troll!!

I can't wait for the third part of the Troly Trinity to show up (JuicyG) and enlighten us on the wonders of a Zionist version of LVT.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Thank for all the propaganda,


You are very confused.  You need to get your thoughts structured.




> The poor spend more on housing than any other expense.


Ah something sensible at last.  LVT will stabilize land prices. It will make land cheaper and more can be spent on the building meanING affordable, quality homes. 

It is apparent you know nothing of urban living. In the centre of cities people need to be stacked. It also creates, attractive vibrant districts.  

LVT will dissipate people from city hot spots and alleviate housing overheating. Dave Wetzel expains that here.  The other guy is a clear knob.

----------


## WilliamC

> And the final piece of the puzzle falls right into place.
> 
> Geoists are cannibals!  A "geolibertarian" is someone who wants to liberate..."the earth". 
> 
> Holy Moly, it all makes sense now. 
> 
> "To Serve Man" 
> 
> Marinated in LVT sauce, no doubt.


To be fair I don't think that Georgist want to eat everyone, just the rich...

----------


## WilliamC

> You are very confused.  You need to get your thoughts structured.


When all else fails in a debate, try direct commands eh?.

Maybe you can just completely bypass that entire pesky critical thinking function that most people use to separate sense from non-sense and just _tell_ them what to believe.

I think the technique works better with the spoken word though, writing it out like you do just makes it sound stupid.

And before you come back with some childish reply about me...



If I were really smart I wouldn't be wasting my time...

----------


## JohnLVT

> To be fair I don't think that Georgist want to eat everyone, just the rich...


This indicates you have no idea of what Geoism is about.  In the USA 1% of the pop'n have more wealth than the bottom 90%.  If you think that is normal and desirable for a society then you are a saddo.  That indicates there is a systemic failure - no economist in their right mind would agree that an economy is a success with figures like that.

So, we need to wipe it away and get a real system that works retaining the positive aspects of Capitalism - an *unrigged free-market*.  Geoism give that.  Geoism does not penalize the rich as enterprise is promoted, as LVT has proven in Hong Kong, etc.  Henry George said, "What I stand for is the equal rights of *all men*."  The Single Tax will make people richer, that is all of us. 

George observed (as did others like Marx), that in an era of rapid technological progress and mass production, a belt of grinding poverty remained.  It is still with us today in all western societies. George brilliantly hit upon LVT, although others did way before him. This will distribute the proceeds of the production of a society more fairly and simultaneously expand the economy so all are richer.

----------


## JohnLVT

Transcript, "based" on Fred Harrison with Max Keiser:

*The Forbidden Knowledge*

The forbidden knowledge in economics is the land market. There is nothing magical about this. Data about the western European economy, tells us that trends repeat every 18 years without fail. Looking at the land market you can see how the heath of the economy is progressing. From this information the turning points in the business cycle can be pinpointed.  

*The Boom - Bust Cycle*

The boom bust cycle is programmed into the politics. It used to be a monarchical system, aristocracies economy now it is semi-democratic.  The underlying factors are still the same. The best gains are out of LAND, not the stock market, not out of anything else. Over the business cycle the highest capital gains are out of land. That is the secret. 

The way the market is structured at the present time we definitely get a boom after 15 years into the cycle and then a bust because debt is created to over exploit that market and the economy has to come to dip. It has happened every 18 years for the past 200 to 300 years.

*Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES.*

The socialisation of LAND is recovering for the community the value we collectively create. Changing the taxes by abolishing taxes on earnings and the profits from the investments from our savings. Privatise the wealth that we create. Let people keep what they produce. Collect from the public sector that shared revenue that is chrysalises in the land market as land values, we use that to pay for public services.  That's resocialising what used to be the public revenue and privatising people's wages. 

There is an Anglo-American phenomenon, unlike the Germans who do not view their homes as their castles and invest in productive activities.  The US and UK culture is to regard their house as their castle and their homes as a nest egg/pension fund.

*Political Problem*

It is a political problem. They found that when the Liberal government  introduced a land value based tax 100 years ago the House of Lords simply rejected any attempt at reform.

That culture of making money out of nothing, just by occupying a little bit of land, has seeded through into the democratic system. The UK even has shop workers who have portfolios of buy-to-let properties to make money out of nothing. It is a political problem to inform them that it is against their interests. There hasn't been the political or moral strength of our statesmen for 100 years to change that corrupt method of distributing income.

*All Become Richer When Taxes Are Raised From Land Values*

*In the USA they would be collectively better off by $100s billions per year to share out amongst the population if they made the tax shift from taxing wages and raising revenue from land values.*  That become an incentive. Everyone becomes richer.  In the Tony Blair administration the nation lost wealth and welfare to the tune of one years worth of national income. That pays for a lot of hospitals and schools. Wages would be higher. It takes moral courage by the stewards of our system of government. The people would listen and once informed they would want to make the change.

*Taxing Land Values Give Sustainable Economics*

If we want a sustainable system of economics and want to be able to compete with the Far East on an equal footing over the next business cycle, the only option is to shift taxes off wages and onto the "values" of land.  What that would mean? It would mean is that the factory gate products of western Europe would become more affordable in global markets.  Without this tax shift, our goods will continually to be undercut by cheap labour produced goods in the Far East. 

This future is not sustainable. This is what the G20 economies have driven Europe and North America into. A situation of crisis were we will not be able to compete, unless there is a change to the cost structure. The only way we can do that is to implement this tax shift.

Governments have been abysmal in looking after the interests of the advanced countries.  They have exposed Europe and North America to a Far Eastern economy that is going to gobble up most of us.  We may be in the doldrums for the next 20 years, because our governments have tried to inflate us out of this depression by the very mechanism that brought us into it in the first place. Debt was the way to maintain living standards, not by producing goods that are of any value but by borrowing and spending. 

That is exactly what governments are still doing, piling debt on debt. They have socialised the private debt of land speculators, putting the burden onto future tax payers. What does that mean to the rest of the business cycle? It means the European and North American economies are not fit for purpose. The G20 economies have failed abysmally to take care of their nations.

*Doldrums Will Continue*

The economy will be in the doldrums for about 10 years, as the Japanese economy in the 1990s and European and North American in the 1930.  Some will make money by latching onto the forbidden knowledge that predicts the trends, but for the rest of us there will be a decline in living standards and lot of unemployment.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You are very confused.  You need to get your thoughts structured.


Uh oh.




Well, perhaps some of those LVT bucks can be used for a reeducation camp for me when the time comes. Then I might say "l got my mind right, boss."




> Ah something sensible at last.  LVT will stabilize land prices. It will make land cheaper and more can be spent on the building meanING affordable, quality homes.


Yeah, nothing quite so affordable as land and a home that is paid for, rent free, tax free, and unencumbered by banks, liberals, or gnashing teethed mass-manipulating progressives in geoist clothing.  

And screw "stabilizing" land prices. They need to be DEstabilized.  As in, made cheaper because it's not artificially scarce by anyone. Public or private.  Go away from the fantasy madness of the large inner cities, and into the more spread out rural areas, and price stabilization becomes a natural reality with no LVT'ers sniffing around trying to get it into an artificial collectivist concentrate.  




> It is apparent you know nothing of urban living. In the centre of cities people need to be stacked. It also creates, attractive vibrant districts.


Really? Well, I don't know if I know anything about urban living, but I have lived in the centers of Shanghai, Beijing, Vancouver, Santiago, Hong Kong, Manhatten, Boston and San Francisco, among other place. If those count for anything.   I've also lived in their non-bipolar opposites, in the more rural areas.   As for your opinion on urban aesthetics, the great pyramids were really attractive too. So were many southern slave plantations.  But that's really irrelevant to the principles we're talking about.  




> LVT will dissipate people from city hot spots and alleviate housing overheating.


Yeah, in a Sweep The Less Fortunate Human Debris To The Outskirts sort of "dissipating" way.  Nothing makes a city beautiful like getting rid of ugly people (the "less productive hands" according to Roy L. - as if everyone needed to answer to the state for their productivity).

----------


## JohnLVT

> And screw "stabilizing" land prices. They need to be DEstabilized.  As in, made cheaper because it's not artificially scarce by anyone.


Pay attention at the back!  You like boom & busts?  Wow!  Land prices will stabilize and gradually drop. Get it? I doubt it

----------


## JuicyG

> This is just too good. We have two guys complimenting each other and the best part is they're actually the same troll!!
> 
> I can't wait for the third part of the Troly Trinity to show up (JuicyG) and enlighten us on the wonders of a Zionist version of LVT.


Said the statist anti-libertarian dude who doesn`t believe in free markets. You are the troll on this forum. 

What`s your obsession with the word "Zionist" by the way? You`re clearly in much pain for some reason.

----------


## zyphex

So funny watching JohnLVT shift around in his seat as he fails to offer any substantive critique of Rothbard, and then display that he isn't only ignorant of economics, but ignorant about the contemporary influences of modern economics by positing that the Austrians have had influence on contemporary economists which has brought about the business cycle. It's so cute to watch you fail so hard at offering a substantive critique and then display your ignorance at a whole new level. Keep pushing your dead, worthless idea that would raise ZERO revenue and do unprecedented economic damage. At least when George was pushing it there wasn't a Rothbard to critique him, but watching followers dogmatically attach themselves to the idea and failing to conjure up a substantive critique to the greatest counter to the idea of the LVT is quite amusing. You're in your own little world, aren't you?

Mr. Reasonable JohnLVT can't even offer a substantive critique of the raving-mad Rothbard. One would think it was easy given JohnLVT's disposition towards Rothbard, but JohnLVT is hopeless and displays that he has been defeated by Rothbard by going into ad hominem attacks and offering nothing. He even tries to switch the issue from the critique towards Austrian economics in general. Have fun bumbling around this thread displaying your worthless ideas, persuading nobody. You couldn't be any more unpersuasive than you already are, and you couldn't display any lack of scholarship that you haven't already put on display.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Said the statist anti-libertarian dude who doesn`t believe in free markets. You are the troll on this forum. 
> 
> What`s your obsession with the word "Zionist" by the way? You`re clearly in much pain for some reason.



Bring back your Fire11 alter-ego!  It was soooo much better than this JuicyG one!

----------


## JohnLVT

*Max Keiser interviews Scott Baker, Senior Editor of OpEdNews.com.*

http://www.OpEdNews.com

Max Kieser, summing up Geoism...

_
"real free-market Capitalism where risks and 
rewards are evenly distributed and you don't 
have this aggregation of concentration in banking 
terrorists, who invariably go down to Washington 
with that wealth to change laws which makes it 
easier to steal more money"_

1st...



2nd...

----------


## Zippyjuan

> You are very confused.  You need to get your thoughts structured.
> 
> 
> 
> Ah something sensible at last.  LVT will stabilize land prices. It will make land cheaper and more can be spent on the building meanING affordable, quality homes. 
> 
> It is apparent you know nothing of urban living.


Can you provide us with ANY examples of a situation where having a tax on something stablized its price?

Of course we could try to adjust the tax to control demand of real estate- if prices are rising we could jack up the tax rate to try to lower demand and keep the prices from going up. We would probably have to do that anyways if the prices went down so we could keep the same revenue stream coming into the government.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Can you provide us with ANY examples of a situation where having a tax on something stablized its price?




Denmark had LVT for near 4 years.  Land prices rose but were stable in comarisosn to the economic growth that occurred.  But....After LVT was dropped. In 1964:The currency surplus became a currency deficit.The annual deficit on the balance of payments in 1972 was 3 billion kr.Debts abroad amount today to 20,000 million kr.The effective rate of interest has been doubled.*Land prices jumped sky-high.* Denmark's overall land value rose from 17 billion kr. at the assessment of 1960 to 67 billion in 1969, and reached 100 billion at the next assessment in 1973.Rents in new housing are six fold those of 1964.The rate of inflation rose from barely 1 per cent to 5-7 per cent and was 8.6 per cent in 1965, the year after repeal of the land tax law in 1964.Taxes have risen again and again and are today five times higher.
LVT is not a tax. It is reclaiming community created wealth.  Very different to levying anything else.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> *Denmark had LVT for near 4 years.  Land prices rose but were stable in comarisosn to the economic growth that occurred.  But....After LVT was dropped.* In 1964:The currency surplus became a currency deficit.The annual deficit on the balance of payments in 1972 was 3 billion kr.Debts abroad amount today to 20,000 million kr.The effective rate of interest has been doubled.*Land prices jumped sky-high.* Denmark's overall land value rose from 17 billion kr. at the assessment of 1960 to 67 billion in 1969, and reached 100 billion at the next assessment in 1973.Rents in new housing are six fold those of 1964.The rate of inflation rose from barely 1 per cent to 5-7 per cent and was 8.6 per cent in 1965, the year after repeal of the land tax law in 1964.Taxes have risen again and again and are today five times higher.
> LVT is not a tax. It is reclaiming community created wealth.  Very different to levying anything else.


1) It's not logical to come to a conclusion on a complex matter using only one variable.  2) "Communities" do not create wealth.  Individuals acting in their own self-interest (or by coercion) do.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> *Governments spend our tax money on infrastructure, such as: Schools Universities Hospitals Rail networks Roads This infrastructure raises the productivity of the economy resulting in economic growth.* Because of the way the market economy works, those economic gains are crystallised as land values. Then these gains surface as windfalls or capital gains in the property market.
> 
> Those capital gains are not shared out equally amongst all of us,
> 
> Understand the above - immediately above. That is a start for you.  Get the basics. Then talk about covered wagons.


Everyone understands that.  What YOU don't understand is that such government activities are inefficient and does not raise the value of the land. (it actually creates a liability for everyone-especially considering the overpriced and poor quality of standard government projects)

----------


## eduardo89

> Said the statist anti-libertarian dude who doesn`t believe in free markets. You are the troll on this forum. 
> 
> What`s your obsession with the word "Zionist" by the way? You`re clearly in much pain for some reason.


Statist? That's why I'm anti-tax, right?

Anti-free market? That's why I said I don't believe in "public services" and prefer voluntary contracts and personal responbility instead...

Edit: you need to learn how to use an apostrophe. What you're usin isn't one. This is an apostrophe: '. This is what you're using: `

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Statist? That's why I'm anti-tax, right?
> 
> Anti-free market? That's why I said I don't believe in "public services" and prefer voluntary contracts and personal responbility instead...


Don't you know?  Anyone who disagrees with JuicyG is evil and/or stupid and unknowing.  Just like his alter-ego Roy L.

----------


## eduardo89

> Don't you know?  Anyone who disagrees with JuicyG is evil and/or stupid and unknowing.  Just like his alter-ego Roy L.


I tell ya, it's the Troly Trinity: JuicyG, RoyL and JohnLVT

----------


## JuicyG

> Don't you know?  Anyone who disagrees with JuicyG is evil and/or stupid and unknowing.  Just like his alter-ego Roy L.


What are you talking about? I never called anyone evil or stupid. You`re way out of line. Alter-ego? I think you`re tripping on paranoid delusions.

You can have a healthy debate with people who don`t agree with you. Some of the people here seem to think you need to be in full agreement with someone to be able to get along.

----------


## JuicyG

> I tell ya, it's the Troly Trinity: JuicyG, RoyL and JohnLVT


You need to get yourself a girlfriend or wife(as you might prefer) because you`re trolling here with nonsense 24/7.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> What are you talking about? I never called anyone evil or stupid. You`re way out of line. Alter-ego? I think you`re tripping on paranoid delusions.


You behave uncannily like Roy L and JohnLVT.  It is my hypothesis that all these accounts are held by one person with too much time on his hands, and Eduardo agrees.




> You can have a healthy debate with people who don`t agree with you.


I can, but you and your sock puppet accounts-not so much.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You need to get yourself a girlfriend or wife(as you might prefer) because you`re trolling here with nonsense 24/7.


Eduardo is married with rugrats.  He and I are only here to troll the trolls.

----------


## eduardo89

> Eduardo is married with rugrat*s*.  He and I are only here to troll the trolls.


Only one 

 She had her first birthday party today, ate cake for the first time. LOVED it. I'll post the video on fb so you can see it lol

----------


## JuicyG

> You behave uncannily like Roy L and JohnLVT.  It is my hypothesis that all these accounts are held by one person with too much time on his hands, and Eduardo agrees.
> 
> 
> I can, but you and your sock puppet accounts-not so much.


Your accusations make you look like a complete paranoid individual. Eduardo agrees with you simply because he`s part of your conspiracy fan club. If someone doesn`t agree with you, then it must be something evil about it. 

You and Eduardo are spewing anti-jewish crap on this forum. You are the ones who are out of place and give Paul a bad name. 

You can check my posts on economic issues and you`ll see why you`re totally off. I`d feel embarrased if I were you.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Only one 
> 
>  She had her first birthday party today, ate cake for the first time. LOVED it. I'll post the video on fb so you can see it lol


sorry, didn't mean to make it plural.  I made a bad.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Your accusations make you look like a complete paranoid individual. Eduardo agrees with you simply because he`s part of your conspiracy fan club. If someone doesn`t agree with you, then it must be something evil about it. 
> 
> You and Eduardo are spewing anti-jewish crap on this forum. You are the ones who are out of place and give Paul a bad name. 
> 
> You can check my posts on economic issues and you`ll see why you`re totally off. I`d feel embarrased if I were you.


lolz.  No, I'm not paranoid.  I've just dealt with enough annoying trolls with dupe accounts that they're pretty easy to spot.   I'd be embarrassed to be you considering your gross illogic and ignorance.  And what's this "anti-jewish" nonsense you speak of?  $#@! off.  Some of the most admired people around here are jews-Rothbard, Mises, etc.

----------


## JuicyG

> lolz.  No, I'm not paranoid.  I've just dealt with enough annoying trolls with dupe accounts that they're pretty easy to spot.   I'd be embarrassed to be you considering your gross illogic and ignorance.  And what's this "anti-jewish" nonsense you speak of?  $#@! off.  Some of the most admired people around here are jews-Rothbard, Mises, etc.


You are very paranoid making retarded observations. Don`t tell me to $#@! off as you`re the one who needs to get his head checked.

Your argument with Rothbard and Mises is useless. Marx was Jewish and yet Stalin and many other communists were anti-jewish. It`s a hollow argument.

----------


## eduardo89

> Your accusations make you look like a complete paranoid individual. Eduardo agrees with you simply because he`s part of your conspiracy fan club. If someone doesn`t agree with you, then it must be something evil about it. 
> 
> You and Eduardo are spewing anti-jewish crap on this forum. You are the ones who are out of place and give Paul a bad name. 
> 
> You can check my posts on economic issues and you`ll see why you`re totally off. I`d feel embarrased if I were you.


Haha anti-jewish? 

I'm a Christian, so obviously I believe Judaism to not be the true faith, otherwise I'd be a Jew.  That said, I respect and admire the Jewish people, just don't agree with them theologically. 

I'm anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, that's for sure. I don't approve of any state or ideology that promotes one class of people, whether it be based on race, religion or ethnicity over others, as Zionism and Israel do in practice. 

I admire many Jewish people, I think Mises was one of the most brilliant minds in economics, I admire Stanley Kubrick, I love Walter Block's writings, my longest relationship was with a Jewish girl...yeah, I'm extremely anti-Jewish...

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You are very paranoid making retarded observations. Don`t tell me to $#@! off as you`re the one who needs to get his head checked.


Nice ad hominem, but still incorrect.




> Your argument with Rothbard and Mises is useless. Marx was Jewish and yet Stalin and many other communists were anti-jewish. It`s a hollow argument.


 Useless?  No.  Your claim that Eduardo and I are "anti-jew" is hollow and unfounded. (I'm fully in favor of letting Israelis take care of their own business so they no longer have to suckle at the teat of Western welfare)  Take your BS accusations and shove them deep up your ass, troll.

----------


## JuicyG

> Only one 
> 
>  She had her first birthday party today, ate cake for the first time. LOVED it. I'll post the video on fb so you can see it lol


Is that some monkey ?

----------


## eduardo89

> Nice ad hominem, but still incorrect.
> 
>  Useless?  No.  Your claim that I am "anti-jew" is hollow and unfounded.  Take your BS accusations and shove them deep up your ass, troll.


This.

----------


## eduardo89

> Is that some monkey ?


Now calling my daughter a monkey...very mature.

----------


## JuicyG

> Nice ad hominem, but still incorrect.
> 
>  Useless?  No.  Your claim that Eduardo and I are "anti-jew" is hollow and unfounded.  Take your BS accusations and shove them deep up your ass, troll.


No, it`s not. I`m a libertarian who strongly believes in free markets and I think taxation by state is theft, pure and simple. From what I`ve seen in this debate, thread starter believes in some sort of taxation for lands.

I also think Eduardo is trolling and not genuine because his beloved Catholic church leeches money from dozens of taxpayers throughout the world by mandatory force by being in cahoots with governments. I`ve made this accusation months ago which got me my first neg rep from him. 

You`re 180 degrees off on this. Sorry to disappoint.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Now calling my daughter a monkey...very mature.


  He's got E-courage, you know.  Big time toughguy (as long as it's over the webbernets  I doubt he'd have the balls to say that to you in person)

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> No, it`s not. I`m a libertarian who strongly believes in free markets and I think taxation by state is theft, pure and simple. From what I`ve seen in this debate, thread starter believes in some sort of taxation for lands.
> 
> I also think Eduardo is trolling and not genuine because his beloved Catholic church leeches money from dozens of taxpayers throughout the world by mandatory force by being in cahoots with governments. I`ve made this accusation months ago which got me my first neg rep from him. 
> 
> You`re 180 degrees off on this. Sorry to disappoint.


Nope, you're still wrong-and you didn't even address the post you quoted.   Sorry to disappoint.

----------


## JuicyG

> Now calling my daughter a monkey...very mature.


Your daughter? Didn`t you say in some thread you`re not married and that you`re single?

Are you actually divorced? I thought Catholic church is against divorce?

----------


## eduardo89

> Your daughter? Didn`t you say in some thread you`re not married and that you`re single?
> 
> Are you actually divorced? I thought Catholic church is against divorce?


Yes my daughter. And no, I'm not divorced.

And for the record, I don't 100% theologically agree with the Catholic Church, nor with many of its actions. I certainly don't like the "reforms" of Vatican II.

----------


## JuicyG

> Yes my daughter. And no, I'm not divorced.


So you lied about not being married?

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Yes my daughter. And no, I'm not divorced.


Liar!  You changed your story to make JuicyG/Roy L look foolish!  /sarcasm

----------


## eduardo89

> So you lied about not being married?


When did I say I'm married?

----------


## JuicyG

> When did I say I'm married?


Can`t you read? You`ve said you are NOT married and that you`re single in a thread where you`ve insulted a female moderator.

----------


## eduardo89

> Can`t you read? You`ve said you are NOT married and that you`re single in a thread where you`ve insulted a female moderator.


I know I said that. When have I ever claimed to be married?

And how exactly did I insult a female moderator?

----------


## JuicyG

> I know I said that. When have I ever claimed to be married?
> 
> And how exactly did I insult a female moderator?


Heh? You`ve claimed that you`re *not married* and that *you`re single*. You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. 




> And how exactly did I insult a female moderator?


Ask Nirvikalpa.

----------


## eduardo89

> Heh? You`ve claimed that you`re *not married* and that *you`re single*. You seem to have a reading comprehension problem.


Yes, I know I said that. 

When have I ever said I'm married?




> Ask Nirvikalpa.


That was Danke who got banned for "insulting" her. She's very sensitive though.

----------


## JuicyG

> Yes, I know I said that. 
> 
> When have I ever said I'm married?


I `ve never claimed you`ve said that. You didn`t bother to read my post properly.

----------


## eduardo89

> I `ve never claimed you`ve said that. You didn`t bother to read my post properly.


Well, what's the problem here? I said I'm not married, I said I'm single, I've never said I'm married.

----------


## JohnLVT

> "Communities" do not create wealth.  Individuals acting in their own self-interest (or by coercion) do.


You are 100% wrong - as usual.  You need to study some economics.

----------


## eduardo89

> You are 100% wrong - as usual.  You need to study some economics.


I don't get why you (yes, that also includes your Roy persona) are even here on this forum? You don't agree with a basic tenet of liberty, that is the right to property (which includes land), you support taxation, you support the state and you reject that individuals create wealth, not the "community".

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You are 100% wrong - as usual.  You need to study some economics.


No, you are wrong.  Implicit in my statement is individual self-interested actors work with each other.  No economy of scale exists without such interactions.  You're the one who needs to crack open an econ 101 book.  Make Roy L your schizophrenic study buddy, too.  That way the silly claims you folks keep making will no longer have to be refuted.

----------


## JohnLVT

> So funny watching JohnLVT shift around in his seat as he fails to offer any substantive critique of Rothbard, and then display that he isn't only ignorant of economics,


Martin Wolf - chief economist of the Financial Times......

*Why were resources expunged from neo-classical economics?*
July 12, 2010 10:38 am

Something strange happened to economics about a century ago. In moving from classical to neo-classical economics  the dominant academic school today  economists expunged land  or natural resources. _Neo-classical value theory  based on marginalism and subjective valuation  still makes a great deal of sense. Expunging natural resources from the way economists think about the world does not._

In classical economics, land, labour and capital were the three factors of production. With neo-classical economics, the standard production function had just two factors of production: capital and labour. Land  by which we mean the totality of natural resources  was then incorporated into capital.

All thinking about the world involves a degree of abstraction. Economics has taken this principle further than any other social science. This is a fruitful intellectual procedure. But it is also risky. The necessary process of abstraction may end up leaving essential aspects of the world out of the analysis. That can be intellectually crippling. I believe that that is exactly what has happened, in this case.

_The idea that land and capital are the same thing is evidently ludicrous_. It requires us to believe that the economic machine is self-sustaining  a sort of perpetual motion machine. Capital is the product of savings and investment. It is the result of human frugality and the invention required to imagine and create new capital goods. Labour is also  and in todays circumstances, increasingly  a form of capital. Parents, governments and individual people invest in their own skills, so making themselves more productive. Yet there would be no economy  indeed no humanity  without a constant inflow of natural resources into the system: what lies above our heads (the sun and the atmosphere), what lies close to us (the soil, the seas and location itself) and what lies beneath us (fossil fuels, metals and minerals and heat). Humanity does not make these things; it exploits them. Some of these resources are also appropriable and so a source of unearned personal wealth.

Why did this compelling distinction disappear from economics? After all, no economist can believe that the economic system will move without a constant infusion of external resources.

One reason was that the classical world view implies diminishing returns. Since the supply of land was fixed, it would become ever scarcer. Rents  the price of resource scarcity  would rise, profits would fall and growth slow. But the economy did not show signs of diminishing returns. Technical progress seemed to offset any tendency towards diminishing returns. So assuming that land, like capital, could be effectively expanded, without limit, via land-augmenting technical progress, seemed to be the right thing to do.

Another reason may have been political. Henry George argued that resource rents are not a reward for the efforts of the owners, but the fruit of the efforts of others. It would be both just and efficient to socialise rents, he argued, and then use the proceeds to finance the infrastructure that makes resources valuable. *But the powerful owners of natural resources wished to protect their unearned gains.* In practice, therefore, the tax burden fell on labour and capital. Economics, one might argue, was pushed into supporting this way of organising economic life.
Yet it would seem to me that this way of thinking by economists is no longer sensible, if it ever was. _Land must again be treated as separate from labour and capital._

First, resource scarcity is an increasingly pressing issue. It shows up in concerns over pollution (including global warming), in the discussion of peak oil and so forth. The idea that diminishing returns will become a more significant factor in the next century than in the past two seems to me to be compelling, now that modern economic growth has spread across the globe. So we need to return to economic models that incorporate resources, as a matter of course.

Second, in a globalised economy, taxing labour and capital will become increasingly difficult. That leaves land. The Australian government is right to want to extract the full rental value of its mineral resources for the benefit of the Australian people. Similarly, the people of the UK should wish to extract the rental value of London for their own use. The benefits of infrastructure investments that make London more productive would automatically be recouped if land rents were heavily taxed. Meanwhile, the taxation of capital and land could be reduced.

I can see the objection that natural resources are necessary for the operation of capital and labour. Thus, the distinction between land, labour and capital is hard to draw. I agree with this. But there are two responses: first, from the point of view of economics, resource scarcity may mean diminishing returns, which are economically important; second, some natural resources are not appropriable and can be treated as free (sunlight, for example), but others are indeed appropriable.

*Thus, for both economic and political reasons, we should put natural resources into the heart of economics, thereby remedying a neoclassical mistake.*
The Austrians, backed by big business, were responsible for this massive mistake.  Since then, countless booms and busts and two world-wide crashes.   Martin Wolf says it all. 

The Austrians are all fully paid up members of the Flat Earth Society.  What nuts!

----------


## eduardo89

> The Austrians are all fully paid up members of the Flat Earth Society.  What nuts!


And you geoist socialist...err...I mean geoliberterians (that's what you like to call yourselves right) make complete sense...

Btw, I don't think anyone reads those massive copypastas you post, which you obviously haven't even written yourself.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> The Austrians, backed by big business, were responsible for this massive mistake.  Since then, countless booms and busts and two world-wide crashes.   Martin Wolf says it all. 
> 
> The Austrians are all fully paid up members of the Flat Earth Society.  What nuts!


OMG, this has to be one of the funniest posts in recent memory.   It reads like something out of The Onion.  LMFAO!!

----------


## Roy L

> I don't get why you (yes, that also includes your Roy persona) are even here on this forum?


People here are at least not sleepwalking the way most Americans are.  And if you can't tell the difference between me and John, you can't be very bright.



> You don't agree with a basic tenet of liberty, that is the right to property (which includes land),


You are merely ASSERTING that the right to property includes land, but no one has ever actually been able to demonstrate that.  The basis of all plausible arguments for property rights is the right of the producer to his product.  Land is not a product.  Therefore, the arguments for property rights do not apply to land.  How could a right to liberty include a "right" to remove others' liberty?  How could a right to property include land but not people?  The only difference between owning a slave and owning land is that when you own a slave, you remove all of one person's rights, while when you own land, you remove one of all persons' rights.  Owning all the people and owning all the land are materially equivalent removals of liberty: you serve the owner, or you die.



> you support taxation, you support the state


You'll find that as a strict constructionist, Ron Paul does, too.



> and you reject that individuals create wealth, not the "community".


Lie.  Individuals do create wealth, but land value is not individually created.  It comes from the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides.  You will note the absence from that list of anything the landowner provides.

----------


## Roy L

> You behave uncannily like Roy L and JohnLVT.


???  Only to someone who can't read.  Or think.

----------


## Roy L

> Can you provide us with ANY examples of a situation where having a tax on something stablized its price?


Property taxes.  Property prices have been most stable in states with the highest property taxes -- NH, NJ, CT, TX, WI, etc. -- and went through the biggest booms and busts in states with low property taxes: CA, NV, FL, AZ.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> ???  Only to someone who can't read.  Or think.


  Petty insults, as usual.  Way to go.  I'm sure that'll persuade 'em.

----------


## GeorgiaAvenger

> Property taxes.  Property prices have been most stable in states with the highest property taxes -- NH, NJ, CT, TX, WI, etc. -- and went through the biggest booms and busts in states with low property taxes: CA, NV, FL, AZ.


That is because less people bought property in those states due to the high taxes and were less resistant to the subsidization of the housing bubble by Congress and the Fed.

The market should decide the price.

----------


## eduardo89

> Property taxes.  Property prices have been most stable in states with the highest property taxes -- NH, NJ, CT, TX, WI, etc. -- and went through the biggest booms and busts in states with low property taxes: CA, NV, FL, AZ.


You do realize that California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona also have the best weather in the US? 

New jersey and Wisconsin don't. 

There's a reason why people were buying second/third/fourth homes in warm states and not in cold, wet states.

Obviously that's not the ony reason, high property taxes also stop people from buying homes in those states.

----------


## Roy L

> What YOU don't understand is that such government activities are inefficient and does not raise the value of the land.


Such an absurd comment disqualifies you from participating in economic discussions.  Everywhere on earth, aggregate land rent is close to aggregate government spending on services and infrastructure.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Property taxes.  Property prices have been most stable in states with the highest property taxes -- NH, NJ, CT, TX, WI, etc. -- and went through the biggest booms and busts in states with low property taxes: CA, NV, FL, AZ.


I live in AZ and I can tell you low property taxes aren't as important as you're making it out to be.  States like AZ, NV, and FL happened to be more desirable to average people because of the climate.  Come down here and ask someone from back east and they'll tell you this.  Every winter business spikes because "snowbirds" flock here to get away from the snow.

----------


## eduardo89

> I live in AZ and I can tell you low property taxes aren't as important as you're making it out to be.  States like AZ, NV, and FL happened to be more desirable to average people because of the climate.  Come down here and ask someone from back east and they'll tell you this.  *Every winter business spikes because "snowbirds" flock here to get away from the snow.*


That's why when the Phoenix Coyotes play against the Vancouver Canucks there are twice as many Canucks fans in the building

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> *Such an absurd comment disqualifies you from participating in economic discussions.*


  oooh, I'm SO intimidated by Roy L's towering pseudo-intellectualism! 




> Everywhere on earth, aggregate land rent is close to aggregate government spending on services and infrastructure.


Says who?

"In actuality, *there is no single aggregate production function*, since land is divided into zones of differing productivity. A more realistic production function would consist of the sum of the functions within each zone." -The Science of Economics by Fred E. Foldvary

----------


## eduardo89

[QUOTE=heavenlyboy34;4271464]


> *Such an absurd comment disqualifies you from participating in economic discussions.*  oooh, I'm SO intimidated by Roy L's towering pseudo-intellectualism! 
> 
> 
> 
> Says who?


Roy says so. Therefore it's true.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> That's why when the Phoenix Coyotes play against the Vancouver Canucks there are twice as many Canucks fans in the building


lolz

----------


## heavenlyboy34

[QUOTE=eduardo89;4271470]


> Roy says so. Therefore it's true.


Ah, yes.  So let it be written, so let it be done.

----------


## Roy L

> You do realize that California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona also have the best weather in the US?


No, they don't.  NV and AZ have terribly hot, dry weather, which is why they are mostly uninhabited, and FL has hurricanes.



> New jersey and Wisconsin don't.


TX has better weather than NV or AZ, but did not have a significant real estate boom-bust.  UT is right beside both NV and AZ, has similar weather, and it had no real estate boom because it has higher property taxes.



> There's a reason why people were buying second/third/fourth homes in warm states and not in cold, wet states.


TX is not cold or wet, and neither is UT.  Homes were a lot cheaper in TX and UT than in NV or AZ, but speculators weren't buying them in TX or UT because the property taxes were too high.  They bought in NV and AZ because property taxes were so low they could just hold property for speculation and the taxes were reliably less than the increase in land value.



> Obviously that's not the ony reason, high property taxes also stop people from buying homes in those states.


Bingo.  You actually found a willingness to know a fact.  Congratulations.

----------


## Roy L

> Says who?


The facts.

----------


## Roy L

> I live in AZ and I can tell you low property taxes aren't as important as you're making it out to be.  States like AZ, NV, and FL happened to be more desirable to average people because of the climate.


Then why didn't TX and UT have housing booms?



> Come down here and ask someone from back east and they'll tell you this.  Every winter business spikes because "snowbirds" flock here to get away from the snow.


UT is the same latitude and weather as NV, but had no housing boom.  TX is the same latitude and weather as AZ, but had no housing boom.  The weather in CA is nice, but the state has not been adding significant population the way it was before Prop 13, because the resulting increased fiscal and social problems deter immigration.  Housing bubbled anyway.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> No, they don't.  NV and AZ have terribly hot, dry weather, which is why they are mostly uninhabited, and FL has hurricanes.


lol!  They are "mostly uninhabited" because so much land is government owned.  When land was cheap in the boom, people were coming here in droves and building.  There were even ads on the radio for companies selling multi-acre ranches  I assure you, there would be much more city-structure if land were cheap again.  Phoenix is already the 6th largest city in the US.  You can stop lecturing people about being "ignorant", Mr Troll, as you've demonstrated your profound ignorance yet again.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> The facts.


LOL!!!   This kind of lame bull$#@! is why I love you, Roy.  It's like sparring with a 6 year old.

----------


## Roy L

> lol!  They are "mostly uninhabited" because so much land is government owned.


No, that's just stupid garbage.  The land is government owned because no one wants to live on it.  It was uninhabited before there was any government around to own it.



> When land was cheap in the boom,


By definition, land was expensive in the boom.  You're talking nonsense.



> people were coming here in droves and building.  There were even ads on the radio for companies selling multi-acre ranches  I assure you, there would be much more city-structure if land were cheap again.


It *is* cheap again, and much of the city-structure is sitting empty.



> Phoenix is already the 6th largest city in the US.  You can stop lecturing people about being "ignorant", Mr Troll, as you've demonstrated your profound ignorance yet again.


I have proved you wrong, and your claims are self-evidently absurd.

----------


## Roy L

> I understand the difference between the land and the human structures placed upon it.  But the land itself is owned as property in the same way that the human structures or a couch are property.


No, products of labor like structures or a couch BECOME property by an act of production.  Land never becomes property by any means but an act of appropriation.



> The fact of the matter is, a tax based on the land-property or house-property that you own, either way, they raise the barrier of entry to own a house, and that cannot be denied.


That is wildly, hilariously false.  The higher the tax on land, the lower the price, and the lower the barrier to ownership.  That is why it is most expensive to buy a house in places like CA and HI that have the lowest property tax rates, and cheapest in places like TX and WI that have the highest property tax rates.

----------


## zyphex

> Martin Wolf - chief economist of the Financial Times......
> 
> *Why were resources expunged from neo-classical economics?*
> July 12, 2010 10:38 am
> 
> Something strange happened to economics about a century ago. In moving from classical to neo-classical economics  the dominant academic school today  economists expunged land  or natural resources. _Neo-classical value theory  based on marginalism and subjective valuation  still makes a great deal of sense. Expunging natural resources from the way economists think about the world does not._
> 
> In classical economics, land, labour and capital were the three factors of production. With neo-classical economics, the standard production function had just two factors of production: capital and labour. Land  by which we mean the totality of natural resources  was then incorporated into capital.
> 
> ...


Hey cutie, read pages 480-488 of Man, Economy, and State, and you can see that Rothbard critiques the Neoclassicals and says there is a distinction between land and capital. So once again, here you are babbling irrelevance instead of being able to offer a substantive criticism of Rothbard's critique and unsuccessfully strawmanning (because Rothbard DOES agree there is a distinction between land and capital). And once again, showing your flat out ignorance of Austrian theory and the state of contemporary economics. Please, give me more, I'm splitting at the sides. First thinking the LVT was a good idea, instead of one of the worst. Then ad-hominem attacks on Austrians and Rothbard with no substance. Then saying that the Austrians influenced those who cause the economics collapse. Now pretending that Rothbard doesn't make a distinction between land and capital. Wow! How many circles can one man run in order to avoid a substantive critique of a criticism which killed the concept he's been pushing for? Please, keep running in circles avoiding Rothbard's argument, it is amusing watching you from overhead, watching you getting ever more dizzier and dizzier as you are unable to refute Rothbard, all while thinking you carry any bit of legitimacy in this thread as you demonstrate your absolute inadequacy to defend your idea and DIRECTLY address a critique.

----------


## Roy L

> Can be exchanged for, or is?


Huh?



> I can exchange a dollar for your car, but my brother says he can exchange it for ten dollars. Hard cashola, baby, crisp new bill right from the bankie. Made me stand down, I think it's too high, myself. But I guess we are both right. Then again, we both just realized that you might have some say in the matter, as you can exchange your car for a billion dollars - if'n its offered and you accept (and whoo-boy you'd be crazy not to!).


Were you under an erroneous impression that that meant something?



> So to settle the dispute, what is the value of your car?


What it can be exchanged for.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> No, that's just stupid garbage.  The land is government owned because no one wants to live on it.  It was uninhabited before there was any government around to own it.
> 
> By definition, land was expensive in the boom.  You're talking nonsense.
> 
> It *is* cheap again, and much of the city-structure is sitting empty.
> 
> I have proved you wrong, and your claims are self-evidently absurd.


EPIC FAIL.  I thought you at least pretended to know something about economics.  This is just a bunch of fiction, probably copied off some blog.  I've lived in Arizona for 30 years.  I'm in a far better position to speak about it than you are, young pseudo-intellectual.  Not only did I watch it play out, I observed commentary by economists of all sorts of backgrounds.  Crawl back into your troll cave and learn something before telling me what is and isn't.

----------


## Roy L

> And the final piece of the puzzle falls right into place.
> 
> Geoists are cannibals!  A "geolibertarian" is someone who wants to liberate..."the earth". 
> 
> Holy Moly, it all makes sense now. 
> 
> "To Serve Man" 
> 
> Marinated in LVT sauce, no doubt.


Stupid, evil, despicable filth beneath all contempt.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Property taxes.  Property prices have been most stable in states with the highest property taxes -- NH, NJ, CT, TX, WI, etc. -- and went through the biggest booms and busts in states with low property taxes: CA, NV, FL, AZ.


Are you making the claim that states with high property taxes did not experience the housing bubble the rest of the country faced? After all, you have said that this was proof that property taxes led to stable housing prices and to be stable they should avoid bubbles.  You do have some interesting ideas indeed.

 Let us test this theory by checking first to see which states have the highest property tax rates. I will be using this list from the New York Times which uses figures for 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/bu...ptaxrates.html  It is your suggestion that higher property taxes spared those states with the highest rates from price instability on housing. 

Lowest Five Stated by Property Tax Rates:
Hawaii 0.40%
Alabama 0.65%
Delaware 0.68%
California 0.68%

Five highest:
Texas 2.57%
New Hampshire 2.21%
Nebraska 2.15%
Iowa 2.15%
Indiana 2.12

I think I will choose two neighboring states- Delaware and New Hampshire- they are fairly similar in size and being neighbors there should be little "weather premium" we might encounter if we choose states like say California vs New York. New Hampshire is also on your list of "stable" housing prices. 

What has happened with housing prices in Delaware? I found a 33 year price chart for Delaware housing prices. They have a low property tax rate so prices should be pretty unstable.  Scale on this chart is logrythmic.  January 1980 was set as 100 on the scale. Sorry, copying the graphic seems to have left off the numbers. Follow the link to see the figures and dates. Since both charts are the same and use the same scale it is the shape which is the most important anyways.  "Stable" housing prices should be reflected by a pretty straight line. 


http://www.forecast-chart.com/house-price-delaware.html


Ok. So now let's compare how they did relative to New Hampshire. New Hampshire is at the other end of the scale with second hightest property tax rates in the country.  If your theory holds true, it should be considerably more stable than that of Delaware.  Their rate is more than three times that of Delaware.  I am able to use the exact same source for their chart which is great- we have no troubles comparing the two and cannot say we are not using the same information and even the scale is the same. Ready? Here we go. 

http://www.forecast-chart.com/house-...hampshire.html


Hmm.  Seems that the tax rate is not having any impact at all on the stability of housing prices for the two states in the manner which was suggested.  Actually the New Hampshire prices seem LESS stable- the opposite from what was predicted.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, that's just stupid garbage.  The land is government owned because no one wants to live on it.  It was uninhabited before there was any government around to own it.


Of all the stupid things you've written here, Roy, that has to be one of very dumbest. 

Go park your dumb ass on some BLM land of your choosing.  Lay a foundation, start building a home (read=signal to everyone that at least one person "wants to live on it"), and tell me how that works out for you.  Or...go directly to the BLM and tell them you want to live on some of that land. Parcel off a teensy little parcel - don't be greedy, make it small in size, about as big an area required for a small hut. Point to that parcel on a map and let the BLM know that you want to live on it. Let me know what the good folks there have to say. 

_The land is government owned because no one wants to live on it._
- Roy L., with a straight face -

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Of all the stupid things you've written here, Roy, that has to be one of very dumbest. 
> 
> Go park your dumb ass on some BLM land of your choosing.  Lay a foundation, start building a home (read=signal to everyone that at least one person "wants to live on it"), and tell me how that works out for you.  Or...go directly to the BLM and tell them you want to live on some of that land. Parcel off a teensy little parcel - don't be greedy, make it small in size, about as big an area required for a small hut. Point to that parcel on a map and let the BLM know that you want to live on it. Let me know what the good folks there have to say. 
> 
> _The land is government owned because no one wants to live on it._
> - Roy L., with a straight face -


You know what else is interesting?  Contrary to Roy's absurd claim, there is big money to be made selling off those huge government "owned" parcels.  Arizona Land And Ranch is a company that does this. http://www.azranchesandresorts.com/learn-more.php  They run ads on local radio all the time.  If I had the money, I'd buy a parcel and GTFO of the city.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Hey cutie, read pages 480-488 of Man, Economy,


Rothbard is way-off mark...as are the Austrians. The world's economy has suffered since their yodeling influence came in.  It is that simple.

Rothbard appeal to the self-centred and greedy.

----------


## JohnLVT

> And you geoist socialist...err...I mean geoliberterians (that's what you like to call yourselves right) make complete sense...


Thank you.




> Btw, I don't think anyone reads those massive copypastas you post, which you obviously haven't even written yourself.


It said Martin Wolf wrote it at the top. Read them - you need to.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Rothbard is way-off mark...as are the Austrians. The world's economy has suffered since their yodeling influence came in.  It is that simple.
> 
> Rothbard appeal to the self-centred and greedy.


 Ad hominems count as rational arguments against the Austrians to you?  You're also confusing rational self-interest (what Austrians concern themselves with) with "self-centeredness" and "greed".  The Austrians were right before you were even born.

----------


## Roy L

> Hey cutie, read pages 480-488 of Man, Economy, and State, and you can see that Rothbard critiques the Neoclassicals and says there is a distinction between land and capital. So once again, here you are babbling irrelevance instead of being able to offer a substantive criticism of Rothbard's critique and unsuccessfully strawmanning (because Rothbard DOES agree there is a distinction between land and capital). And once again, showing your flat out ignorance of Austrian theory and the state of contemporary economics. Please, give me more, I'm splitting at the sides.


It's true that Rothbard recognized the distinctness of land, and in various places he comes close to understanding the rationale for LVT.  He certainly recognized the moral illegitimacy of land titles.  But he ultimately let his anti-government prejudice get the better of him, and penned a disgracefully fallacious, absurd and dishonest anti-LVT slag-fest that left an indelible blot on what would have been a respectable intellectual legacy.  



> First thinking the LVT was a good idea, instead of one of the worst.


It is definitely a good idea, and indisputably the best.



> Then ad-hominem attacks on Austrians and Rothbard with no substance.


Read Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and tell me he isn't an evil, lying, fascist, racist sack of $#!+.



> Then saying that the Austrians influenced those who cause the economics collapse.


That is certainly true.



> Now pretending that Rothbard doesn't make a distinction between land and capital. Wow! How many circles can one man run in order to avoid a substantive critique of a criticism which killed the concept he's been pushing for?


I have demolished Rothbard's critique of LVT elsewhere.  I suggest you read it, and just ask yourself if his claims about LVT are actually honest and rational, or just outrageous disinformation.

----------


## Roy L

> Are you making the claim that states with high property taxes did not experience the housing bubble the rest of the country faced?


They experienced it to a much lesser degree, and have not suffered the same degree of collapse.



> Let us test this theory by checking first to see which states have the highest property tax rates. I will be using this list from the New York Times which uses figures for 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/bu...ptaxrates.html


Those rates look far too high to me.  What are they based on?



> It is your suggestion that higher property taxes spared those states with the highest rates from price instability on housing. 
> 
> Lowest Five Stated by Property Tax Rates:
> Hawaii 0.40%
> Alabama 0.65%
> Delaware 0.68%
> California 0.68%


Uh, that's only four.  And I've never seen DE mentioned elsewhere as a low property tax state.  If CA were really taxing property at 0.68%, it would have no budget problems.



> Five highest:
> Texas 2.57%
> New Hampshire 2.21%
> Nebraska 2.15%
> Iowa 2.15%
> Indiana 2.12


Again, these numbers look way too high.



> I think I will choose two neighboring states- Delaware and New Hampshire- they are fairly similar in size and being neighbors there should be little "weather premium" we might encounter if we choose states like say California vs New York. New Hampshire is also on your list of "stable" housing prices.


DE and NH are not neighboring states.



> What has happened with housing prices in Delaware? I found a 33 year price chart for Delaware housing prices. They have a low property tax rate so prices should be pretty unstable.  Scale on this chart is logrythmic.  January 1980 was set as 100 on the scale. Sorry, copying the graphic seems to have left off the numbers. Follow the link to see the figures and dates. Since both charts are the same and use the same scale it is the shape which is the most important anyways.  "Stable" housing prices should be reflected by a pretty straight line. 
> 
> 
> http://www.forecast-chart.com/house-price-delaware.html
> 
> 
> Ok. So now let's compare how they did relative to New Hampshire. New Hampshire is at the other end of the scale with second hightest property tax rates in the country.  If your theory holds true, it should be considerably more stable than that of Delaware.  Their rate is more than three times that of Delaware.  I am able to use the exact same source for their chart which is great- we have no troubles comparing the two and cannot say we are not using the same information and even the scale is the same. Ready? Here we go. 
> 
> http://www.forecast-chart.com/house-...hampshire.html
> ...


I agree the charts do show DE with more stable prices than NH over that period.  NH also participated significantly in the 1995-2006 boom, like a number of other states in the Northeast.  The trends are complicated by the relationship between state population growth trends and the timing of the inflation and interest rate whipsaw of the late 70s and early 80s: in the case of NH, population growth accentuated it, while in DE population grew much more slowly in the 70s and picked up in the 80s, moderating the variation.  What did the charts for the other high- and low-property tax states show?

----------


## JohnLVT

> It's true that Rothbard recognized the distinctness of land, and in various places he comes close to understanding the rationale for LVT.  He certainly recognized the moral illegitimacy of land titles.  But he ultimately let his anti-government prejudice get the better of him, and penned a disgracefully fallacious, absurd and dishonest anti-LVT slag-fest that left an indelible blot on what would have been a respectable intellectual legacy.


All very true.  The Flat Earth Society, oh sorry the Yodelers, are best ignored. Their influence has been devastating over 100 years.  Why people follow these fools is beyond me as they are clearly detached from the real world cosy on their flat earth.

----------


## JohnLVT

> The Austrians were right before you were even born.


The Yodelers have never been right.

----------


## JuicyG

> Their influence has been devastating over 100 years. Why people follow these fools is beyond me as they are clearly detached from the real world cosy on their flat earth.





> The Yodelers have never been right.


So you`re saying we haven`t had Keynesianism via central banking for most of the past 100 years? Isn`t this what created inflationary environments which lead to credit bubbles such as the event that triggered the 2008 crisis?

----------


## JohnLVT

Some posters on this forum are seriously deranged.  Many want to pay no tax whatsoever towards for the services and security provided by the society they live in. Pure self-centeredness and greed.  If all taxes were abolished we will end up like Somalia.  That is obvious but not to these free-loaders. They want to take, take, take. But not give. 

They should go here:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/w...itle=Main_Page

_"demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax."_

Lots of Austrians are members.

----------


## JuicyG

> Some posters on this forum are seriously deranged.  Many want to pay no tax whatsoever towards for the services and security provided by the society they live in. Pure self-centeredness and greed.  If all taxes were abolished we will end up like Somalia.  That is obvious but not to these free-loaders. They want to take, take, take. But not give. 
> 
> They should go here:
> http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/w...itle=Main_Page
> 
> _"demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax."_
> 
> Lots of Austrians are members.


You haven`t answered my question.

----------


## JohnLVT

> So you`re saying we haven`t had Keynesianism via central banking for most of the past 100 years? Isn`t this what created inflationary environments which lead to credit bubbles such as the event that triggered the 2008 crisis?


You are looking at the symptoms not the root-cause.  *The root-cause was over-speculation in LAND because the gains were tax free*.  LVT would stop all that nonsense and give us a stable economy - no world-wide crashes.


*Economist Fred Harrison....*

"Any good economist will tell you, *as people's real disposable incomes rise, that money ends up in one place, and one place only, the LAND MARKET*. As there is growth land values rise, and it should rise. Except, the problem occurred when that increase in value went into private pockets instead of going into services: highways, hospitals, schools and so on, that created that value in the first place"
..
..
"*This is the sources of our problem*, not bankers, big bonuses, sub-prime mortgages in America and the other excuses they have. *This is the heart of the problem of the market economy*, we have to address it. There has to be political consensus, there has to consensus, with no body playing party politics"

The above is at. 3 min 35 secs

----------


## JuicyG

> You are looking at the symptoms not the root-cause.  *The root-cause was over-speculation in LAND because the gains were tax free*.  LVT would stop all that nonsense and give us a stable economy - no world-wide crashes.


So you`re saying that printing money without any backing, very low interest rates policy didn`t create an artificial environment in which banks have given easy credit and were encouraged to do so even to people who didn`t qualify thus triggering a mortgage crisis, which lead to downfall of AIG, car companies, government bailouts out of taxpayer money and all the good stuff?

"Overspeculation" in land had nothing to do with it.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Some posters on this forum are seriously deranged.  Many want to pay no tax whatsoever towards for the services and security provided by the society they live in. Pure self-centeredness and greed.  If all taxes were abolished we will end up like Somalia.  That is obvious but not to these free-loaders. They want to take, take, take. But not give.


If they do not like taxes then LVT is for them. It is really Community Reclaim Charge (CRC).  This has no taxes on your production (your labor).  No Income Tax, no sales tax, no property tax, no other silly stealth taxes.  CRC merely reclaims wealth that soaked into lland.  It takes back the wealth the community created.  Simple. No taxes.  Just what they want.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Land, like any scarce and valuable commodity, really does appreciate in value in a growing economy.


Land does not appreciate in value?  Wow! What part of the Flat Earth are you on. We can all go and have a look.  

He goes on.....




> The most important reason for appreciation,


So it does appreciate now.  Fantastic.  Was the earth a bit round at that point?

----------


## JohnLVT

> So you`re saying


What I am saying is what I wrote which is very clear - and the content indisputable.




> that printing money without any backing, very low interest rates policy didn`t create an artificial environment in which banks have given easy credit and were encouraged to do so even to people who didn`t qualify thus triggering a mortgage crisis,


If the gains from land were not tax free people would not borrow to pour debt after debt into land. 




Transcript, "based" on Fred Harrison with Max Keiser:

*The Forbidden Knowledge*

The forbidden knowledge in economics is the land market. There is nothing magical about this. Data about the western European economy, tells us that trends repeat every 18 years without fail. Looking at the land market you can see how the heath of the economy is progressing. From this information the turning points in the business cycle can be pinpointed.  

*The Boom - Bust Cycle*

The boom bust cycle is programmed into the politics. It used to be a monarchical system, aristocracies economy now it is semi-democratic.  The underlying factors are still the same. *The best gains are out of LAND, not the stock market, not out of anything else.* Over the business cycle the highest capital gains are out of land. That is the secret. 

The way the market is structured at the present time we definitely get a boom after 15 years into the cycle and then a bust because debt is created to over exploit that market and the economy has to come to dip. It has happened every 18 years for the past 200 to 300 years.

*Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES.*

The socialization of LAND is recovering for the community the value we collectively create. Changing the taxes by abolishing taxes on earnings and the profits from the investments from our savings. Privatise the wealth that we create. Let people keep what they produce. Collect from the public sector that shared revenue that is chrysalises in the land market as land values, we use that to pay for public services.  That's resocialising what used to be the public revenue and privatising people's wages. 

There is an Anglo-American phenomenon, unlike the Germans who do not view their homes as their castles and invest in productive activities.  The US and UK culture is to regard their house as their castle and their homes as a nest egg/pension fund.

*Political Problem*

It is a political problem. They found that when the Liberal government  introduced a land value based tax 100 years ago the House of Lords simply rejected any attempt at reform.

That culture of making money out of nothing, just by occupying a little bit of land, has seeded through into the democratic system. The UK even has shop workers who have portfolios of buy-to-let properties to make money out of nothing. It is a political problem to inform them that it is against their interests. There hasn't been the political or moral strength of our statesmen for 100 years to change that corrupt method of distributing income.

*All Become Richer When Taxes Are Raised From Land Values*

*In the USA they would be collectively better off by $100s billions per year to share out amongst the population if they made the tax shift from taxing wages and raising revenue from land values.*  That become an incentive. Everyone becomes richer.  In the Tony Blair administration the nation lost wealth and welfare to the tune of one years worth of national income. That pays for a lot of hospitals and schools. Wages would be higher. It takes moral courage by the stewards of our system of government. The people would listen and once informed they would want to make the change.

*Taxing Land Values Give Sustainable Economics*

If we want a sustainable system of economics and want to be able to compete with the Far East on an equal footing over the next business cycle, the only option is to shift taxes off wages and onto the "values" of land.  What that would mean? It would mean is that the factory gate products of western Europe would become more affordable in global markets.  Without this tax shift, our goods will continually to be undercut by cheap labour produced goods in the Far East. 

This future is not sustainable. This is what the G20 economies have driven Europe and North America into. A situation of crisis were we will not be able to compete, unless there is a change to the cost structure. The only way we can do that is to implement this tax shift.

Governments have been abysmal in looking after the interests of the advanced countries.  They have exposed Europe and North America to a Far Eastern economy that is going to gobble up most of us.  We may be in the doldrums for the next 20 years, because our governments have tried to inflate us out of this depression by the very mechanism that brought us into it in the first place. Debt was the way to maintain living standards, not by producing goods that are of any value but by borrowing and spending. 

*That is exactly what governments are still doing, piling debt on debt. They have socialised the private debt of land speculators, putting the burden onto future tax payers.* What does that mean to the rest of the business cycle? It means the European and North American economies are not fit for purpose. The G20 economies have failed abysmally to take care of their nations.

*Doldrums Will Continue*

The economy will be in the doldrums for about 10 years, as the Japanese economy in the 1990s and European and North American in the 1930.  Some will make money by latching onto the forbidden knowledge that predicts the trends, but for the rest of us there will be a decline in living standards and lot of unemployment.

----------


## JuicyG

> What I am saying is what I wrote which is very clear - and the content indisputable.
> 
> *If the gains from land were not tax free people would not borrow to pour debt after debt into land.*


It`s true that it might have stopped some speculation and investments in that sector, although I don`t agree with taxes as tool to stop a free market. It`s basically intrusion and violation.

However, most of the land was bought by big corporations and bank consortiums who got free money from the FED and other central banks. With free money you can buy all the land you want and raise land and real estate prices to kingdom come. 

It`s also pretty ignorant and single minded to dismiss the big role cheap credit had on the making of the real estate bubble.

----------


## JohnLVT

> You haven`t answered my question.


Your question was off-mark. Please read what I wrote.

----------


## JuicyG

> Your question was off-mark. Please read what I wrote.


_However, most of the land was bought by big corporations and bank consortiums who got free money from the FED and other central banks. With free money you can buy all the land you want and raise land and real estate prices to kingdom come.

It`s also pretty ignorant and single minded to dismiss the big role cheap credit had on the making of the real estate bubble. 
_
Translation: epic failure of Keynesian economics.

----------


## JohnLVT

> It`s true that it might have stopped some speculation and investments in that sector, although I don`t agree with taxes as tool to stop a free market. It`s basically intrusion and violation.


This is where you are confused. Speculation and the free-market are not the same thing. *Speculation acts against the free-market*.  Land is unique, one of the factors of production. Distort land and the market always is distorted along with the land. LVT reclaims community created wealth to pay for community services.  It also prevent speculation in this unique factor of production. 




> However, most of the land was bought by big corporations and bank consortiums who got free money from the FED and other central banks. With free money you can buy all the land you want and raise land and real estate prices to kingdom come.


You are back to the symptom now.  

Max Kieser, summing up Geoism...

_"[Geoism is] real free-market Capitalism where risks and 
rewards are evenly distributed and you don't 
have this aggregation of concentration in banking 
terrorists, who invariably go down to Washington 
with that wealth to change laws which makes it 
easier to steal more money"_
Go back to the root cause. 




> It`s also pretty ignorant and single minded to dismiss the big role cheap credit had on the making of the real estate bubble.


Go back to the root cause.  Why did they pour debt after debt into land? Answer: because it the gains were tax free.

What 2008 has proven was that the current economic system does not work. Geoism is the answer.  Tried and proven.

Economist Fred Harrison....

"Any good economist will tell you, *as people's real disposable incomes rise, that money ends up in one place, and one place only, the LAND MARKET*. As there is growth land values rise, and it should rise. Except, the problem occurred when that increase in value went into private pockets instead of going into services: highways, hospitals, schools and so on, that created that value in the first place"
..
..
"*This is the sources of our problem*, not bankers, big bonuses, sub-prime mortgages in America and the other excuses they have. *This is the heart of the problem of the market economy*, we have to address it. There has to be political consensus, there has to be consensus, with nobody playing party politics"

----------


## Steven Douglas

> *Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES.*
> 
> The socialization of LAND is recovering for the community the value we collectively create.


False.  We don't _collectively create_. Hundreds of millions of Microsoft products users made it possible for Microsoft to keep creating - by consuming.  And paying (many of them) for what they consume.  But those users are consumers - NOT CREATORS. Likewise, we didn't collectively create a community - not in an incorporated sense, where it exists for SOCIALIZED PROFIT where everybody is a SOCIALIZED SHAREHOLDER.  The creation of the community was founded on the voluntary acts of individuals, including me, each one contributing differently, and for his or her own motives and reasons, and while we can be counted in the aggregate, we cannot be credited in the aggregate for anything, and certainly not spoken for in the aggregate.  

What a nasty little fantasy that whole Socialist "community provided value" is, as absolute parasites attempt to take credit where absolutely none is due.  We don't collectively create, we don't collectively "provide value" that anyone can speak for, and we don't even collectively consume.  

There is no such thing as "Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES".   If the land is socialized, then SO ARE THE WAGES EARNED ON THAT LAND. 

George didn't outclever Marx. Did you learn nothing from the video you posted? The very first thing it talks about are the miseries wrought by RENT. Paying forever for something you can NEVER OWN.   

What a nasty parasitic breed the collectivists are.  

If it's not one thing it's another.  One group wants to collectivize the currency. Another wants to collectivize the land. Centralize/collectivize, get your monopoly.  Central planning, central control, a bit in the entire population's mouth.  When are we going to finally rise up and slap these nasty collectivizing bastards down and put them into their sociopathic, sometimes well-intending, society manipulating, humanity enslaving places once and for all?

----------


## JohnLVT

> False.  We don't _collectively create_.


Where do land values come from? Not the sky for sure. *Economic activity by the community, pubic & private, soaks into the land and crystallizes as land values. That is where land values come from.* Basic economics. I never made it up.

Martin Wolf, Chief Economist of the Financial Times.....

_The essential point is quite simple: the value of resources is created by the economic activity of other factors of production [not the owner of the resources - the LAND]. The owners of these resources can become hugely wealthy and are often untaxed on that increase in wealth: the Duke of Westminster is the richest Englishman simply because he owns a large amount of land in a valuable part of London. So why should he have command over the labour of so many other people?_
That wealth extracted from the land is, in the strictest sense, unearned.

Martin Wolf, Chief Economist of the Financial Times.....


"The idea that LAND and CAPITAL are the same thing is evidently ludicrous. It requires us to believe that the economic machine is self-sustaining — a sort of perpetual motion machine."


"Land and capital are both assets, true. But they are not the same thing. Capital is produced by human beings. Land (i.e. all natural resources) is not. *If we think of land as capital, we start thinking of the economic system as a perpetual motion machine, which is contrary to nature*."

_"for both economic and political reasons, we should put natural resources into the heart of economics, thereby remedying a neoclassical mistake"_




> There is no such thing as "Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES".   If the land is socialized, then SO ARE THE WAGES EARNED ON THAT LAND.


the result of CAPITAL is wages.  The result of LAND is economic rent (a surplus). LAND & CAPITAL are separate factors of production. That is basic economics.

----------


## JohnLVT

> There is no such thing as "Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES".


Fred Harrison answered that one well for you. Max Kieser never disagreed.


*Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES.*

_The socialization of LAND is recovering for the community the value we collectively create._ Changing the taxes by abolishing taxes on earnings and the profits from the investments from our savings. Privatise the wealth that we create. Let people keep what they produce. Collect from the public sector that shared revenue that is chrysalises in the land market as land values, we use that to pay for public services. That's resocialising what used to be the public revenue and privatising people's wages.

----------


## zyphex

Oh gosh, please stop, you are killing me, absolutely killing me. And now JohnLVT has another comedian named RoyL to join in the fun. Both of you still absolutely fail to offer a substantive critique of Rothbard's criticism. It's funny watching how fearful you are of the elephant in the room. Rothbard is wrong because I say he is way off the mark and stuff. He is wrong cause Austrians are greedy. He is wrong because Hoppe is also an Austrian and I don't like him. Rothbard is wrong because he is anti-government, so obviously everything he says is biased...because there is no way to use reason to come to anti-government conclusions..no, no, because we kings of reason already know reason leads directly to geoism! 

Way to fail to address ANY of Rothbard's criticisms against the LVT and display much more how intellectually inadequate both of you are. Totally unable to overturn Rothbard so you are reduced to ad-hominem attacks and straw men. Oh boy, what logical prowess from you two cuties. Really, it's adorable. Oh wait! RoyL has offered a critique of Rothbard's criticism! Yet he won't provide it for us! Oh boy, I guess Rothbard is wrong because RoyL has promised us he has overturned it in some other undisclosed location!

It's not everyday that I run into a pack of intellectual midgets such as yourselves, throwing around as many ad-hominems, red herrings, straw men, and as much misinformation as you can in order to avoid tackling the one criticism that, if demolished, would surely win the libertarians that visit the forum to your side. No, no, it's best to copy and paste long articles and youtube videos and create a LVT echo chamber rather than address any criticisms.

You are both jokes. Silly, pathetic, ignorant, and hopefully trolling, intellectual midgets.

And I am sorry to denigrate midgets by associating them with buffoons such as yourselves.

How's that for ad-hominem!

----------


## JohnLVT

> Oh gosh, please stop,


Do you think Martin Wolf is harmful?

As to Rothbard and the Austrians:


Martin Wolf Chief economist of the Financial Times...

_There is nothing extraordinarily radical about Georgism. It is just Ricardo. Would Ricardo have won a Nobel prize? Oh yes. As to counting Nobel prize winners, well, most of them are neo-classicals and Keynesians, whom the Austrians despise. So where does this way of assessing the value of economics leave you? The only pure Austrian who won the Nobel prize is surely Hayek. Who were the others? Austrians have been almost as much outside the academic mainstream as modern Ricardians. But I apologise for calling Austrian economics a sect and agree that Georgists are also a sect. In fact, I believe both have useful things to say (and these things are not incompatible, in fact).
_

An Austrian, Fetter, convinced many that LAND should be merged in CAPITAL.  Because of that they should be blasted into history.


Roy L ripped Rothbard to bits on this forum.

----------


## zyphex

> Do you think Martin Wolf is harmful?
> 
> As to Rothbard and the Austrians:
> 
> 
> Martin Wolf Chief economist of the Financial Times...
> 
> _There is nothing extraordinarily radical about Georgism. It is just Ricardo. Would Ricardo have won a Nobel prize? Oh yes. As to counting Nobel prize winners, well, most of them are neo-classicals and Keynesians, whom the Austrians despise. So where does this way of assessing the value of economics leave you? The only pure Austrian who won the Nobel prize is surely Hayek. Who were the others? Austrians have been almost as much outside the academic mainstream as modern Ricardians. But I apologise for calling Austrian economics a sect and agree that Georgists are also a sect. In fact, I believe both have useful things to say (and these things are not incompatible, in fact).
> _
> ...


Show me where RoyL did this; you have zero intellectual credibility so I'm not going to take your word for it. And I don't want Rothbard ripped down, I want his argument against LVT ripped down.

In addition, saying things like "this other Austrian said this" or "Rothbard said this about this other totally unrelated thing and he was wrong about that" does not amount to a criticism of Rothbard's arguments against LVT, so keep running circles trying to attack other things while avoiding the actual content of his LVT criticism. How many straw men can one attempt to knock down before they attack the elephant in the room? (Not that in normal situations I advice attacking elephants)

Also, what you just posted said that Austrian economics has been out of the mainstream. This is true, and it was mainstream economics thinking, not Austrian, that led to our Great Recession. Get your brain together.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Show me where RoyL did this;


I'm sure Roy can stick up for himself.




> Also, what you just posted said that Austrian economics has been out of the mainstream. This is true, and it was mainstream economics thinking, not Austrian, that led to our Great Recession. Get your brain together.


A crucial aspect of the broken economic system we have is that CAPITAL & LAND were merged, causing havoc. Austrians had a big say in that.  Fools, as two world-wide crashes have clearly shown.  They are not worth the time of day.

The Austrians are more of a "cult" - which might be more accurate.  The followers of this cult argue ever more absurdly in favor of parasitic behavior.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Where do land values come from? Not the sky for sure. [B][I]Economic activity by the community, pubic & private, soaks into the land and crystallizes as land values.


I'm glad you asked. Where does the market value for ANYTHING come from? Not that nebulous thing called "community".  That's a disgustingly gross over-simplification, giving credit where credit is not earned, and not accounting for the fact that nobody "owns the entire market".  Anyone who tries, KILL THEM. Really. Put a bullet in their head. 

Google ATTRACTS a big crowd - which you could call a "community", but that would be a gross oversimplification as well.  In reality it's individuals from all over the place, acting in the moment, able to come and go as they please.  You can take or leave Google either way. Nobody is locked into its "community".  Same with Facebook and anything else. 

Google GATHERED, ENTICED, COLLECTED its "community" by providing a FREE SERVICE.  Free to the wider audience, that is.  But being the quintessential (and FIRST) roadmap to the internet, and drawing a big enough crowd - a captive, but quite voluntary audience, Google was also able to attract advertisers - people who could RENT space from them.  Now that's three different parties (Google, audience and advertisers), all getting what they want.  Every transaction has a beginning, a middle and an end.  The average user/CONSUMER doesn't pay dues to Google. Only advertisers do. Value didn't SOAK into Google's massive cyberland.  Google ABSORBED it, EARNED IT, and EARNED the profits from it.  Furthermore, Google only has a monopoly _on its own interests_.  Yahoo and others are still able to compete, but Google is hands down the best, so it gets the lion's market share.   

Whatever the case, I know that I DID NOT CREATE GOOGLE'S VALUE. Nor did any nebulous CYBER-COMMUNITY BLOB of TAKERS.  Google did that all by themselves.  I'm a taker where Google is concerned - but not a thief.  I come to them with a need, and if they weren't there, someone else would be.  It's that simple.  

Georgists want to do basically what Google is doing, but they want an absolute monopoly on ALL LAND from the git-go.  They don't want to own Google, they want the whole friggin internet!  They want to run a country like a business, and ABSORB value they didn't create, by naming a nebulous "community" as a creator and deprived  beneficiary to speak on behalf of.  In other words, geolibs want to "own" the market. _For land_.  

Humans require food, clothing and shelter. Basic needs, without which you can die. Geolibs want control over one of those things.  A control, literally, on the pulse of humanity.   And damn them all to hell for even having such wicked thoughts.  And the only way they can do this is to pander to "community members" and convince them (having already convinced themselves) that THEY CREATED the value (by their mere existence and participation) of the land, and are therefore deserving of a return on "the community investment". 




> Fred Harrison answered that one well for you. Max Kieser never disagreed.


Is that supposed to mean something to me?  Max Keiser, from Russia Today?  The fact that he gets what's happening to currencies doesn't mean he gets everything else.  Far left Dennis Kucinich gets what's happening with the Fed. Should that make me a Democrat?  The fact that he understands what the Fed and banks are doing doesn't mean he isn't off his liberal rocker with what he thinks ought to be done in response - as wanting that sweet little counterfeiting operation closer to home, under Treasury - SPENDING counterfeit bills into existence, rather than having the Fed LEND them into existence.    

So much for "Max Keiser never disagreed". 




> [INDENT]*Socialized LAND and Privatized WAGES.*
> 
> _The socialization of LAND is recovering for the community the value we collectively create._


FALSE. But definitely a big enough lie to make idiots swoon and tingle with feelings of entitlement.

----------


## zyphex

> I'm sure Roy can stick up for himself.
> 
> 
> 
> A crucial aspect of the broken economic system we have is that CAPITAL & LAND were merged, causing havoc. Austrians had a big say in that.  Fools, as two world-wide crashes have clearly shown.  They are not worth the time of day.
> 
> The Austrians are more of a "cult" - which might be more accurate.  The followers of this cult argue ever more absurdly in favor of parasitic behavior.


Already gave you a source showing that Rothbard regarded land and capital as distinctly separate. As I said, cutie, criticizing what other Austrians have said is not a legitimate criticism of Rothbard's argument against LVT.

Geoists are more of "intellectual midgets" in that they ever more absurdly advance a tax plan that generates zero tax revenue and also causes economic havoc, while failing to ever respond to legitimate criticisms because they are too afraid to look in the mirror and discover that they are themselves "intellectual midgets."

----------


## zyphex

> Some posters on this forum are seriously deranged.  Many want to pay no tax whatsoever towards for the services and security provided by the society they live in. Pure self-centeredness and greed.  If all taxes were abolished we will end up like Somalia.  That is obvious but not to these free-loaders. They want to take, take, take. But not give. 
> 
> They should go here:
> http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/w...itle=Main_Page
> 
> _"demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax."_
> 
> Lots of Austrians are members.


Oh how precious, an intellectual midget trying to make fun of his intellectual superiors. Coochie-coochie coo, you are so adorable. Who's a cutie? Is JohnLVT a cutie? Yes you are, yes you are!

----------


## eduardo89

> Oh gosh, please stop, you are killing me, absolutely killing me. And now JohnLVT has another comedian named RoyL to join in the fun.
> 
> You are both jokes. Silly, pathetic, ignorant, and hopefully trolling, intellectual midgets.
> 
> And I am sorry to denigrate midgets by associating them with buffoons such as yourselves.
> 
> How's that for ad-hominem!


Don't you see, they are the same person!

----------


## WilliamC

This is just too much epic fail to believe.

Post #299 by JohnLVT




> Some posters on this forum are seriously deranged.  Many want to pay no tax whatsoever towards for the services and security provided by the society they live in. Pure self-centeredness and greed.  If all taxes were abolished we will end up like Somalia.  That is obvious but not to these free-loaders. They want to take, take, take. But not give. 
> 
> They should go here:
> http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/w...itle=Main_Page
> 
> _"demonstrating that the earth is flat and that Round Earth doctrine is little more than an elaborate hoax."_
> 
> Lots of Austrians are members.


Post #303 by JohnLVT responding to post #299 by JohnLVT just 15 minutes earlier...




> If they do not like taxes then LVT is for them. It is really Community Reclaim Charge (CRC).  This has no taxes on your production (your labor).  No Income Tax, no sales tax, no property tax, no other silly stealth taxes.  CRC merely reclaims wealth that soaked into lland.  It takes back the wealth the community created.  Simple. No taxes.  Just what they want.


Having trouble keeping your sock-puppet accounts straight eh?

Too bad there isn't any reality soaking into your worldview.
Heh.

----------


## JohnLVT

_It is the force of land monopoly; it is a screw and lever all in one; 
it will screw the last penny out of a man's pocket, and bend everything
on earth to its own despotic will. Give me the private ownership of all
the land, and will I move the earth? No; but I will do more. I will
undertake to make slaves of all the human beings on the face of it. 
Not chattel slaves exactly, but slaves nevertheless. What an idiot 
I would be to make chattel slaves of them. I would have to find 
them salts and senna when they were sick, and whip them to work 
when they were lazy._
- Mark Twain

LVT will stop that slavery.

----------


## eduardo89

> LVT will stop that slavery.


LVT just like every other tax is slavery to the state.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Post #299 by JohnLVT
> Post #303 by JohnLVT


What don't you understand about the posts? I can help you.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> *Give me the private ownership of all
> the land, and will I move the earth? No; but I will do more. I will
> undertake to make slaves of all the human beings on the face of it.*
> LVT will stop that slavery.


Oh yeah, if diffused private ownership can make slaves of all human beings, just imagine what concentrated public ownership could do?

----------


## WilliamC

> What don't you understand about the posts? I can help you.


Oh I understand everything I need to about what you want, it's just that we start from different premises is the problem.

As for helping me, just donate $2,500 to either the Ron Paul Presidential campaign or to the Campaign for Liberty and I'll consider myself helped.

Here on RPF though you are just a source of amusement though.

Carry on.

----------


## JohnLVT

> I'm glad you asked. Where does the market value for ANYTHING come from?


Not be the individual owner for sure. Get it?  Capital, car, dishwasher, etc, has value, but it drops over time, as it wears out.  Also if there is a shortage of cars more can be made.  They are not making land any longer.  Get it?  The capital may have rarity value.  Land has rarity value as its is inelastic.  But Capital is not the same as land - ever.


Winston Churchill....

_
They talk to us of the increased profits of a doctor or a 
lawyer from the growth of population in the towns in which 
they live. They talk to us of the profits of a railway through 
a greater degree of wealth and activity in the districts through 
which it runs. They tell us of the profits which are derived from 
a rise in stocks and shares, and even of those which are 
sometimes derived from the sale of pictures and works of art, 
and they ask us  as if it were the only complaint: Ought not 
all these other forms to be taxed, too?

But see how misleading and false all these analogies are. 
The windfalls which people with artistic gifts are able 
from time to time to derive from the sale of a picture  from
a Vandyke or a Holbein  may here and there be very 
considerable. But pictures do not get in anybodys way. 
They do not lay a toll on anybodys labour; they do not 
touch enterprise and production at any point; they do 
not affect any of those creative processes upon which 
the material well-being of millions depends._

----------


## JohnLVT

> Carry on.


Ron Paul should adopt LVT.  If he cares about society and understands it, he would adopt it ASAP. It works and it is fair and liberating.

----------


## JohnLVT

> LVT just like every other tax is slavery to the state.


LVT is NOT a tax. It reclaims community created wealth.  This you have to accept as you have difficulty getting to grips with it.

----------


## JohnLVT

_The annual produce of the land and labour of the_ _society, 
the real wealth and revenue of the great_ _body of the people, 
might be the same after such a_ _tax as before._ *Ground-rents 
and the ordinary rent of land* _are,__therefore, perhaps, the 
species of revenue which can_ *best bear to have a peculiar 
tax imposed upon**them.*

*Adam Smith* - _Wealth of Nations_ (1776), Book V, Chap. 2, Art.1

_Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working,_ _risking or 
economizing. The increase in_ *the value of* *land, arising as it 
does from the efforts of an* *entire community, should belong 
to the* *community* _and not to the individual who might hold_ _title._

*John Stuart Mill* - _Political Economy_ (1848), Book V, Chap. 2, Sec. 5

_The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just_ _and equal 
of all taxes._ _It is the taking by the community, for the use of the_ 
_community, of that value which is the creation of the_ _community._

*Henry George* - _Progress and Poverty_ (1879)

Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are improved, ...
water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains - 
and all the while the landlord sits still… To not one of these improvements 
does the land monopolist as a land monopolist contribute, and yet by 
every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced.

*Winston Churchill* - _Speaking in 1909 for the People's budget_


*Search out every problem*_, look into these_ _questions thoroughly, 
and the more thoroughly you_ _look into them_ *you will find that the 
land is at the* *root of most of them*_. Housing, wages, food,_ _health…_

*David Lloyd George* - _Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at Aberdeen, 29__th_ _November 1912_


_If a tax were imposed equal to the annual use value of_ _real 
property ex its improvement, so that it would now_ _have no net 
earnings and hence no capital value of_ _its own --_ *progress 
would be orderly and its fruits**would be equitably shared.*

*John Kenneth Galbraith 1908 - 2006* - _The Affluent Society (1958)_


_So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In_ _my 
opinion_ *the least bad tax is the property tax on* *the 
unimproved value of land*_, the Henry George_ _argument 
of many, many years ago._

*Milton Friedman* - _Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, speaking in 1978_

_Land value taxation is a "no-brainer"__…__It is both fair and_ 
_efficient. It should be adopted._

*Martin Wolf* - _Chief economics commentator at the Financial Times_

_The taxation of future growth in land values "to_ _eliminate 
the fever of land speculation" that has_ _"ended up destabilizing 
the entire global economy"…_ 

*Polly Toynbee* - _Columnist, writing in The Guardian, 13__th_ _July 2010_

_The wealth produced over the centuries by the efforts_ _of 
the community is reflected in land values and is_ _therefore 
a proper target for taxation._

*Vince Cable* - _In foreword to 'The Case For A New People's Budget'_

"The underlying intellectual argument for seeking to tax 
economic rents retains its force." 

*Mervyn King*, in the standard textbook on the British tax system :Kay & King, 1990 p.179

----------


## Travlyr

> Land, like any scarce and valuable commodity, really does appreciate in value in a growing economy.





> Land does not appreciate in value?  Wow! What part of the Flat Earth are you on. We can all go and have a look.  
> 
> He goes on.....
> 
> 
> 
> So it does appreciate now.  Fantastic.  Was the earth a bit round at that point?


Lolz... This LVT cult scrapes the bottom of the barrel for their advocates. Ignorance is indeed Strength for LVT worshipers.

----------


## JohnLVT

> This LVT cult


LVT is no cult it is a simple economic system - Geoism.  What don't you understand. What is your sticking point?  I can help.

----------


## Travlyr

> LVT is no cult it is a simple economic system - Geoism.  What don't you understand. What is your sticking point?  I can help.


LVT worshipers seem to have a problem with honest discussion. Perhaps you could start there.

----------


## JohnLVT

> LVT worshipers seem to have a problem with honest discussion.


We do not worship, as we provide facts and backup for the facts.  We are 100% honest all though.  We try to help where you fail.

Geoism means True Liberty.

----------


## Travlyr

> We do not worship, as we provide facts and backup for the facts.  We are 100% honest all though.  We try to help where you fail.
> 
> Geoism means True Liberty.


Then who gets liberated when you confiscate land due to non-payment of taxes?

----------


## JohnLVT

> Then who gets liberated when you confiscate land due to non-payment of taxes?


The land taken away (as per now) is in payment of wealth the landowner stole by not returning the wealth to its rightful owners, and those who created it, which is the community. 

If your land is taken away it is because you have stolen.  That would sound fair to all people. Or if you want to sell your car or other possessions, you can do that.

----------


## Travlyr

> The land taken away (as per now) is in payment of wealth the landowner stole by not returning the wealth to its rightful owners, and those who created it, which is the community. 
> 
> If your land is taken away it is because you have stolen.  That would sound fair to all people. Or if you want to sell your car or other possessions, you can do that.


Honest discussion. Remember? In other words, 'nobody' is liberated by confiscating their land. It is not True Liberty as you claimed. Kicking someone off their land because they could not pay the ransom is tyranny, JohnLVT, not liberty.

----------


## eduardo89

> LVT is NOT a tax. It reclaims community created wealth.  This you have to accept as you have difficulty getting to grips with it.


How does it "reclaim"? Through intimidation, coercion and force of the state? Is it voluntary? If I don't pay are there consequences, including asset foreiture or jail time?

----------


## eduardo89

> The land taken away (as per now) is in payment of wealth the landowner stole by not returning the wealth to its rightful owners, and those who created it, which is the community. 
> 
> If your land is taken away it is because you have stolen.  That would sound fair to all people. Or if you want to sell your car or other possessions, you can do that.


You seem to believe in some "community right". We don't believe in collective rights, we believe in individual rights.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Honest discussion. Remember? In other words, 'nobody' is liberated by confiscating their land. It is not True Liberty as you claimed. Kicking someone off their land because they could not pay the ransom is tyranny, JohnLVT, not liberty.


Your idea of liberty is greed and self-centerednesss. You want to take and not give.  You want the benefits of what a society offers: security, infrastructures, education, etc. and not pay for it.

Under LVT if you do not pay the levy, you will be chased to get it - as they do now. If you can't pay then sell possessions.  Or if you are unemployed, then there are exemptions, etc - Roy has explained that very well.

Again, LVT *reclaims* community created wealth.  The community takes its wealth back, which the landowners never created. Very simple. If you deliberately keep that wealth you are stealing.  Get it?  If you want a low LVT you can live in the boonies and pay next to nothing, or nothing, as the land is worth next to nothing. Get it? 

If you cannot pay you can always remortgage and tap int the wealth locked into the land.

----------


## eduardo89

> Your idea of liberty is greed and self-centerednesss. You want to take and not give.  You want the benefits of what a society offers: security, infrastructures, education, etc. and not pay for it.


That's not true. We want to pay our fair share. We want to pay for what we use. We don't, however, want to be stolen from to pay for others. If we want to pay for others we do it voluntarily.

----------


## Travlyr

> Your idea of liberty is greed and self-centerednesss. You want to take and not give.  You want the benefits of what a society offers: security, infrastructures, education, etc. and not pay for it.
> 
> Under LVT if you do not pay the levy, you will be chased to get it - as they do now. If you can't pay then sell possessions.  Or if you are unemployed, then there are exemptions, etc - Roy has explained that very well.
> 
> Again, LVT *reclaims* community created wealth.  The community takes its wealth back, which the landowners never created. Very simple. If you deliberately keep that wealth you are stealing.  Get it?  If you want a low LVT you can live in the boonies and pay next to nothing, or nothing, as the land is worth next to nothing. Get it? 
> 
> If you cannot pay you can always remortgage and tap int the wealth locked into the land.


None of that changes the fact that LVT is tyrannical not liberating. You claimed LVT is True Liberty. It clearly is not. Tyranny is not Liberty.

----------


## JohnLVT

> How does it "reclaim"? Through intimidation, coercion and force of the state?


If you hire a service from a company and do not pay the same process applies. Courts, etc.  The last thing they take for non-payment is the land, as will be the case with LVT. 




> Is it voluntary? If I don't pay are there consequences, including asset foreiture or jail time?


The law does not allow people to voluntarily keep other people's property or wealth - that is right now.  If they demand it back, it has to be given back, or the law starts process to get it back.  So why should this basic part of law be rescinded for reclaiming wealth from land?  Answer: it should not.

LVT is voluntary. You can move to low LVT area, or right in the boonies and pay zero tax as there will be no income tax, etc.

----------


## JohnLVT

> None of that changes the fact that LVT is tyrannical not liberating. You claimed LVT is True Liberty. It clearly is not. Tyranny is not Liberty.


LVT is liberating, this has been explained to you. It rolls back the state.

----------


## eduardo89

> If you hire a service from a company and do not pay the same process applies. Courts, etc.  The last thing they take for non-payment is the land, as will be the case with LVT.


I didn't hire the fire department to put our the fire across town. I didn't hire a ware management company to pick up my neighbours's trash. I didnt hire hire a clerk to expedite the guy across the street's drivers license. 

The first two things can and should be privatized. The latter can be funded through user fees. 

No need for LV TAX.

----------


## eduardo89

> LVT is liberating, this has been explained to you. It rolls back the state.


No it doesn't, it just funds the state through a different mechanism. It's still taxation and statism.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Not be the individual owner for sure. Get it?  Capital, car, dishwasher, etc, has value, but it drops over time, as it wears out.  Also if there is a shortage of cars more can be made.


Yeah, and there's gold on Earth that was mined 2,000 years ago and passed around, sold, molded, shaped, traded, stamped, cast and recast - is still around, it's value coming in part from its scarcity, and never wearing out.  Get it? 




> They are not making land any longer.  Get it?


"They" never "made" land, any more than they "made" gold.  But "they" continue to clear and prepare land for specific usage, just as "they" continue to mine and a refine gold ore. Get it? 




> The capital may have rarity value.  Land has rarity value as its is inelastic.


What the hell does elasticity or inelasticity have to do with whether a thing is capital or not? 




> But Capital is not the same as land - ever.


That's your non-sequitur, the weakest of conclusions asserted without any meaningful or even related preceding argument, and strictly from your own premise.  Get it? 

In your pea brain, for something to be considered capital:
It must not be durable.It must be elastic.It must not be fixed in supply.

What kind of hair-brained criteria are those?  Oh yeah - Keynesian-spawned.

----------


## Travlyr

> LVT is liberating, this has been explained to you. It rolls back the state.


That too is irrelevant. Again, honest discussion. Tyranny is not Liberty.

----------


## Travlyr

> LVT is no cult it is a simple economic system - Geoism.  What don't you understand. What is your sticking point?  I can help.





> LVT worshipers seem to have a problem with honest discussion. Perhaps you could start there.


One page later we are right back to where we were.

How is tyranny = liberty?

----------


## JohnLVT

> That's not true. We want to pay our fair share.


Since when. Most here want to pay zero of any description.  Who pays for the army, police, fire, schools, etc?  Does manna from heaven drop on the army?




> We want to pay for what we use.


What are you carping on about then?




> We don't, however, want to be stolen from to pay for others. If we want to pay for others we do it voluntarily.


So you decided what to give each month to the army!  You are on a flat earth for sure.

The community provides the security and lifestyle you enjoy via many aspects.  Schools educate the young who pay and control society when you get older, etc - even though you may not use a school.  Infrastructure around, paid for by others, adds value to your life and put value into your land as well.

----------


## JohnLVT

> How is tyranny = liberty?


It isn't but LVT = liberty.  No one takes the fruits of my labors, I keep it all.

----------


## eduardo89

> Since when. Most here want to pay zero of any description.  Who pays for the army, police, fire, schools, etc?  Does manna from heaven drop on the army?


I've never attended public school, neither will my kids. Why should I pay for public schools? Fire departments should be completely privatized, if I want protection I pay a monthly fee, if I don't I take that risk. There should be no standing army, a volunteer militia woul suffice to protect the US from outside threats.

----------


## JohnLVT

> No it doesn't, it just funds the state through a different mechanism. It's still taxation and statism.


LVT pays for community services, by _reclaiming wealth the community created_ - not the landowner. You keep all of the wealth you created. No one takes it from you. Very liberating.

----------


## Travlyr

> It isn't but LVT = liberty.  No one takes the fruits of my labors, I keep it all.


If you don't even have the most fundamental element of honesty, then how do you expect to grow your movement?

LVT advocates forcibly taking someone's land because they do not pay ransom to the ruler. That is, oppressive power, which is by definition, tyranny.

LVT is tyrannical.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> LVT pays for community services, by _reclaiming wealth the community created_ ...


You haven't made that case, and won't here, because we are not socialists, by and large, and don't think with "hive minds", you busy little drone you.   

The "community" doesn't create wealth.

----------


## JohnLVT

> "They" never "made" land, any more than they "made" gold.  But "they" continue to clear and prepare land for specific usage, just as "they" continue to mine and a refine gold ore. Get it?


You never got it.  With Geoism, the resources extracted from land are taxed at source, then after, it becomes CAPITAL.  Get it?  




> What the hell does elasticity or inelasticity have to do with whether a thing is capital or not?


This proves your knowledge of economics is little more than NIL.  But keep on, I and others can help.

Non-elastic in *supply*.  We can make as many cars as we like. They are not making land in NY any more. Get it?

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> The land taken away (as per now) is in payment of wealth the landowner stole by not returning the wealth to its rightful owners, and those who created it, which is the community. 
> 
> If your land is taken away it is because you have stolen.  That would sound fair to all people. Or if you want to sell your car or other possessions, you can do that.


Wow, who gets the house, garage, shop? (don't tell me to move it, that's plain crazy).  Or does the house, garage, shop get stolen from me?

----------


## JohnLVT

> You haven't made that case,


That has been made abundantly to you. Even with quotes from leading economists.  I can't cater for selective amnesia though.




> and won't here, because we are not socialists, by and large, and don't think with "hive minds", you busy little drone you.


Geoism is apolitical. It will fit into any ism.  Which one do you want?




> The "community" doesn't create wealth.


You need to take an economics course.

----------


## eduardo89

> You never got it.  With Geoism, the resources extracted from land are *taxed* at source, then after, it becomes CAPITAL.  Get it?


So it is a tax...?

----------


## JohnLVT

> Wow, who gets the house, garage, shop? (don't tell me to move it, that's plain crazy).  Or does the house, garage, shop get stolen from me?


What happens if you owe money now?  If you legally owe money by definition that money is not yours, it belongs to others and you are keeping it - that applies to anyone.  So a court says pay. You do not, then the process of getting that money from you (which the court determined was not yours) starts. The last line of the process is taking your land/house.  You find that difficult to comprehend.

----------


## JohnLVT

> So it is a tax...?


When a company extracts commonly owned resource, yes. That is the case with oil now.  Use the commonly owned electro-magnetic spectrum and you get charged.  Use the commonly owned streets to make a money driving a cab and you are charged via taxi licence. Businesses get taxed on using common wealth or extracting common wealth.

----------


## eduardo89

> When a company extracts commonly owned resource, yes.


If the resources are on my land, I own them. They are not "commonly owned".

Go peddle your socialism somewhere else.

----------


## mczerone

> LVT is NOT a tax. It reclaims community created wealth.  This you have to accept as you have difficulty getting to grips with it.


It has "tax" in the name.

Sorry, I'm trying to not feed you (the troll), but can you answer 3 questions for me:

(1) Why should someone be compelled to share the products he devises from his land?

(2) Who should be in charge of redistributing the wealth confiscated?

and 

(3) What will the confiscated funds be spent on, and why wouldn't this happen without this tax?

----------


## mczerone

> When a company extracts commonly owned resource, yes. That is the case with oil now.  Use the commonly owned electro-magnetic spectrum and you get charged.  Use the commonly owned streets to make a money driving a cab and you are charged via taxi licence. Businesses get taxed on using common wealth or extracting common wealth.


So you want to claim that "we all" own the unowned land, and your examples are govt-usurped EM spectrum and roads?

----------


## WilliamC

> So it is a tax...?


See, your problem is that you just don't get it. It is not a tax, except for when it is a tax. Because if it isn't, then it can't be, and that's why it's better than any other tax, because it both is and isn't a tax that everyone can agree on if they would just stop being so obtuse and agree with us communists about what words mean. Learn this and you will stop being so confused.

*GET IT!*

/Indoctrination

----------


## zyphex

Hey JohnLVT, you said you can help me with this whole LVT. Well, I came across this critique by Rothbard...I think you may have seen a post about it? Yeah, well, Rothbard has his misgivings, and so do those cultish greedy Austrians, but I was wondering if you could provide a comprehensive refutation of his criticisms? 

Thanks, cutie.

----------


## JohnLVT

> If the resources are on my land, I own them. They are not "commonly owned".
> 
> Go peddle your socialism somewhere else.


Socialism? where?  Look at the Max Kieser/Scott Baker vid.  Streets are commonly owned; so you think it is fine to erect a shack on the local road?  Put one on the local park?  OK for anyone to do that. 

Understand what is _common wealth_ and _private wealth_. Understand the difference. Commonwealth should not be appropriated by private individuals or organisations.  If private individuals or organisations use or extract that commonwealth then they pay the community - because it is ours.  What is yours is yours and the community has no right taking it from you.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Hey JohnLVT, you said you can help me with this whole LVT. Well, I came across this critique by Rothbard...I think you may have seen a post about it? Yeah, well, Rothbard has his misgivings, and so do those cultish greedy Austrians, but I was wondering if you could provide a comprehensive refutation of his criticisms? 
> 
> Thanks, cutie.


See Roy sunshine.

----------


## WilliamC

> So you want to claim that "we all" own the unowned land, and your examples are govt-usurped EM spectrum and roads?


Of course we do, it is all community property and cannot be claimed by any individual. If you would just stop being so difficult and accept what I say, which I profusely back up with links, cut-and-pasted quotes from all sorts of important people, and even videos from experts who know better than you, then you would easily conclude that I am correct and you simply need to re-educate yourself in basic economics

/Indoctrination

----------


## JohnLVT

> So you want to claim that "we all" own the unowned land, and your examples are govt-usurped EM spectrum and roads?


Get to know the difference between *Common wealth* and _private wealth_.

----------


## WilliamC

> Hey JohnLVT, you said you can help me with this whole LVT. Well, I came across this critique by Rothbard...I think you may have seen a post about it? Yeah, well, Rothbard has his misgivings, and so do those cultish greedy Austrians, but I was wondering if you could provide a comprehensive refutation of his criticisms? 
> 
> Thanks, cutie.


Any simpleton can tell just by their names that Rothbard, Mises, and the entire Austrian school are barking mad yodelling know-nothings who are from another planet and who's failed policies have been imposed on the entire world for far too long, thus bringing about the very economic crisis we Geo-libertarians are trying to solve.

Join the winning side, not on the side of these mad-men you are under the spell of, and everything will become clear to you.

/Indoctrination

----------


## zyphex

> See Roy sunshine.


Why? Don't you have reading comprehension skills? Can't you refute it yourself?
Why? Do you lack copy and paste skills? Why can't you copy and paste the criticism?

Oh, and what does the great Winston Churchill have to say about the LVT. Let me hear that one more time, I'm almost convinced. Oh, and something about Max Keiser, too, I definitely need to see that $#@!!

----------


## JohnLVT

> Of course we do, it is all community property and cannot be claimed by any individual.


Spot on.




> you simply need to re-educate yourself in basic economics


Spot on. Wow! The penny is dropping

----------


## eduardo89

> Socialism? where?  Look at the Max Kieser/Scott Baker vid.  Streets are commonly owned; so you think it is fine to erect a shack on the local road?  Put one on the local park?  OK for anyone to do that.


Max Keiser is a joke.

Roads should be privatized. Read _ The Privatization of Roads and Highways_ by Walter Block. Great book.

Parks should also be privatized. Run them like Chuck. E. Cheese. Everything could be operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck.

Those two are horrible examples, as they could easily be privatized and those who use them pay for them. Those who don't use them, wouldn't have to. Same goes for public services such as fire protection, garbage pickup, schools, highways, airports, mass transit, etc.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Any simpleton can tell just by their names that Rothbard, Mises, and the entire Austrian school are barking mad yodelling know-nothings who are from another planet and who's failed policies have been imposed on the entire world for far too long, thus bringing about the very economic crisis we Geo-libertarians are trying to solve.
> 
> Join the winning side, not on the side of these mad-men you are under the spell of, and everything will become clear to you.


Spot on.  Very encouraging indeed.

----------


## zyphex

> Any simpleton can tell just by their names that Rothbard, Mises, and the entire Austrian school are barking mad yodelling know-nothings who are from another planet and who's failed policies have been imposed on the entire world for far too long, thus bringing about the very economic crisis we Geo-libertarians are trying to solve.
> 
> Join the winning side, not on the side of these mad-men you are under the spell of, and everything will become clear to you.
> 
> /Indoctrination


I'll only join if Winston Churchill is in support.

----------


## WilliamC

> Get to know the difference between *Common wealth* and _private wealth_.


Damn straight, 'cause I know I don't have enough for my needs as a result of the failure of private wealth to accumulate under my control, and since I'm so damn smart and everything why it can't possibly be my fault.

So it's *ONLY FAIR* that I get some of the common wealth that those greedy land owners are hoarding, even if I have to take it from them. 

After all, if I can't get enough of what I want it's not right that anyone else has more, that's simply *NOT FAIR*!

/sarcasm.

Yea, we all get it. Communism by any other name is still communism, and collective ownership of all land and resources is the very definition thereof.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Max Keiser is a joke.


In your mind.




> Roads should be privatized.


Why? It is bad enough land being privatized - although LVT solves that and it can remain private.




> Parks should also be privatized. Run them like Chuck. E. Cheese. Everything could be operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck.


Private armies as well?  Private police?  _ All that sounds like an Orwellian nightmare!!!!_

----------


## eduardo89

> In your mind.


In the mind of any sane person. I guess that excludes the LVT fanboys.




> Why? It is bad enough land being privatized - although LVT solves that and it can remain private.


There's nothing bad about private roads. Let those who use roads pay for them. If you've ever been to Europe, you'll notice how private highways are much better designed and maintained than public ones. The private sector always delivers a better product/service for cheaper.





> _All that sounds like an Orwellian nightmare!!!!_


Again, no it doesn't. If I want to use a park, I should pay to use it. If I don't use the park, why should I pay for it?

----------


## heavenlyboy34

"Commonwealth" is just a fantasy concocted by classical economcists.  In practice, it doesn't really exist.  If you use "commonly held" property in a way that irritates nearby landowners (even in the fantastical LVT regime) the landowners will use force to compel you to stop.  For example, consider air-widely considered 'common property' (incorrectly).  If you use your air to pollute my air with excessive sound, gas, etc., Phoenix (and every other city I know of) has special departments which I can report you to.

----------


## ClydeCoulter

> What happens if you owe money now?  If you legally owe money by definition that money is not yours, it belongs to others and you are keeping it - that applies to anyone.  So a court says pay. You do not, then the process of getting that money from you (which the court determined was not yours) starts. The last line of the process is taking your land/house.  You find that difficult to comprehend.


I don't find it difficult to comprehend, I find it repulsive that any form of tax be used to remove a person from their property (LAND/HOUSE whatever terms you might choose to call it to obfuscate my post).

----------


## JohnLVT

> I don't find it difficult to comprehend, I find it repulsive that any form of tax be used to remove a person from their property (LAND/HOUSE whatever terms you might choose to call it to obfuscate my post).


So you think people can get into debt and not pay it back?  Borrow $500,000 and just not pay and sit on your land/house and no one does anything?  That is siding with criminality.  Appalling.

----------


## eduardo89

> So you think people can get into debt and not pay it back?  Borrow $500,000 and just not pay and sit on your land/house and no one does anything?  That is siding with criminality.  Appalling.


When did he ever say that?

Owning land does not mean you have a debt to anyone.

----------


## JohnLVT

> "Commonwealth" is just a fantasy concocted by classical economcists.


Wow!  Who owns Central Park?  Tom Cruise? Who owns all the streets in NYC?  Bill Gates?

----------


## JohnLVT

> When did he ever say that?


He implied he should not pay back debts and his land/house should never be taken to pay them.




> Owning land does not mean you have a debt to anyone.


I agree.  But paying back others wealth that happened to have accumulated in your land you should pay back as this wealth is not yours.  If a big box of money rolled off the back of a truck and onto your land, do you think you should not pay it back to its rightful owners?  Wow.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So you think people can get into debt and not pay it back?  Borrow $500,000 and just not pay and sit on your land/house and no one does anything?  That is siding with criminality.  Appalling.


$500,000?  You mean a "finite number", broken down into payments, after which there is nothing more to pay, and full title transfers? You mean that kind of debt?  

Sounds better than a variable rate interest only loan, where the interest is INFINITE, as the principle can NEVER be paid, and title can never transfer.   

Yes, LVT is the perfect communist tax. You just have to buy into the idea that "the community" is the creator of wealth - wealth that "soaks into" the land, and is just sitting there, waiting to be rightfully "reclaimed" by all those wonderful creators, one and all, great and small. 

Lunatics.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Lunatics.


I have read some of your exchanges with Roy, and the only ignorant of economics lunatic is you.  A self-centered, greedy, conditioned one at that.

LVT is perfect for communism and extreme right USA politics as well.  It fits into any ism.  Here is what a America professor says:
_"George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can 
puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the 
two. The system is internally consistent, but defies 
conventional stereotypes."_
- Professor Mason Gaffney (US economist)

As to Commie:

Max Kieser, summing up Geoism...

_"[Geoism is] real free-market Capitalism where risks and 
rewards are evenly distributed and you don't 
have this aggregation of concentration in banking 
terrorists, who invariably go down to Washington 
with that wealth to change laws which makes it 
easier to steal more money"_

Max says:_"real free-market Capitalism "_
The Commies could do with it as well.   Have you found any reds under your bed today?

At least try to understand. You have lot to gain.

----------


## Travlyr

> I have read some of your exchanges with Roy, and the only ignorant of economics lunatic is you.  A self-centered, greedy, conditioned one at that.


After reading your posts, you are not even honest. Steven has proven himself knowledgeable & honest. 

If you were honest, then you would tell people that LVT is tyrannical. Then, you could go about the business of convincing people why your tyranny is better than say a dictatorship. If only, you were honest.

This forum is a liberty forum. We discuss ways to avoid tyranny. Sound money, 100% redeemable while adhering to rule of law as prescribed by Dr. Ron Paul is what a lot of us are working towards. It's honest.

----------


## JohnLVT

> After reading your posts, you are not even honest. Steven has proven himself knowledgeable & honest.


Firstly, none of you have much idea of economics.  Anyone who does not know how the value appears in land is gross ignorant of economics. You have to accept and do not question _that land values came about because of economic growth created by community activity soaked into the land crystallizing as land values. _ The landowner _never_ created the value. 

I pasted countless eminent economists stating that on this forum. Once you accept a basic economic fact, it all becomes easier for you in understanding.   Geonomics is for you without doubt, as it fulfills your needs and wants, but you need to open your minds.  Break away from the locked views. get rid of the blinkers.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Wow!  Who owns Central Park?  Tom Cruise? Who owns all the streets in NYC?  Bill Gates?


The government does (on paper).  In practice, it belongs to whomever has enough force to keep everyone off.  You want to use that corner of the park?  Too bad, my friends and I are using it.  Step on our turf and we'll crush your skull.  This is why the commons had to be abandoned in most places.  To the extent that it's kept around, it's just a political move.  It's a type of bribe/distraction to keep Boobus from focusing on the State's crimes and revolting.  It's rather similar to welfare.

Of course, had you done the proper research-reading everything you claim you've read-you would know this already and not have wasted time making such foolish and ignorant claims to start with.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I have read some of your exchanges with Roy


How could you not, being Roy's sock puppet and all?

----------


## JohnLVT

> How could you not, being Roy's sock puppet and all?


What is a sock puppet?  I have read that few times.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> What is a sock puppet?  I have read that few times.


A second account one creates to give the illusion of being a different person.

----------


## JohnLVT

> The government does (on paper).  In practice, it belongs to whomever has enough force to keep everyone off.  You want to use that corner of the park?  Too bad, my friends and I are using it.  Step on our turf and we'll crush your skull.


But they do not permanently live there.  No buildings are erected and if they threaten criminal violence then the police come in. Central Park is Commonwealth owned by all. That is obvious. 

The streets are commonwealth.  

In NYC, Taxi medallions now run up to a million each. These mobile licenses to Land give the owner an exclusive and monopolistic right to carry passengers expensively across NYC. These medallions should be subject to a Land Value Tax.  Is there a bubble in this trans-locational form of Land ownership?  See more here:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...-11102011.html

NYC streets are the biggest piece of NYC real estate there is,  so says NYC  Transportation Commissioner.  "Street land" as represented by Taxi Medallion monopoly;  the rules and results are the same as for any other kind of Land monopoly.

----------


## JohnLVT

> A second account one creates to give the illusion of being a different person.


Do you have few.  So many people can't all have the same simple views as you...but there again....

Just get to grips with Geoism.  It is for you.

----------


## eduardo89



----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Do you have few.  So many people can't all have the same simple views as you...but there again....
> 
> Just get to grips with Geoism.  It is for you.


  LOL!!  My views aren't simple-they're correct.  Your views are not "complex"-they are an elaborate exercise in bullshitting.  Come to grips with the facts that Geoism is nonsense.  It's for the birds.

Why did you make your sock puppet so much dumber than you, Roy?  I am disappoint.  At least Fire11 was consistent with his sock puppet accounts.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> But they do not permanently live there.  No buildings are erected and if they threaten criminal violence then the police come in. Central Park is Commonwealth owned by all. That is obvious. 
> 
> The streets are commonwealth.  
> 
> In NYC, Taxi medallions now run up to a million each. These mobile licenses to Land give the owner an exclusive and monopolistic right to carry passengers expensively across NYC. These medallions should be subject to a Land Value Tax.  Is there a bubble in this trans-locational form of Land ownership?  See more here:
> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...-11102011.html
> 
> NYC streets are the biggest piece of NYC real estate there is,  so says NYC  Transportation Commissioner.  "Street land" as represented by Taxi Medallion monopoly;  the rules and results are the same as for any other kind of Land monopoly.


LOL!!  John Stossel did a report on those NYC cab medallions.  In practice, they crowd out small businesses in favor of corporations who can afford to pay off the government.  You still don't know WTF you're talking about!

----------


## JohnLVT

> LOL!!  John Stossel did a report on those NYC cab medallions.  In practice, they crowd out small businesses in favor of corporations who can afford to pay off the government.  You still don't know WTF you're talking about!


You are on about criminality and corruption. That is different top the points I am making.

----------


## JohnLVT

> LOL!!  My views aren't simple-they're correct.


They are confused. You need some clarity of thought. Structure your thoughts.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You are on about criminality and corruption. That is different top the points I am making.


No, I refuted your BS about the cab medallions.  GTFO until you can come up with something logical.  As your alter-ego Roy L would say, "I have destroyed you!".

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> They are confused. You need some clarity of thought. Structure your thoughts.


LMAO!  Anything you don't like is unstructured and confused. (eta: remember, we are discussing YOUR views, which is why they are simple and unstructured) I think you're just a few grade levels behind and you just need to catch up before you can participate in this discussion.

----------


## Zippyjuan

Let me see if I can try to summarize where we are on this thing. We want to try this program called LVT or Land Value Tax. Now despite the word tax in it and that the government is adding a price onto something so they can take the money, it is not really a tax. Mmm. Ok. 

How does it work? I buy some property to live on (or have a business on) at a certain price.  Over time, my neighbors (the "'community") does things which cause the value of my land to get inflated. I am somehow receiving economic benefit from this inflated value of my land (even though I don't get a penny of that value as long as I own the property).  Then this community will kindly take some of that increased land value back ("reclaiming it") which means I have to give them money.

Now since it was claimed that the money I need to pay for this tax on the inflated value of my land won't come from my income, then I must not have to pay for it since that is where I am getting my money.  I further don't have to pay it since it is instead supposed to come from the financial benefits I received by my neighbors driving up property values yet I received no money for that either.  I have not been given anything for the increased value of my property (at least until I actually sell it and then I am no longer a land owner) there is nothing for this "community" to "reclaim" from me. 

I think I am starting to like this idea!  A "tax" which is not a tax and which I don't have to pay. 

And on top of that, housing prices will become stable so we don't have to worry about any more housing bubbles. Double benefits!  Cool!

----------


## JohnLVT

> No, I refuted your BS about the cab medallions.  GTFO until you can come up with something logical.  As your alter-ego Roy L would say, "I have destroyed you!".


I doubt you have the intelligence and knowledge to destroy me. One is clear you can't get a point and mix economics up with criminality.  Try to separate these thing in your mind. 

I notice Roy did destroy the detractors - to my amusement.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I doubt you have the intelligence and knowledge to destroy me. One is clear you can't get a point and mix economics up with criminality.  Try to separate these thing in your mind. 
> 
> I notice Roy did destroy the detractors - to my amusement.


LOL!!!!  You aren't reading (or you're feigning illiteracy).  Come on, now!  You can't be this dumb already, Roy!  Get rid of this John sock puppet so you at least don't get so convoluted and confused.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I doubt you have the intelligence and knowledge to destroy me. One is clear you can't get a point and mix economics up with criminality.  Try to separate these thing in your mind. 
> 
> I notice Roy did destroy the detractors - to my amusement.


Except I didn't "mix economics up with criminality".  I addressed your points as YOU raised them.  Neither you nor Roy are capable of destroying anyone-except perhaps noobs who haven't read anything on the subjects at hand.  But you do make me laugh.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Let me see if I can try to summarize where we are on this thing. We want to try this program called LVT or Land Value Tax. Now despite the word tax in it and that the government is adding a price onto something so they can take the money, it is not really a tax. Mmm. Ok.


Correct. Tax is misnomer. It *reclaims*. 




> How does it work? I buy some property to live on (or have a business on) at a certain price.  Over time, my neighbors (the "'community") does things which cause the value of my land to get inflated. I am somehow receiving economic benefit from this inflated value of my land (even though I don't get a penny of that value as long as I own the property).


So you pay $10,000 for land, Community activity increases that value to say £500,000. You can sell or get a loan on that collateral.  You _can_ tap into then  wealth at any time. Many do.  If you sell you make $400,000 for doing NOTHING. 




> Then this community will kindly take some of that increased land value back ("reclaiming it") which means I have to give them money.


Yes.  Based on rental value, as Hong Kong, Singapore Harrisburg, Taiwan, etc , do. 




> Now since it was claimed that the money I need to pay for this tax on the inflated value of my land won't come from my income, then I must not have to pay for it since that is where I am getting my money.


You pay no income tax, property tax, sales tax etc. Your income is now substantial, more than enough to pay for the LVT levied.

If you can't pay, then you are in serious business problems - similar problem to the current system.   You can always move to a lower LVT district or town - one you can pay.




> And on top of that, housing prices will become stable so we don't have to worry about any more housing bubbles. Double benefits!  Cool!


You are getting there.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Except I didn't "mix economics up with criminality".


You did.

----------


## Zippyjuan

Tapping into that "wealth" means borrowing- going into debt which must be repaid from my income. It isn't free money.

If I buy property and do nothing yet others around me cause the value of properties to go up, I have done nothing, my income does not change and yet my taxes will rise based on what OTHERS did. This is equitable? If taxes then rise so much I can no longer afford to live on property I paid for then "tough luck"? I paid what I could afford. I did not buy a $500,000 property, I bought a $100,000 property.  I didn't get that $400,000 so why should I pay taxes on that $400k or be forced to sell what I purchased fair and square?

----------


## JohnLVT

> Tapping into that "wealth" means borrowing- going into debt which must be repaid from my income. It isn't free money.


Many will lend without payment, or repaid way into the future - the land is security.  In a house the loan can be no payments and payable on death or sale of house/land. Many retired people do this, to tap into that wealth under the house, to enjoy themselves into their retirement without monthly repayments.  Easy.

The same will apply to the Single Tax (LVT).  The state will reclaim on death or sale of land.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You did.


  Such claims demand evidence, Roy.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Many will lend without payment, or repaid way into the future - the land is security.  In a house the loan can be no payments and payable on death or sale of house/land. Many retired people do this, to tap into that wealth under the house, to enjoy themselves into their retirement without monthly repayments.  Easy.
> 
> The same will apply to the Single Tax (LVT).  The state will reclaim on death or sale of land.


Except Zippy's point still stands.  You can't "tap into the wealth" without paying for it.  A lot of people did this in Phoenix in the 2000's, and lost their homes because of the debt they incurred and couldn't pay back (they believed land prices would go up forever and the other lies propagated by the bankers and the financial racket). Again, you're trying to talk about things you don't understand.

----------


## JohnLVT

> Except Zippy's point still stands.  You can't "tap into the wealth" without paying for it.


You can. Read my post again.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You can. Read my post again.


No you can't (unless someone is willing to eat some major losses).  I read your post.  Reality is against you, bro.

----------


## JohnLVT

You really must understand what happens now, then try and project that to a far superior economic system.

----------


## Roy L

> No, I refuted your BS about the cab medallions.


No, you did not.

----------


## Dan Sullivan

> Phony baloney. 
> 
> Colorblind private individual land ownership without property tax creates the most secure prosperous societies. Sure the State virtually starves and that is liberating.


The "phony baloney" intro to the statement is ironic, as it describes the empty assertion above. Various indices of economic freedom rank Hong Kong as the freest economy in the world, followed by Singapore and Taiwan competing for second place. Hong Kong gets more of its revenue from land rents than any other economy in the world, followed by Singapoare and Taiwan.

New Hampshire was chosen by American Libertarians as the "free state," to which libertarians are encouraged to migrate. New Hampshire gets two thirds of its state and local revenue from real estate taxes. No other state gets more than half from real estate.

There is a direct correlation between the amount of taxes collected on real estate and the stability of housing prices. Far more people are losing their homes to banks where there have been housing bubbles, and housing bubbles have been worst where real estate taxes have been lowest.

Prior to a shift to a more right-wing "neolibertarian" approach, almost all libertarians challenged the legitimacy of state-issued titles to land. Property must flow from liberty for liberty to flow from property.

----------


## Dan Sullivan

The issue of land value tax is naturally a state and local issue. The way we issue money is the most fundamental federal issue. Ron Paul's focus has been on the federal government, which should stay out of the land question. The federal government should own no land other than what is needed for Constitutionally authorized federal purposes. To reduce the abuse of federal landholding, the federal government should pay the same taxes on the land it holds as anyone else pays.

Local governments compete, and, without state and federal interference, can discover for themselves which revenue approaches and which expenditures are most attractive. State governments complete less, and national governments use tariffs and immigration limits to severely curtail competition. The shift to sales and income taxes (which Ron Paul has always opposed) accompanied the shift from local government to centralized government. This is not coincidence, I think.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> ...housing bubbles have been worst where real estate taxes have been lowest.


Source? 

Even if that was true, correlation does not equal causation. All you really showed is that real estate taxes are a strong disincentive for investment (and improvement), because you're just paying for something the government is going to claim ownership to and rent back to you. 

Hey, but there is an upside to a housing bubble crash for tax collectors everywhere, because while the Fed-engineered housing bubble produced a windfall for property tax collectors, those same collectors and assessors are loathe to have that revenue stream collapse along with the real estate bubble.  In California, the tax is based on whatever you paid, plus any improvement assessments that only add to you already pay.  It's not until the next owner pays that there's a reduction in taxes - the person holding undervalued property is stuck with overvalued taxes. 

When the housing bubble collapsed, property taxes tended to stay where they were at, or even continued (in the case of North Dakota and many other places) to grow in many places, as if nothing special happened to the housing market.  

What a nice bubble-collapse proof tent that is.  So much "stability" - for them.

----------


## WilliamC

> The issue of land value tax is naturally a state and local issue. The way we issue money is the most fundamental federal issue. Ron Paul's focus has been on the federal government, which should stay out of the land question. The federal government should own no land other than what is needed for Constitutionally authorized federal purposes. To reduce the abuse of federal landholding, the federal government should pay the same taxes on the land it holds as anyone else pays.
> 
> Local governments compete, and, without state and federal interference, can discover for themselves which revenue approaches and which expenditures are most attractive. State governments complete less, and national governments use tariffs and immigration limits to severely curtail competition. The shift to sales and income taxes (which Ron Paul has always opposed) accompanied the shift from local government to centralized government. This is not coincidence, I think.


Now this actually starts to make more sense.

I'm not for any taxes, but if they are a necessary evil then the more local the better, and a local property tax or land tax to me is vastly different than some Federal or Global land tax which is what I inevitably see Georgists argue for.

Push power down to State and County governments and let them be the primary taxing authority, not the Federal Government. While not a perfect solution by any means it's a step in the right direction.

----------


## Roy L

> Several fallacies engaged by this idiot.


No, you are just spewing stupid, anti-economic garbage.



> His first premise is that while everyone is paying taxes, and he admits freely that the wealthy pay progressively more, the landowners, he says, are more than getting this all "back" from increased land values.  -- then comes nothing but false gibberish on how infrastructure was responsible for this "value increase".


He is objectively correct, and he did not say ONLY infrastructure.



> Land values appreciate in the midst of any growing population with a growing economy, but that is not primarily due to "infrastructure".


Wrong.  Infrastructure and services are what make a growing population and economy possible AND ECONOMICALLY ADVANTAGEOUS.



> Land itself is similar to hard specie.


Wrong.  Specie is a product of labor and not in fixed supply.  You are just spewing stupid, anti-economic garbage again, as usual.



> It is naturally rare, and therefore *inflation-proof*.


<sigh>  Specie is not inflation-proof, as the Spanish specie inflation of the 16th C proved.



> A HEDGE against a debased currency, one that is deliberately diluted, and which depreciates in value, which hits the lowest income earners, who have no hedges, the hardest.


Garbage.  Inflation hits _creditors_ hardest, and tends to benefit the lowest income earners, who are more often debtors.



> He focuses on the fact that the lowest income earners tend not to be landowners (tend not have access to the same "hedging" security of landowners).   One response to this could be the obvious:  *Homestead.  Turn renters into owners.*


What, through squatters' rights?  ROTFL!  You are just talking stupid, anti-economic nonsense again.



> Remove all artificial barriers to individual land ownership.


Land ownership is itself the biggest artificial barrier to individual liberty, prosperity and _home_ ownership.



> FREE EVERYONE FROM EVIL $#@!ING RENT.


That is economically impossible.  All your "solution" will do is make the productive into the permanent slaves of rich, greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic landowners.  Which is just pure evil.



> But no, that would defeat his underlying aim and central purpose, because he also (and rightly) hates income taxes. Does he hate income taxes more than he hates rent?  NO.  He starts off by decrying rent, but that's really the last we hear of it.


You are talking nonsense.  Rent is simply a fact of the market.  It makes no more sense to hate rent than to hate wages or interest.  



> He's off in Georgist La-La land after that, because really - the one thing that he said hurts the poor is the very thing he wants to keep in place, and call for as the Grand Solution.


We have no more choice about the existence of rent than we do about the existence of wages or interest, and for the same reasons.



> See, the poor are hit by low taxes and high rents.


No, they are hit by high taxes, high rents (which go together), and being forced to pay the former (often through burden shifting) while forcibly being deprived of the liberty to take advantage of the latter.



> If they were not renters, they would just be hit by low taxes.


Nope.  They need access to opportunity.  Not being renters through "homesteading" and owning land off in the wilderness somewhere does them no good at all.  Your proposed "solution" is just stupid, anti-economic nonsense.

The mystery here, Steven, is how you can so obviously understand that people have and need a right to use land, yet still deny it.  People can't exist without using land, and you know that.  But your brain has been so twisted into irrationality by landowner greed, illogic and absurdities that you think somehow people have more of a right to own land than to use it, despite the indisputable fact that ownership of land is precisely the measure of how much of people's rights to use it have been removed.



> His aim is not to allow the poor to make themselves inflation-proof,


The poor, not being creditors or having much money, are already inflation-proof anyway.



> and RENT FREE (free of the ONLY thing he said hits them hardest), by making them landowners, freeing them from rents,


Rent is the price of access to an economic opportunity that would otherwise be available.  So freeing them from rents just means forcibly depriving them of their liberty to access economic opportunity by violent, aggressive, physical coercion.



> and limiting (OR EVEN ABOLISHING) income taxes.  Not on your life.  His solution is, instead, just to make everyone renters!  Rich and poor alike.  Make the rich pay "their fair share" of RENT.


I.e., the value they are taking.  Right.  Whereas you want them to keep it, as a welfare subsidy giveaway paid for by robbing the productive.



> Then all is well, and all the other taxes (magically, we promise and guaran-damn-tee it), go away.


As already proved, LVT is inherently the only possible way to make government self-financing.  



> Land, like any scarce and valuable commodity, really does appreciate in value in a growing economy.


Garbage.  Commodities generally decline in real value in a growing economy.  It is natural resources that grow in value, as they are in FIXED SUPPLY, and represent economic opportunity.



> The most important reason for appreciation, which can be seen as you move away from insane metropolitan centers, which should not be held up as examples or used as models, is that land simply does not DEPRECIATE in value _relative to a thoroughly and incessantly debauched currency_.  That's not "publicly created" value for the land, but rather "publicly AND privately DESTROYED" value for the currency itself.


Nope.  That's just more false, dishonest and stupid garbage from you.  



> The solution is not LVT OR income tax. That's a FALSE CHOICE, as both should be abolished wherever they exist, and forbidden where they do not. Infrastructure does not require EITHER of these mechanisms as revenue streams to exist.


As private interests cannot provide efficient amounts of investment in infrastructure, it must be paid for publicly.  There are only two ways to do that: by recovering the value the infrastructure itself creates, or by stealing other value from its private creators and giving it to the landowners near the infrastructure.  LVT is the former choice.  All other taxes are the latter choice.



> The second solution (which is really the first in terms of importance): STOP DEBAUCHING THE CURRENCY.


Irrelevancy.  



> The third solution: STOP WITHHOLDING PUBLIC LANDS FROM LANDLESS INDIVIDUALS.  MAKE HOMESTEADING FOR INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT LAND A RIGHT.


That would solve nothing.  Only about 1/8 of the US land area is managed by the BLM, and most of it is effectively uninhabitable.  What happens when the inhabitable part is all gone?



> If you inherited land, or already have land, you're out of luck.  Declare your homestead, and it's INVIOLABLE.


How special -- for those who already own all the good land...



> The fourth solution: ABOLISH THE PROPERTY TAX AND THE INCOME TAX.  Neither are necessary.


There's no reason to think that would solve anything.



> But this nonsense of making everyone renters, paying perpetual rents on land they can NEVER own -- that notion can kiss my ass forever, along with all the collectivist, socialist fantasy-land rationale invented to support it. The solution is NOT to make everyone renters. It's the opposite - make it so that everyone can be landowners.  That is the ONLY solution that is sustainable, and that I would support.


It's self-evidently not sustainable, as proved above.  When all the land is owned, how does a new citizen get to be a landowner?

----------


## Travlyr

> Land ownership is itself the biggest artificial barrier to individual liberty, prosperity and _home_ ownership.


How so?

----------


## Zippyjuan

Question- it was said earlier on that the tax would be paid from gains in property values (even though a property owner does not get paid any sort of money for rising property values as long as they own it). Suppose we have a situation like in 2008 through today where property values are falling for an extended time.  Does the government send rebate checks to everybody? Does the tax go negative?  With money going out in the form of checks and none coming in from rising property values, how does the government continue to function? Borrowing and deficit spending? 

If property values stay flat does that mean that nobody owes taxes that year since it is only the "community" "reclaiming" a portion of any apreciation in values and that apreciation was zero? 

The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.

----------


## PaulStandsTall

> The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.


The Warren Buffett Effect. Raise taxes on the small fish so the big strong money players can own the market without any real competition.

I'm surprised this tax hasn't been already implemented, seeing as how efficient the monetary system is in funneling wealth from productive people into strong money's hands.

----------


## Roy L

> How so?


Landownership tilts the land market away from users and in favor of rent seekers and speculators, raising the cost of acquiring land.  That's why working people in states with low property taxes have to sell themselves into permanent debt slavery in order to buy a house.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> How so?


Remember, in RoyLand, everyone is perfectly suited for homeownership (contrary to observable reality, in which only a part of the population has interest and resources to even maintain a home, much less buy one).

----------


## Roy L

> Question- it was said earlier on that the tax would be paid from gains in property values


I don't recall who might have said that, but it's certainly not true.  It's paid out of the value the landholder takes from society.



> (even though a property owner does not get paid any sort of money for rising property values as long as they own it).


He is getting -- AND FORCIBLY DEPRIVING OTHERS OF -- the benefit of the economic advantage that makes the land more valuable, including being able to get a higher rent for it.  If he doesn't want to take advantage of the value he is taking from others, that's his problem.  When you take a loaf of bread home from the grocery store, you have to pay the market price for it, not the amount you think you should have to pay just to let it go moldy.



> Suppose we have a situation like in 2008 through today where property values are falling for an extended time.  Does the government send rebate checks to everybody?


LVT stops such speculative boom-bust cycles, and even if land rents declined for some reason, they'd still be positive.



> Does the tax go negative?  With money going out in the form of checks and none coming in from rising property values, how does the government continue to function? Borrowing and deficit spending?


Land rent is the most stable and reliable form of revenue government could have.  That is why the rich buy land.



> If property values stay flat does that mean that nobody owes taxes that year since it is only the "community" "reclaiming" a portion of any apreciation in values and that apreciation was zero?


The tax is on the value, not the increase in value.



> The tax would raise the costs of land ownership which would tend to concentrate land owning into the hands of the wealthier who can afford the taxes.


Nope.  Flat wrong.  By increasing the cost of land OWNERSHIP, it equivalently reduces the cost of land ACQUISITION.  As LVT stops the rich from getting something for nothing just by owning land, they lose all interest in owning it.  LVT is by far the most effective way to make homeownership more affordable for ordinary people.  You'd be able to buy a perfectly good house in a decent neighborhood for a typical month's wages (which would not be taxed).

----------


## Roy L

> Remember, in RoyLand, everyone is perfectly suited for homeownership (contrary to observable reality, in which only a part of the population has interest and resources to even maintain a home, much less buy one).


Stop lying about what I have plainly written.

----------


## Roy L

> The Warren Buffett Effect. Raise taxes on the small fish so the big strong money players can own the market without any real competition.


The fixity of land's supply means that competition is never an issue: the land market is ALWAYS inherently a monopoly market.  The universal individual LVT exemption guarantees that LVT is progressive, and bears more on the big fish than the small.



> I'm surprised this tax hasn't been already implemented, seeing as how efficient the monetary system is in funneling wealth from productive people into strong money's hands.


It's the system of private landowning that does that, as already proved, and as seen throughout history in societies with many different kinds of monetary systems.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> It's the system of private landowning that funnels wealth from productive people into strong money's hands, as already proved, and as seen throughout history in societies with many different kinds of monetary systems.


Which historical civilization had the strongest private land ownership regime:

China
Persia
Mayan
India
Middle-ages Europe

Which one was where productive people became wealthiest, since it was the first civilization in history to experience sustained long-term per-capita economic growth?

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Stop lying about what I have plainly written.


I didn't lie.  You wrote: 


> Landownership tilts the land market away from users and in favor of rent seekers and speculators, raising the cost of acquiring land. That's why working people in states with low property taxes have to sell themselves into permanent debt slavery in order to buy a house.


Not to mention:



> Landownership tilts the land market away from users and in favor of rent seekers and speculators, raising the cost of acquiring land. That's why working people in states with low property taxes have to sell themselves into permanent debt slavery in order to buy a house.


After all these pages, you keep confusing "is" and "ought".

----------


## Roy L

> I didn't lie.


Yes, of course you did, and now you have lied again to cover up your previous lie.  That is the usual pattern.



> You wrote: 
> Not to mention:
> 
> After all these pages, you keep confusing "is" and "ought".


And where does that say, "everyone is perfectly suited for homeownership," hmmm?

You lied, hb.  Pants on fire.

----------


## Roy L

> Which historical civilization had the strongest private land ownership regime:
> 
> China
> Persia
> Mayan
> India
> Middle-ages Europep


Pretty meaningless without the period specified.  I'm not familiar with Mayan institutions, but certainly China, Persia and India all had periods when private landowning was very firmly established.  For example, one of the most effective ways Islam was spread through Persia in the 7th and 8th centuries was by taxing the land owned by non-Muslims: to avoid the tax, landowners converted to Islam.



> Which one was where productive people became wealthiest, since it was the first civilization in history to experience sustained long-term per-capita economic growth?


Well, in large areas of Middle-Ages Europe, productive people did quite well because they had rights of access to common land: the "village commons."  But where land was all privately owned, the productive were normally forcibly kept at starvation level by the landowners.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> I don't recall who might have said that, but it's certainly not true.  It's paid out of the value the landholder takes from society.
> 
> He is getting -- AND FORCIBLY DEPRIVING OTHERS OF -- the benefit of the economic advantage that makes the land more valuable, including being able to get a higher rent for it.  If he doesn't want to take advantage of the value he is taking from others, that's his problem.  When you take a loaf of bread home from the grocery store, you have to pay the market price for it, not the amount you think you should have to pay just to let it go moldy.
> 
> LVT stops such speculative boom-bust cycles, and even if land rents declined for some reason, they'd still be positive.
> 
> Land rent is the most stable and reliable form of revenue government could have.  That is why the rich buy land.
> 
> The tax is on the value, not the increase in value.
> ...


What value is the landowner getting from society? Say I bought a property for $100k.  The value of that property goes up to $200k based on what my neighbors may have done (I didn't have to do anything to my property necessarily). Am I taking $100k from society?  If so, where is that money?  It is only a paper gain- I have directly received NOTHING from society. Can I take those gains and go to the store and buy a bunch of bread to take home and let get moldy?  No- I can't.  I can't buy anything with it.  Of course if I was to SELL my land at $200k, then I have realized a profit but I don't have any gains until the day I sell it. 

If the price of gold goes from $1000 an ounce to $1500 an ounce and I purchased it at $1000, have I made $500? Absolutely not.  I only make that $500 if I sell my gold at that price. As long as I hold my gold or land any apreciation in the value others are willing to pay is a benefit I do not get. 

What am I "forcibly denying" society by not selling my property and instead continuing to live on it (as I have pointed out repeatedly I don't get any society benefit as long as I continue to own the property and use it for myself). 

If the value of my land does not change, then the question of what benefit I got from society becomes even more important.  There I have zero benefit from society- either in reality or on paper.  And if the value of my land was to go down then it is theoretically possible that society imposed a cost on me (assuming that I receive some sort of benefit when values go up) and you said that the tax is "paid out of the value the landholder takes from society". 

Then later on you say that the tax is on the value- not the increase in value. This conflicts with the statement that "It is paid out of the value the landholder takes from society". This second statement seems to me to say that they are only taking from the increase in value- the "benefit" I allegedly receive.   It seems that it  is the society which is taking from me- not the other way around. 




> Land rent is the most stable and reliable form of revenue government could have. That is why the rich buy land.


The rich buy land to avoid paying rents for it. LVT is a rent on land- even if you do own it.




> You'd be able to buy a perfectly good house in a decent neighborhood for a typical month's wages (which would not be taxed).


That is an amazing figure. It is not believable and shows that this is just a fantasy. Other than when it was offered for free via land grants, property has never been that low. Average income is about $42k  a year before taxes http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml so one month's wages would be $3,500.  That would mean a massive collapse in property values from where we are today which according to this link http://www.realestateabc.com/outlook/overall.htm is about $155,000 or a fall of nearly 98%. But you also said that the tax would mean stable land prices so it could not possibly go down by that much. Again contradicting yourself. If they are stable, they won't go up or down. Now if you are willing to sell me land at one months wages, I would definately like to talk with you about getting a couple of year's worth. 

And if land was that cheap, how much would the government be able to raise via taxing it?  Unless the rate was extremely high, the collections would be practically nothing. Total households in the US as of 2006 was 114 million. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0880690.html Multiply that by an average of $3,500 for a home and its land (using your one week's pay figure) and you have total base of $400 billion. A ten percent tax would generate a mere $40 billion in revenue.  Interest on the debt alone for 2010 was $164 billion (and it has gone up since then) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Un...federal_budget  so you would need about a 50% tax on land if it was that price just to cover interest on the debt (I rounded up the interest on the debt to $200 billion) and nothing else. 

But I do give you credit for your persistance in promoting the issue- even if it is flawed.

----------


## Roy L

> What value is the landowner getting from society?


The value of his land is identically equal to the minimum value of what he expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.  That's what land value IS.



> Say I bought a property for $100k.


That proves you expected society to give you more than $100K worth of benefits, over and above whatever you expected to be paying in property taxes.



> The value of that property goes up to $200k based on what my neighbors may have done (I didn't have to do anything to my property necessarily). Am I taking $100k from society?


No,* $200K*.  But you paid the previous owner $100K for the privilege of taking the first $100K from society, so from your perspective that was a wash, while the previous owner got $100K and society had $100K stolen from it.  Now you expect to take another $100K from society.



> If so, where is that money?


It's value, not money.  Same thing as if you take 600 oz of gold dust out of the police evidence warehouse.  It's not money.  You can't take it to a store and spend it.  But it is value -- wealth -- that you have stolen.



> It is only a paper gain- I have directly received NOTHING from society.


Flat false.  You have received access to the economic advantages, PROVIDED BY GOVERNMENT AND THE COMMUNITY, that make the land worth $200K.  If you don't make any use of those advantages, that doesn't mean you haven't taken them from society, just as your failure to use the gold dust for anything useful does not affect the fact that you have taken it.



> Can I take those gains and go to the store and buy a bunch of bread to take home and let get moldy?  No- I can't.  I can't buy anything with it.


Just like the gold dust you stole.  But you still stole it, and the value of what you took is still $100K.



> Of course if I was to SELL my land at $200k, then I have realized a profit but I don't have any gains until the day I sell it.


Wrong again.  You can start pocketing that money from Day 1 by renting the place out.



> If the price of gold goes from $1000 an ounce to $1500 an ounce and I purchased it at $1000, have I made $500? Absolutely not.  I only make that $500 if I sell my gold at that price.


Wrong AGAIN.  By that "logic," anyone who dealt only by barter would never gain anything, even if they obtained ownership of billions of dollars worth of non-negotiable assets.  Such claims are of course always false, absurd, stupid, and dishonest.



> As long as I hold my gold or land any apreciation in the value others are willing to pay is a benefit I do not get.


False, as proved above.  If you make that claim once more, you will be lying.



> What am I "forcibly denying" society by not selling my property and instead continuing to live on it


You are depriving society of the economic advantage obtainable by using the land.  You are depriving everyone who would like to use the land of the opportunity to use it, which is not rightly yours, as it would be just the same had you never existed



> (as I have pointed out repeatedly I don't get any society benefit as long as I continue to own the property and use it for myself).


No, I have proved you are blatantly wrong about that, so kindly do not try to repeat it: if you do, you will simply be lying.  That is of course what I expect you to do.



> If the value of my land does not change, then the question of what benefit I got from society becomes even more important.


You are getting the benefits you paid the previous owner for: the benefits that made you willing to pay the purchase price for the land.  You just paid the wrong party.



> There I have zero benefit from society- either in reality or on paper.


False and stupid, as proved above.  What did you pay the previous owner for, if not the benefits you are taking from society?



> And if the value of my land was to go down then it is theoretically possible that society imposed a cost on me (assuming that I receive some sort of benefit when values go up) and you said that the tax is "paid out of the value the landholder takes from society".


Nope.  Flat wrong.  Society won't have taken anything from you.  It simply won't have given you all the value you expected to take when you paid the previous owner for the privilege of taking it. 



> Then later on you say that the tax is on the value- not the increase in value.


Correct.



> This conflicts with the statement that "It is paid out of the value the landholder takes from society".


No, it does not, as proved above.



> This second statement seems to me to say that they are only taking from the increase in value- the "benefit" I allegedly receive.


No, the landowner takes the ENTIRE land value from society.  He just pays the previous landowner for the privilege of taking it.



> It seems that it  is the society which is taking from me- not the other way around.


Such claims are false, absurd, stupid, and dishonest.



> The rich buy land to avoid paying rents for it.


No, dumpling, the rich buy land to COLLECT rents for it.  That is very much the point.



> LVT is a rent on land- even if you do own it.


It's the market value of what the landowner is taking from society, as proved above.



> That is an amazing figure. It is not believable and shows that this is just a fantasy.


It is fact.  LVT removes the exchange value of land, leaving the value of the improvements.  THE SITE WOULD BE FREE TO BUY, the owner would only have to pay the periodic LVT on it.  Improvements depreciate exponentially, so for much of their lifespan they are worth very little.  A modest wood-frame house can be built for about $160K, and depreciates at about 4%/yr.  So after 90 years it is worth about $5K.  Most North American cities still have thousands of wood-frame houses built in the 1920s real estate boom, and many of them are still perfectly livable (if a bit dated), and under LVT could be purchased for a month's wages.



> Other than when it was offered for free via land grants, property has never been that low.


Yes, it has, and is.  You can find livable houses for sale at that kind of price in many cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Flint, Buffalo, etc. where land prices have crashed to near zero.



> Average income is about $42k  a year before taxes http://www.worldsalaries.org/usa.shtml so one month's wages would be $3,500.


Average income is averaged over a lot of people who are not working full time, or maybe at all.



> That would mean a massive collapse in property values from where we are today which according to this link http://www.realestateabc.com/outlook/overall.htm is about $155,000 or a fall of nearly 98%.


Land value, which is the expected value of the welfare subsidy giveaway to the landowner, would fall to near zero.  Improvement value would hardly be affected at all.



> But you also said that the tax would mean stable land prices so it could not possibly go down by that much.


Land prices would be stable at near zero.



> Again contradicting yourself. If they are stable, they won't go up or down.


They will be stable AFTER they go down, and don't come up again.



> Now if you are willing to sell me land at one months wages, I would definately like to talk with you about getting a couple of year's worth.


If you had to pay for what you took from society by owning it, you would not want any more than you intended to use.



> And if land was that cheap, how much would the government be able to raise via taxing it?


The revenue -- up to about_ 20% of GDP_ -- would be what MADE the land so cheap.



> Unless the rate was extremely high, the collections would be practically nothing.


Think of the rate as 100%.  This would reduce land value by about 95%.  So the revenue would be around 5% of current land value.  This is kind of hard for some people to wrap their heads around, but I can explain it in more detail if you like.



> Total households in the US as of 2006 was 114 million. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0880690.html Multiply that by an average of $3,500 for a home and its land (using your one week's pay figure) and you have total base of $400 billion.


??  No, my figure was for land value reduced to near zero by LVT, and it was for the cheapest livable houses in decent neighborhoods, not the average house, which is newer and much more valuable.  The actual current value of residential real estate in the USA is about $20T.  The great majority of that is land value.



> A ten percent tax would generate a mere $40 billion in revenue.  Interest on the debt alone for 2010 was $164 billion (and it has gone up since then) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Un...federal_budget  so you would need about a 50% tax on land if it was that price just to cover interest on the debt (I rounded up the interest on the debt to $200 billion) and nothing else.


You are making a lot of wildly wrong assumptions.  To get a better idea of LVT's revenue capacity, think of the total rental value of all real estate.  If you take 2/3 of that -- roughly the land value fraction -- it will be roughly LVT's potential revenue.  So just to ballpark it, if there are 114M households, and the average rental value of their dwellings is $1000/month or $12K/yr (it's probably more), then the LVT revenue from residential land would be about $8K x 114M, or just under $1T.  Add in non-residential land and it rises to perhaps $1.5T.  Some economists estimate that eliminating other taxes would greatly increase land rents, even as much as doubling them as the economic advantage of using the land was no longer vitiated by confiscatory taxation of productive effort and investment.  I'm not sure how much it would increase, as it depends on complex relationships of elasticities that are very hard to measure empirically.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> Just like the gold dust you stole. But you still stole it, and the value of what you took is still $100K.


So basically owning anything is "stealing?"  If I stole it, you can't tax me on it. 




> No, my figure was for land value reduced to near zero by LVT


So the value of land will be near zero which would mean that somebody who owns land is taking near zero from society and in turn society could "reclaim" a percent of that "near zero" from the owner in the form of Land Value Taxation  which would be less than "near zero".

And I am still waiting for a better answer to just what benefits I am getting from society when the value of my land goes up.  




> Think of the rate as 100%. This would reduce land value by about 95%. So the revenue would be around 5% of current land value. This is kind of hard for some people to wrap their heads around, but I can explain it in more detail if you like.


This does not necesarily work that way.  If we put a 100% tax on the price of something the price of it would  fall to five percent of what it was. Does a higher tax on gasoline or cigarettes cause the price before the taxes are applied go down?  No- the tax is added on to the price.  The costs of producing one more gallon of gas or one pack of cigarettes don't go down and their profit margin is certainly not 95 or 100% which they can afford to give up.

----------


## furface

I think a prerequisite disclosure for this thread should be whether you own real estate or are getting angry cutting that check to your landlord every month.

Me?  Home owner.

----------


## eduardo89

> I think a prerequisite disclosure for this thread should be whether you own real estate or are getting angry cutting that check to your landlord every month.
> 
> Me?  Home owner Evil, greedy parasite.


Fixed it for you before Roy sees it.

----------


## furface

> Fixed it for you before Roy sees it.


LOL, that's funny.  Thanks.

----------


## Roy L

> So basically owning anything is "stealing?"


No.  I said nothing of the sort.  Please do not lie about what I have plainly written.  It makes you look like you are trying to rationalize privilege and justify injustice.



> If I stole it, you can't tax me on it.


Wrong.



> So the value of land will be near zero which would mean that somebody who owns land is taking near zero from society and in turn society could "reclaim" a percent of that "near zero" from the owner in the form of Land Value Taxation  which would be less than "near zero".


Right: the owner being obliged to repay what he takes from society is what makes the land value decline to near zero: he is no longer a net taker from society.  Society can't get any more from him, as that is all he is willing to pay to use the land.  As LVT is a voluntary, beneficiary-pay, market-based, value-for-value transaction, it is naturally self-limiting. 



> And I am still waiting for a better answer to just what benefits I am getting from society when the value of my land goes up.


I have already told you the facts: you are getting access to whatever increased advantages are making people willing to pay more for the land.



> This does not necesarily work that way.


The numbers would of course not be exactly as in my example, but that's the general idea.



> If we put a 100% tax on the price of something the price of it would  fall to five percent of what it was.


Only when the price is for land (or something with similar economic characteristics), as land value is based on a perpetual future after-tax rent stream.



> Does a higher tax on gasoline or cigarettes cause the price before the taxes are applied go down?


Yes, but not by much, as they do not get their value from expected future rents.  The relationship is governed by elasticities.  The demand for cigarettes, for example, is quite inelastic, so the tax does not cause the price to go down much.  With land, the supply is very inelastic -- in fact it is fixed -- so the tax all comes out of the price.



> No- the tax is added on to the price.


No.  Any good introductory economics text can explain to you how taxes make before-tax prices go down.



> The costs of producing one more gallon of gas or one pack of cigarettes don't go down and their profit margin is certainly not 95 or 100% which they can afford to give up.


The profit margin is reduced because quantity demanded is reduced.

----------


## Roy L

> I think a prerequisite disclosure for this thread should be whether you own real estate or are getting angry cutting that check to your landlord every month.
> 
> Me?  Home owner.


I have been a landlord in the past, but I still think it is a bad time to own in my area.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> So basically owning anything is "stealing?" If I stole it, you can't tax me on it. 
> 			
> 		
> 
> No. I said nothing of the sort. Please do not lie about what I have plainly written. It makes you look like you are trying to rationalize privilege and justify injustice.


Really? 



> No, $200K. But you paid the previous owner $100K for the privilege of taking the first $100K from society, so from your perspective that was a wash, while the *previous owner got $100K and society had $100K stolen from it*. Now *you expect to take another $100K from society.*


and:



> Just like the gold dust you stole. *But you still stole it*, and the *value of what you took is still $100K.*


I traded my labor for money which in turn I exchanged for in one case land and in the second case gold.  You called both stealing. 

Who did I steal from? Who lost out?  How did I steal the second $100k on my property if I only paid $100k for it?  When the value of it goes to $200k how did I take another $100k? I didn't ask for it, I didn't take it from anybody and I certainly don't have it. I only get the $100k extra by selling the property. 





> As LVT is a voluntary, beneficiary-pay, market-based, value-for-value transaction, it is naturally self-limiting.


Ah. A voluntary system. If I choose not to participate in the LVT I don't have to pay. 

Can you try please to give examples of how society gives a landowner benefits he can be taxed on?  Say my neighbor buys a vacant lot next to mine, cleans it up, and puts a big, fancy house on it.   The value of his land has increased because of the use he put his property to.  That makes properties next to his, like mine, more desirable and thus may have a higher perceived value than before his actions.  What benefits have I personally received which are taxable?  I did nothing to my land and his building a house offers me no other benefit than perhaps a nice view instead of a cluttered one. 

How about a second example.  Instead of building a house, he starts a gold mine. He is producing lots of value to society with all the gold he digs up so they are better off. But the mining activities cause noise and pollution and make my land less valuable to live on though I could sell it to him to expand his mining operation. I have been harmed by his actions but society benefited.  Should I be paying higher taxes in either example than I was before any changes were made to the lot next to me? If so, why? 


How is owning land taking anything from society?  A land owner is more likely to take care of their property and maintain its value while land everybody (or in turn nobody) owns is more likely to be abused and misused (look up "Tragedy of the Commons"). 

Yes, I have read a few economics texts in my time- I have a degree in it actually. If you add a tax to something, you are correct that the underlying price may go down- or it may not- but it will not go down by a significant amount and it will not fall by as much as the tax. It does depend on the elasticity of demand and what my costs are.  I certainly can't lower the price below my costs or I go out of business.  The tax becomes one of the costs of the final item and it gets added to my costs.  It may reduce my profits somewhat but I still need to be profitable. I may be forced to absorb some of the tax but I am going to pass along to the consumer as much of that tax as I can.

----------


## Roy L

> Really?


Yes.



> No, $200K. But you paid the previous owner $100K for the privilege of taking the first $100K from society, so from your perspective that was a wash, while the previous owner got $100K and society had $100K stolen from it. Now you expect to take another $100K from society.
> 			
> 		
> 
> and:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Land is not "anything," as "anything" includes everything, not just land.  Owning some things -- like land, or slaves -- is inherently stealing, because it violates others' rights without just compensation.  In such cases, what is owned is the PRIVILEGE of stealing, and having government be on your side rather than your victims' side: a legal "right" to take value from others while not contributing any value in return.  Other things -- products of labor -- have been contributed, adding to the sum of wealth, so owning them does not inherently violate others' rights: they have lost nothing.



> I traded my labor for money which in turn I exchanged for in one case land and in the second case gold.  You called both stealing.


No, that is a lie.  In post #435 I wrote:



> Same thing as if you _take_ 600 oz of gold dust out of the police evidence warehouse. It's not money. You can't take it to a store and spend it. But it is value -- wealth -- that you have stolen.


In the example I gave, you did not pay for the gold dust.  If you had, that would not be stealing because the gold dust is a product of labor, not a privilege of taking value without contributing anything in return.  Having paid for land does make owning it any less a theft, just as having paid for a slave does not make owning him any less a theft.  In both cases, you simply paid the previous owner for the legal PRIVILEGE of stealing, because the deed to the slave or the land is not something that has been added to the sum of wealth.  It just legally entitles you to take what already existed.



> Who did I steal from? Who lost out?


All who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land.



> How did I steal the second $100k on my property if I only paid $100k for it?


By depriving others of more valuable advantages than you paid for.



> When the value of it goes to $200k how did I take another $100k?  ]I didn't ask for it, I didn't take it from anybody and I certainly don't have it. I only get the $100k extra by selling the property.


Consider a slave who learns how to be more productive, so that his value is doubled.  The wages you are stealing from him have likewise doubled.  You don't have to sell him to be taking that additional value from him.

GET IT??



> Ah. A voluntary system. If I choose not to participate in the LVT I don't have to pay.


That is correct.  But government will not help you exclude others from more than your equal share of the good land.  And in fact, if you are occupying land that someone is willing to pay the tax on while you are not, government will dispossess you of that land and secure legal possession to the one who is willing to pay for what he takes.



> Can you try please to give examples of how society gives a landowner benefits he can be taxed on?


I have done so, several times: roads, water and sewer systems, schools, sanitation services, hospitals and free medical care, port and airport facilities, police and fire protection, the list goes on and on.



> Say my neighbor buys a vacant lot next to mine, cleans it up, and puts a big, fancy house on it.   The value of his land has increased because of the use he put his property to.


No, it has not.  The unimproved value is the same (assuming nothing else has happened).



> That makes properties next to his, like mine, more desirable and thus may have a higher perceived value than before his actions.


Right.  The unimproved value of YOUR lot has probably increased a bit, not his.



> What benefits have I personally received which are taxable?


The more desirable aspect of the land you occupy.



> I did nothing to my land and his building a house offers me no other benefit than perhaps a nice view instead of a cluttered one.


Bingo.  You are now forcibly depriving others of an opportunity that is more valuable that it was before.



> How about a second example.  Instead of building a house, he starts a gold mine. He is producing lots of value to society with all the gold he digs up so they are better off.


He is presumably charging full market value for the gold.  Society as a whole is wealthier, so he is not stealing, but neither is he running a charity.  His employees are better off, etc., but that is a matter of increased surplus through voluntary exchange, not increased land value.



> But the mining activities cause noise and pollution and make my land less valuable to live on though I could sell it to him to expand his mining operation.


Land value is based on its most productive permitted use, not the existing use.



> I have been harmed by his actions but society benefited.  Should I be paying higher taxes in either example than I was before any changes were made to the lot next to me? If so, why?


The value of what you are depriving others of is greater.  You may have been harmed (the value of your improvements has declined) but you are harming society even more by blocking the more productive use.



> How is owning land taking anything from society?


You deprive others of the opportunity to use it.  That is self-evident and indisputable.



> A land owner is more likely to take care of their property and maintain its value


Land does not need maintenance to stay in its natural state or retain its unimproved value (it may need to be defended against vandals, but that is actually the police's job, not the owner's, and is mainly a symptom of dysfunctional city government).
[


> while land everybody (or in turn nobody) owns is more likely to be abused and misused


Nope.  Publicly owned land in Hong Kong does not seem to be abused and misused.  It is used very productively.



> (look up "Tragedy of the Commons").


I know it far better than you.  Garrett Hardin, the author of "The Tragedy of the Commons," said later that his work had been misappropriated and misinterpreted by the right, and he wished he had called it, "The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons," because what he was arguing for was intelligent public stewardship of commons, not their privatization.  Historically, ACTUAL village commons were managed to prevent abuse that would impair their productivity.



> Yes, I have read a few economics texts in my time- I have a degree in it actually.


No, you don't, or you could not be making such economically ignorant comments.



> If you add a tax to something, you are correct that the underlying price may go down- or it may not- but it will not go down by a significant amount and it will not fall by as much as the tax.


Depending on the relevant elasticities, it may go down by almost as much as the tax.  Consider a good for which there are close but untaxed substitutes and elastic demand, like imported booze subject to a tariff.



> It does depend on the elasticity of demand and what my costs are.  I certainly can't lower the price below my costs or I go out of business.


Other producers may be more efficient.  That is why you can't just pass on tax costs and expect consumers to pay them, any more than you can just pass on any other cost you incur.  The difference with tax costs is that all the other producers presumably incur the same cost; but with land that is not the case, as there is no producer of land, only "consumers."



> The tax becomes one of the costs of the final item and it gets added to my costs.


No, you are mistaking land's ACQUISITION cost for a PRODUCTION cost.  Two entirely different things.  There is no production cost of land, as its supply is fixed.  Such elementary errors are how I know you cannot possibly have a degree in economics.



> It may reduce my profits somewhat but I still need to be profitable. I may be forced to absorb some of the tax but I am going to pass along to the consumer as much of that tax as I can.


Which in the case of land is zero, as the supply is fixed.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Owning some things -- like land, or slaves -- is inherently stealing, because it violates others' rights without just compensation.


There's part of your lunacy in a nutbag shell.  Can't violate others' rights "without just compensation"?  No, Roy, if it is indeed a right, you shouldn't violate it PERIOD. There is no "just compensation" to it.  Assuming we are talking about an actual right, and not "otherwise would be at liberty capacity" logic stretched to absurd extremes and force-molded into what you think ought to be a right. 

And conflating land with slaves? That has always been your geolib (read="Free The Land!", or "Let my people land go...") gibberish.  

GET IT??

"Forcibly depriving others of an opportunity that is more valuable that it was before" is stupid because opportunities abound elsewhere. It's the "specific place" from which they are forcibly prevented/deprived.  Nothing wrong with that, they didn't have a "right", and the deprivation is just. Go get your own place. Don't go crying to gov-Mommy that so-and-so won't "justly compensate you" for your well-deserved deprivation.   




> Land value is based on its most productive permitted use, not the existing use.


No, remember? The community soaks land value magically into the ground. The value has nothing to do with how it's used, or even how it could be used.  All that nature, community and government "provided" infrastructure gives the land its value - not existing or "most productive permitted" use.  I remember that pretzel well. 




> You may have been harmed (the value of your improvements has declined) but you are harming society even more by blocking the more productive use.


Get out of your aggregate thinking nutshell, and stop anthropomorphizing collectives. "Society" isn't harmed or helped by anything. INDIVIDUALS ONLY are harmed and helped - at all times. You would do well to learn that, and remember it.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

There we go.  See?  This is the right thread to talk about this in.

Actually, the old one was the right thread, I think.  No, there is no database problem with long threads.  One LVT thread is enough, that's how I feel.  But, I suppose one at a time is a reasonable compromise.

LVT has perhaps not been tried fully.  There are example places where it's been put into place to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing decisive.  One can look at these partial examples and argue that it shows LVT would work, or that it shows that it wouldn't.

An-cap/Voluntaryism/radical libertarianism is in much the same boat.  There has never been a society which intentionally and fully designed itself to be completely voluntary with the necessary intellectual framework and institutions to make it resilient, certainly not in modern times.

Let's have NH be pure an-cap, Vermont be pure Georgist, and come back in 30 years to see what happened.

----------


## Roy L

> No, there is no database problem with long threads.


That was the reason given for limiting thread size on another forum.  I don't know enough about how this forum works to know if the same reasoning applies.



> LVT has perhaps not been tried fully.  There are example places where it's been put into place to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing decisive.  One can look at these partial examples and argue that it shows LVT would work, or that it shows that it wouldn't.


No, one can't argue that any of the examples show LVT wouldn't work, because all the examples show it does work.



> An-cap/Voluntaryism/radical libertarianism is in much the same boat.  There has never been a society which intentionally and fully designed itself to be completely voluntary with the necessary intellectual framework and institutions to make it resilient, certainly not in modern times.
> 
> Let's have NH be pure an-cap, Vermont be pure Georgist, and come back in 30 years to see what happened.


How do you recommend VT handle the flood of refugees from NH?

----------


## Roy L

> Can't violate others' rights "without just compensation"?  No, Roy, if it is indeed a right, you shouldn't violate it PERIOD. There is no "just compensation" to it.


Of course there is.  That's what civil courts are for, for one thing.  Are you really that ignorant of such basic facts of social existence?  



> Assuming we are talking about an actual right, and not "otherwise would be at liberty capacity" logic stretched to absurd extremes and force-molded into what you think ought to be a right.


Freedom to do what one would "otherwise would be at liberty" to do is exactly what a right to liberty IS.  Your absurd and evil notion of rights says that slaves had no rights to liberty because "Oh, look, they have fetters on their ankles, if they had a right to liberty they wouldn't be fettered."

One could not possibly overstate the stupidity and dishonesty of such "arguments."



> And conflating land with slaves? That has always been your geolib (read="Free The Land!", or "Let my people land go...") gibberish.


I have proved it is not gibberish.  The only difference between owning land and owning slaves is that when you own a slave, you remove all of one person's rights, while when you own land, you remove one of all persons' rights.



> "Forcibly depriving others of an opportunity that is more valuable that it was before" is stupid because opportunities abound elsewhere.


LOL!  Such "arguments" are just cretinous.  Yes, there are opportunities elsewhere: opportunities to waste your labor and capital where they cannot be productive; to starve or die of exposure on worthless, uninhabitable land while a greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic landowner hoards good land out of use, blah, blah.  The fact that opportunities abound elsewhere is completely irrelevant to the fact that the landowner is forcibly depriving others of the opportunities he controls, just as the opportunity to expound one's political opinions out in the wilderness is irrelevant to the fact that stopping people from criticizing the government in ANY public place is a violation of their rights to freedom of speech.



> It's the "specific place" from which they are forcibly prevented/deprived.


And all the opportunities associated with it.



> Nothing wrong with that,


Wrong.  As I have proved, it violates people's rights without just compensation.



> they didn't have a "right",


I have proved they did.



> and the deprivation is just.


No, it's pure evil.



> Go get your own place.


"Go get your own liberty.  Just save up your money and buy it from your owner."

Such "arguments" are infinitely evil.



> Don't go crying to gov-Mommy that so-and-so won't "justly compensate you" for your well-deserved deprivation.


"Don't go crying to gov-Mommy that so-and-so won't "justly compensate you" for your well-deserved enslavement."

It is government's JOB to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.  When your rights are being violated without just compensation, it is the mark of a civilized human being (nothing you would know anything about, to be sure) to petition _government_ for relief and redress, not to take matters into your own hands like some sort of feudal libertarian vigilante.



> No, remember?


I remember your claims are never based on facts.



> The community soaks land value magically into the ground. The value has nothing to do with how it's used,


True.  Unimproved land value is exactly that: that value the bare land would have, independently of anything that is being done on it or improvements that are sitting on it.



> or even how it could be used.


No, you are just telling stupid lies again, Steven.  The value is ENTIRELY dependent on how it could be used, as proved by the fact that a simple zoning change can make it worth many times more than it was.



> All that nature, community and government "provided" infrastructure gives the land its value - not existing or "most productive permitted" use.


The advantages government, the community and nature provide DEFINE what the most productive use is, given the limits of what is legally permitted.



> Get out of your aggregate thinking nutshell, and stop anthropomorphizing collectives.


I have not done that.  Stop lying about what I have plainly written.



> "Society" isn't harmed or helped by anything.


No, such claims are just stupid.  Societies emerge, exist for a time, and die, much as any organism does.  To claim that defeat in war, for example, does not harm a society is simply idiotic.



> INDIVIDUALS ONLY are harmed and helped - at all times. You would do well to learn that, and remember it.


I won't be learning any such cretinous, quasi-autistic drivel, thanks.  You would do well to learn that societies do in fact exist, and remember it.

----------


## sailingaway

Kindly refrain from personal attacks.  'Stupid, cretinous, quasi-autistic drivil' counts as an attack.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Of course there is. That's what civil courts are for, for one thing. Are you really that ignorant of such basic facts of social existence?


Are you ignorant of the fact that this^^ is a _false_ fact? 




> It is government's JOB to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. When your rights are being violated without just compensation, it is the mark of a civilized human being (nothing you would know anything about, to be sure) to petition_government_ for relief and redress, not to take matters into your own hands like some sort of feudal libertarian vigilante.


This is just wishful thinking.  This has never been and never will be the purpose of government.  It's just a lie perpetuated by State-run indoctrination centers (aka "public schools").  The State is always and everywhere the greatest violator of rights.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Freedom to do what one would "otherwise would be at liberty" to do is exactly what a right to liberty IS.


False, and certainly not according to your intended meaning. 

*Example 1* (pass)

I am kidnapped, or otherwise unlawfully detained, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to choose my own path. However, I have been deprived of my "rightful" liberty (already established as a right) in the process. Thus, I have a "cause of action". 

*Example 2* (fail)

I am walking along, exercising my right to liberty, and encounter a brick wall and a locked door - the exterior that encloses the vault area of a bank.  Had the bank not existed, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to enter that space.  That is indisputable. It is also indisputable that I am "deprived" of my liberty (my *capacity* and _ability_, _but not my right_) to enter and occupy that space.  Because no right is established, I have no cause of action.

*Example 3* (fail)

I am prevented, both physically and legally, from taking a piece of gold that someone finds on public ground (National Park, whatever), and is now in their possession. 

I could truthfully say that:

a) I have "suffered" a deprivation, and that
b) I would "otherwise be at liberty" to have that gold (i.e., if that person had not found it, did not possess it, or had not even existed) 

Those are undeniable indisputable facts, and yet there is no right of possession on my part, no unjustified deprivation, and no cause of action.  

So, no, your _"'otherwise would be at liberty' to do is exactly what a right to liberty IS"_ fails as any kind of definitive or axiomatic statement.

----------


## Roy L

> Kindly refrain from personal attacks.  'Stupid, cretinous, quasi-autistic drivil' counts as an attack.


I see.  But "lunacy... gibberish... stupid" (just in post #444 in this thread) doesn't?

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that...

----------


## Roy L

> Are you ignorant of the fact that this^^ is a _false_ fact?


It is true, and known to everyone who isn't a "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead.



> This has never been and never will be the purpose of government.


"...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."



> It's just a lie perpetuated by State-run indoctrination centers (aka "public schools").


There were no public schools when the above line was written.



> The State is always and everywhere the greatest violator of rights.


Such comments are just absurd and historically ignorant.  Somalia proves you wrong, and so does every other place where the state has ever disappeared.  When Roman state power disappeared from western Europe in the 5th C, the population declined by a quarter over the next century, and the economy collapsed.  That did not happen because people's rights were being violated less than before.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> It is government's JOB to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. When your rights are being violated without just compensation, it is the mark of a civilized human being (nothing you would know anything about, to be sure) to petition_government_ for relief and redress, not to take matters into your own hands like some sort of feudal libertarian vigilante.


Here you are engaging in wishful thinking again.  This has never been the government's job-though the propagandists and cronies would certainly like you to believe so.  You really think the government cares about your petitions for relief and redress?  I thought you were a student of history-you must have overlooked civic history 1790-present.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Such comments are just absurd and historically ignorant.  Somalia proves you wrong, and so does every other place where the state has ever disappeared.  When Roman state power disappeared from western Europe in the 5th C, the population declined by a quarter over the next century, and the economy collapsed.  That did not happen because people's rights were being violated less than before.


Nonsense.  Somalia has had a "transitional" government since 2004.  The pre-"civilized" American West was more lawful and rational than the post-civilized era.  No single person or group has the means and/or will to destroy and enslave than States.  Recorded human history bears this out.  There's a whole lot of literature about historical stateless societies-I would think you'd be aware of it, being such a mighty pseudo-intellectual as you are.

----------


## Roy L

> False, and certainly not according to your intended meaning.


Everyone who isn't a delusional "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead knows it is true.



> *Example 1* (pass)
> I am kidnapped, or otherwise unlawfully detained, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to choose my own path. However, I have been deprived of my "rightful" liberty (already established as a right) in the process.


_How_ was it established as a right?



> Thus, I have a "cause of action".


Oh?  Suppose you were in Somalia, had been kidnapped by pirates, and the local warlord ("government," according to you) ruled that the kidnappers were merely exercising their property right over the ocean, a property right conferred by the local government just as validly as any property title to land?



> *Example 2* (fail)
> 
> I am walking along, exercising my right to liberty, and encounter a brick wall and a locked door - the exterior that encloses the vault area of a bank.  Had the bank not existed, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to enter that space.  That is indisputable. It is also indisputable that I am "deprived" of my liberty (my *capacity* and _ability_, _but not my right_) to enter and occupy that space.


False.  Physically, you could enter the space if you had appropriate equipment, and you are definitely being deprived of your right to enter it.



> Because no right is established, I have no cause of action.


Nonsense.  Other than in law, which merely begs the question, your right to liberty is just as well established as in the kidnapping case.  It is merely being violated with the local government's assistance, just as in the amended Somalia kidnapping case.



> *Example 3* (fail)
> 
> I am prevented, both physically and legally, from taking a piece of gold that someone finds on public ground (National Park, whatever), and is now in their possession. 
> 
> I could truthfully say that:
> 
> a) I have "suffered" a deprivation,


No.  Unless you knew of the gold and intended to pick it up yourself, you have suffered no deprivation.  You have lost nothing.  The gold is NO LONGER THERE, so no forcible coercion need be applied to you to stop you from picking it up.  That is entirely unlike the bank case, where coercion must be applied to prevent you from using the land sitting under the bank for your own purposes.



> and that
> b) I would "otherwise be at liberty" to have that gold (i.e., if that person had not found it, did not possess it, or had not even existed)


False, as proved above.  The natural opportunity no longer exists, so no coercion need be applied to prevent you from exercising your liberty to use it.  There can be no right to turn back the clock, or do what is logically or physically impossible.  



> Those are undeniable indisputable facts,


False, as proved above.



> and yet there is no right of possession on my part, ]no unjustified deprivation, and no cause of action.


Right, because the opportunity nature provided no longer exists.



> So, no, your _"'otherwise would be at liberty' to do is exactly what a right to liberty IS"_ fails as any kind of definitive or axiomatic statement.


False, as proved above.

----------


## Roy L

> Nonsense.  Somalia has had a "transitional" government since 2004.


It is a government only in name, not in fact, and exercises little or no authority outside a small zone, like any other power that naturally emerges from a power vacuum.



> The pre-"civilized" American West was more lawful and rational than the post-civilized era.


That's just absurd nonsense with no basis in fact.  There is more violence in modern American cities than in the old west mainly because there are hundreds or thousands of times as many people there now, and because the US government, specifically, creates a culture of violence by maintaining a large standing army that is routinely exposed to the psychological damage of waging unjust wars against innocent civilian populations; by its evil and insane War on Drugs that exposes much of the impressionable young male population that isn't in the army to the violent cultures of the criminal underworld and prison; and by economic policies that forcibly create a permanently unemployed underclass, and transfer immense quantities of wealth from ordinary working and poor people to a wealthy, greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic elite, creating enormous resentment among the hundreds of millions of victims who know very well they are being robbed, but are prevented from understanding how.  In countries with less corrupt and more competent governments, such as in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., life is far less violent than it ever was in the old west.  If you had ever lived in a civilized country, you would know that.



> No single person or group has the means and/or will to destroy and enslave than States.


But collectively, they do, as Somalia and every other stateless society proves.



> Recorded human history bears this out.


Nonsense.  Pointing to a few bad governments and claiming that therefore all governments must always be bad is just laughable garbage.



> There's a whole lot of literature about historical stateless societies-I would think you'd be aware of it, being such a mighty pseudo-intellectual as you are.


I am definitely aware of it, and it is mostly ridiculous garbage that ignores facts such as I identified above.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> In countries with less corrupt and more competent governments, such as in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., life is far less violent than it ever was in the old west.  If you had ever lived in a civilized country, you would know that.


You think West European governments are less corrupt and more competent?  LMFAO!!!  





> But collectively, they do, as Somalia and every other stateless society proves.
> 
> Nonsense.  Pointing to a few bad governments and claiming that therefore all governments must always be bad is just laughable garbage.
> 
> I am definitely aware of it, and it is mostly ridiculous garbage that ignores facts such as I identified above.


You can't be serious.  Let me know when a stateless society commits genocide on a mass scale or drops fire bombs or nuclear bombs on a civilian population, and I'll take this empty argument seriously.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

btw, Roy-since you clearly didn't read the article about the American stateless West I linked to earlier, I will post it here for easy reading:
*The Not-So-Wild, Wild West*
In a thorough review of the “West was violent” literature, Bruce Benson (1998) discovered that many historians simply _assume_ that violence was pervasive—even more so than in modern-day America—and then theorize about its likely causes. In addition, some authors assume that the West was very violent and then assert, as Joe Franz does, that “American violence today reflects our frontier heritage” (Franz 1969, qtd. in Benson 1998, 98). Thus, an allegedly violent and stateless society of the nineteenth century is blamed for at least some of the violence in the United States today.
In a book-length survey of the “West was violent” literature, historian Roger McGrath echoes Benson’s skepticism about this theory when he writes that “the frontier-was-violent authors are not, for the most part, attempting to prove that the frontier was violent. Rather, they assume that it was violent and then proffer explanations for that alleged violence” (1984, 270).
In contrast, an alternative literature based on actual history concludes that the civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was_not_ very violent. Eugene Hollon writes that the western frontier “was a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than American society today” (1974, x). Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill affirm that although “[t]he West . . . is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life,” their research “indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved” (1979, 10).
What were these private protective agencies? They were not governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on keeping order. Instead, they included such organizations as land clubs, cattlemen’s associations, mining camps, and wagon trains.
So-called land clubs were organizations established by settlers before the U.S. government even surveyed the land, let alone started to sell it or give it away. Because disputes over land titles are inevitable, the land clubs adopted their own constitutions, laying out the “laws” that would define and protect property rights in land (Anderson and Hill 1979, 15). They administered land claims, protected them from outsiders, and arbitrated disputes. Social ostracism was used effectively against those who violated the rules. Establishing property rights in this way minimized disputes—and violence.
The wagon trains that transported thousands of people to the California gold fields and other parts of the West usually established their own constitutions before setting out. These constitutions often included detailed judicial systems. As a consequence, writes Benson, “[t]here were few instances of violence on the wagon trains even when food became extremely scarce and starvation threatened. When crimes against persons or their property were committed, the judicial system . . . would take effect” (1998, 102). Ostracism and threats of banishment from the group, instead of threats of violence, were usually sufficient to correct rule breakers’ behavior.
Dozens of movies have portrayed the nineteenth-century mining camps in the West as hot beds of anarchy and violence, but John Umbeck discovered that, beginning in 1848, the miners began forming contracts with one another to restrain their own behavior (1981, 51). There was no government authority in California at the time, apart from a few military posts. The miners’ contracts established property rights in land (and in any gold found on the land) that the miners themselves enforced. Miners who did not accept the rules the majority adopted were free to mine elsewhere or to set up their own contractual arrangements with other miners. The rules that were adopted were often consequently established with unanimous consent (Anderson and Hill 1979, 19). As long as a miner abided by the rules, the other miners defended his rights under the community contract. If he did not abide by the agreed-on rules, his claim would be regarded as “open to any [claim] jumpers” (Umbeck 1981, 53).
The mining camps hired “enforcement specialists”—justices of the peace and arbitrators—and developed an extensive body of property and criminal law. As a result, there was very little violence and theft. The fact that the miners were usually armed also helps to explain why crime was relatively infrequent. Benson concludes, “The contractual system of law effectively generated cooperation rather than conflict, and on those occasions when conflict arose it was, by and large, effectively quelled through nonviolent means” (1998, 105).
When government bureaucrats failed to police cattle rustling effectively, ranchers established cattlemen’s associations that drew up their own constitutions and hired private “protection agencies” that were often staffed by expert gunmen. This action deterred cattle rustling. Some of these “gunmen” did “drift in and out of a life of crime,” write Anderson and Hill (1979, 18), but they were usually dealt with by the cattlemen’s associations and never created any kind of large-scale criminal organization, as some have predicted would occur under a regime of private law enforcement.
In sum, this work by Benson, Anderson and Hill, Umbeck, and others challenges with solid historical research the claims made by the “West was violent” authors. The civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was much more peaceful than American cities are today, and the evidence suggests that in fact the Old West was not a very violent place at all. History also reveals that the expanded presence of the U.S. government was the real cause of a culture of violence in the American West. If there is anything to the idea that a nineteenth-century culture of violence on the American frontier is the genesis of much of the violence in the United States today, the main source of that culture is therefore government, not civil society.
*The Real Cause of Violence in the American West*
The real culture of violence in the American West of the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians. It is untrue that white European settlers were _always_at war with Indians, as popular folklore contends. After all, Indians assisted the Pilgrims and celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them; John Smith married Pocahontas; a white man (mostly Scots, with some Cherokee), John Ross, was the chief of the Cherokees of Tennessee and North Carolina; and there was always a great deal of trade with Indians, as opposed to violence. As Jennifer Roback has written, “Europeans generally acknowledged that the Indians retained possessory rights to their lands. More important, the English recognized the advantage of being on friendly terms with the Indians. Trade with the Indians, especially the fur trade, was profitable. War was costly” (1992, 9). Trade and cooperation with the Indians were much more common than conflict and violence during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney relate how Thomas Jefferson found that during his time negotiation was the Europeans’ predominant means of acquiring land from Indians (1994, 56). By the twentieth century, some $800 million had been paid for Indian lands. These authors also argue that various factors can alter the incentives for trade, as opposed to waging a war of conquest as a means of acquiring land. One of the most important factors is the existence of a standing army, as opposed to militias, which were used in the American West prior to the War Between the States. On this point, Anderson and McChesney quote Adam Smith, who wrote that “‘[i]n a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.’” (1994, 52). A standing army, according to Anderson and McChesney, “creates a class of professional soldiers whose personal welfare increases with warfare, even if fighting is a negative-sum act for the population as a whole” (52).
The change from militia to a standing army took place in the American West immediately upon the conclusion of the War Between the States. The result, say Anderson and McChesney, was that white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army. On their own, they were much more likely to negotiate peacefully. Thus, “raid” replaced “trade” in white–Indian relations. Congress even voted in 1871 not to ratify any more Indian treaties, effectively announcing that it no longer sought peaceful relations with the Plains Indians.
Anderson and McChesney do not consider why a standing army replaced militias in 1865, but the reason is not difficult to discern. One has only to read the official pronouncements of the soldiers and political figures who launched a campaign of extermination against the Plains Indians.
On June 27, 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman was given command of the Military District of the Missouri, which was one of the five military divisions into which the U.S. government had divided the country. Sherman received this command for the purpose of commencing the twenty-five-year war against the Plains Indians, primarily as a form of veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized railroad corporations and other politically connected corporations involved in building the transcontinental railroads. These corporations were the financial backbone of the Republican Party. Indeed, in June 1861, Abraham Lincoln, former legal counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, called a special emergency session of Congress not to deal with the two-month-old Civil War, but to commence work on the Pacific Railway Act. Subsidizing the transcontinental railroads was a primary (if not the primary) objective of the new Republican Party. As Dee Brown writes in_Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow_, a history of the building of the transcontinental railroads, Lincoln’s 1862 Pacific Railway Act “assured the fortunes of a dynasty of American families . . . the Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons, Trowbridges, Lanworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords, Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells, and dozens of others” (2001, 49), all of whom were tied to the Republican Party.
The federal railroad subsidies enriched many Republican members of Congress. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania “received a block of [Union Pacific] stock in exchange for his vote” on the Pacific Railroad bill, writes Brown (2001, 58). The Pennsylvania iron manufacturer and congressman also demanded a legal requirement that all iron used in constructing the railroad be made in the United States.
Republican congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts was a shovel manufacturer who became “a loyal ally” of the legislation after he was promised shovel contracts (Brown 2001, 58). A great many shovels must have been required to dig railroad beds from Iowa to California.
Sherman wrote in his memoirs that as soon as the war ended, “My thoughts and feelings at once reverted to the construction of the great Pacific Railway. . . . I put myself in communication with the parties engaged in the work, visiting them in person, and assured them that I would afford them all possible assistance and encouragement” (2005, 775). “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress [of the railroads],” Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant in 1867 (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 264).
The chief engineer of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroads was Grenville Dodge, another of Lincoln’s generals during the war with whom Sherman worked closely afterward. As Murray Rothbard points out, Dodge “helped swing the Iowa delegation to Lincoln” at the 1860 Republican National Convention, and “[i]n return, early in the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Dodge to army general. Dodge’s task was to clear the Indians from the designated path of the country’s first heavily subsidized federally chartered trans-continental railroad, the Union Pacific.” In this way, Rothbard concludes, “conscripted Union troops and hapless taxpayers were coerced into socializing the costs of constructing and operating the Union Pacific” (1997, 130).
Immediately after the war, Dodge proposed enslaving the Plains Indians and forcing them “to do the grading” on the railroad beds, “with the Army furnishing a guard to make the Indians work, and keep them from running away” (Brown 2001, 64). Union army veterans were to be the “overseers” of this new class of slaves. Dodge’s proposal was rejected; the U.S. government decided instead to try to kill as many Indians as possible.
In his memoirs, Sherman has high praise for Thomas Clark Durant, the vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad, as “a person of ardent nature, of great ability and energy, enthusiastic in his undertaking” (2005, 775). Durant was also the chief instigator of the infamous Credit Mobilier scandal, one of the most shocking examples of political corruption in U.S. history. Sherman himself had invested in railroads before the war, and he was a consummate political insider, along with Durant, Dodge, and his brother, Senator John Sherman.
President Grant made his old friend Sherman the army’s commanding general, and another Civil War luminary, General Phillip Sheridan, assumed command on the ground in the West. “Thus the great triumvirate of the Union Civil War effort,” writes Sherman biographer Michael Fellman, “formulated and enacted military Indian policy until reaching, by the 1880s, what Sherman sometimes referred to as ‘the final solution of the Indian problem’” (1995, 260).
What Sherman called the “final solution of the Indian problem” involved “killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places.” “These men,” writes Fellman, “applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three [men] despised. . . . Sherman’s overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians,” whom he regarded as “a less-than-human and savage race” (1995, 260).
All of the other generals who took part in the Indian Wars were “like Sherman [and Sheridan], Civil War luminaries,” writes Sherman biographer John Marszalek. “Their names were familiar from Civil War battles: John Pope, O. O. Howard, Nelson A. Miles, Alfred H. Terry, E. O. C. Ord, C. C. Augur . . . Edward Canby . . . George Armstrong Custer and Benjamin Garrison” (1993, 380). General Winfield Scott Hancock also belongs on this list.
Sherman and Sheridan’s biographers frequently point out that these men apparently viewed the Indian Wars as a continuation of the job they had performed during the Civil War. “Sherman viewed Indians as he viewed recalcitrant Southerners during the war and newly freed people after: resisters to the legitimate forces of an ordered society” (Marszalek 1993, 380). Marszalek might well have written also that Southerners, former slaves, and Indians were not so much opposed to an “ordered society,” but to _being ordered around_ by politicians in Washington, D.C., primarily for the benefit of the politicians’ corporate benefactors.
“During the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan had practiced a total war of destruction of property. . . . Now the army, in its Indian warfare, often wiped out entire villages” (Marszalek 1993, 382). Fellman writes that Sherman charged Sheridan “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War” (1995, 270). Sheridan’s troops had burned and plundered the Shenandoah Valley after the Confederate army had evacuated the area and only women, children, and elderly men remained there (Morris 1992, 183). Even Prussian army officers are said to have been shocked when after the war Sheridan boasted to them of his exploits in the Shenandoah Valley.
“[Sherman] insisted that the only answer to the Indian problem was all-out war—of the kind he had utilized against the Confederacy,” writes Marszalek. “Since the inferior Indians refused to step aside so superior American culture could create success and progress, they had to be driven out of the way as the Confederates had been driven back into the Union” (1993, 380).
Sherman’s compulsion for the “extermination” of anyone opposed to turning the U.S. state into an empire expressed the same reasoning he had expressed earlier with regard to his role in the War Between the States. In a letter to his wife early in the war, he declared that his ultimate purpose was “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.” Mrs. Sherman responded by expressing her similar wish that the conflict would be a “war of extermination, and that all [Southerners] would be driven like the swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing” (qtd. in Walters 1973, 61). Sherman did his best to take his wife’s advice, especially during his famous “march to the sea.” It is little wonder that Indian Wars historian S. L. A. Marshall observes, “[M]ost of the Plains Indian bands were in sympathy with the Southern cause” during the war (1972, 24).
One theme among all of these Union Civil War veterans is that they considered Indians to be subhuman and racially inferior to whites and therefore deserving of extermination if they could not be “controlled” by the white population. Sherman himself thought of the former slaves in exactly the same way. “The Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of the negroes if they are released from the control of the whites,” he once said (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 296). He believed that intermarriage of whites and Indians would be disastrous, as he claimed it was in New Mexico, where “the blending of races had produced general equality, which led inevitably to Mexican anarchy” (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 297).
Sherman described the inhabitants of New Mexico, many of whom were part Mexican (Spanish), part Indian, and part Negro, as “mongrels.” His goal was to eliminate the possibility that such racial amalgamation might occur elsewhere in the United States, by undertaking to effect what Michael Fellman called a “racial cleansing of the land” (1995, 264), beginning with extermination of the Indians.
Sherman, Sheridan, and the other top military commanders were not shy about announcing that their objective was _extermination_, a term that Sherman used literally on a number of occasions, as he had in reference to Southerners only a few years earlier. He and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” he said. Sherman announced his objective as being “to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 270). According to Fellman, Sherman gave “Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (1995, 271).
In case the media back east got wind of such atrocities, Sherman promised Sheridan that he would run interference against any complaints: “I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 271). In later correspondence, Sherman wrote to Sheridan, “I am charmed at the handsome conduct of our troops in the field. They go in with the relish that used to make our hearts glad in 1864–5” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 272).
Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. army’s actions matched its leaders’ rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods (the Indians even made fish hooks out of dried buffalo bones and bow strings out of sinews).
By 1882, the buffalo were all but extinct, and the cause was not just the tragedy of the commons. Because buffalo hides could be sold for as much as $3.50 each, an individual hunter would kill more than a hundred a day for as many days as he cared to hunt on the open plain. This exploitation of a “common property resource” decimated the buffalo herds, but the decimation was also an integral part of U.S. military policy aimed at starving the Plains Indians. When a group of Texans asked Sheridan if he could not do something to stop the extermination of the buffalo, he said: “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 265).
The escalation of violence against the Plains Indians actually began in earnest _during_ the War Between the States. Sherman and Sheridan’s Indian policy was a _continuation_ and _escalation_ of a policy that General Grenville Dodge, among others, had already commenced. In 1851, the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold 24 million acres of land to the U.S. government for $1,410,000 in a typical “trade” (as opposed to raid) scenario. The federal government once again did not keep its side of the bargain, though, reneging on its payment to the Indians (Nichols 1978). By 1862, thousands of white settlers were moving onto the Indians’ land, and a crop failure in that year caused the Santee Sioux to become desperate for food. They attempted to take back their land by force with a short “war” in which President Lincoln placed General John Pope in charge. Pope announced, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made” (qtd. in Nichols 1978, 87).At the end of the month-long conflict, hundreds of Indians who had been taken prisoner were subjected to military “trials” lasting about ten minutes each, according to Nichols (1978). Most of the adult male prisoners were found guilty and sentenced to death—not based on evidence of the commission of a crime, but on their mere presence at the end of the fighting. Minnesota authorities wanted to execute all 303 who were convicted, but the Lincoln administration feared that the European powers would not view such an act favorably and did not want to give them an excuse to assist the Confederacy in any way. Therefore, “only” 38 of the Indians were hanged, making this travesty of justice still the largest mass execution in U.S. history (Nichols 1978). To appease the Minnesotans who wanted to execute all 303, Lincoln promised them $2 million and pledged that the U.S. Army would remove all Indians from the state at some future date.
One of the most famous incidents of Indian extermination, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, took place on November 29, 1864. There was a Cheyenne and Arapaho village located on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. These Indians had been assured by the U.S. government that they would be safe in Colorado. The government instructed them to fly a U.S. flag over their village, which they did, to assure their safety. However, another Civil War “luminary,” Colonel John Chivington, had other plans for them as he raided the village with 750 heavily armed soldiers. One account of what happened appears in the book _Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars_ (1972) by the renowned military historian S. L. A. Marshall, who held the title of chief historian of the European Theater in World War II and authored thirty books on American military history.
Chivington’s orders were: “I want you to kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 37). Then, despite the display of the U.S. flag and white surrender flags by these peaceful Indians, Chivington’s troops “began a full day given over to blood-lust, orgiastic mutilation, rapine, and destruction—with Chivington . . . looking on and approving” (Marshall 1972, 38). Marshall notes that the most reliable estimate of the number of Indians killed is “163, of which 110 were women and children” (39).
Upon returning to his fort, Chivington “and his raiders demonstrated around Denver, waving their trophies, more than one hundred drying scalps. They were acclaimed as conquering heroes, which was what they had sought mainly.” One Republican Party newspaper announced, “Colorado soldiers have once again covered themselves with glory” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 39).
An even more detailed account of the Sand Creek Massacre, based on U.S. Army records, biographies, and firsthand accounts, appears in Dee Brown’s classic _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West_: “When the troops came up to [the squaws,] they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. . . . There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. . . . The squaws offered no resistance. Every one . . . was scalped” (1970, 89). Brown’s narrative gets much more graphic. The effect of such behavior was to eliminate forever the possibility of peaceful relations with these Indian tribes. They understood that they had become the objects of a campaign of extermination. As Brown writes, “In a few hours of madness at Sand Creek, Chivington and his soldiers destroyed the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men” (92). For the next two decades, the Plains Indians would do their best to return the barbarism in kind.
The books by Brown and Marshall show that the kind of barbarism that occurred at Sand Creek, Colorado, was repeated many times during the next two decades. For example, in 1868 General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered Custer to attack a Cheyenne camp with infantry, which Custer did. The attack led Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy to report to Washington that “General Hancock’s expedition . . . has resulted in no good, but, on the contrary, has been productive of much evil” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157). A report of the attack prepared for the U.S. secretary of the interior concluded: “For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few straggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, and injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting, that must, sooner or later, bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of Heaven” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157).
As the war on the Cheyenne continued, Custer and his troops apparently decided that to “kill or hang all the warriors,” as General Sheridan had ordered, “meant separating them from the old men, women, and children. This work was too slow and dangerous for the cavalrymen; they found it much more efficient and safe to kill indiscriminately. They killed 103 Cheyenne, but only eleven of them were warriors” (Brown 1970, 169).
Marshall calls Sheridan’s orders to Custer “the most brutal orders ever published to American troops” (1972, 106). This is a powerful statement coming from a man who wrote thirty books on American military history. In addition to ordering Custer to shoot or hang all warriors, even those that surrendered, Sheridan commanded him to slaughter all ponies and to burn all tepees and their contents. “Sheridan held with but one solution to the Indian problem—extermination—and Custer was his quite pliable instrument,” writes Marshall (1972, 106).
One of the oddest facts about the Indian Wars is that Custer famously instructed a band to play an Irish jig called “Garry Owens” during the attacks on Indian villages. “This was Custer’s way of gentling war. It made killing more rhythmic,” writes Marshall (1972, 107).
During an attack on a Kiowa village on September 26, 1874, soldiers killed more than one thousand horses and forced 252 Kiowas to surrender. They were thrown into prison cells, where “each day their captors threw chunks of raw meat to them as if they were animals in a cage” (Brown 1970, 270). On numerous occasions, fleeing Indians sought refuge in Canada, where they knew they would be unmolested. Canadians built their own transcontinental railroad in the late nineteenth century, but they did not commence a campaign of extermination against the Indians living in that country as the government did in the United States.
No one denies that the U.S. government killed tens of thousands of Indians, including women and children, during the years from 1862 to 1890. There are various estimates of the number of Indians killed, the highest being that of historian Russell Thornton (1990), who used mostly military records to estimate that about forty-five thousand Indians, including women and children, were killed during the wars on the Plains Indians. It is reasonable to assume that thousands more were maimed and disabled for life and received little or no medical assistance. The thousands of soldiers who participated in the Indian Wars lived in a culture of violence and death that was cultivated by the U.S. government for a quarter of a century.
*Conclusions*
The culture of violence in the American West of the late nineteenth century was created almost entirely by the U.S. government’s military interventions, which were primarily a veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized transcontinental railroad corporations. As scandals go, the war on the Plains Indians makes the Credit Mobilier affair seem inconsequential.
There _is_ such a thing as a culture of war, especially in connection with a war as gruesome and bloody as the war on the Plains Indians. On this topic, World War II combat veteran Paul Fussell has written: “The culture of war . . . is not like the culture of ordinary peace-time life. It is a culture dominated by fear, blood, and sadism, by irrational actions and preposterous . . . results. It has more relation to science fiction or to absurdist theater than to actual life” (1997, 354). Such was the “culture” the U.S. Army created throughout much of the American West for the quarter century after the War Between the States. It is the “culture” that all military interventions at all times have created, and it contrasts sharply with the predominantly peaceful culture of the stateless civil society on the American frontier during much of the nineteenth century.
Fussell made this statement based on his personal experiences in combat, but it echoes the scholarly writing of Ludwig von Mises (who, let us remember, was also an Austrian army officer who had substantial combat experience during World War I): “What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate Instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.” Human cooperation under the division of labor in the civil society “bursts asunder,” Mises wrote, whenever “citizens turn into warriors” and resort to war (1998, 827).
It is not true that all whites waged a war of extermination against the Plains Indians. As noted earlier and as noted throughout the literature of the Indian Wars, many whites preferred the continuation of the peaceful trade and relations with Indians that had been the norm during the first half of the nineteenth century. (Conflicts sometimes occurred, of course, but “trade” _dominated_ “raid” during that era.) Canadians built a transcontinental railroad without a Shermanesque campaign of “extermination” against the Indians in Canada. It is telling that the Plains Indians often sought refuge in Canada when the U.S. Army had them on the run.
The U.S. government dehumanized the Plains Indians, describing them as “wild beasts,” in order to justify slaughtering them, just as Sherman and his wife, among many others, dehumanized Southerners during and after the War Between the States. The same dehumanization by the government’s propaganda machine would eventually target Filipinos, who were killed by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the U.S. Army during their 1899–1902 revolt against the U.S. conquest of their country barely a decade after the Indian Wars had finally ended. President Theodore Roosevelt “justified” the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos by calling them “savages, half-breeds, a wild and ignorant people” (qtd. in Powell 2006, 64). Dehumanization of certain groups of “resisters” at the hands of the state’s propaganda apparatus is a prerequisite for the culture of war and violence that has long been the main preoccupation of the U.S. state.
It was not necessary to kill tens of thousands of Indians and imprison thousands more in concentration camps (“reservations”) for generations in order to build a transcontinental railroad. Nor were the wars on the Plains Indians a matter of “the white population’s” waging a war of extermination. This war stemmed from the policy of the relatively small group of white men who ran the Republican Party (with assistance from some Democrats), which effectively monopolized national politics for most of that time.
These men utilized the state’s latest technologies of mass killing developed during the Civil War and its mercenary soldiers (including the former slaves known as “buffalo soldiers”) to wage their war because they were in a hurry to shovel subsidies to the railroad corporations and other related business enterprises. Many of them profited handsomely, as the Credit Mobilier scandal revealed. The railroad corporations were the Microsofts and IBMs of their day, and the doctrines of neomercantilism _defined_ the Republican Party’s reason for existing (DiLorenzo 2006). The Republican Party was, after all, the “Party of Lincoln,” the great railroad lawyer and a lobbyist for the Illinois Central and other midwestern railroads during his day.
*References*
Anderson, Terry, and P. J. Hill. 1979. An American Experiment in Anarcho-capitalism: The _Not_ So Wild, Wild West. _Journal of Libertarian Studies_ 3: 9–29.
Anderson, Terry, and Fred L. McChesney. 1994. Raid or Trade? An Economic Model of Indian-White Relations. _Journal of Law and Economics_37: 39–74.
Benson, Bruce. 1998. _To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice_. New York: New York University Press for The Independent Institute.
Brown, Dee. 1970. _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West_. New York: Holt.

———. 2001. _Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow_. New York: Owl Books.
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2006. _Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know about Dishonest Abe_. New York: Crown Forum.
Fellman, Michael. 1995. _Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman_. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
Franz, Joe B. 1969. The Frontier Tradition: An Invitation to Violence. In_The History of Violence in America_, edited by Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, 127–54. New York: New York Times Books.

Fussell, Paul. 1997. The Culture of War. In _The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories_, edited by John Denson, 351–57. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
Hollon, W. Eugene. 1974. _Frontier Violence: Another Look_. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kennett, Lee B. 2001. _Sherman: A Soldier’s Life_. New York: HarperCollins.
Marshall, S. L. A. 1972. _Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars_. New York: Da Capo Press.
Marszalek, John F. 1993. _Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order_. New York: Vintage Books.
McGrath, Roger. 1984. _Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier_. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Mises, Ludwig von. 1998. _Human Action_. Scholar’s Edition. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Morris, Roy. 1992. _Sheridan: The Life & Wars of General Phil Sheridan_. New York: Vintage Books.
Nichols, David A. 1978. _Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics_. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Powell, Jim. 2006. _Bully Boy: The Truth about Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy_. New York: Crown Forum.
Roback, Jennifer. 1992. Exchange, Sovereignty, and Indian-Anglo Relations. In _Property Rights and Indian Economies_, edited by Terry Anderson, 5–26. Savage, Md.: Roman & Littlefield.
Rothbard, Murray N. 1997. America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861. In_The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories_, edited by John Denson, 119–33. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
Sherman, William T. 2005. _Memoirs_. New York: Barnes & Noble.
Thornton, Russel. 1990. _American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492_. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press.
Umbeck, John. 1981. Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights. _Economic Inquiry_ 19: 38–59.
Walters, John Bennett. 1973. _Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War_. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.

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## Steven Douglas

> Everyone who isn't a delusional "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead knows it is true.


No more ad hominem attacks, either way. We've both been warned, so knock it off. 




> Suppose you were in Somalia, had been kidnapped by pirates, and the local warlord ("government," according to you) ruled that the kidnappers were merely exercising their property right over the ocean, a property right conferred by the local government just as validly as any property title to land?


Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force, then yes. Of course. A legal "right" doesn't mean "morally right".  If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period.  That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid.  And if you didn't like it, and had no meaningful legal recourse to keep me from hunting and shooting you dead, seeking to overthrow the government would be among your many your options.  Only principles are sacred to me. There is absolutely nothing sacred, or inherently good or bad, about government.  




> Example 2 (fail)
> 
> I am walking along, exercising my right to liberty, and encounter a brick wall and a locked door - the exterior that encloses the vault area of a bank. Had the bank not existed, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to enter that space. That is indisputable. It is also indisputable that I am "deprived" of my liberty (my capacity and ability, but not my right) to enter and occupy that space. 
> 			
> 		
> 
> False.  Physically, you could enter the space if you had appropriate equipment, and you are definitely being deprived of your right to enter it.


Yes, if I had sufficient _force_, I could physically enter.  But you are ahead of yourself on the second part, where you simply presume that I have a de facto "right" to enter.  That's where you make a circular argument from your own premise.  

All one may conclude, in that example, is that I am deprived of my ordinary capacity (without C4, drills, jackhammers, etc.,) to enter.  I am not "at liberty" to enter, but that does not mean I am deprive of a "right to enter it". Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right", such a "right" exists only in the minds of the dissenters who are unable to establish it by force and defend it as such.  




> Nonsense.  Other than in law, which merely begs the question, your right to liberty is just as well established as in the kidnapping case.  It is merely being violated with the local government's assistance, just as in the amended Somalia kidnapping case.


See above.  It is not question begging - it is in fact what is at issue.  Question begging would be to simply declare something to be a right based on your own logic and rationale and nothing more. 




> No.  Unless you knew of the gold and intended to pick it up yourself, you have suffered no deprivation.  You have lost nothing.  The gold is NO LONGER THERE...


Well, if I'm a constant gold-digger, I would always have the intent to pick up any gold I found, so I guess your rule is based on a combination for both prior knowledge and intent. Interesting.  Back to the homesteader who built in private, only to be discovered years later by a band of LVT Ruffians, who insisted on camping next to him. He was good enough to hire them to help improve his property, and the trails leading to it. They had all been paid for their services, but they later claimed to have infused his land with "community provided value", for which they demanded he give them just compensation for their suffered deprivations, or else he would be forced to leave his humble domicile.  

What gives? They were land-diggers, for sure, but they didn't know of his land before, and had no intentions of using it.  The land still exists, of course, just as the gold does in the other example. Thus, they have suffered no deprivation, and have lost nothing.  I know that in your mind land has a special property that distinguishes it from gold, or anything else that can be taken from the land, as it truly is finite.  But the finite supply nature of land, in itself, does not make GOLD VS. LAND any more or less of a deprivation.   The same principles apply, whether I am denied the use of a tiny piece of mobile land (gold) or a parcel of land itself, and all that is therein.    

You say that I no longer have the opportunity to possess the gold. That is not true. If I have the tools, I have the ability to possess it still.  The gold still exists, and so therefore does the opportunity to possess it. Except that I am being forcibly deprived of it by the current exclusive possessor.  That gold "otherwise would have been there", had the current possessor not taken exclusive possession to it.  And I might have "otherwise been at liberty to have it" had someone else not picked it up.  I have, therefore, suffered a deprivation.  And I am forcibly prevented from taking exercising my "natural liberty right" to the use of that gold (the non-exclusive use of which I, of course, would be willing to share. With everyone.) The current exclusive possessor of that gold can continue to possess it, but not without just compensation to me for my deprivation.  




> The natural opportunity no longer exists, so no coercion need be applied to prevent you from exercising your liberty to use it.  There can be no right to turn back the clock, or do what is logically or physically impossible.


Interesting. I think I told you that once or twice. But the gold is still available - as a present opportunity, since I know where it is.  But I have a dilemma, because I am being forcibly prevented from entering the bank vault where it is stored.  Thus I am being forcibly deprived of my opportunity to use not only the vault, but the gold that is buried thereunder.  I have the tools to enter the vault, but police have guns drawn on me, and told me to put down my jackhammer, or they would shoot me.    

How can I get a "right" to enter that vault area, and also a right to use that gold, so that I can exercise my liberty at using both?

----------


## Roy L

> You think West European governments are less corrupt and more competent?  LMFAO!!!


I certainly do, and I am objectively correct.  There are exceptions, like Italy and Greece, which are certainly corrupt and incompetent, though not as deadly dangerous to their own people as the US government.  But the great majority are far superior to the USA, as proved by every accepted measure of well-being.

Are you unaware that West European governments don't generally make war on civilian populations in faraway countries, or lock up a large fraction of their populations in prison, or subject the great majority of their populations to economic duress that forces them into poverty or lifelong servitude?  I would laugh at your ignorance, but it is too sad.



> You can't be serious.


I am serious, and I am factually correct.  You just have never lived in a country with a good government, which is sad.  You also have never lived in a country with no government, which I suppose explains your utter ignorance of prevailing conditions in such places.



> Let me know when a stateless society commits genocide on a mass scale


What fraction of all the states that have ever existed have done that, hmmmmm?

Stateless societies can't do anything on a mass scale, including enable human progress and well-being.  But they have certainly committed genocide on a scale almost unknown among states, when measured relative to the size of the societies involved.  It's just that in stateless societies, conditions are invariably so catastrophic that no one is literate, or has the leisure, to record such incidents for posterity.  Nevertheless, genocide among stateless societies has been quite common.  In pre-colonial Africa, genocidal tribal wars were a major source of slaves for the slave trade to the Americas.  Many tribes were entirely exterminated or enslaved.  And it's not just Africa.  In 1577, for example, the clan MacLeod, not a government or state, nor with the blessing of any government or state, exterminated the entire population of the Isle of Eigg.  Read and learn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_..._Spoiling_Dyke

The saga-era Icelanders who are so often proclaimed as the model of a society without government in fact got into a civil war over land that was so violent and bloody, they petitioned the King of Norway to govern them and put an end to it.



> or drops fire bombs


Stateless societies don't have airplanes, duh.  They lack the societal infrastructure needed to keep such complex machinery operating.



> or nuclear bombs on a civilian population,


How many governments, in the whole history of the world, have ever dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations, hmmmm?  And just which one do you suppose it was?  Take your time.



> and I'll take this empty argument seriously.


It is not empty.  It is fact.  You just refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.

----------


## The Gold Standard

http://mises.org/daily/5738/The-Sing...l-Implications

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I certainly do, and I am objectively correct.  There are exceptions, like Italy and Greece, which are certainly corrupt and incompetent, though not as deadly dangerous to their own people as the US government.  But the great majority are far superior to the USA, as proved by every accepted measure of well-being.
> 
> Are you unaware that West European governments don't generally make war on civilian populations in faraway countries, or lock up a large fraction of their populations in prison, or subject the great majority of their populations to economic duress that forces them into poverty or lifelong servitude?  I would laugh at your ignorance, but it is too sad.


So, the historical basis for this opinion is the post-war era?    Read European history Roy.  I'm not going to spoon-feed it to you.  It would take years.  You need to get out of your pretentious, self-righteous bubble and learn about the real world around you-and its history.




> I am serious, and I am factually correct.  You just have never lived in a country with a good government, which is sad.


I am factually correct.  No one has lived in a country with an objectively good government (except for a few benevolent kings, but that is statistically insignificant).




> You also have never lived in a country with no government, which I suppose explains your utter ignorance of prevailing conditions in such places.


 No, but I've been in the middle of nowhere-effectively ungoverned.  People in these places live in good conditions (better than the cities, really-unless you really like cities).




> What fraction of all the states that have ever existed have done that, hmmmmm?


Enough to know that they are undesirable.  You don't need shoot 10,000 people point blank in the head to know it's deadly.  




> Stateless societies can't do anything on a mass scale, including enable human progress and well-being.  But they have certainly committed genocide on a scale almost unknown among states, when measured relative to the size of the societies involved.  It's just that in stateless societies, conditions are invariably so catastrophic that no one is literate, or has the leisure, to record such incidents for posterity.  Nevertheless, genocide among stateless societies has been quite common.


Woefully incorrect.  Culture has more to do with the success of lack thereof in society.  The American West is an example of this.





> Stateless societies don't have airplanes, duh.  They lack the societal infrastructure needed to keep such complex machinery operating.


 Again, false.  The stateless American West was industrialized and developed long before incorporation into the union.




> How many governments, in the whole history of the world, have ever dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations, hmmmm?  And just which one do you suppose it was?  Take your time.


  Thus far, just one.  But every State has brutalized its citizens.  There is no other reason for the State to exist (the "defense" and other arguments have long been disproven).[/QUOTE]




> It is not empty.  It is fact.  You just refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.


A false fact, yes.  My beliefs are rooted in fact and antithetical to evil.  It is tools of the State like yourself who are detached from your own humanity and allow Statism to destroy you.

P.S.  I insist that you go back and read post 485 of this thread before you continue making an utter fool of yourself.  And don't respond to me till you've done so (and comprehend it).

----------


## Roy L

> http://mises.org/daily/5738/The-Sing...l-Implications


I demolished Rothbard's idiotic anti-geoist screed long ago:

http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/.../msg00098.html
https://groups.google.com/group/sci....915e37c?hl=en&

----------


## eduardo89

your email is @telus.net??

ROY IS CANADIAN?!?!?!

----------


## Roy L

> So, the historical basis for this opinion is the post-war era?


Of course. That's when modern, constitutional, democratic government really became the norm in Western Europe.  Before the 19th C, Britain was the only major country in the _world_ since classical times that had effective democratic institutions.



> Read European history Roy.  I'm not going to spoon-feed it to you.


<yawn>  I have.  Lots of undemocratic governments before the 20th C.  So?  They were mostly STILL better than the non-government of early post-Roman Europe.



> You need to get out of your pretentious, self-righteous bubble and learn about the real world around you-and its history.


As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"



> I am factually correct.


No, you are not.



> No one has lived in a country with an objectively good government (except for a few benevolent kings, but that is statistically insignificant).


False and absurd.  Any objective measure of national well-being shows people who live in places like Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. enjoy good government.



> No, but I've been in the middle of nowhere-effectively ungoverned.


Hermits don't need government, duh.



> People in these places live in good conditions (better than the cities, really-unless you really like cities).


Have you ever lived in a city in any of the countries identified above?

Thought not.



> Enough to know that they are undesirable.


Nope.  You have no evidence for your claims, so you simply assume them, *contrary* to the evidence.



> You don't need shoot 10,000 people point blank in the head to know it's deadly.


You don't seem to understand.  Your claim is not that some governments have been bad.  That's indisputable.  Your claim is that ALL governments must ALWAYS be bad.  And that claim is a ludicrous fabrication that flies in the face of the evidence.  You are effectively claiming that because some people have been made ill or died from eating tainted food, no one should eat _any_ food.



> Woefully incorrect.


It is fact.



> Culture has more to do with the success of lack thereof in society.  The American West is an example of this.


More garbage.  The American West is merely an example -- and there are others, such as saga-era Iceland -- of how a population that has access to an abundance of good land and the associated opportunities has little need for government to administer its possession and use; but once the good land is all appropriated, the violence inherent in landowning comes to the fore.  If the American West had not been all but depopulated of aboriginals by Old World diseases -- smallpox, typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis, which reduced the indigenous population by something like 90% in the preceding centuries -- leaving vast areas of good, fertile land available for use, violent conflict over land would have been chronic, as it was during the European colonization of Africa.



> Again, false.


It is fact.  No stateless area in the world has ever maintained air transport infrastructure.



> The stateless American West was industrialized and developed long before incorporation into the union.


That is an absurd fabrication.  The only significant industries were agriculture and mining, and they were low-tech.  Almost all manufactured goods had to be imported from areas with government.



> Thus far, just one.  But every State has brutalized its citizens.


Another absurd fabrication.  And you ignore the INVARIABLE brutalization in stateless societies.



> There is no other reason for the State to exist (the "defense" and other arguments have long been disproven).


No, of course they have not.



> My beliefs are rooted in fact and antithetical to evil.  It is tools of the State like yourself who are detached from your own humanity and allow Statism to destroy you.


Nonsense.  Your ideas are not only evil and not rooted in fact, they cannot survive contact with fact, which is why you refuse to know any facts.  The notion that the level of evil per capita in countries such as those I identified above is even comparable to the level in places that have had no government is absurd and laughable.



> P.S.  I insist that you go back and read post 485 of this thread before you continue making an utter fool of yourself.  And don't respond to me till you've done so (and comprehend it).


I read it before, and understood it before.  It is idiotic, unscientific garbage.  There is NO ATTEMPT to describe conditions in the American West in the pre-Civil War era, let alone to make a valid statistical comparison.  The Civil War, as we now understand, created a large population of millions of brutalized, psychotic, racist, violence-prone males trained to dehumanize, attack and kill their fellow human beings.  The only available outlet for their psychological need to express their chronic anger and hatred through violence was the West.  Hence the litany of brutality the article chronicles.  But YOUR OWN SOURCE even proves your claims flat wrong, as it repeatedly states that aboriginal refugees from the violence and brutality of Civil War veterans and the US government often fled to Canada, where the government respected and secured their rights.

----------


## Roy L

> Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force,


As is, not coincidentally, all ownership of land...



> then yes.


If you have a cause of action contrary to local law, then so does everyone who is forcibly excluded from land they want to use.  Thanks for conceding the whole argument.



> A legal "right" doesn't mean "morally right".


You again concede the whole argument.  All your "arguments" have depended on legal recognition of property in land.  Without that, you have nothing to offer in opposition to the rights to life and liberty.



> If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period.  That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid.


You need to clarify the difference between "right" and "valid."



> Only principles are sacred to me.


But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty.  Right.



> Yes, if I had sufficient _force_, I could physically enter.


Equivocation fallacy.  The kind of "force" needed to enter a bank building is the same as needed to enter a natural cave sealed by rock, not the kind of force needed to impose one's will on other human beings.



> But you are ahead of yourself on the second part, where you simply presume that I have a de facto "right" to enter.  That's where you make a circular argument from your own premise.


An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular.  I have identified the premises of my arguments, and they imply the conclusions.  They are not themselves dependent on the conclusions, so the argument is not circular.



> All one may conclude, in that example, is that I am deprived of my ordinary capacity (without C4, drills, jackhammers, etc.,) to enter.  I am not "at liberty" to enter, but that does not mean I am deprive of a "right to enter it".


Yes, of course it does.



> Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right",


Question begging fallacy.



> such a "right" exists only in the minds of the dissenters who are unable to establish it by force and defend it as such.


Like slaves' rights to liberty...?  That is merely the might-makes-right fallacy.  HOW CAN RIGHTS EVER BE ESTABLISHED AND DEFENDED BY FORCE EXCEPT BY ALREADY EXISTING IN THE MINDS OF "DISSENTERS"??  Your "argument" is baldly self-contradictory.



> It is not question begging - it is in fact what is at issue.


No, it is not, because no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty that slave owners had when slavery was legal.



> Question begging would be to simply declare something to be a right based on your own logic and rationale and nothing more.


??  Nonsense.  That's what all arguments are based on.  Question begging is assuming the conclusion in the premises.



> Back to the homesteader who built in private, only to be discovered years later by a band of LVT Ruffians, who insisted on camping next to him.


You misspelled, "people innocently exercising their rights to liberty."



> He was good enough to hire them to help improve his property, and the trails leading to it.


No, he was not.  You are begging the question by assuming that the landowner pays for all improvements and infrastructure.  He doesn't.



> They had all been paid for their services,


No, that is a false and ludicrous assumption that simply evades the real issue.



> but they later claimed to have infused his land with "community provided value", for which they demanded he give them just compensation for their suffered deprivations, or else he would be forced to leave his humble domicile.


The only way LVT "ruffians" could do that would be by OFFERING TO PAY _HIM_ THE SAME AMOUNT.



> They were land-diggers, for sure, but they didn't know of his land before, and had no intentions of using it.  The land still exists, of course, just as the gold does in the other example.


Wrong.  The gold is no longer a natural opportunity.  The land is.



> Thus, they have suffered no deprivation, and have lost nothing.


Garbage.  The land "owner" is forcibly depriving them of their liberty to use the opportunity nature provided.



> I know that in your mind land has a special property that distinguishes it from gold, or anything else that can be taken from the land, as it truly is finite.


No, the difference is that land truly is something they would otherwise be at liberty to use.



> But the finite supply nature of land, in itself, does not make GOLD VS. LAND any more or less of a deprivation.   The same principles apply, whether I am denied the use of a tiny piece of mobile land (gold) or a parcel of land itself, and all that is therein.


Nope.  The gold is not "mobile land."  Once removed from nature, it is a product of labor, and land, by definition, can never be a product of labor.



> You say that I no longer have the opportunity to possess the gold. That is not true. If I have the tools, I have the ability to possess it still.


No, what I say, and is indisputably true, is that the gold is no longer a natural opportunity but a product of labor.



> The gold still exists, and so therefore does the opportunity to possess it.


The opportunity nature provided no longer exists.



> Except that I am being forcibly deprived of it by the current exclusive possessor.


But that deprivation is not of something you would otherwise have.  The gold is no longer the natural opportunity but a product of labor.



> That gold "otherwise would have been there", had the current possessor not taken exclusive possession to it.


Irrelevant.  It ISN'T there, which means no coercion is applied to you to stop you from picking it up, and your rights are therefore not being violated.



> And I might have "otherwise been at liberty to have it" had someone else not picked it up.  I have, therefore, suffered a deprivation.


Wrong.  You would only have suffered a deprivation if you were deprived of your liberty to pick it up when it was still a natural opportunity.  But you were not.  No one did anything to you at all, so your rights were not violated.  You just missed the opportunity, and now it no longer exists.

You are mistaking the product of labor for a natural opportunity.  It isn't, any more than a naturally growing apple that I picked and ate before you ever knew of its existence is a natural opportunity for you to eat an apple.  It's gone.



> And I am forcibly prevented from taking exercising my "natural liberty right" to the use of that gold (the non-exclusive use of which I, of course, would be willing to share. With everyone.)


Nope.  You indisputably aren't.  No one uses any force to prevent you from picking up the gold from its natural place, because it is no longer there.



> The current exclusive possessor of that gold can continue to possess it, but not without just compensation to me for my deprivation.


Nope.  He is not depriving you of anything you would otherwise have.



> Interesting. I think I told you that once or twice.


I doubt that.



> But the gold is still available - as a present opportunity, since I know where it is.


Wrong.  You also know where the apple is.  But like the gold, it is no longer an opportunity you would otherwise be at liberty to use.



> But I have a dilemma, because I am being forcibly prevented from entering the bank vault where it is stored.  Thus I am being forcibly deprived of my opportunity to use not only the vault, but the gold that is buried thereunder.


Both the vault and the gold have been put there by others, and you consequently have no liberty right to use them.  The land, by contrast has always been there, waiting for you to exercise your liberty to use it.



> I have the tools to enter the vault, but police have guns drawn on me, and told me to put down my jackhammer, or they would shoot me.    
> 
> How can I get a "right" to enter that vault area, and also a right to use that gold, so that I can exercise my liberty at using both?


You have no such right, as the vault and gold, unlike the land, are there only because others put them there.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force,
> 
> 
> As is, not coincidentally, all ownership of land...


...as would be, not coincidentally, an LVT regime. You see that force is used to defend landownership rights (as recognized and codified), but seem to gloss over the fact that the exact same force would be used to institute and enforce LVT law.  So what? It's a use of force in both cases, and therefore a wash, and not at issue. 




> If you have a cause of action contrary to local law, then so does everyone who is forcibly excluded from land they want to use.  Thanks for conceding the whole argument.


That wasn't the argument at all, and you are still begging the question, arguing from your own premise.  A cause of action contrary to local law is a two-edged sword.  If local law is LVT-based, I could say that I have a cause of action contrary to local law -- that I am forcibly deprived of a right to own land (my normative). You are claiming the reverse (from the positive reality that LVT is not the current regime) that you have a cause of action that you are forcibly excluded from land you want to use (your normative).   They are two mutually exclusive propositions - _either of which could be codified and recognized as a right_ - to the exclusion of another would-be right.  

You want your normative ("ought") to be recognized as the de facto positive, based on your rationale.  I want the exact opposite.  But that isn't what establishes a right.  




> You again concede the whole argument.  All your "arguments" have depended on legal recognition of property in land.  Without that, you have nothing to offer in opposition to the rights to life and liberty.


Again, your rationale, your normatives, based on how you personally interpret "rights to life and liberty".  All BOTH of our arguments depend on our interpretation of what OUGHT to be rights, which would in turn dictate which entity (government or individuals) have legal recognition of property in land.   Again a wash.  





> Your position did not become de facto correct


That's true, and my point entirely.  Neither did yours - at any time. 



> If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period. That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid. 
> 			
> 		
> 
> You need to clarify the difference between "right" and "valid."


Right, as in "morally right" (the context you quoted) is an internal judgment.  By "valid", I only mean "in keeping with the law", or "not contrary to [state] law".  I think that was obvious enough. 




> But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty.  Right.


All your dogma, your paradigms, your moral governing assumptions, pretty much all of which I reject, and do not share. 




> Equivocation fallacy.  The kind of "force" needed to enter a bank building is the same as needed to enter a natural cave sealed by rock, not the kind of force needed to impose one's will on other human beings.


No, that would be both your equivocation and composition fallacy in one.  A natural cave sealed by rock may not have armed guards or police threatening violence and use of force if I attempt to enter.  A bank building most certainly would. 




> An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular.  I have identified the premises of my arguments, and they imply the conclusions.  They are not themselves dependent on the conclusions, so the argument is not circular.


An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular, but an argument that states the premise as the conclusion is, by definition, circular.  And your arguments are chock full of those, to wit:  "_But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty._"  That's just one example of nothing but question begging and presumptive circular reasoning.  




> Like slaves' rights to liberty...?  That is merely the might-makes-right fallacy.  HOW CAN RIGHTS EVER BE ESTABLISHED AND DEFENDED BY FORCE EXCEPT BY ALREADY EXISTING IN THE MINDS OF "DISSENTERS"??  Your "argument" is baldly self-contradictory.


Hardly.  All rights exist first as mental seeds, and not only in the minds of dissenters.  Might-makes-right is a fallacy wherein one attaches moral meaning strictly on the basis of force. Which I do not. Remember above?  ALL rights are instituted and defended - by force.  AKA - Might.  Not might-makes-right -- rather MIGHT MAKES A RIGHT. That's true of both landownership AND LVT.   




> No, it is not, because no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty that slave owners had when slavery was legal.


See what you did there?  Look at that question-begging (assuming the conclusion in the premises - emphasis mine)

_...no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty_

See that? You slipped in your normative "rights to liberty" - as if that kind of right, as you meant it, had already been established. You took your normative dissenting mental seed of what you believe OUGHT to be a right, one that is NOT current law, and therefore NOT a recognized right, and enthroned it in your sentence - the assumption concluded - as if it was.  




> Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right",
> 			
> 		
> 
> Question begging fallacy.


No, I was calling you out on your question begging fallacy, wherein you refer to a deprivation of land use as a deprivation of a "liberty right". That's question begging on your part, as you state your normative assumption (your mental seed of what OUGHT to be a right) as if it was already a positive.  How is what I wrote question begging?  Untying your logical knot is not the same as tying a knot.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I demolished Rothbard's idiotic anti-geoist screed long ago:
> 
> http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/.../msg00098.html
> https://groups.google.com/group/sci....915e37c?hl=en&


That doesn't "demolish" anything.  All you do is claim xyz to be "nonsense", etc.  You, as usual, don't "prove" _anything_.  It's Rothbard who did the demolishing there.

----------


## Roy L

> That doesn't "demolish" anything.


You are just lying.  I demolished Rothbard's stupid crap utterly.  And more, I showed, virtually sentence by sentence, that his "arguments" were nothing but absurd, dishonest garbage that no one over the age of six could possibly believe or take seriously.



> All you do is claim xyz to be "nonsense", etc.


Identifying stupid, absurd, dishonest nonsense as such IS demolishing it.  Just as one example, his claim that LVT would raise no revenue IS nonsense.  LITERALLY nonsense.  It is absurd and idiotic.



> You, as usual, don't "prove" _anything_.


Lie.  I proved his claims were absurd and dishonest.  Claiming I didn't demolish Rothbard cannot alter the fact that I did.



> It's Rothbard who did the demolishing there.


ROTFL!!  Learn how to read.  Or think.  Or something.

----------


## Roy L

> ...as would be, not coincidentally, an LVT regime.


Correct.  As I have stated repeatedly, there is no way to allocate exclusive tenure to land but by force.  It is impossible.



> You see that force is used to defend landownership rights (as recognized and codified),


<sigh>  Question-begging fallacy.  If recognition and codification created rights, there would never have been any basis for challenging slavery.



> but seem to gloss over the fact that the exact same force would be used to institute and enforce LVT law.


As usual, you have to lie about what I have plainly written.  I have stated repeatedly that there is no way to allocate exclusive land tenure but by force.  You know that.



> So what? It's a use of force in both cases, and therefore a wash, and not at issue.


ROTFL!!  By that "logic," the protection racketeer and the police both use force, so that's a wash, too, and not at issue.



> That wasn't the argument at all,


Yes, actually, it was.



> and you are still begging the question, arguing from your own premise.


All arguments are from premises, duh.  I have shown that my premises are objectively correct, while yours are objectively false.



> A cause of action contrary to local law is a two-edged sword.


Unless you have some weird redefinition in mind, it's a bald contradiction.



> If local law is LVT-based, I could say that I have a cause of action contrary to local law -- that I am forcibly deprived of a right to own land (my normative).


But that would merely be another question-begging fallacy.  You could with equal "logic" claim that you are deprived of a "right" to own slaves.



> You are claiming the reverse (from the positive reality that LVT is not the current regime) that you have a cause of action that you are forcibly excluded from land you want to use (your normative).


I think it is more accurate to call it what it is: a forcible, uncompensated removal of my liberty.



> They are two mutually exclusive propositions - _either of which could be codified and recognized as a right_ - to the exclusion of another would-be right.


No, you are just trying to play it deuces wild by claiming that rights are not based on anything, merely "codified and recognized."  That is the legalistic fallacy.



> You want your normative ("ought") to be recognized as the de facto positive, based on your rationale.  I want the exact opposite.


But I can support my views with fact and logic, while you cannot.



> But that isn't what establishes a right.


True.  So, what do you imagine does?



> Again, your rationale, your normatives, based on how you personally interpret "rights to life and liberty".  All BOTH of our arguments depend on our interpretation of what OUGHT to be rights, which would in turn dictate which entity (government or individuals) have legal recognition of property in land.   Again a wash.


It would only be a wash if we both had equal factual and logical support for our views.  We don't.  My views are based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their logical implications, while yours are based on nothing but your desire for unearned wealth.



> That's true, and my point entirely.  Neither did yours - at any time.


You chopped up the context so I can't tell what you are talking about.



> Right, as in "morally right" (the context you quoted) is an internal judgment.


No, it is not.  That is a commonly held but mistaken notion.  Right is not subjective, it is merely an aspect of objective reality that may change according to circumstances, and is difficult to discern.



> By "valid", I only mean "in keeping with the law", or "not contrary to [state] law".  I think that was obvious enough.


Yes, it WAS obvious enough: by "valid," you just meant the validity slavery had when slavery was legal.



> No, that would be both your equivocation and composition fallacy in one.  A natural cave sealed by rock may not have armed guards or police threatening violence and use of force if I attempt to enter.  A bank building most certainly would.


Exactly my point: the "force" that the prospective user of the land under the bank would have to use is not the kind of force the armed guards and police use to stop him from doing so.  Your claim that they are the same is a blatant equivocation fallacy.



> An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular, but an argument that states the premise as the conclusion is, by definition, circular.


No, that is question begging.



> And your arguments are chock full of those, to wit:  "_But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty._"  That's just one example of nothing but question begging and presumptive circular reasoning.


Nonsense.  It just reminds you that claiming to be motivated by "principle" is not an argument. 



> Hardly.  All rights exist first as mental seeds,


No, they do not.  There must be something in reality to create that mental seed.  It can't and doesn't come from nowhere.



> and not only in the minds of dissenters.


Wrong.  By definition, before it is codified and recognized, only dissenters see the rationale for it.



> Might-makes-right is a fallacy wherein one attaches moral meaning strictly on the basis of force. Which I do not.


Yes, actually, you do.  You believe forcible appropriation of land confers a moral right to deprive others of their liberty to use it.  That is the only basis for your claims.



> Remember above?  ALL rights are instituted and defended - by force.


No, that is _not_ what was said above, and it is certainly not true.  Exclusive LAND tenure -- which is NOT a right -- can only be instituted and defended by force.  THAT is what was said above.  The genuine and valid property right in products of labor is instituted by recognition that it is in the interest of all.



> AKA - Might.  Not might-makes-right -- rather MIGHT MAKES A RIGHT.


Blatant self-contradiction.



> That's true of both landownership AND LVT.


Because neither of those are RIGHTS.  Landownership is merely a _means_ land thieves use to take wealth from producers and contribute nothing in return.  LVT is a _means_ society can use to secure and reconcile people's equal liberty rights wrt land -- in fact, it is the only possible means to do so while securing the producer's right to property in the fixed improvements he makes.



> See what you did there?  Look at that question-begging (assuming the conclusion in the premises - emphasis mine)


I did nothing of the sort.



> _...no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law [U]to remove others' rights to liberty_
> 
> See that? You slipped in your normative "rights to liberty" - as if that kind of right, as you meant it, had already been established.


Of course it has already been established.  Our ancestors indisputably lived by that right for millions of years.  They could not have existed without it.  It is the removal of that right by landowning that has yet to be established as rightful -- and it won't and can't be.



> You took your normative dissenting mental seed of what you believe OUGHT to be a right, one that is NOT current law, and therefore NOT a recognized right, and enthroned it in your sentence - the assumption concluded - as if it was.


No, I pointed out that in _FACT_, landowning _removes_ a right that is _already_ recognized.  Landowning has simply been inserted into law by landowners to provide a legal pretext for their greed, parasitism and evil, and the productive have been stupid and cowardly enough to go along with it on the assumption that it must somehow be justifiable, though it has never actually been justified.  You just have to refuse to know that fact, as you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.



> No, I was calling you out on your question begging fallacy, wherein you refer to a deprivation of land use as a deprivation of a "liberty right".


That is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality, not a fallacy.  The right to liberty is simply assumed, for legal purposes, to have been removed _rightly_.  That is why Locke and others have sought to justify landowning by fallacious and historically naive and laughable arguments about "homesteading."



> That's question begging on your part, as you state your normative assumption (your mental seed of what OUGHT to be a right) as if it was already a positive.


Garbage.  It is indisputable that our ancestors used land non-exclusively by pure right of liberty, without owning it, for millions of years.  How was that universal human right, by which all human beings lived until a few thousand years ago, rightly removed?  You need to explain that, and you can't.



> How is what I wrote question begging?  Untying your logical knot is not the same as tying a knot.


It is question begging because you merely ASSUME that the human right to liberty that our ancestors indisputably enjoyed has somehow rightly been removed, without providing any credible basis for such a claim.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> <sigh>  Question-begging fallacy.  If recognition and codification created rights, there would never have been any basis for challenging slavery.


No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds.  Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them.  Without exception.  




> I have stated repeatedly that there is no way to allocate exclusive land tenure but by force.  You know that.


Ah, but my point was that what YOU are advocating is no different, as there is no way to implement LVT except by use of that exact same force, and yet you attack landownership on the basis that force is used -- as if you've actually said something meaningful, or that distinguishes it in some way from LVT, when it does not. 




> ROTFL!!  By that "logic," the protection racketeer and the police both use force, so that's a wash, too, and not at issue.


You don't get it, do you?  To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers -- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT.  So yes, if the protection racketeer became organized enough to defeat both the police and the military - to stage a coup that overthrew the existing government, a new "government" would be born, as might makes, not right, but new "rights". Nothing magical or mysterious there. 




> You could with equal "logic" claim that you are deprived of a "right" to own slaves.


Yes, I could, and with that exact logic.  If I had a mental seed planted that made me feel entitled to someone else's labor, I could push for it to be a right - including slavery (in all its myriad forms).  That would not make it right (or wrong), as those are moral pronouncements.  But it could be the basis of a newly recognized and codified legal right. 




> I think it is more accurate to call it what it is: a forcible, uncompensated removal of my liberty.


That would make it precisely accurate to yours and others' paradigms, and contrary - wholly inaccurate - to mine.  




> No, you are just trying to play it deuces wild by claiming that rights are not based on anything, merely "codified and recognized."  That is the legalistic fallacy.


I'm pretty much stating reality.  In China I have the right to do things that I do not have the right to do in the US -- and vice versa.  There is no universal standard when it comes to rights, nor can there be.  At best we try to persuade using our normatives, and hope that it will eventually equate to enough force (a plurality of votes even) to have them recognized and codified despite the dissenters who see it otherwise.  Again, no magic, no mystery to it. It's all subjective normatives and brute force.  




> But I can support my views with fact and logic, while you cannot.


Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic.  Can't accept that at all. How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?   




> My views are based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their logical implications, while yours are based on nothing but your desire for unearned wealth.


Is this where I'm supposed to say I'm rubber and you're glue?




> Right is not subjective, it is merely an aspect of objective reality that may change according to circumstances, and is difficult to discern.


Yes, and you keep telling yourself that.  The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up.  I personally "believe" in the concepts of right and wrong - and I personally don't think they are difficult at all to discern (not even a tiny bit). I even "believe" (note the root - belief) in such a thing as universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc.,.  However, I also "recognize" (acknowledge, stipulate) that my discernment, my conclusions about what is right and wrong differ from those of many others, including you, whom I "believe" also hold their differing, often contradictory, views in earnest.  That alone is evidence to me that while "right" may not be subjective, our human discernment most definitely is.   You and I each have taken the position that our view is "right" and the others' wrong/evil.   Big deal, what's new? Welcome to politics, as you try to manifest your mental seed - what you believe to be "right" - as something that is recognized and codified by others, and defended by force. 




> Exactly my point: the "force" that the prospective user of the land under the bank would have to use is not the kind of force the armed guards and police use to stop him from doing so.


Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime. Suddenly the same police, the same guards which kept him out under a non-LVT regime, are potentially on his side.  Where they were once keeping him out, now they are there, potentially, to remove the previous owner and let the new occupier in. Happens all the time, as would-be criminals become patriots and heroes, and vice versa, as power shifts, and might makes a whole new set of rights. 

A classic example: Eisenhower federalizes the entire Arkansas National Guard in one day. The very troops used to block integration are suddenly the same troops that are there to enforce it.  No equivocation to it. 




> There must be something in reality to create that mental seed.  It can't and doesn't come from nowhere.


Yes, there is external stimulus from which all mental seeds are derived. We both look at the same thing and come away with different, not always incorrect or mutually exclusive, conclusions.  So what?  You could even say, "Yes, but my conclusion is based on indisputable reality and logic, while yours is not." And it wouldn't mean a thing in and of itself (even though you make this very assertion ad nauseam).  

I see land, and the need for land to survive on Earth, and I want the capacity for access to and OWNERSHIP of land - recognized and codified as a right - not a conditional privilege - for everyone.   You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right - one that is mutually exclusive of landownership.  But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS).  You seem to believe that your concept of right and rights are matters of objective physical reality - and I see that as delusional on your part. Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.   




> Yes, actually, you do.  You believe forcible appropriation of land confers a moral right to deprive others of their liberty to use it.  That is the only basis for your claims.


Wrong. I always, without fail, draw a sharp distinction between what I know is a legal right, and what I believe to be morally right or wrong.  My ability to forcibly appropriate land is a legal right that I have now - one that I only HAPPEN to believe is a moral right.  But I do not believe the legal right CONFERRED the moral right.  In my mind, as in yours, I believe, the "moral right", whatever we each believe that it to be, is always independent of the legal right.  So you are incorrect in the absolute, and have it completely backwards.  I do not believe that forcible appropriation CONFERS a moral right. Rather, it was the belief in a moral right that CONFERRED my willingness to forcibly appropriate. 




> Exclusive LAND tenure -- which is NOT a right -- can only be instituted and defended by force.


No, it is not a LEGAL right (be specific in your meaning - don't conflate moral and legal as if they were one and the same). Not yet. But it may become such in North Dakota. The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.  




> The genuine and valid property right in products of labor is instituted by recognition that it is in the interest of all.


"genuine and valid" and "interest of all" - both collectivist gibberish sentiments - both absolutely, completely, and at all times subjective.

----------


## furface

Roy's right to a certain extent. Land has a natural collective aspect to it.  However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership.  Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.

What's the alternative? Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats?  Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats? 

In a sense it all has to do with control.  Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually.  Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.

Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time.  I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals.  I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though.  And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.  

This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles.  For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you.  Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either.  They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help.  It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.

----------


## Roy L

> However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership.


Oh, really?  Does it benefit slaves to enforce private property ownership?  If the government decided to issue a title deed to the atmosphere as well as the land, so the airlords could charge us all rent for air to breathe, would it benefit everybody to enforce private ownership of that property?

You need to stop typing and start thinking.



> Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.


That depends entirely on what those possessions are, as proved above.  Hong Kong proves that society does just fine without any private property in land.  In fact, it does a lot better than many societies where private property in land is well established and enforced, such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Guatemala, Pakistan, etc.



> What's the alternative?


Liberty, justice and prosperity are one alternative I would support.



> Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats?


No, let the free market decide the most appropriate and productive use.



> Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats?


<sigh>  There are, in this world, certain people who like to claim that tax revenue is "given to" government officials, as if they were spending it on themselves rather than for public purposes and benefit as determined by (however admittedly imperfect) democratic processes.  Those people are called, "stupid, evil, lying sacks of $#!+."



> Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually.


Like control of WMDs....?

Stop typing.  Start thinking.  It's time.



> Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.


Nope.  Flat wrong, as the contrast between Hong Kong and Third World $#!+-holes like Pakistan, Guatemala and the Philippines proves.  

All governments administer possession and use of land.  That's what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.  The only question is, will government exercise that authority in the interest of, and to secure and reconcile the equal human rights of, all the people, or will it do so only in the narrow financial interests of a small, idle, wealthy, privileged, greedy, parasitic landowning elite?



> Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time.


That's OK.  I can fix ignorance.  Stupidity and dishonesty are the problems I can't fix.



> I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals.  I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though.


See above.  The claim that government revenue is "given to" government bureaucrats is not only false and absurd, it is cretinous and dishonest.



> And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.


OMG.  You saw the answer, you even specifically IDENTIFIED it, and you didn't even notice: the cost of land rent is FIXED.  You cannot increase it or reduce it by government fiat.  All you can do is give it away to private landowners in return for nothing, or recover it to pay for the public services and infrastructure that create it in the first place.  And giving it away to landowners just means the productive not only have to pay that much more for land, but must also pay that much more in _other taxes_ to make up for government's failure to recover the land rent its spending creates.  Look at what has happened in CA since Prop 13 slashed property taxes: not only has the cost of buying a home soared out of reach of ordinary working people, the cost of all taxes other than property taxes has soared by a similar amount.  AND THAT WAS INEVITABLE.

*ANY LAND RENT THAT IS LEFT IN LANDOWNERS' HANDS DOES NOT REDUCE TOTAL COSTS FOR HOMEOWNERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES, IT INCREASES THEM.*



> This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles.


Giving money to the idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic rich in return for nothing is far from being a novel economic concept -- though I suppose the kind of big, greedy, evil corporate real estate interests that have profited so astronomically at the expense of ordinary Californians since Proposition 13 could be considered "interesting" circles.



> For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you.


But somehow, it should help corporate landowning interests and mortgage lenders take it away from you...?



> Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either.


LVT would be enormously favorable to the productive, including small farmers and small business people.  You just don't know enough economics to understand why.  As for "targeting homeowners," which California homeowners do you think have been "targeted": the few dozen a year who decided to pocket large, tax-free capital gains by selling their homes and seeking accommodation better suited to their needs and means before Proposition 13, or the MILLIONS who are literally _losing_ not only their homes but their life savings and being booted into the gutter since Prop 13 slashed property taxes?  You don't know enough economics to understand why Prop 13 made the current disaster for CA homeowners inevitable, but I do.



> They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help.


Wrong.  As landowners, they are being parasites on government and the community, because the value of land is precisely equal to the minimum value of what the landowner expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.



> It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.


Stop lying.  If people didn't want those services, they would not be willing to pay _landowners_ such astronomical sums for access to them.

----------


## furface

Note to thread.  I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.

----------


## Roy L

> Note to thread.  I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.


Is that your way of saying that you know you have been refuted and have no answers, but you decline, merely on that account, to reconsider your proved-false beliefs?

----------


## Roy L

> No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds.


No, I proved they* can't* begin as "mental seeds."  They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds."  There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact.  If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.



> Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them.  Without exception.


<yawn>  I thought we had agreed that legal rights are not relevant, as slavery proved?



> Ah, but my point was that what YOU are advocating is no different, as there is no way to implement LVT except by use of that exact same force, and yet you attack landownership on the basis that force is used -- as if you've actually said something meaningful, or that distinguishes it in some way from LVT, when it does not.


No, you are just lying again, Steven.  I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used.  I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them.  What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk.  Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.



> To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers


No, of course they weren't.  You are just lying again.



> -- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT.


That is not what protection racketeers do, and you know it.

You just always have to lie.



> So yes, if the protection racketeer became organized enough to defeat both the police and the military - to stage a coup that overthrew the existing government, a new "government" would be born, as might makes, not right, but new "rights". Nothing magical or mysterious there.


Nothing truthful, either.  Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military.  They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable.  They have no interest in overthrowing or being the government, because unlike you, protection racketeers are honest enough to know the fact that takers depend on producers to produce something worth taking.



> Yes, I could, and with that exact logic.


??  Right.  And as we already know there can be no right to own slaves, we know that logic is fallacious, with no further argument needed.



> If I had a mental seed planted that made me feel entitled to someone else's labor, I could push for it to be a right - including slavery (in all its myriad forms).  That would not make it right (or wrong), as those are moral pronouncements.  But it could be the basis of a newly recognized and codified legal right.


Thank you for admitting that you have no more basis for your claim of a "right" to own land than there is for a "right" to own slaves.  You just conceded the whole debate.



> That would make it precisely accurate to yours and others' paradigms, and contrary - wholly inaccurate - to mine.


So in fact, you also agree that your "paradigm" is contrary to objective fact.  Good.



> I'm pretty much stating reality.


No, you are dodging the issue and the facts by using the legalistic fallacy.



> In China I have the right to do things that I do not have the right to do in the US -- and vice versa.  There is no universal standard when it comes to rights, nor can there be.


OK, so you also agree that your views cannot be reconciled with any universal standard of human rights.  You intend to violate others' rights, and you see nothing wrong with that.  Check.



> At best we try to persuade using our normatives, and hope that it will eventually equate to enough force (a plurality of votes even) to have them recognized and codified despite the dissenters who see it otherwise.  Again, no magic, no mystery to it. It's all subjective normatives and brute force.


OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.

What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.



> Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic.


No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.



> Can't accept that at all.


I know.  I have told you many times that you refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.



> How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?


That's what we're doing, Steven.  And you have been demolished, utterly.



> Is this where I'm supposed to say I'm rubber and you're glue?


That would be a step up from the standard of your usual "arguments."



> Yes, and you keep telling yourself that.


If it were not the case, our discussion would make no sense.  There would be no point in just shouting our arbitrary opinions at each other.  You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.



> The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up.


No, it trips up those who are not as discerning as I.



> I personally "believe" in the concepts of right and wrong - and I personally don't think they are difficult at all to discern (not even a tiny bit).


Oh, really?  How do you discern when someone is capable of giving consent to sexual relations?  How do you discern the difference between a victim of fraud and a victim of their own foolishness and greed?



> I even "believe" (note the root - belief)


I note that claiming belief is the root of belief is a blatant circular reasoning fallacy.



> in such a thing as universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc.,.  However, I also "recognize" (acknowledge, stipulate) that my discernment, my conclusions about what is right and wrong differ from those of many others, including you, whom I "believe" also hold their differing, often contradictory, views in earnest.  That alone is evidence to me that while "right" may not be subjective, our human discernment most definitely is.   You and I each have taken the position that our view is "right" and the others' wrong/evil.   Big deal, what's new? Welcome to politics, as you try to manifest your mental seed - what you believe to be "right" - as something that is recognized and codified by others, and defended by force.


As above.  You have realized you cannot defend your views, and have retreated to a position that others' views can be no more defensible than yours.  But they can.



> Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime.


No, you are just trying to change the subject to get away with your equivocation.  He has no interest in LVT.  He just wants to use the land, and has the equipment needed to do so.  You just have to refuse to know the fact that the force he proposes to use -- the bulldozer, excavator, etc. -- is entirely different from the force the police and guards propose to use: violence.



> Suddenly the same police, the same guards which kept him out under a non-LVT regime, are potentially on his side.  Where they were once keeping him out, now they are there, potentially, to remove the previous owner and let the new occupier in. Happens all the time, as would-be criminals become patriots and heroes, and vice versa, as power shifts, and might makes a whole new set of rights.


You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.



> A classic example: Eisenhower federalizes the entire Arkansas National Guard in one day. The very troops used to block integration are suddenly the same troops that are there to enforce it.  No equivocation to it.


Of course there is an equivocation.  See above.



> Yes, there is external stimulus from which all mental seeds are derived. We both look at the same thing and come away with different, not always incorrect or mutually exclusive, conclusions.  So what?


So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.



> You could even say, "Yes, but my conclusion is based on indisputable reality and logic, while yours is not." And it wouldn't mean a thing in and of itself (even though you make this very assertion ad nauseam).


I make that "assertion" because it is in fact correct.



> I see land, and the need for land to survive on Earth, and I want the capacity for access to and OWNERSHIP of land - recognized and codified as a right - not a conditional privilege - for everyone.


But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive.  Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it.  People need land to survive on earth, just as you said; but when the land is owned, they must pay a landowner for that access, or die.  They therefore can have no recognized or codified right of access to or ownership of land.  They have nothing but the conditional "privilege" -- actually an unchosen obligation forced upon them by violent, aggressive, physical coercion -- of paying a landowner for it.



> You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right


No, you are lying about what I have plainly written.  I want the right to liberty codified because of the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective reality I perceive, not the other way around.



> - one that is mutually exclusive of landownership.


For the logically indisputable reason given above.



> But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS).


No.  I have based my normative views on positive facts.



> You seem to believe that your concept of right and rights are matters of objective physical reality - and I see that as delusional on your part.


OTC, it is self-evidently and indisputably delusional to think you can recognize and codify a right by recognizing and codifying a "right" to remove it.



> Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.


See above.  The fixity of land's supply is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality.  The fact that owning land removes others' liberty to access and use it is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality.  These are merely facts that you have decided not to know, because you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.



> Wrong. I always, without fail, draw a sharp distinction between what I know is a legal right, and what I believe to be morally right or wrong.


No, you merely assert that there is a difference, and then proceed to base the latter on the former.



> My ability to forcibly appropriate land is a legal right that I have now - one that I only HAPPEN to believe is a moral right.  But I do not believe the legal right CONFERRED the moral right.  In my mind, as in yours, I believe, the "moral right", whatever we each believe that it to be, is always independent of the legal right.  So you are incorrect in the absolute, and have it completely backwards.  I do not believe that forcible appropriation CONFERS a moral right. Rather, it was the belief in a moral right that CONFERRED my willingness to forcibly appropriate.


But as we have seen, your belief in that right is logically self-contradictory, and in fact, it is based on nothing but your own desire for unearned wealth.



> No, it is not a LEGAL right (be specific in your meaning - don't conflate moral and legal as if they were one and the same).


You know I meant it's not a moral right.



> But it may become such in North Dakota.


Nonsense.  Do you really imagine that if ND abolishes property taxes, land titles will somehow become immune to legal process for satisfaction of debts, including OTHER tax liabilities and (especially) mortgage payments?  Talk about delusional.



> The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.


Right.  The only question is, will that force be exerted to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all, or only to serve the narrow financial interests of a small, wealthy, idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite?



> "genuine and valid" and "interest of all" - both collectivist gibberish sentiments - both absolutely, completely, and at all times subjective.


That is an absurd lie.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, I proved they* can't* begin as "mental seeds."


You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.  




> They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds." There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact.


Let me unravel your confusion.  There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective).  For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact.  What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.  




> If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.


LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.  

A mental seed is nothing more than "taking thought" - making an observation and drawing a conclusion about a thing.   It can happen before or after the fact.  Before the fact:  You see something, find it desirable, and conclude that you want it.  After the fact: You take/have something without having taken prior thought (you find a gold nugget on the ground), and afterward concluded why you should keep it.   Before or after, it doesn't matter.  It takes a mental seed to establish ANY right.  And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.  




> I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used.  I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them.  What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk.  Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.


Compensation (a "right" thereto) not establishedRights violated (not established)Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)"Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.




> Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military.  They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable.


Protection racketeers that are able to DEPEND ON the police and military have, in a very real way, defeated them, making the police and military part and parcel to protection racketeers.   In your mind defense of landownership is a protection racket (for landowners), while in my mind LVT is a protection racket (for elitists that control and suckle on productivity in the name of a nebulous collective). 




> OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.


That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one.  To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned".  That's your "deserving" trap.  "Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land, and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively.  That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing. 




> What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.


Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?  

Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership).  Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT?  And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic. 




> No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.


With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other.  But it's gibberish. 

BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.  




> You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.


Actually, that's my charge to you.  I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane.  You, on the other hand, are.  That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from. 




> You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.


Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede.  Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force.  You just happen to believe that in your particular case the end justifies the means.  Welcome to the club, nothing special about that, nothing to see here.  




> So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.


I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR CONCEPTS of right and wrong.  That's your error, not mine.  If either of us have a FALSE CONCEPT of right and wrong, it can hardly be considered "objective".  I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong, and that they are INDEPENDENT of OUR CONCEPTS, our conclusions about them.  So you're wrong. I don't engage in false choice fallacies.  Even if I proved you were "wrong" about a thing I am not so dense as to suppose that would make me "right by default - as if my concept was the only alternative left. So no, it's not that we both can't be right - more that _we could both be wrong_.  Capice? 




> But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive.  Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it.


At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removed. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION.  It is neither recognized nor codified, and therefore not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do.  So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:




> "Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' *rights of* access to it."


Remove the words "rights of" and the statement is factually correct. Landownership does inherently remove others' ACCESS to that land.  Leave the words "RIGHTS OF" in there, and it is a complete, bald-faced lie - absolutely, objectively, indisputably, factually incorrect wherever no such "RIGHT" exists (except in your mind - as a "mental seed").  Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.

----------


## Roy L

> You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.


You are lying.  I have proved my statements derive from objective fact while yours are objectively false.



> Let me unravel your confusion.


Prediction: you will now lie.



> There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective).  For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact.  What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.


There is no "qualifier" there.  You just have to refuse to know the facts, and ignore the logical contradictions in your position.  It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land.  If you believe, as I do, that people have a _right_ to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right.  You just do not believe in the right to liberty.  It's that simple.



> LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.


Lie.  Religions are not based on facts of economics, and you know it.



> And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.


No.  Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies.  They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, _especially conceptual language and economic exchange_.  But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.



> [*]Compensation (a "right" thereto) not established


Denying is not refuting.  Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.



> [*]Rights violated (not established)


If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.



> [*]Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)


Refuted above.  Our hunter-gather and nomadic herding ancestors had to have rights to own the fruits of their labor and to use land, or they could not have survived.  Once fixed improvements become a significant factor, those rights need to be reconciled. You need to explain why our ancestors had rights to use land, but we don't.  And you can't.



> [*]"Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)


You are just lying.  Any ordinary understanding of the English word, "justice" includes the concept of just deserts: rewards commensurate with contributions, and penalties commensurate with deprivations.  Landowning violates the basic principle of just deserts by enabling the landowner to deprive others of their liberty without suffering any penalty, and to obtain wealth without making any contribution to its production.



> [*]Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.


Lie.  The conclusions are objective facts.  It is an objective fact that the landowner qua landowner takes a portion of production without contributing to production.  It is an objective fact that he deprives others of the liberty they would otherwise enjoy.



> A protection racketeers that is able to DEPEND ON the police and military has, in a very real way, defeated them.


Nonsense. You are just trying to equivocate on the word, "defeat," which you intended in the military sense.



> That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one.  To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned".  That's your "deserving" trap.


Justice is about _nothing but_ deserving.  You just want to ignore considerations of justice, because your beliefs are diametrically opposed to justice.



> "Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land,


That is nothing but an arbitrary and subjective assertion on your part, with absolutely no basis in fact.  Indeed it is contrary to fact. In the only reliably attested historical examples of homesteading, earning was most definitely a criterion for homesteading.



> and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively.  That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing.


It definitely means something, and you know it.  It is just something that you have to keep out of your brain, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.



> Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?


I will continue to identify the facts and their logical implications.



> Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership).  Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT?


Because to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor is government's JOB.



> And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic.


There is nothing circular about it, and you might want to have a look at what the American Founders said about liberty, rights and justice.  Thomas Paine, for example.



> With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other.  But it's gibberish.


No, combining the positive and normative is the only way society can function.  That is exactly what law does.  Hello?



> BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.


Lie.  One line is often sufficient to identify and refute your fallacies.

See?



> Actually, that's my charge to you.  I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane.


But they are accurate, so I will continue to use them.



> You, on the other hand, are.  That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from.


<yawn>  Google "emotivism" and start reading.



> Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede.  Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force.


I have disproved that claim many times.



> You just happen to believe that the end justifies the means.


Arbitrary and unsupported claim.



> I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR concepts of right and wrong.


I know you didn't.  But there is.



> That's your error, not mine.


It is not an error.  If you think about it, it's self-evident (unless you deny evolution, and think human nature is simply a decision taken by God for His own reasons).



> I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong that is INDEPENDENT of our concepts, our conclusions about them.


Now that really _is_ gibberish.



> So you're wrong. It's not that we both can't be right - more that _we could both be wrong_.


That was implied by my statement.  You just don't know enough logic -- and it's not much -- to realize that.



> At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removes. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION.  It is neither recognized nor codified,


False.  Law is full of recognized and codified rights of access to land, such as easements, rights of way, etc.  You are just objectively wrong.  As usual.



> and therefor not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do.  So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:
> 
> "Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' *rights of* access to it." - that statement is factually incorrect - a complete lie wherever no such "RIGHT" exists.  Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.


That's the legalistic fallacy again.  By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land.


Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others.  I _believe_ justly so, you _believe_ unjustly so. 




> If you believe, as I do, that people have a _right_ to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right.  You just do not believe in the right to liberty.  It's that simple.


Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact.  This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to _this type of liberty_, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I _believe_ it should be, is not. 

So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours) that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to _that kind of_ liberty.  See that?  Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.      

You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word.  I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket.  I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty".  That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.   

I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage.  I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will.  I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.  

Does that mean I am opposed to liberty?  No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.  




> No.  Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies.  They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, _especially conceptual language and economic exchange_.  But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.


Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement, and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions.  Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum. Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion. 




> Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.


Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum?  You didn't. Go back up and read. Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.   




> If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.


Again, stop trying wriggling past that one.  Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty".  You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good. 




> That's the legalistic fallacy again.  By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.


Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- _normatively speaking_ (the OUGHT of it all).   They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy, because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force). I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote). That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.

----------


## Roy L

> Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others.  I _believe_ justly so, you _believe_ unjustly so.


Right.  You believe that the bandit in the pass is simply exercising his valid right of landownership when he demands money from the merchant caravans to let them proceed.



> Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact.


Why even bother with such silly lies, Steven?  I've never said the right to liberty is an indisputable fact.  Clearly it isn't, as many people, including you, do not believe in it.  I have stated that the right to liberty is BASED ON objective facts of human nature, and that is not a "face plant" or "attempt to slip in what I believe."  



> This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to _this type of liberty_, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I _believe_ it should be, is not.


Right.  Just as, 200 years ago, the slave's right to liberty of _any_ type was not recognized or codified.



> So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours)


That is an attempt to pretend that you have offered facts and logic in support of your views with weight equivalent to the facts and logic I have offered in support of mine.  But you haven't.



> that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to _that kind of_ liberty.  See that?  Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.


I know you do not believe people have a right to "that kind" of liberty, because that is the kind of liberty that honest people and good dictionaries mean when they use the term, "liberty."  The "kind" of liberty that you mean by "right to liberty" is the kind that enables greedy, idle, privileged parasitic landowners to rob the productive of a quarter of their rightful earnings, and to murder 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year.  You believe the right to liberty is a "right" to pay an extortionist for not exercising his legal authority to prevent one from doing what one would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to do.



> You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word.


No.  You merely oppose the human condition that the word, "liberty" denotes.



> I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket.


No, that is one of your fundamental errors, where you always do a face plant.  You are NOT at liberty to pick my pocket, because I have to be there with a pocket before you can pick it.  I HAVE TO PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY for you to pick my pocket.  If I don't provide you with that opportunity, you_ physically can't_ pick my pocket.  There can be no such thing as a "right" to something others have to provide, because if others aren't there to provide it, you don't and can't have it.  That is why there is a liberty right to use what nature provided (a right our ancestors indisputably exercised for millions of years), but not to use what other people must provide.

You just have to refuse to know these indisputable facts, as you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.



> I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty".  That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.


It is you who are playing fast and loose -- and dishonest -- with the term, as proved above.  



> I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage.


There is nothing false about it, as the invariably slave-like condition of the landless proves in countries where landowning is well established but government does not intercede on behalf of the landless to rescue them from the full effects of landowner privilege.  It is self-evidently and indisputably true in the case of a single landowner:

*"Place one hundred people on an island from which there is no escape. Make one of them the absolute owner of the others -- or the absolute owner of the soil. It will make no difference -- either to owner or to the others -- which one you choose. Either way, one individual will be the absolute master of the other ninety-nine. Denying permission to them to live on the island would force them into the sea." -- Henry George, Progress and Poverty*

And it further makes little difference if the island is all owned by one man or two, or three, or a dozen, save that under several owners the landless would at least be able to escape the arbitrary caprice of a single owner.  But assuming the owners -- one or several -- were rationally self-interested fellows who only wanted the maximum income their ownership of the land could afford, there would be no difference between the one owner and the dozen "competing" owners.  The land market is always a monopoly market, so none of the landowners can do better than to charge the full market rent for all the land they own.  Any attempt to get more just results in some land remaining unused, and his total income declining.  That is in fact what happened in many places where landowners sought to reduce their tenants to absolute poverty and servitude, such as czarist Russia, France under the ancien regime, and Ireland under the English landlords (who committed genocide by starvation against their Irish tenants in the 1840s), and many other historical cases: good land remained vacant, the landowners got less income than they could have, and the tenants were reduced to utter, slave-like destitution.  The good ol' USA provides another example

"During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal army. When the war broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky home for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old negroes, who said to me: "Mas George, you say you sot us free; but 'fore God, I'm wus off than when I belonged to your father." The planters, on the other hand, are contented with the change. They say: "How foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper now than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him well, and were compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their interest and responsibility cease when they have got all the work out of him they can."
-- From a letter by George M Jackson, 1885

I know you have seen that letter before, more than once.  You just have to refuse to know the facts it identifies -- facts which, btw, were well known and widely remarked at the time.



> I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will.  I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.


Oh, but you do, Steven.  You definitely believe that landowners have a right to steal.  I already proved that by the example of the bandit in the pass.  There is absolutely no moral difference between the bandit stealing from the caravans, and the same man proclaiming himself the "owner" of the pass -- or the government proclaiming him the owner -- and making the same demand for the exact same amount of money.  You know this.  Of course you do.  You just have to refuse to know it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.



> Does that mean I am opposed to liberty?  No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.


You are only in favor of the type of "liberty" that results in the privileged being legally at liberty to rob the productive by forcibly depriving them of their liberty.



> Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement,


Lie.



> and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions.  Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum.


When observed empirical facts prove your beliefs are false and evil, you delete those facts from your brain.  Simple.



> Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion.


Do you believe animal behavior can be studied scientifically, and understood by establishing how it confers a survival or  reproductive advantage?  Well, human beings are animals.



> Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum?  You didn't.


More accurately, you didn't show there _was_ any "original conundrum" in anything I said.  OTC, the "original conundrum" is all yours: you can't justify the forcible removal of people's rights to liberty -- rights they indisputably had and exercised before they were removed by landowning -- and neither can anyone else, and lots of people much smarter than you have tried.



> Go back up and read.


The stench of your evil, dishonest garbage is not lessened by repeated exposure.



> Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.


Legalistic fallacy again.  A "right" to "liberty" that denies one the liberty to breathe atmospheric air, to drink from a natural spring, or to use the land and resources nature provided to provide oneself with food is a right without content, and nothing but an evil lie.



> Again, stop trying wriggling past that one.


Again, stop lying about what I have plainly written.  I can be accused of many things, but "wriggling" is not one of them.  And you know it.



> Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty".  You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good.


I realize you oppose liberty.



> Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- _normatively speaking_ (the OUGHT of it all).


Based on what?  Why did they have a right to liberty?



> They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy,


It is a legalistic fallacy when you claim the landless's lack of a legal right to liberty means they have no right to liberty.



> because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force).


Throughout this and the previous LVT thread, you have done nothing but confuse them.



> I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote).


You are lying, Steven.  I have never had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make the distinction between legal and natural rights.  OTC, I have had to remind you dozens of times that legal rights are IRRELEVANT to this discussion, because it is about CHANGING THE LAW, and any appeal to legal rights is automatically a question-begging fallacy.



> That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.


It's the other way around, duh.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I know you do not believe people have a right to "that kind" of liberty, because that is the kind of liberty that honest people and good dictionaries mean when they use the term, "liberty."  The "kind" of liberty that you mean by "right to liberty" is the kind that enables greedy, idle, privileged parasitic landowners to rob the productive of a quarter of their rightful earnings, and to murder 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year.  You believe the right to liberty is a "right" to pay an extortionist for not exercising his legal authority to prevent one from doing what one would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to do.


Now you're getting it.  My land. As a greedy, privileged parasitic landowner, I intend to steal and exclusively hold a small parcel for myself, and exclude everyone else who would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to use it.  And I also intend not to compensate the community for any part it might have played in "soaking value" into my land.  My gain. And the gubmint - I lubs me some good non-LVT gubmint, because I can chip in a little here and there along with others to get some commonly used infrastructure from it. As a bonus, my gubmint-which-I-lubs  will provide all the force I need to be the lone parasite on my particular plot of land - which I own - thus forcibly excluding others from access to it without any compensation to them for their deprivations.  Furthermore, I might charge extort some rent - some unearned value - for others to use it, thus further contributing to the murders if 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year.  

Cause that's how we mountain pass parasitic landowner bandits roll, Roy.

----------


## Roy L

> As a greedy, privileged parasitic landowner, I intend to steal and exclusively hold a small parcel for myself, and exclude everyone else who would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to use it.


Well, at last: an honest statement of fact from you.



> And I also intend not to compensate the community for any part it might have played in "soaking value" into my land.  My gain.


At others' expense.  Check.



> And the gubmint - I lubs me some good non-LVT gubmint, because I can chip in a little here and there along with others to get some commonly used infrastructure from it.


Infrastructure that is "commonly used" -- but that the productive must pay landowners full market value for if they want access to it, as well as paying the taxes that fund it, so that the landowners can pocket one of those payments in return for nothing.  Check.



> As a bonus, my gubmint-which-I-lubs  will provide all the force I need to be the lone parasite on my particular plot of land - which I own - thus forcibly excluding others from access to it without any compensation to them for their deprivations.  Furthermore, I might charge extort some rent - some unearned value - for others to use it, thus further contributing to the murders if 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year.  
> 
> Cause that's how we mountain pass parasitic landowner bandits roll, Roy.


I know, and that is what I have been telling you for 250-odd pages.  Thanks for finally admitting it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I know, and that is what I have been telling you for 250-odd pages.  Thanks for finally admitting it.


It was the least I could do, given all your utter clarity in pointing out all the indisputable facts of objective reality, which of course could only point one to a single common conclusion - assuming they don't refuse to know facts as you do...which are, of course, indisputable facts of objective reality. So yeah, I figure that taking a good measure of value from that infrastructure creating and value-infusing community - gaining at their collective expense without any compensation to anyone, and even charging for use of that land and pocketing payments in return for nothing - that seems like a good investment to me. It's something I hope to protect as a matter of right, because it is a great deal for me, anyway, no matter how many people are out of pocket, deprived and uncompensated as a result, and regardless how many millions of innocent people it enslaves and/or kills each year. Year after year.

----------


## Roy L

> It was the least I could do, given all your utter clarity in pointing out all the indisputable facts of objective reality, which of course could only point one to a single common conclusion - assuming they don't refuse to know facts as you do...which are, of course, indisputable facts of objective reality. So yeah, I figure that taking a good measure of value from that infrastructure creating and value-infusing community - gaining at their collective expense without any compensation to anyone, and even charging for use of that land and pocketing payments in return for nothing - that seems like a good investment to me. It's something I hope to protect as a matter of right, because it is a great deal for me, anyway, no matter how many people are out of pocket, deprived and uncompensated as a result, and regardless how many millions of innocent people it enslaves and/or kills each year. Year after year.


This is wonderful, Steven.  You are really shaking hands with the truth, and enunciating the landowner ethic with remarkable clarity.  I'm impressed.  Congratulations!

----------


## Steven Douglas

> This is wonderful, Steven.  You are really shaking hands with the truth, and enunciating the landowner ethic with remarkable clarity.  I'm impressed.  Congratulations!


Yeah, I figured, what's the harm in a trip down the rabbit hole between old friends?

Meanwhile, I heard Ireland was going to finally going to take the LVT plunge, phasing into LVT by 2013. 

But it doesn't look like the phasing in parts (flat fee and onward into LVT) are being embraced all that well.  A Socialist Tea Party, in Ireland?  Whodathunk!

Well, I guess it doesn't help that it's part of an austerity plan, with the tax strongly recommended by the EU, ECB and IMF.




> http://seamusoriley.blogspot.com/201...tops-here.html
> The charge this year is a flat-fee €100 ($130) per dwelling, but is expected to rise dramatically next year once Ireland starts to vary the charge based on a property's estimated value. Anti-tax campaigners have urged the public to ignore the tax demand, arguing that the government doesn't have the power to collect it.
> 
> Ireland imposed the charge as part of its ongoing negotiations with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, which in 2010 provided Ireland a €67.5 billion ($90 billion) credit line to pay its bills through 2013.


You might want to go to Ireland and remind them about the importance of LVT exemptions for individuals.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

lolz...I think the sarcasm is lost on Roy L.

----------


## redbluepill

> All taxation leads to corruption. The basic premise of taxation is already morally corrupt.


Except it is not really a tax. The landholder pays rent to everyone else for the PRIVILEGE to exclude them from a piece of land.

----------


## redbluepill

> Land only tax, property only tax, any type of tax still relies on coercion, intimidation and force.


Landholding is coercion, intimidation and force.

----------


## redbluepill

> Did you notice he quoted Tolstoy?  Tolstoy was a Christian anarchist and didn't recognize the State as legitimate-thus leaving no mechanism to even collect an LVT.  Deception by omission.  Orwell was a socialist and aside from this issue, he disagreed with the geoists.  Cherry-picking for convenience and deception.


How short is your memory? Tolstoy advocated the LVT. You know it.
_
The only thing now that would pacify the people now is the introduction of the Land Value Taxation system of Henry George. The land is common to all; all have the same right to it.

Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions.... Possession of land by people who do not use it is immoral — just like the possession of slaves.

The earth cannot be anyone's property._ ~ Tolstoy!

http://wealthandwant.com/auth/Tolstoy.htm

----------


## redbluepill

I'm curious... How many here will be voting for Ron Paul? And how many of that group believe he actually wants to get rid of ALL TAXES?

----------


## redbluepill

> I really think you're on the wrong forum. We aren't statists here, you clearly are though.


You think the flat taxers and "fair" taxers should leave too?

----------


## eduardo89

> You think the flat taxers and "fair" taxers should leave too?


Would it make you feel less excluded if I said yes?

----------


## eduardo89

> Except it is not really a tax. The landholder pays rent to everyone else for the PRIVILEGE to exclude them from a piece of land.


lol, that's quite a nice a nice way to look at stealing from the landowner.

----------


## redbluepill

> Would it make you feel less excluded if I said yes?


I want a genuine answer.

----------


## redbluepill

> lol, that's quite a nice a nice way to look at stealing from the landowner.


As a Christian you should recognize the evil in the idea that it is okay to exclude everyone else from land that God created without compensation.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> As a Christian you should recognize the evil in the idea that it is okay to exclude everyone else from land that God created without compensation.


Did you really honestly go there? 

Joshua 1 for starters, anyone?  There's a lot more, but this one's good for a start:




> 2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the *a land which I do give to them*, even to the children of Israel.
> 
>  3 *Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you*, as I said unto Moses.
> 
>  4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, *shall be your coast*.



And just in case you might want to fancy in your imagination that it's referring to some kind of "collective ownership", or some kind of theocratic/communistic thingy, wherein the land is not actually divided and parceled out for exclusive use and individual disposition... 




> 6 Be strong and of a good courage: for *unto this people shalt thou* *divide for an inheritance** the land**, which I sware unto their fathers to give them.*
> 
>  10 ¶Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying,
> 
>  11 Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, *to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it.*

----------


## Roy L

> lol, that's quite a nice a nice way to look at stealing from the landowner.


It is the landowner who is doing the stealing, as already proved.  He just has a legal license to steal.  Remember?

*THE BANDIT*
_
Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.

A thief, right?

Now, suppose he has a license to charge tolls of those who use the pass, a license issued by the government of one of the countries  or even both of them. The tolls are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? He is still just a thief. He is still just demanding payment and not contributing anything in return. How can the mere existence of that piece of paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?

But now suppose instead of a license to steal, he has a land title to the pass. He now charges the caravans the exact same amount in rent for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable gentleman. But how has the nature of his business really changed? Its all legal now, but he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free, and contributing nothing whatever in return, just as he did when he was a lowly bandit. How is he any different now that he is a landowner?

And come to that, how is any other landowner, charging rent for what nature provided for free, any different?_

It is the landowner who takes from the producer and contributes nothing in return, not the land taxer.

It is the landowner who seeks forcibly to violate others' rights without making just compensation, not the land taxer.

It is the landowner who initiates force to deprive others of what they would otherwise have, not the land taxer.

It is therefore the landowner who is the thief, not the land taxer.

----------


## Roy L

> Yeah, I figured, what's the harm in a trip down the rabbit hole between old friends?


You stated the exact truth because you knew it was the truth.



> Meanwhile, I heard Ireland was going to finally going to take the LVT plunge, phasing into LVT by 2013. 
> 
> But it doesn't look like the phasing in parts (flat fee and onward into LVT) are being embraced all that well.  A Socialist Tea Party, in Ireland?  Whodathunk!
> 
> You might want to go to Ireland and remind them about the importance of LVT exemptions for individuals.


Indeed.  Someone has obviously gone to some pains to associate LVT with an unfair and disgraceful per-household flat tax, almost the exact opposite of the required individual exemption.  They have ludicrously lied that this flat tax is an "introductory" LVT when it is indisputably nothing of the kind.  LVT advocates are usually required to accept these sorts of "poison pill" provisions in order to get legislation passed.  It's nothing but a blatant attempt to sabotage the LVT system by dishonestly associating it with a completely different and morally and economically very inferior tax.

----------


## redbluepill

> Did you really honestly go there? 
> 
> Joshua 1 for starters, anyone?  There's a lot more, but this one's good for a start:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And just in case you might want to fancy in your imagination that it's referring to some kind of "collective ownership", or some kind of theocratic/communistic thingy, wherein the land is not actually divided and parceled out for exclusive use and individual disposition...


Sorry, making your quotations red and extra bold doesn't mean you are right.

No Georgist argues against possession of land, which is what those passages refer to.

In the Old Testament God gave his people the Law which they must follow to ensure peace and prosperity. This Law included a tithe (which some argue was a form of land rent) that went towards the community and religious purposes.




Read up on your Biblical history please:
_
The family was free to use the land they now legally possessed, but they could not sell it or borrow money against it. They did not own the land; it belonged to God._
http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-li...-land-rent-god

Land will not be sold absolutely,
For the land belongs to ME,
And you are only strangers and guests of mine.
—Leviticus 25:23

----------


## Steven Douglas

> In the Old Testament God gave his people the Law which they must follow to ensure peace and prosperity. This Law included a tithe (which some argue was a form of land rent) that went towards the community and religious purposes.


Tithe? As in tenth part of all your gain?  As in, has nothing whatsoever to do with LVT, renting land from a collective, or being evicted because someone stepped forward with an offer of a greater tithe in return for exclusive possession? 

Oh, and the parts I put in red and bold - that wasn't to make myself "more right".  It was just to make sure you didn't miss and dismiss it as so much "blah blah".  Which you did anyway. 

And, incidentally, while I happen to believe in God, I am not the slightest bit religious. I only quoted scripture because you seemed to think you had some kind of LVT lock on Judeo-Christian scripture.  Not to mention a false guilting of others based on your narrow interpretations of certain passages.  Which don't really hold any weight at all with me (it really is some 'blah blah blah' for me).

----------


## redbluepill

> Tithe? As in tenth part of all your gain?


That's the common belief today. But...

Leviticus 27:30 states, "'A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD."

Once again, we weren't alive during the time this takes place so we can only go on what evidence we have. I believe the evidence is strong that the tithe was a form of land rent.




> As in, has nothing whatsoever to do with LVT, renting land from a collective, or being evicted because someone stepped forward with an offer of a greater tithe in return for exclusive possession?


I take it you didn't read the article.




> Oh, and the parts I put in red and bold - that wasn't to make myself "more right".  It was just to make sure you didn't miss and dismiss it as so much "blah blah".  Which you did anyway.


I know how to read. And you can bold words without being condescending.




> And, incidentally, while I happen to believe in God, I am not the slightest bit religious. I only quoted scripture because you seemed to think you had some kind of LVT lock on Judeo-Christian scripture.


Well I was raised Christian but I only discuss religious arguments concerning politics and economics with other Christians.




> Not to mention a false guilting of others based on your *narrow interpretations of certain passages.*  Which don't really hold any weight at all with me (it really is some 'blah blah blah' for me).


Crow calling the raven black?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Well I was raised Christian but I only discuss religious arguments concerning politics and economics with other Christians.


I didn't say I wasn't a Christian. I said I'm not the slightest bit religious.

----------


## ProIndividual

Tax is extortion by the mafia (state) on the threat of kidnapping (prison). If you try to escape the kidnapping they'll send thugs (cops) to murder you. 

No tax is preferable. All tax makes you a property renter, not owner. I'm not into renting from the state.

I used to try to come up with the best tax system too...and I also thought property tax was the best (as it was the only tax without Deadweight Loss). But in the end, I was wrong. I was being pragmatic and ignoring ethics. If tax is extortion, the only "best" tax is no tax.

The sooner you face this, the better off you'll be. All the state's coerced monopolies can be privatized. Afterall, if the services are necessary and desirable, the market will provide them (and do so cheaper, more efficiently, and with accountability). The tragedy of the commons, the free-rider problem, and market failure apply more to the state than anywhere else (hence using those criticisms of privatization makes no sense logically).

----------


## Roy L

> Tax is extortion by the mafia (state) on the threat of kidnapping (prison). If you try to escape the kidnapping they'll send thugs (cops) to murder you.


Nope.  Wrong.  That describes current taxes, but not a land value tax.  If you don't want to pay a land value tax, government just doesn't help you exclude others from the land -- and if someone else does want to pay it, government will help them exclude _you_ from the land.  There is no kidnapping, no prison, and no murder involved.  You simply do not get the benefit that you do not pay for, same as not getting to take stuff home from the grocery store without paying for it.  And before you whine that government would then be using force to exclude you from "your" land, be aware that that is just hypocritical bull$#!+: there is no way it could ever rightly have become "your" land in the first place, as there is no way to "own" land other than by excluding others from it by force.  It is inherently impossible.



> No tax is preferable.


Oh, really?  How's that Somalia thingy workin' for ya?

There is no such thing as civilization without taxes.  There is no such thing as security of human rights to life, liberty and property in the fruits of one's labor without taxes.  Never has been, never will be.  Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.



> All tax makes you a property renter, not owner.


By what right would you ever be an owner of what neither you nor anyone else ever produced, and which everyone would otherwise be at liberty to use?



> I'm not into renting from the state.


If you are not into renting natural resources from the state, then you are into stealing them from your fellow man.  There is no third alternative.  Do you want to be a "renter" or a thief?  Most people want to be thieves.



> I used to try to come up with the best tax system too...and I also thought property tax was the best (as it was the only tax without Deadweight Loss).


Let's be clear: only the land value portion of the property tax is without deadweight loss.



> But in the end, I was wrong. I was being pragmatic and ignoring ethics.


See above.  Maybe it was just your ethics that were wrong.



> If tax is extortion, the only "best" tax is no tax.


Extortion is a demand for an unearned benefit, backed by a threat to deprive you of what you would otherwise have.  Exclusive tenure to land is not something you would otherwise have, and land rent is a benefit government and the community have earned, but you haven't.



> The sooner you face this, the better off you'll be.


The sooner you and everyone else face the facts identified above, the better off we will all be.



> All the state's coerced monopolies can be privatized.


If you want to live in Somalia.



> Afterall, if the services are necessary and desirable, the market will provide them (and do so cheaper, more efficiently, and with accountability).


Nope.  There is no credible empirical evidence for this claim, which is essentially nothing but an article of religious faith, and considerable evidence against it.  When Margaret Thatcher privatized many public water supply systems in Britain, costs rose and service worsened.  The private market CANNOT provide an efficient level of investment in public goods.  It is impossible, because essentially all the value of services and infrastructure -- whether publicly or privately provided -- is simply taken by landowners who charge everyone else full market value for access to them.  The history of privately built roads is very instructive in this regard: the road building companies almost all went bankrupt, but the people who owned the land alongside the roads got rich.  The same happened with most privately built railroads, unless they got huge government subsidies.



> The tragedy of the commons, the free-rider problem, and market failure apply more to the state than anywhere else (hence using those criticisms of privatization makes no sense logically).


Wrong again.  The Tragedy of the Commons only applies to commons that aren't managed to secure the equal rights of all to benefit by them -- and historically, the commons typically _were_ managed, and managed quite effectively.  Garrett Hardin, who _wrote_ "The Tragedy of the Commons," protested later that his work was intended as a plea for better public stewardship of commons, not their privatization; that it had been misconstrued and misappropriated by the right; and that he wished he had called it, "The Tragedy of the _Unmanaged_ Commons."

Free-rider and market failure problems apply equally to private and public enterprises; the difference is that government can use its power to counteract and compensate for them, while private firms can't.

----------


## Roy L

> I didn't say I wasn't a Christian. I said I'm not the slightest bit religious.


Which neatly expresses the level of logic demonstrated in your posts on LVT (other than the honest ones, #481 and #483 in this thread).

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Let's be clear: only the land value portion of the property tax is without deadweight loss.


Let's be even more clear:  The _only_ way that could be true is if there were no measures in place by the State to artificially reduce or control the amount of available land (e.g., zoning laws, land preserves, etc.,), and only if the free market through competition, and not the State by any formula, determined all land values.  Otherwise the LVT will be _fraught with deadweight loss_ to that extent.




> Causes of deadweight loss can include monopoly pricing (in the case of artificial scarcity), externalities, taxes or subsidies, and binding price ceilings or floors. The term deadweight loss may also be referred to as the "excess burden" of monopoly or taxation.


So let's take your example:




> If you don't want to pay a land value tax, government just doesn't help you exclude others from the land -- and if someone else does want to pay it, government will help them exclude you from the land. There is no kidnapping, no prison, and no murder involved. You simply do not get the benefit that you do not pay for, same as not getting to take stuff home from the grocery store without paying for it.


That assumes that all benefit from all land belongs to everyone/the state, and I'm still at a loss to understand something:  The murders you believe are caused by forcibly excluding others from land where private landownership is involved somehow evaporate when that same forcible exclusion is exercised by the State under LVT.  But let's go with it anyway, continuing within the geolib framework:

Land is one of the basic needs for life itself, a need which varies from person to person. The option to not exclusively use some land on Earth is an impossibility for literally everyone.  I know, _your particular version_ of LVT would carry with it individual exemptions - not on quantity of land, but a given value - established not by the market, but by the State.  

Let's say, however, that someone wants to avoid paying outrageous LVT's associated with major metropolitan areas (e.g., not interested in living in someone else's version of a Hong Kong concrete paradise), and doesn't consider whatever "exemption" has been offered for that area to be of much value to them personally.  They decide instead that they want to live where NOBODY ELSE wants to be -- in the mountains or countryside instead, _far away from everyone_ and their collectivist madness.  If all that "other land" is locked up by the State, such that they and everyone else are excluded from using it by force, such that their choices of where to live are artificially narrowed to communities already dominated by LVT - then whatever you are paying in LVT at that point is nearly *100% deadweight loss*, making that particular version of LVT an hypocritical sham, given that all of the benefit of all that unused/reserved land, without any compensation to anyone by the State or anyone else, _has been stolen from you_.

----------


## Keith and stuff

> [INDENT]*How Harrisburg in Rust Belt PA, USA was transformed through a Land Value Tax* 
> *In 1982, before the change, Harrisburg, with a population of 52,000, was listed as the second most run-down city in the US.* Since then, following the change, empty sites and buildings have been re-developed, with the number of vacant sites by 2004 down by 85 per cent. The city authorities have issued over 32,000 building permits, representing nearly $4 billion of new investment  nearly 2,000 were issued in 2004 alone. Over 5,000 housing units have been newly constructed or rehabilitated, and the number of businesses has jumped from 1,908 to 8,864, with unemployment down by 19 per cent. Furthermore, crime has fallen by 58 per cent, and the number of fires has been reduced by 76 per cent, which the authorities say is due to more employment opportunities, and the elimination of derelict sites, making vandalism less likely.


I love how he use of the worst run cities in the whole country as the example of his thoughts.  Perhaps he were trying to prove that his theory doesn't work?

The government leaders of Harrisburg destroyed the city and then asked a judge to agree that the city could file for bankruptcy.  The judge said no, no matter what the leaders of Harrisburg do, they will not be able to fix the city.  The leaders of the city don't have the ability to do anything right except destroy things.

Judge dismisses Harrisburg, PA, bankruptcy filing
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7AM2IL20111123

----------


## helmuth_hubener

I just take comfort in the fact that Roy is incapable of saying anything convincing.

And in reply to that he will write "Were you under the delusional impression you were contributing something to the discussion?"  or "On the contrary, I have demolished every point you have made and you have nothing left to say." or what-_ever_.  It really is hard to believe that a real person would be as repetitive, redundant, and tiresome as he is perfectly satisfied in being.  And in spending hours upon irreplaceable hours of his life being so!  It's really pretty tragic.  But, it's affirming and heartening to the denizens of liberty to see our opponents so bankrupt.  So carry on!  And remember, as everyone knows: homesteading doesn't use force against anyone.  If you're the first person to appropriate something, obviously no one else had appropriated it, so they are no worse off than before.  Yet you are better off, at least in your own opinion, or else you wouldn't have appropriated it.  So, you are better off, no one is worse off, everyone wins.  And obviously no one's rights have been violated, no one was around to be violated, just the homesteader by his lonesome, so again everyone wins.  This is really elementary logic, it cannot be refuted, and I already know which talking points Roy will drag out of his copy-paste text file to claim to refute it all the same, so there's no need to even bother, old buddy.  Just stipulate that you already refuted it umpteen times, which, according to your definition, you have.

----------


## Steven Douglas

I must spread some reputation around before giving it to helmuth_hubener again.  I have been forcibly excluded, deprived of my right to liberty to otherwise give to him as I see fit, just as he has been deprived of his right to just compensation for reputation he would otherwise have.  This indisputable fact of objective reality means that the rest of you bastards owe us something, and refusal to know this fact is no different than slavery and murder in the tens of millions poor forum denizens every year.

Honest posters who don't want to be guilty of stealing, among other evils, should PM us for PayPal addresses. Either that or give each of our posts some good reputation - which will go a long way toward keeping you from burning in Forum LVT Hell forever and ever amen.

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## Roy L

> I love how he use of the worst run cities in the whole country as the example of his thoughts.  Perhaps he were trying to prove that his theory doesn't work?


Actually, Harrisburg was doing fine with LVT until the _totally unrelated_ incinerator problem emerged, and the incinerator problem is a creation of the EPA, not the government of Harrisburg.  Harrisburg spent a fortune on the incinerator to meet EPA requirements, and then the EPA changed the requirements, leaving Harrisburg with an expensive incinerator it couldn't use.



> The government leaders of Harrisburg destroyed the city


Flat false.  The city's main problem is the incinerator debt, for which the EPA bears primary responsibility.



> and then asked a judge to agree that the city could file for bankruptcy.  The judge said no, no matter what the leaders of Harrisburg do, they will not be able to fix the city.  The leaders of the city don't have the ability to do anything right except destroy things.


Your ignorance of the Harrisburg case appears to be quite comprehensive.

----------


## jabowery

Aside from all the psychotic noise, an LVT is superior to taxation on economic activity including not only income, capital gains, inheritance and sales taxes but value added and anything else you can think of.

Blither away about how evil it may be for whatever reasons, valid or invalid, but it stands as superior to all of those options.

If you say "all taxation is theft" then you need to come up with some alternative means of supporting the FORCE that stands behind all property rights claims.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> alternative means of supporting the FORCE that stands behind all property rights claims.


 Defensive force is fine, it is aggressive force which is an inferior means of inter-human interaction.  And of course the free market is perfectly capable of providing security services, including whatever force or threats of force might be necessary to protect the persons and property of paying customers.  The same principles apply which make the market capable of providing every other type of service.

----------


## Roy L

> Let's be even more clear:  The _only_ way that could be true is if there were no measures in place by the State to artificially reduce or control the amount of available land (e.g., zoning laws, land preserves, etc.,), and only if the free market through competition, and not the State by any formula, determined all land values.  Otherwise the LVT will be _fraught with deadweight loss_ to that extent.


No.  While it is true that the market has to determine land values, that is the intended system anyway, so there is nothing to dispute.  It is _not_ true that artificial reduction of the available land would result in a deadweight loss IF the amount of land removed from the market for parks, military use, etc. is economically fixed: i.e., if it doesn't vary according to price.  You may be skeptical of that proviso, but when land rent is all recovered for public purposes and benefit anyway, there is no real incentive for individuals or government to add or remove reserved land.



> That assumes that all benefit from all land belongs to everyone/the state,


As the benefit is publicly, not privately created, it rightly belongs to the public, no matter how badly greedy thieves want to steal it.



> and I'm still at a loss to understand something:  The murders you believe are caused by forcibly excluding others from land where private landownership is involved somehow evaporate when that same forcible exclusion is exercised by the State under LVT.


They evaporate in at least three different important ways:

1. As the productive no longer have to support a greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic landowning class that pockets roughly the same amount of money the government spends on services and infrastructure, they have much more money to spend -- probably double or triple their current disposable income.  In most cases, that alone is enough to make them no longer poor or in danger of being murdered by landowner greed.
2. LVT encourages landholders to use their land productively, which usually means hiring people to work on it.  This increases wages in two different ways: the margin moves in, reducing land rents as a fraction of production, and unemployment drops off a cliff, compelling employers to offer higher wages.
3. The universal individual land tax exemption guarantees every resident citizen secure tenure on enough land to live on.  No one need be poor because they can't afford to pay a landowner for access to the opportunities government, the community and nature provide.



> But let's go with it anyway, continuing within the geolib framework:
> 
> Land is one of the basic needs for life itself, a need which varies from person to person. The option to not exclusively use some land on Earth is an impossibility for literally everyone.  I know, _your particular version_ of LVT would carry with it individual exemptions - not on quantity of land, but a given value - established not by the market, but by the State.


The market would determine land value, "the State" would determine the exemption amount.  There are various statistical formulae that could be used to determine the exemption amount without "evil bureaucrat" intervention.  Quibbling over the amount is a red herring.  It's enough to live on.



> Let's say, however, that someone wants to avoid paying outrageous LVT's associated with major metropolitan areas (e.g., not interested in living in someone else's version of a Hong Kong concrete paradise),


Actually, lots of ordinary people choose to live on very small amounts of very valuable land.  See the high-rise apartment buildings of NYC.



> and doesn't consider whatever "exemption" has been offered for that area to be of much value to them personally.  They decide instead that they want to live where NOBODY ELSE wants to be -- in the mountains or countryside instead, _far away from everyone_ and their collectivist madness.  If all that "other land" is locked up by the State, such that they and everyone else are excluded from using it by force, such that their choices of where to live are artificially narrowed to communities already dominated by LVT - then whatever you are paying in LVT at that point is nearly *100% deadweight loss*,


You do not know what deadweight loss is.



> making that particular version of LVT an hypocritical sham, given that all of the benefit of all that unused/reserved land, without any compensation to anyone by the State or anyone else, _has been stolen from you_.


Yes, and in what you are no doubt pleased to call your, "mind," if the government of the LVT state rounded up all the blonde 12-year-old girls and sold them as sex slaves to landowners in Pakistan, that would no doubt be another black mark against LVT.

The LVT state HAS NO MOTIVE to lock up large areas of land from use.  It simply gives up potential revenue.  All you are doing is concocting something stupid, and claiming a government that implemented LVT would also do whatever stupid thing you concocted.  It's just stupid, dishonest garbage.

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## Roy L

> Defensive force is fine, it is aggressive force which is an inferior means of inter-human interaction.


And landowning requires aggressive force to deprive people of the liberty they would otherwise enjoy to use the land.



> And of course the free market is perfectly capable of providing security services, including whatever force or threats of force might be necessary to protect the persons and property of paying customers.


Which is working exactly according to the blandishments of anarcho-ninnies -- in Somalia.



> The same principles apply which make the market capable of providing every other type of service.


The main principle being that you have to be an economic ignoramus who refuses to know anything about externalities, market failures, public goods, or historical fact.

----------


## Roy L

> I just take comfort in the fact that Roy is incapable of saying anything convincing.


My nomination for Unconscious Self-Reference of the Month.



> And in reply to that he will write "Were you under the delusional impression you were contributing something to the discussion?"  or "On the contrary, I have demolished every point you have made and you have nothing left to say." or what-_ever_.  It really is hard to believe that a real person would be as repetitive, redundant, and tiresome as he is perfectly satisfied in being.  And in spending hours upon irreplaceable hours of his life being so!  It's really pretty tragic.  But, it's affirming and heartening to the denizens of liberty to see our opponents so bankrupt.  So carry on!


<yawn>



> And remember, as everyone knows: homesteading doesn't use force against anyone.


No, Helmuth, you are just lying.  "Everyone" doesn't know that, because it is indisputably false.  Of course appropriating natural resources as private property uses force against others.  Just as soon as they show up, the resource thief ("homesteader") will enslave them.  We have already established that fact by the examples of Dirtowner Harry and Thirsty, Robbingthem Crusoe and Friday, and the freed slaves of the post-Civil War South who were worse off landless and "free" than they had been when legally enslaved.



> If you're the first person to appropriate something, obviously no one else had appropriated it, so they are no worse off than before.


No, that's clearly just a lie on your part.  You will always have to tell lies to rationalize greed, privilege, injustice and evil.  Always.  There is no other way to do it.

People don't have to have appropriated stuff to be made worse off when others appropriate it.  People have liberty without appropriating it, and are made worse off when their liberty is forcibly removed without just compensation whether they have "appropriated" anything or not.

Two men are walking in the desert.  One stumbles on a natural spring and "appropriates" it.  Then the other arrives, and the "non-violent" "homesteader" decides that the price of a drink of water is a day's labor.  He uses force -- violent, aggressive physical coercion -- to prevent the second man from drinking the water he would otherwise have been at liberty to drink, and thus permanently enslaves him, making him indisputably worse off than before.

I just proved you lied, Helmuth.  Again.



> Yet you are better off, at least in your own opinion, or else you wouldn't have appropriated it.  So, you are better off, no one is worse off, everyone wins.


You are telling evil lies again, Helmuth.  It's not nice to tell evil lies to rationalize and justify two Holocausts a year worth of robbery, oppression, suffering, injustice, starvation, despair, and death.



> And obviously no one's rights have been violated,


You are lying, Helmuth, as proved above.  What is blatantly, self-evidently, indisputably obvious is that someone's rights HAVE been violated.  The "homesteader" couldn't enslave the other man without violating his rights.



> no one was around to be violated, just the homesteader by his lonesome, so again everyone wins.


Except the people that the "homesteader" enslaves once they ARE around.  By what right could the "homesteader" remove other people's rights to be there and use the resources he himself claims a right to use?  If anything, he has had his turn, and it is now someone else's turn.



> This is really elementary logic, it cannot be refuted,


I just refuted it, root and branch.



> and I already know which talking points Roy will drag out of his copy-paste text file to claim to refute it all the same, so there's no need to even bother, old buddy.  Just stipulate that you already refuted it umpteen times, which, according to your definition, you have.


I definitely have.  Your whole "argument" is based on your false, absurd and dishonest premise that "appropriating" for yourself what nature provided for all does not harm anyone else or violate their rights.  But I have proved many times that it does.  As soon as anyone else shows up, the "homesteader" will use force in an attempt to enslave them.

----------


## Black Flag

Roy merely proves that insane people like him have opinions too.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy merely proves that insane people like him have opinions too.


You have been demolished utterly, you know it, and you have no answers.  Simple.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No.  While it is true that the market has to determine land values, that is the intended system anyway, so there is nothing to dispute.


The "intended system"?  Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions? And why would that not be open to dispute? Is there something inherently indisputable about an intention?   




> It is _not_ true that artificial reduction of the available land would result in a deadweight loss IF the amount of land removed from the market for parks, military use, etc. is economically fixed: i.e., if it doesn't vary according to price.


Red herring, as those are examples of lands reserved for actual use.  

The United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres. 
Forest-use land, 651 million acres (28.8 percent)
Grassland pasture and range land, 587 million acres (25.9 percent)
Cropland, 442 million acres (19.5 percent)
Special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas), 297 million acres (13.1 percent)
Miscellaneous other uses, 228 million acres (10.1 percent)
Urban land, 60 million acres (2.6 percent). 

Out of that 2.3 BILLION ACRES, I am not referring to Urban land, Special uses, or other land that is actually put to some use.  And the value of those particular lands is irrelevant, as they are not on the market, not available for use.  There's over a BILLION acres of land that is not put to any use whatsoever. I would be forcibly excluded from using them. 




> You may be skeptical of that proviso, but when land rent is all recovered for public purposes and benefit anyway, there is no real incentive for individuals or government to add or remove reserved land.


Government at all times has built-in incentive to increase revenues.  IF the market truly did decide the value of all lands, artificial scarcity (via land reserves, zoning laws, special use restrictions, etc.,) are most certainly a way to increase those revenues.  

The reason that incentive is most definitely in place:  Not all commerce requires a major metropolitan hive center from which to operate, and WILL move to the cheapest, most economically feasible areas they can find.  With LVT in place as a single tax - that means CAPITAL FLIGHT to the least expensive lands.  

Hershey specifically chose Oakdale, CA, to build a big plant, and received all kinds of tax breaks to do this, on the assumption that it would provide work for those in the community. The problem - the plant was mostly automated, and provided less than 600 jobs.  Oakdale and other areas with similar problems finally addressed that problem -- and Hershey ultimately responded by moving its American and Canadian plants to Mexico. 




> As the benefit is publicly, not privately created, it rightly belongs to the public, no matter how badly greedy thieves want to steal it.


Yeah, until someone (read=MANY) say, "You can keep all your wonderful publicly created value. I'll shop elsewhere -- if I am not forcibly excluded from doing so, thanks."




> The market would determine land value, "the State" would determine the exemption amount.


IF the market actually determined the land value, and that value was not distorted -- meaning that land was not made artificially scarce.  Which the State has the built-in incentive to manipulate.




> There are various statistical formulae that could be used to determine the exemption amount without "evil bureaucrat" intervention.  Quibbling over the amount is a red herring.  It's enough to live on. Actually, lots of ordinary people choose to live on very small amounts of very valuable land.  See the high-rise apartment buildings of NYC.


That's your red herring.  Bully for those "lots of ordinary people" who actually do choose to live on "very small amounts of very valuable land" in a concrete metropolitan hive. That's them, and their choices, and not a model for everyone to follow.  There are also "lots of ordinary people" who would not make that choice, and want nothing whatsoever to do with high-rises or anything that resembles a concrete hive.  To me it looks like insanity, and a recipe for something "not-so-human".  But I've lived in them, and see why it appeals to some.  What does that have to do with those who would NOT make that choice, and want to live as far from that as possible? 




> You do not know what deadweight loss is.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
I was quoting wiki, which can always be wrong. Instead of merely asserting that I do not know what deadweight loss is, perhaps you could expound, and actually make an argument and explain why my understanding is wrong. Or, better yet, explain what you believe deadweight loss to be, and why my reference (which I did not write) or anything I wrote about it fell short of the mark in your mind. 




> Yes, and in what you are no doubt pleased to call your, "mind," if the government of the LVT state rounded up all the blonde 12-year-old girls and sold them as sex slaves to landowners in Pakistan, that would no doubt be another black mark against LVT.


You can KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF NOW.  We have all been warned against making ad hominem attacks. I have stopped making them. Do likewise. 




> The LVT state HAS NO MOTIVE to lock up large areas of land from use.  It simply gives up potential revenue.


Wrong. Exactly the opposite, since free market competition is ostensibly the primary value determinant, and therefore revenues. The success of LVT requires active competition for land that would drive up revenues. A finite number of competitors actively pursuing an equally finite quantity of land.   

All your seeming knowledge, and you seem not to comprehend the basic fundamental role that supply scarcity plays in economics, including value, price and revenues.  Land is not the only thing that has a finite quantity. In the moment, so are competitors for all land.  If the government opened up all land for use under an LVT regime, more land would mean less people competing for the same land that was otherwise limited in supply. That would place downward pressure on land values in the aggregate.  Hence, less revenue overall, as each competitor for land pays less overall.  Increased productivity from greater use could EVENTUALLY result in increase revenues, but that would be to those communities only, and a long way off - like to the tune of generations.

----------


## Roy L

> The "intended system"?  Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions?


Mine, of course.  I'm not trying to defend other people's erroneous ideas.  Life's too short.



> And why would that not be open to dispute?


That would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.



> Is there something inherently indisputable about an intention?


Yes.  If you are not talking about the intended system, you are just trying to change the subject.



> Red herring, as those are examples of lands reserved for actual use.


The folks who typically hoard land completely out of use are land speculators, not governments, and they are waiting for capital gains, not pursuing rent income.



> The United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres. 
> Forest-use land, 651 million acres (28.8 percent)
> Grassland pasture and range land, 587 million acres (25.9 percent)
> Cropland, 442 million acres (19.5 percent)
> Special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas), 297 million acres (13.1 percent)
> Miscellaneous other uses, 228 million acres (10.1 percent)
> Urban land, 60 million acres (2.6 percent). 
> 
> Out of that 2.3 BILLION ACRES, I am not referring to Urban land, Special uses, or other land that is actually put to some use.  And the value of those particular lands is irrelevant, as they are not on the market, not available for use.  There's over a BILLION acres of land that is not put to any use whatsoever. I would be forcibly excluded from using them.


But of course, your claims are just objectively false.  The billion acres you are apparently referring to are being used for forestry, grazing cattle, etc.  The land is merely being used for things that you choose to call, "nothing."  Furthermore, you would not be excluded from them.  There's no reason to exclude you from them.



> Government at all times has built-in incentive to increase revenues.  IF the market truly did decide the value of all lands, artificial scarcity (via land reserves, zoning laws, special use restrictions, etc.,) are most certainly a way to increase those revenues.


Nope.  _The land market is always a monopoly market._  That means one rational (i.e., profit-maximizing) landowner will act the same as a million rational landowners.  So if the government wants to maximize its revenue, it can only do so by charging what the market will bear on all the land.  Any attempt to game the market by holding land out of use will lose more revenue on the idle land than can be gained through the increased price of the rest of the land.  The only time this relationship doesn't hold is when the idle land is an actual amenity for users of nearby land, like a park in an urban area.  There is a certain level and distribution of parkland that maximizes the total land rent of an urban or suburban area.  But that condition obviously doesn't apply to the vast areas of marginal or sub-marginal land you are talking about.



> The reason that incentive is most definitely in place:  Not all commerce requires a major metropolitan hive center from which to operate, and WILL move to the cheapest, most economically feasible areas they can find.  With LVT in place as a single tax - that means CAPITAL FLIGHT to the least expensive lands.


Nonsense.  It just means capital will seek its most appropriate and productive allocation, rather than having to account for the opportunity cost of land appreciation.  Your position is simply absurd.  The expensive lands are expensive *BECAUSE* users *are willing* to pay so much to use them.



> Hershey specifically chose Oakdale, CA, to build a big plant, and received all kinds of tax breaks to do this, on the assumption that it would provide work for those in the community. The problem - the plant was mostly automated, and provided less than 600 jobs.  Oakdale and other areas with similar problems finally addressed that problem -- and Hershey ultimately responded by moving its American and Canadian plants to Mexico.


So?  The problem was the local government's attempt to second-guess the market.  Hershey just took advantage of a proffered gift of land value.  LVT ends all such nonsense.



> Yeah, until someone (read=MANY) say, "You can keep all your wonderful publicly created value. I'll shop elsewhere -- if I am not forcibly excluded from doing so, thanks."


Fine.  So what?  You don't seem able to comprehend that LAND VALUE AUTOMATICALLY MEASURES AND ACCOUNTS FOR ALL SUCH PREFERENCES.



> IF the market actually determined the land value, and that value was not distorted -- meaning that land was not made artificially scarce.  Which the State has the built-in incentive to manipulate.


Refuted above.  You just don't understand what fixity of supply implies.



> That's your red herring.


No, it's a reminder to you that you speak for yourself, not others.



> Bully for those "lots of ordinary people" who actually do choose to live on "very small amounts of very valuable land" in a concrete metropolitan hive. That's them, and their choices, and not a model for everyone to follow.  There are also "lots of ordinary people" who would not make that choice, and want nothing whatsoever to do with high-rises or anything that resembles a concrete hive.  To me it looks like insanity, and a recipe for something "not-so-human".  But I've lived in them, and see why it appeals to some.  What does that have to do with those who would NOT make that choice, and want to live as far from that as possible?


LVT gives everyone the opportunity to pay for exactly as much government as he wants.



> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
> I was quoting wiki, which can always be wrong. Instead of merely asserting that I do not know what deadweight loss is, perhaps you could expound, and actually make an argument and explain why my understanding is wrong. Or, better yet, explain what you believe deadweight loss to be, and why my reference (which I did not write) or anything I wrote about it fell short of the mark in your mind.


Deadweight loss is not just some circumstance some individual doesn't like.  It's a reduction in the AGGREGATE production of goods and services as a result of the disincentive effect of a tax.



> You can KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF NOW.  We have all been warned against making ad hominem attacks. I have stopped making them. Do likewise.


So instead you make outlandish accusations about what a government that used LVT "would" do, like deprive people of access to low-value land for no reason.  Cute.



> Wrong. Exactly the opposite, since free market competition is ostensibly the primary value determinant, and therefore revenues.


Nope.  You do not understand the implications of land's fixity of supply.  The government CANNOT increase total revenue by holding large areas of low-value land out of use, because what it loses on the swings, it cannot make up on the roundabouts.  By forcing an inefficient allocation, it could only reduce total available land rent.  It can only gain by holding land out of use to the extent that the vacant land functions as an amenity -- like "green space" in urban areas -- for users of nearby land.



> The success of LVT requires active competition for land that would drive up revenues. A finite number of competitors actively pursuing an equally finite quantity of land.


The quantity of land is not only finite (everything is finite -- except the stupidity and dishonesty of apologists for landowner privilege, of course) but FIXED.  You basically just haven't accepted the economic implications of fixed supply.



> All your seeming knowledge, and you seem not to comprehend the basic fundamental role that supply scarcity plays in economics, including value, price and revenues.


The supply of *land* is *FIXED*.  An ordinary monopoly increases its profits by reducing supply below the market clearing price.  Land is not like that.  Because the supply is fixed, its production cost is zero.  That means there is no way to reduce costs by reducing production, and no way to increase aggregate profit by taking any of the supply off the market.



> Land is not the only thing that has a finite quantity. In the moment, so are competitors for all land.  If the government opened up all land for use under an LVT regime, more land would mean less people competing for the same land that was otherwise limited in supply. That would place downward pressure on land values in the aggregate.


No.  You are getting confused with the economics of a normal monopoly.  Land rent is economic advantage as already revealed in the market.  By taking some land off the market, you can increase the rent of substitutable parcels; but unless that idle land actually increases the usefulness of nearby land, total rent will decline because some of the resource is being misallocated.



> Hence, less revenue overall, as each competitor for land pays less overall.


Wrong.  That's your mistake.  Each competitor _doesn't_ pay less, because the competitors who wanted to use the land being held vacant aren't using other land as productively.  They can't compete with the more efficient users of the other land, so they end up paying less for land -- so much less that the total rent is less -- and not being as productive.



> Increased productivity from greater use could EVENTUALLY result in increase revenues, but that would be to those communities only, and a long way off - like to the tune of generations.


You'd see increased economic growth almost instantly.

----------


## Black Flag

> You have been demolished utterly, you know it, and you have no answers.  Simple.


The insane make such grand claims, don't they?

----------


## Czolgosz

> The insane make such grand claims, don't they?


Do you often engage the insane in conversation?

----------


## Steven Douglas

*ROY:* While it is true that the market has to determine land values, that is the intended system anyway, so there is nothing to dispute.
*STEVEN:* The "intended system"? Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions?
*ROY:* Mine, of course.  I'm not trying to defend other people's erroneous ideas.
*STEVEN:* And why would that not be open to dispute?
*ROY:* That would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.

Finally.  

Roy L. 1:1-2 
1: The Roy L. intended LVT system is indisputable
2: Asking why Roy L.'s intended system is not open to dispute is an ignoratio elenchi fallacy. 

Roy, I'm not so sure that you even understand what ignoratio elenchi is, or how many times you've committed this fallacy yourself in just this thread, but at least we're onto something, as you explicitly stipulated that we are only talking about Roy L.'s version of LVT - all else being completely irrelevant to you. And you've also declared it indisputable, proving (indisputably) that you are reasoning from an entirely circular framework. 

My point has always been that current reality, current practices, especially by government, are all relevant as disputations and discussions of the practical ramifications of your particular theory.  And yet you entertain your theory in a complete vacuum, and only according to the ideals and governing assumptions you have established in your mind.  

There is no universally agreed upon version of LVT, that much is clear, even out of your own words - by numerous cases in both LVT threads where you rejected examples of LVT as not being in line with your intended version. You want to defend and advance your personal ideal, and that's fine, but how Roy L. "intends" LVT is only relevant - not open to dispute (with current realities irrelevant even) - if Roy L. is omnipotent, and can control all aspects of LVT.  Barring that capacity on your part, which I don't think exists, current practices are more than relevant, and all your personal intentions are entirely open to dispute.  

Well, Roy, when you're king of the world, and completely in charge of all LVT - and all its "Roy L. Certified and Proper" definitions and appropriate implementations, I guess we'll have something to talk about.  Until then, you're just one of many, and you have a personal theory - which represents _a faction_.  Only.  And every bit of that is open to dispute whether you like it or not.  That's not ignoratio elenchi, that's reality -- outside your mind, where most reality actually exists, and wholly independent of your intentions.

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## Black Flag

It's insane, isn't it, but fun!

PS: point taken

----------


## Yieu

> *ROY:* While it is true that the market has to determine land values, that is the intended system anyway, so there is nothing to dispute.
> *STEVEN:* The "intended system"? Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions?
> *ROY:* Mine, of course.  I'm not trying to defend other people's erroneous ideas.
> *STEVEN:* And why would that not be open to dispute?
> *ROY:* That would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
> 
> Finally.  
> 
> Roy L. 1:1-2 
> ...


I saw this thread bumped, and thought, "Not this thread again.  Isn't Roy L banned yet with at least the sock puppet rule?".

Then I saw this post.  Thanks for that, your economic analysis are always spot on.

----------


## Roy L

> *ROY:* While it is true that the market has to determine land values, that is the intended system anyway, so there is nothing to dispute.
> *STEVEN:* The "intended system"? Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions?
> *ROY:* Mine, of course.  I'm not trying to defend other people's erroneous ideas.
> *STEVEN:* And why would that not be open to dispute?
> *ROY:* That would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
> 
> Finally.  
> 
> Roy L. 1:1-2 
> 1: The Roy L. intended LVT system is indisputable


As long as it is Roy L you are talking to about LVT.  Right.  Same as if I say, "Marijuana should be legalized and taxed," that proposal becomes indisputably the topic of our conversation about marijuana legalization.  It would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy for you to yammer on about the effects of legalizing marijuana but not taxing it.  And if you said, "The government would not get any revenue from marijuana users," then you would be lying about what I had plainly written.  You do that a lot.



> 2: Asking why Roy L.'s intended system is not open to dispute is an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.


No, Steven, you are again lying about what I have plainly written.  The ignoratio elenchi fallacy is to dispute that my proposed LVT system is the one under discussion, not to ask why it is indisputable that it is the one under discussion.  The latter question merely demonstrates that you are out of your depth in any discussion with anyone who has any knowledge of logic.



> Roy, I'm not so sure that you even understand what ignoratio elenchi is, or how many times you've committed this fallacy yourself in just this thread,


Provide a direct, verbatim, in-context quote where I do so, or admit that you are nothing but evil, lying filth.  Failure to do the first will constitute doing the second.  And you will not be doing the first.



> but at least we're onto something, as you explicitly stipulated that we are only talking about Roy L.'s version of LVT - all else being completely irrelevant to you.


No, irrelevant to the present discussion.



> And you've also declared it indisputable, proving (indisputably) that you are reasoning from an entirely circular framework.


No, that is just stupid garbage with no basis in fact.  There is nothing circular about declaring one's premises, reasoning from them to a conclusion, and declining to revise the premises merely because another party finds the conclusion unpalatable.



> My point has always been that current reality, current practices, especially by government, are all relevant as disputations and discussions of the practical ramifications of your particular theory.


But in fact, that is false.  "Current reality and current practices" are in part artefacts of the current tax system that do not apply to other systems.  We have to start from first principles, not assume that any proposed reform is only going to be a superficial graft upon a rotten root.



> And yet you entertain your theory in a complete vacuum,


Lie.  I have stated the relevant facts of objective reality, of economics, and of history that support my views.



> and only according to the ideals and governing assumptions you have established in your mind.


If you want to challenge my premises or the reasoning based on them, be my guest.  But don't claim they are not what I have said they are, or that it is my job to defend conclusions other than those I have stated.



> There is no universally agreed upon version of LVT, that much is clear, even out of your own words - by numerous cases in both LVT threads where you rejected examples of LVT as not being in line with your intended version.


Of course.  Universal agreement is not something that occurs very often in science.  There is also not universal agreement among biologists on how the human species evolved from earlier life forms.  That doesn't mean there is any serious question that it did.



> You want to defend and advance your personal ideal, and that's fine, but how Roy L. "intends" LVT is only relevant - not open to dispute (with current realities irrelevant even) - if Roy L. is omnipotent, and can control all aspects of LVT.


No, that's just more stupid, anti-logical garbage from you, like claiming that my proposal to legalize and tax marijuana is only relevant if I am king, and can control all aspects of the change.  It's just stupid.



> Barring that capacity on your part, which I don't think exists, current practices are more than relevant, and all your personal intentions are entirely open to dispute.


No, in fact they aren't, as proved above.



> Well, Roy, when you're king of the world, and completely in charge of all LVT - and all its "Roy L. Certified and Proper" definitions and appropriate implementations, I guess we'll have something to talk about.


You do not want to talk about LVT as proposed because you know that all your "arguments" against it have been utterly demolished, and you have no answers.  I can understand that.  I've proved enough people wrong to recognize the pattern.



> Until then, you're just one of many, and you have a personal theory - which represents _a faction_.  Only.


Same as any biologist's views on the evolutionary history of the human species.  So what?  If you don't want to discuss the topic, just say so.  Don't claim it is my responsibility to defend views that I do not espouse.



> And every bit of that is open to dispute whether you like it or not.


It is not open to dispute that that is what my proposes LVT system _is_.



> That's not ignoratio elenchi,


Yes, actually, it is.



> that's reality -- outside your mind, where most reality actually exists, and wholly independent of your intentions.


Blah, blah, blah...  Run along, little boy.  I am not interested in your pathetic, anti-logical rationalizations for refusing to discuss the topic.

----------


## Roy L

> I saw this thread bumped, and thought, "Not this thread again.  Isn't Roy L banned yet with at least the sock puppet rule?".


I have never used any account on this forum but the Roy L account.  The fact that you are objectively wrong about that should give you pause.  But I'm guessing it won't.



> Then I saw this post.  Thanks for that, your economic analysis are always spot on.


Steven would not know economic analysis (or logic) if it bit him on the goolies, sorry.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> As long as it is Roy L you are talking to about LVT.  Right.  Same as if I say, "Marijuana should be legalized and taxed," that proposal becomes indisputably the topic of our conversation about marijuana legalization.  It would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy for you to yammer on about the effects of legalizing marijuana but not taxing it.


That's  just it. First of all, you are NOT the OP - not in this thread or the other one. Secondly, the topic of our particular conversation is LVT as it would be applied in the real world. Constraining all debate to only how it would apply in Roy L.'s imaginary world, as if that was the real world, is only an option in your mind.  It is not ignoratio elenchi to "yammer on" about the effects of Roy L.'s version of LVT as it would apply in the real world - over which you have little influence and even less control. 




> The ignoratio elenchi fallacy is to dispute that my proposed LVT system is the one under discussion, not to ask why it is indisputable that it is the one under discussion.


Neither. It is neither a dispute that your proposed LVT system is the one under discussion, nor is it to ask why it is indisputable "that your proposed LVT system is the one under discussion".   The dispute is over your proposed LVT system - the system itself - _not whether or not it is the topic of discussion_.  Asking "whose intentions?" "whose system?", etc., is only to clarify what it is that is actually in dispute, so that your proposed LVT system (identified as such, since that is relevant to the discussion) can be drawn out from your imagination and into the real world where it would have to apply. 




> "Current reality and current practices" are in part artefacts of the current tax system that do not apply to other systems. We have to start from first principles, not assume that any proposed reform is only going to be a superficial graft upon a rotten root.


Like I said before, you are arguing from your own ideals, using your own set of governing assumptions which are only indisputable in your mind.  You can certainly start from first principles in theory, but you since you cannot re-engineer the real world from scratch to fit your ideals, current reality and current practices are highly relevant, as it is the only HERE from which you must begin to get to THERE - as you attempt to theoretically implement those principles in a world that isn't governed by those principles.  




> There is nothing circular about declaring one's premises, reasoning from them to a conclusion...


Ah, if you only did that.  You don't reason them "to" a conclusion. You reason them "from" your conclusion.  A universe of difference.

----------


## Yieu

> I have never used any account on this forum but the Roy L account.  The fact that you are objectively wrong about that should give you pause.  But I'm guessing it won't.


Pretty sure you are also the OP of this thread.

I could be wrong.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I distinctly recall a secondary account being used to promote LVT which ended up getting banned.


'twas JohnLVT, IIRC.

----------


## Yieu

> 'twas JohnLVT, IIRC.


Yeah... I edited my post once I realized JohnLVT was the thread starter.

----------


## ProIndividual

> Nope. Wrong. That describes current taxes, but not a land value tax.


Tax is still extortion...you pay agianst your will. If you don't pay against your will, Roy L, you are donating or relinquishing payment for service rendered. Tax is by definition compulsory, not voluntary.




> Oh, really? How's that Somalia thingy workin' for ya?


Actually Somalia now is better than before the state collapsed in nearly every measurable category. You have to be logical, which is to say comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state...you can't compare Somalia to another country and get a logical conclusion. Please watch:







As you can see in the presentation, your red herring is a failure.




> By what right would you ever be an owner of what neither you nor anyone else ever produced, and which everyone would otherwise be at liberty to use?


This was in response to :

"All tax makes you a property renter, not owner. "

This is simply logical fact. If you do not pay taxes on your land you are evicted from it and it is taken from you and sold to pay the taxes. If you do not pay rent you are evicted by the landlord and are sued for the owed money, which can result in your property being sold to pay the difference. Hence, it is illogical to consider yourself an owner of any property being taxed. It is clearly rented from the state. This also ignores imminent domain laws....which further make you a renter.




> If you are not into renting natural resources from the state, then you are into stealing them from your fellow man.


Collectives and species do not own natural resources. Individuals own property and all natural resources on it. All this geoism nonsense is anti-property. Proof?:





> Do you want to be a "renter" or a thief? Most people want to be thieves.


That's you saying property is theft...congratualtions.




> Let's be clear: only the land value portion of the property tax is without deadweight loss.


Any part of a tax that has DWL will cause distortions in the market with consequences...so if you have DWL the tax is even worse.




> See above. Maybe it was just your ethics that were wrong.


No, they aren't wrong. Deontological ethics hold until extreme circumstances where consequentialist ethics overrule them in an attempt to limit harm in a situation where no non-coercive choice exists. You want to coerce, with or without extreme circumstance. And even in extremes, coercion is a crime...it's just punished differently when there are mitigating and corroborating circumstances.




> Extortion is a demand for an unearned benefit, backed by a threat to deprive you of what you would otherwise have. Exclusive tenure to land is not something you would otherwise have, and land rent is a benefit government and the community have earned, but you haven't.


Again, this is anti-property collectivism. No community owns my land, I do. And no state is benefiting me. Property rights preceed states in history; see anthropology.




> The sooner you and everyone else face the facts identified above, the better off we will all be.


No one is better off in your anti-property collectivist statist society. If you want anti-propertry collectivist social contracts among willing participants, have at it...but this precludes tax from existing (again, at that point, voluntary government not a state, all payments by the willing are donation or payment for service rendered).




> If you want to live in Somalia.


Again you make a false comparison. As surely as stateless Somalia is better and improved w/o the state, stateless America would be better and improved w/o the state. You compare apples to oranges and call that logic. I compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Nice try. Please look up "informal logical fallacies" to continue argumentation while simultaneously having logic on your side.




> Nope. There is no credible empirical evidence for this claim, which is essentially nothing but an article of religious faith, and considerable evidence against it.


LOL!!!! So let me get this straight...your understanding of modern economics is that coerced monopolies that aren't subject to competition DON'T cause higher prices, lower quality services, and no accountability? That's some interesting economic understanding you have there...LOL.

Every bit of empirical evidence exists and shows that in the absence of coerced monopolies (not to be confused with voluntary monopolies) and monopsonies lower prices prevail, higher quality goods and services prevail, and more accountability exists than in the coerced monopolizaed situation. Simply pick up a few books and you'd know this. Georgism isn't modern economics my friend.




> Wrong again. The Tragedy of the Commons only applies to commons that aren't managed to secure the equal rights of all to benefit by them -- and historically, the commons typically were managed, and managed quite effectively.


Excuse me while I destroy your argument here...when buffalo were communally owned they were slaughtered to near extinction. When they are owned privately they are brought back from the brink of extinction. When streams natives fished were collectively owned they were depleted and the fish got smaller and smaller because people always took the largest fish for themselves. When the tribes owned the fish individually as opposed to all tribes equally claiming ownership, the streams were managed so that everyone was only permitted to fish small fish so the breeding selectively tended to make the fish larger and more plentiful. Soon taking the smallest fish was equal to the past of taking the largest fish, as the entire stock got larger. The stock uof the natural resources got MORE plentiful under property rights, and less plentiful and more polluted under collective ownership. When collectives own property, the smaller the collective the better managed the resources. Why? Because the closer you get to individual property rights the better management occurs, and the farther you get from individuals (the closer you get to larger and larger collective groups) the worse the management becomes. Why? Because not having any percieved individual stake in the common property leads to market failure.

Market failure is when individual rational pursuits result in collectively irrational outcomes...like when everyone has this thing called a state and they all push for "free" goodies on someone elses dime...this naturally results in deficits and debts, and when the debt grows to say, idk, 15 trillion dollars, no one wants to give up their goodies (rationally) but the end result is collapse of the economy (collectively irrational. Hence nothing is more susceptible to market failure than the state. Why? Precisely because of it's extortion powers (tax). This is no different in practice than the fish and stream example among natives.

Lastly, the free-rider problem is obvious. Around 50% of citizens in the state curently pay 0$ in net income tax, but recieve a disproprtionate amount of the servies...essentially free. So about half of people under the state are free-riders. So how is it you can use the 'free-rider problem' criticism to suggest in anarchy this problem would be a cataclysmic aspect that would lead to the collapse of such a stateless system? Of course, this is logical nonsense. It no more collapses the state now on it's own than it would anarchy. In fact, w/o legalized extortion (tax) the free-rider problem would DECREASE logically because no one could get "free" goodies at their neighbors expense w/o their neighbors consent. Everyoe would have to at least show to others they were attempting to pull their own weight, or no one would hand them anything.

So all three of these economic criticisms effect the state far more than anarchy, logically.




> Garrett Hardin, who wrote "The Tragedy of the Commons," protested later that his work was intended as a plea for better public stewardship of commons, not their privatization; that it had been misconstrued and misappropriated by the right; and that he wished he had called it, "The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons."


I don't care what his intention was...his intention was wrong. The fact stands that collective stewardship is far less efficient and far more detrimental to "commons" than private ownership. BTW, I was aware that a commonly used leftist criticism of markets was in fact anti-privatization...I simply show how it's a bad argument.

Also, Orwell intended 1984 to be a story about showing one world government was preferable to multiple nations. Unfortunately for him (but fortunaely for mankind) people saw the point as "wow, the state can be scary". It's now considered a great work of fiction that was intended to be statist, but ended up resulting in the best argument for libertarianism (anarchism).

----------


## Czolgosz

> It's insane, isn't it, but fun!
> 
> PS: point taken




We may need an intervention for the poster above. Lol

----------


## ProIndividual

> Aside from all the psychotic noise, an LVT is superior to taxation on economic activity including not only income, capital gains, inheritance and sales taxes but value added and anything else you can think of.
> 
> Blither away about how evil it may be for whatever reasons, valid or invalid, but it stands as superior to all of those options.
> 
> *If you say "all taxation is theft" then you need to come up with some alternative means of supporting the FORCE that stands behind all property rights claims*.


Again, anthropology has proven property rights existed before states. The idea that the very some thing that destroys property rights by extorting (taxing) and essentially making you a renter on your own land is also the entity that protects your property rights is as illogical as it gets.

The answer is end the state to have strong property rights. Law would be done through _panarchism_ and private legal firms (watch videos at the bottom of this page). Economics and organization would be done through _panarchist synthesis_.

The two main memes of statism:

1. That which destroys property rights is the only reason we have property rights.

2. That which initiates force against us is that which protects us from initiations of force.

Both of these monopolized services, law and defense, are in existence without said monopolies. In fact, logically, they'd have lower costs for those services, higher quality services, and more accountability (all a result of competition). Once you watch the videos I linked you to, you should have most if not all of your reservations answered. The answer is clearly not believing in memes that fail upon their own premises.

----------


## AllBeliefsRfalse

> Again, anthropology has proven property rights existed before states.


Before states, what then was guaranteeing property rights?  Perhaps it was not called a state as we know it today, but there had to exist an outside entity with the means of enforcement.

In the purest sense there is no such thing as a "right" nor is there such thing as "ownership", these are both abstractions. In the real world, I suggest it is more clear way to say what is actually happening as the ability to possess/use property over time. 

There are several strategies humans use to maintain possession of property, most of which involve some type of collective agreement among a group that has recourse to a cooperative use of force.  

However, even in the most simple case, I alone could assume responsibility for maintaining possession of property.  If another person attempts to possess this property, I would have no outside authority to appeal to enforce a "right" to possession.  In this case I must pay the entire cost of maintaining possession of the property.  Providing for this defense would certainly have some cost associated with it, probably in proportion to how much others sought to possess the property.  If I don't provide resources to defend my possession of the property, I will eventually lose my possession of it to someone else with greater means.  Therefore, maintaining possession of property AWAYS has a cost associated with it.  The cost of maintaining possession is generally in proportion to its value.  Depending on the construct, this cost is either guns, soldiers, rent, taxes or whatever, but there is a cost.   

I've read several posts that seem to ignore that there is a perpetual and unavoidable cost to possessing property.  Ironically, many of those who are advocating an inherent "property right" are unwittingly asserting that this "right" and its costs should be subsidized at no cost to the possessor.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I've read several posts that seem to ignore that there is a perpetual and unavoidable cost to possessing property.  Ironically, many of those who are advocating an inherent "property right" are unwittingly asserting that this "right" and its costs should be subsidized at no cost to the possessor.


False choice, as that presumes that there is no other way to pay for property rights enforcement and protection except through an ad valorem tax of some kind.

You slipped in _"the cost of maintaining possession is generally in proportion to its value"_, as if it was _a priori_ correct, or axiomatic, when it is not.  For example, property value for property value, a store owner out in the boondocks is far more vulnerable and at risk to losses than an entire mall with a few door rattlers patrolling, and an entire police force that covers a broad area.  Police forces don't increase proportionately with the population, and if anything, they increase according to the risks associated with a given population.  Which is why banana republics and run down cities, the property values of which are lower, have a greater cost of protection.  Likewise, small towns have a much greater _per capita cost_ for their police forces than do major metropolitan cities, and yet the property values themselves are inversely proportionate -- often many times greater in the densely populated areas. 

Back to the original point, the question is not one of an ad valorem tax versus "no funding for protection". A rejection of an ad valorem tax is not tantamount to a rejection of all means of paying for protection.

----------


## ProIndividual

> Before states, what then was guaranteeing property rights?


By private law enforcement. Who protects the ATM money? Brinks private security. Who protects the mall directly? Private security. A state is an enforced and coercive monopoly over these services with regard to geographic area. To think these services did not, or would not, exist in the market if that coercive monopoly was lifted (and with it, the extortion that funds it) is ahistorical and a logical leap. 

Also, more times than not, property rights are guaranteed not by enforcement, but by virtue of the fact most people aren't sociopaths themselves (although most of them lend creedence to it by cheerleading for sociopathy by proxy - the state). Since only 2-4% of the population are sociopaths who go around violating each other's rights constantly, 96-98% of us don't even require enforcement to stay within the realm of universally preferable behavior regarding all individual rights. I mean, normal people don't walk around murdering, raping, and pillaging just because they could get away with it. The fact they aren't mentally deficient in terms of empathy makes them largely incapable of these actions even when utility to do so is present. Only in extreme conditions (like hunger, homelessness, etc.) do most people without sociopathic traits act purely on utility.

In the end, for the 2-4% of us that need constantly governed by others (after having sacrificed and compromised their individual sovereignty via aggressive actions) are the vast minority. In no way does this suggest we need a monopoly on law enforcement. Do we require law enforcement? Yes. Does it need to be a state monopoly? No. 

I'm not arguing against policing, I'm arguing against monopolies on it. I'd personally fund police via payment or donation if there were no state monopoly on the service, and I'd do so happily...because it'd be cheaper than being extorted (taxed) to fund a monopoly which had no competition and therefore higher costs, lower quality service, and very little accountability (if any). The same can be said of roads, fire service, courts, military, first class mail, welfare, etc.

Any monopoly the state holds over a service is unnecessary for one of two reasons:

1. The service isn't demanded by the market, so it shouldn't exist to begin with.

2. (More likely) the service is demnaded by the market and would therefore exist because of demand in the absence of the state.




> In the purest sense there is no such thing as a "right" nor is there such thing as "ownership", these are both abstractions.


This is a Max Stirner approach to ethics; "rights are spooks ion the mind". As utilitarianism and ethical egoism have their validity, I won't argue with your consequentialist approach to ethics...but I will say that it's purely a matter of semantics to debate how someone rhetorically justifies "rights" or "utilitarian outcomes". Deontological ethics will arrive at the same result more times than not using the language of rights, which I personally prefer for ease of use. I think both deontological and consequentialist ethics are incomplete in defining universally prefered human behavior in society, and equally incomplete in predicting human behavior in moderate and extreme circumstances (given which theory you use for which situation).

The main point is this: whether you believe rights exist or not is a matter of semantics, not mechanism. Rights did not (anthropology) and do not exist because of a monopoly on law enforcement. This is like saying food didn't exist in Russia until the Soviet Union monopolized it's distribution and manufacture. Notice, when that monopoly ended on food, many Russians feared they would starve to death...but instead the market provided the food at low cost, with widespread distribution, and with no long lines for days to get meager rations. Just as you cannot imagine property existing without a monopoly on law enforcement, the Russian in Soviet Russia couldn't imagine food being distributed properly (or better) in a non-monopolized siutation. It can be very difficult to break free of our bias of experience. I often quip this problem as such:

"I saw a monkey ride a bicycle. I never saw a human or bear ride a bicycle. Therefore only a monkey can ride a bicycle."

See why this is completely illogical?




> In the real world, I suggest it is more clear way to say what is actually happening as the ability to possess/use property over time.


I wouldn't disagree totally. For instance, I think it is a harm according to natural law, utilitarianism, and the non-aggression principle to bury car batteries by the hundreds on your land, given when you die it will be an expense passed on to the next owner (even if related to you) that will require an expensive clean-up. For simplicity I also ignore the ground water contamination aspect here. But, in this way "property" is simply "possession that can be transfered via voluntary contract", such as inheritance or sale. This is demonstrated in natura law via the distinction of unalienable natural rights versus alienable natural rights...where life, speech, religion are unalienable (cannot be transfered, sold, and are not subect to border), but property is alienable (can be transfered, sold, and is subject to border).

But none of this, again, precludes competition form providing this service of possession/property protection from agression in the market.




> There are several strategies humans use to maintain possession of property, most of which involve some type of collective agreement among a group that has recourse to a cooperative use of force.


And this agreemnet can be voluntary and contractual as opposed to coerced and monopolized. I ask you to look up panarchism and panarchist synthesis for details...or watch the videos linked to in the post you quoted above.




> However, even in the most simple case, I alone could assume responsibility for maintaining possession of property.


Well, in fact, you are the first line of defense. The extemporaneous defense provided by law enforcment are just deterents ultimately. Well that, and they settle disputes via the court (another monopoly that can be ended).




> If another person attempts to possess this property, I would have no outside authority to appeal to enforce a "right" to possession. In this case I must pay the entire cost of maintaining possession of the property.


You already do pay this cost...it's called tax. Those who pay no net tax in society are free riders. That would likely occur with or without a state...but rest assured that because of competition in absence of a monopoly on this service, it would be affordable to many more people than it is now, therefore decreasing the free rider problem. Also, all law in panarchism is contractual (an actual social contract, not simply a coerced thing we are told is a social "contract", even though you can never withdraw from it without moving geographically, cannot void it when the other party, the state, breaks the agrreed terms and conditions, not to mention the fact YOU never consented to it, some dead dudes did a long time ago on behalf of everyone accidentally born in their gang tuf (geographic monopoly) thereafter). Because all law in panarchism is contractual, you can either pay for your law (and choose what laws you and other willing participants will follow) or you can form non-profit social contracts with payed enforcers or volunteer enforcement. Any number of things might exist in the absence of monopoly and uniformity.

The main point is, you do pay for it now, and it's more expensive when it's monopolized (not to mention, the service is worse and the accountability for the enforcers is low or non-existent). It's also uniform according to geography instead of uniform according to willing participants only. If someone wants to steal, and another signs that contract with them, they can be both free to steal...from ONLY those who willing agree to it. If they steal from those not in that contract, they face penalties of the law enforcement provider of the victim. To see how disputes are settled by different law enforcement groups in the same geographic area, again, go to the link provided and watch the videos I left in the post you quoted above.




> Providing for this defense would certainly have some cost associated with it, probably in proportion to how much others sought to possess the property.


Yes, this is generally how market insurance (even legal insurance) would work.




> If I don't provide resources to defend my possession of the property, I will eventually lose my possession of it to someone else with greater means.


No, because regardless of the contract, only people willing to be agressed against can legally be agressed against. Since you obviously do not wish to be agressed against, you will be compensated by your insurer anytime you are. They will have a great market incentive to limit the ability of others to agress against you, and to bring those to justice who do. You not paying as much as a rich person pays is proportional to the value of your property and the risks associated with where it is kept (or resides). You pay a high rate in a ghetto, but based upon the relatively small amount of land you own...whereas the rich man will pay a lower rate, but in total more because he has so much more to insure. In the end, you both have protection against unwilling agression. The state agresses, they are the only body legally allowed to do it. Once the state is abolished, no one will accept any institution agressing against unwilling people and their property/possessions. Without the state created barriers to entry into the market (via their monopolies on police, courts, and laws via social contracts) no one will be able to stay in business after agressing against innocent victims. People will switch social contracts and law enforcement providers (as shown in the videos) like they switch internet service providers or cable TV companies. Without the funding coming in, the agressive company will wither and go bankrupt as quickly as it became rich. It's expensive to fund agression...it takes taxes (against people's wills) to accumulate the kind of capital needed to fight wars. No one company, no matter how rich, has trillions of dollars to find wars of agression...only states who fund themselves through compulsory extortion (tax) can have theose resources ad infinitum.




> Therefore, maintaining possession of property AWAYS has a cost associated with it. The cost of maintaining possession is generally in proportion to its value. Depending on the construct, this cost is either guns, soldiers, rent, taxes or whatever, but there is a cost.


Again, we're not talking about anything for free here...we're talking about more efficient, less expensive, better quality, more accountability, and less tyranny in those services you pay for.




> I've read several posts that seem to ignore that there is a perpetual and unavoidable cost to possessing property. Ironically, many of those who are advocating an inherent "property right" are unwittingly asserting that this "right" and its costs should be subsidized at no cost to the possessor.


I don't know of any serious anarchist who suggests there is no cost to maintaining property, or law, or roads, or any other service the government monopolizes coercively out of the market. I would say though that no right is granted by government, it's yours by virtue of your humanity....so the state can only agress against that right, like any other thug who might agress against it.

Also see Steven Douglas's argument above.

----------


## Roy L

> Again, anthropology has proven property rights existed before states.


But only justifiable property rights in products of labor, not the unjust privilege of property in land.



> The idea that the very some thing that destroys property rights by extorting (taxing)


Government does not destroy property rights, that is just an absurd fabrication on your part.  Government is the only agent capable of securing and reconciling property rights, and it has to be paid for somehow.  That somehow is taxes.  You just want the productive to be robbed to pay for the service that benefits property owners.



> and essentially making you a renter on your own land


Blatant question-begging fallacy.  What would make it "your own" land any more than "your own" river, "your own" ocean, "your own" atmosphere or "your own" sun?  And try to think of something more plausible than, "I paid for it," or, "the law," as those would also justify slavery, and are thus known in advance to be fallacious, with no further argument needed.



> is also the entity that protects your property rights is as illogical as it gets.


No, claiming that all the evidence of world history is wrong is as illogical as it gets.



> The answer is end the state to have strong property rights. Law would be done through _panarchism_ and private legal firms (watch videos at the bottom of this page). Economics and organization would be done through _panarchist synthesis_.


That is absurd garbage that has never happened in the whole history of the world, and never will.  Somalia does not have strong property rights.  It has property "rights" for the strong.



> The two main memes of statism:
> 
> 1. That which destroys property rights is the only reason we have property rights.
> 
> 2. That which initiates force against us is that which protects us from initiations of force.


No; more accurately, those are the two puerile strawman fallacies you have just made up.



> Both of these monopolized services, law and defense, are in existence without said monopolies.


No, they are not.



> In fact, logically, they'd have lower costs for those services, higher quality services, and more accountability (all a result of competition).


Competition only stimulates efficiency when rules are already in place to eliminate violent aggression between competitors.  If you want to see the efficiency of competing protection services, look at feudal Europe, an anarcho-capitalist society where even kings were poor.



> Once you watch the videos I linked you to, you should have most if not all of your reservations answered. The answer is clearly not believing in memes that fail upon their own premises.


Your videos are ridiculous, anti-rational garbage.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> That is absurd garbage that has never happened in the whole history of the world, and never will....Your videos are ridiculous, anti-rational garbage.


 You know, whenever you bring up Georgist ideas we could easily just reject them by saying they're ridiculous and absurd. (Virtual Roy [typing Roy's response so he doesn't have to!], patent pending: "Yeah, except they aren't, they're self-evidently true")  Instead, we address them on their own terms, with real arguments. ("That is a vicious, sickening lie.  When your arguments have not been puerile and infantile, they have been blatantly false") We deal much more intelligently and respectfully with your ideas than you do with ours. ("ROFL.  You're trying to lecture me about intelligence and respect?  As they say in Japan: it's mirror time!")  I wonder why that is? ("Perhaps it is because the land value tax is an actual idea worth discussing, whereas your incoherent childish fantasies are just that: fantasies and nothing more.")

----------


## Steven Douglas

It is tiring, given that most of his post content is not actual arguments or debates most of the time. Instead he negates, dismisses, swats and otherwise bats away, even as he regurgitates his own assertions. Ad nauseam. As if it all passed for arguments.  

Take a sweeping statement like this: 




> Government does not destroy property rights, that is just an absurd fabrication on your part.


The above statement is absurd, as it is self-conflicting - and here's why: Roy himself believes that property rights (_his version_) are indeed being CURRENTLY being destroyed by the State -- via landownership.  Can't have it both ways. Saying "government does not destroy property rights" is like saying "carpenters do not kill using hammers".  There is nothing inherent in carpenters or hammers that make them incapable of destruction, or solely capable of construction.  

Likewise, governments *can* reconcile property rights (by whatever definition, positive or normative, "rights" are reckoned), just as they *can* destroy them (again, by anybody's individual definition).  That's not absurd garbage, nor was it made up. It's true on its face, as evinced by hundreds of different governments on Earth that currently deal with the subject of property rights in different, often mutually exclusive ways - defensive and/or destructive of property rights to varying degrees.  




> Government is the only agent capable of securing and reconciling property rights...


And yet if government secured exclusive landownership, and codified and recognized it as a right (not subject to ad valorem tax), I would state that government has indeed secured and reconciled property rights (as I view them - in the normative), while Roy would state (from his own premise, using his own normative rationale) that property rights, as he defines them, were neither secured nor reconciled.   

Whenever Roy uses the term "property rights" without qualification he means only the collectivist geolib LVT definition of property rights as he views them (normative/should/ought only, since they are not recognized or codified by the state).  Meanwhile, the actual property rights that do exist (positive/IS), which are now recognized and codified by the state are referred to by Roy as "landowner privileges".  Not objective reality in either case.  

Thus, neither of Roy's views can be positive statements (i.e., accurate statements of what actually is now) - both are normative.  It is only positive if we all stand in Roy's head and acknowledge that landscape as "reality".  As it is. But within his head _only_.  He's saying what "ought to be" as if it already was - taking his own rationale and trying to pass it off as if it was already fact. This is argument FROM (not to) the premise.  

Too bad, because you can't have a rational discussion with anyone on that basis - not without at least a willingness to accurately state what is, however distasteful it might be to the one communicating.

----------


## ProIndividual

> You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Steven Douglas again.


Good post ^

And good luck Roy...I'm not going to keep responding to such an insulting person. I've clearly made my arguments, and others can obviously more than handle you and your Georgism/statism from here.

----------


## Roy L

> Pretty sure you are also the OP of this thread.
> 
> I could be wrong.


I'm guessing if you can't tell the difference between JohnLVT and me, English is likely not your first language.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> I'm guessing if you can't tell the difference between JohnLVT and me, English is likely not your first language.


You must admit it is odd that there would be two people who only post on one fairly obscure issue for such long times and not even try to address each other on the subject and not be on at the same time.  The thread is far to long to go through and find you both saying the same things but I seem to recall that happening.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I'm guessing if you can't tell the difference between JohnLVT and me, English is likely not your first language.


 English is my first language and JohnLVT strikes me as a sock puppet account of yours as well.

----------


## Roy L

> Take a sweeping statement like this: 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				Government does not destroy property rights, that is just an absurd fabrication on your part.
> 			
> 		
> ...


No, that is false and absurd.



> - and here's why: Roy himself believes that property rights (_his version_) are indeed being CURRENTLY being destroyed by the State -- via landownership.


No, that is a bald fabrication on your part.  I have stated many times that landownership removes the individual right to LIBERTY, not PROPERTY. 



> Can't have it both ways. Saying "government does not destroy property rights" is like saying "carpenters do not kill using hammers".  There is nothing inherent in carpenters or hammers that make them incapable of destruction, or solely capable of construction.


??  That is perfectly right, but entirely irrelevant.  We were not making mere unquantified generalizations.  We were making statements about government as such.  His claim is that government AS SUCH destroys property rights; that it is _inherent_ in the nature of government to destroy property rights.  While it is certainly true that there are cases where government has done so, the number of cases is insignificantly small compared to the number of cases where government has protected (and even invalidly extended) property rights.  His claim was equivalent to, "Carpenters use hammers to kill."  While there are no doubt such cases, overwhelmingly, carpenters use hammers to drive nails, not to kill.



> Likewise, governments *can* reconcile property rights (by whatever definition, positive or normative, "rights" are reckoned), just as they *can* destroy them (again, by anybody's individual definition).  That's not absurd garbage, nor was it made up. It's true on its face, as evinced by hundreds of different governments on Earth that currently deal with the subject of property rights in different, often mutually exclusive ways - defensive and/or destructive of property rights to varying degrees.


Ignoratio elenchi.  The claim was not what governments _can_ do but what they _do_ do.  And overwhelmingly, they defend and even extend property "rights."



> And yet if government secured exclusive landownership, and codified and recognized it as a right (not subject to ad valorem tax), I would state that government has indeed secured and reconciled property rights (as I view them - in the normative), while Roy would state (from his own premise, using his own normative rationale) that property rights, as he defines them, were neither secured nor reconciled.


No, I would identify the fact that in securing a privilege of property in land, it had removed the individual right to liberty without just compensation.



> Whenever Roy uses the term "property rights" without qualification he means only the collectivist geolib LVT definition of property rights


No, you are lying again, Steven.  There is nothing collectivist in the individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor, and you know that.



> as he views them (normative/should/ought only, since they are not recognized or codified by the state).


We have already established that attempting to justify what the state does purely by the fact that it does it is begging the question, and therefore fallacious.  You resort to that fallacy over and over again.



> Meanwhile, the actual property rights that do exist (positive/IS), which are now recognized and codified by the state are referred to by Roy as "landowner privileges".


Correct, because that is what they are, just as state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners.



> Not objective reality in either case.


Wrong.  The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact.



> Thus, neither of Roy's views can be positive statements (i.e., accurate statements of what actually is now) - both are normative.


No, you are merely ASSUMING that normative statements cannot be based on positive fact.  While that view is widespread, I have shown that it is itself not based on positive fact but on assumptions that evolutionary psychology has overturned over the last few decades.



> It is only positive if we all stand in Roy's head and acknowledge that landscape as "reality".  As it is. But within his head _only_.  He's saying what "ought to be" as if it already was - taking his own rationale and trying to pass it off as if it was already fact. This is argument FROM (not to) the premise.


No.  That is a lie.  I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.



> Too bad, because you can't have a rational discussion with anyone on that basis - not without at least a willingness to accurately state what is, however distasteful it might be to the one communicating.


As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"

----------


## Roy L

> You must admit it is odd that there would be two people who only post on one fairly obscure issue for such long times


I have posted on other issues; but the land question is far more important, and I accordingly devote proportionally more time to it.  JohnLVT's name pretty much states where his interests lie.



> and not even try to address each other on the subject


I think I recognize JohnLVT from another forum.  If it is him, he knows my positions and that it is futile to dispute them.  For my part, I have deliberately avoided responding to him, even when he said things I didn't entirely agree with, because I wanted to see what others said, and how he would respond.



> and not be on at the same time.


I don't know that we weren't.  I never noticed.



> The thread is far to long to go through and find you both saying the same things but I seem to recall that happening.


If it did, it was because he realized I said something better than he could say it.  I do sometimes encounter other people on the Net using specific wording I first wrote many years before.  But you'll notice, e.g., that JohnLVT often uses the expression, "value soaks into the land," which I don't use, as I think the watery image distracts from the concept of rent as economic advantage.

----------


## Roy L

> English is my first language and JohnLVT strikes me as a sock puppet account of yours as well.


On what basis, other than our broad agreement on the desirability of recovering land rent for public purposes?  Certainly any observant person should be able to see his English skills are inferior to mine.

----------


## Roy L

> You know, whenever you bring up Georgist ideas we could easily just reject them by saying they're ridiculous and absurd. (Virtual Roy [typing Roy's response so he doesn't have to!], patent pending: "Yeah, except they aren't, they're self-evidently true")  Instead, we address them on their own terms, with real arguments. ("That is a vicious, sickening lie.  When your arguments have not been puerile and infantile, they have been blatantly false") We deal much more intelligently and respectfully with your ideas than you do with ours. ("ROFL.  You're trying to lecture me about intelligence and respect?  As they say in Japan: it's mirror time!")  I wonder why that is? ("Perhaps it is because the land value tax is an actual idea worth discussing, whereas your incoherent childish fantasies are just that: fantasies and nothing more.")


You don't seem to realize how comprehensively (though not as conclusively as I would have) you just refuted yourself.  Thanks for the laughs.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> You don't seem to realize how comprehensively (though not as conclusively as I would have) you just refuted yourself.  Thanks for the laughs.


 Any time, Roy, any time.

----------


## Zippyjuan

> I have posted on other issues; but the land question is far more important, and I accordingly devote proportionally more time to it.  JohnLVT's name pretty much states where his interests lie.
> 
> I think I recognize JohnLVT from another forum.  If it is him, he knows my positions and that it is futile to dispute them.  For my part, I have deliberately avoided responding to him, even when he said things I didn't entirely agree with, because I wanted to see what others said, and how he would respond.
> 
> I don't know that we weren't.  I never noticed.
> 
> If it did, it was because he realized I said something better than he could say it.  I do sometimes encounter other people on the Net using specific wording I first wrote many years before.  But you'll notice, e.g., that JohnLVT often uses the expression, "value soaks into the land," which I don't use, as I think the watery image distracts from the concept of rent as economic advantage.


Thank you for the info.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, that is a bald fabrication on your part.  I have stated many times that landownership removes the individual right to LIBERTY, not PROPERTY.


Semantics - you believe landownership removes not "liberty", generically and broadly speaking, but a specific subset of a certain type of liberty which you believe should be (but is not now) a right - one of property usage.  And this type of liberty that you refer to is NOT a right, positively speaking, no matter how many times you try to slip that in as a qualifying term. 




> ...as he views them (normative/should/ought only, since they are not recognized or codified by the state). 
> 			
> 		
> 
> We have already established that attempting to justify what the state does purely by the fact that it does it is begging the question, and therefore fallacious.  You resort to that fallacy over and over again.


There was no justification or rationale involved in anything I wrote, -  I just stated positive facts.   




> Correct, because that is what they are, just as state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners.


No, it was the _right_, not _privilege_, of slave owners.  That is a positive statement of fact, and has nothing to do with agreement or rationale of any kind.  I can see that you are substituting the word privilege for right for rhetorical effect, but it changes the statement from a positive to a normative - and that's been your fallacy all along.

It's obvious what you're trying to do, given your objective. The problem for you is that it's much more difficult to say, "I think this type of liberty should be recognized as a right." Much easier to simply refer to it (REPEATEDLY even) as a "right to liberty" that is being deprived.  After all, the reasoning goes, if you can establish that not only is the kind of liberty you are referring to is an actual "RIGHT" that is being denied, the only question that remains is how to "right" a "wrong".  After all, who isn't in favor of rights? Or "liberty" (generically, unqualified)?  

You really are stuck with a rhetorical dilemma, because *that type of liberty is not a right*. That is a positive statement you want not to be true.  You want it to be recognized and codified as a right, but it is not now.  But you persist in repeatedly asserting that a "RIGHT" to liberty is being denied...not just a certain type of liberty...rather than _honestly_ acknowledge that no such right is recognized in this society, while you then (just as honestly) explain why you think it should be. 




> Wrong.  The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact.


Again you misstate a positive statement of fact by substituting privilege instead of right, slipping in your normative, given that you would PREFER that landownership (your OUGHT) be referred to as a privilege - when in fact it is codified and recognized right now as a right.  




> No, you are merely ASSUMING that normative statements cannot be based on positive fact.


Incorrect. Normative statements CAN be "based on" positive facts, on that we have no dispute. They cannot, however, be conflated with positive facts, as if they were one and the same. That is your error, your consistent fallacy throughout the thread, to wit: 

1) *"landownership removes the individual right to LIBERTY"* -- incorrect, and a conflation - as landownership removes a certain type of liberty, which is not a "right". 
2) *"state recognition of slave deeds was a privilege for slave owners"* -- incorrect, as it was at that time a right, not a privilege. Whether it leaves a bad taste in your mouth to refer to it accurately as such is irrelevant.  Slave ownership was, in fact a legal right, one that it was later decided conflicted with what most felt was a moral right to liberty (from physical enslavement), which then became recognized and codified as a legal right to liberty for former slaves, which exists today. _But not then_. 
3) *"The state-issued privilege of landownership is an objective fact."* -- incorrect, as landownership -- right now -- is recognized and codified as a right, not a privilege. That has nothing to do with how anyone feels about it - landownership as a matter of right is an indisputable fact of objective reality - while your rhetorical normative, as when you refer to landownership rights as "landowner privilege" is nothing but a normative statement.  

If you want to argue that it's a MORAL RIGHT, go ahead - but moral rights are, by their very nature, NORMATIVE - not positive, and as such cannot accurately be referred to as "indisputable 'facts' of objective reality".  I know that puts a pit in your stomach, but dems da breaks. 




> While that view is widespread, I have shown that it is itself not based on positive fact but on assumptions that evolutionary psychology has overturned over the last few decades.


Gibberish.  Evolutionary psychology doesn't "overturn" anything but itself.  Interesting, perhaps, but entirely moot. Stop trying to peddle the soft sciences as if they were on the same foundations and footing, with the same rigor and scientific objectivity as the hard sciences. 




> I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.


Hardly, as shown above when you conflate what really are indisputable facts with your own rhetorical, normative slant, as if they too could magically pass off (as a free rider) and become part of an indisputable fact by simply (and repeatedly) stating it in the same sentence, or as part of the same term or phrase.

----------


## redbluepill

> You must admit it is odd that there would be two people who only post on one fairly obscure issue for such long times and not even try to address each other on the subject and not be on at the same time.  The thread is far to long to go through and find you both saying the same things but I seem to recall that happening.


I noticed a couple weeks back that the previous thread was brought to up on a LVT forum which explains the "Georgist invasion". 

You think I'm Roy too?

----------


## redbluepill

> I have posted on other issues; but the land question is far more important, and I accordingly devote proportionally more time to it.  JohnLVT's name pretty much states where his interests lie.


Same here. Most other issues besides the issuance of money are almost trivial in comparison.

----------


## Roy L

> Tax is still extortion...you pay agianst your will. If you don't pay against your will, Roy L, you are donating or relinquishing payment for service rendered. Tax is by definition compulsory, not voluntary.


<sigh>  Wrong.  Just as the money you pay for the groceries you take home from the supermarket is a voluntary payment, so is the money you pay for what you take from society by depriving others of their liberty to use the land.



> Actually Somalia now is better than before the state collapsed in nearly every measurable category.


No, it isn't.  It is better in a few cherry-picked categories like cell phone coverage.



> You have to be logical, which is to say comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state...you can't compare Somalia to another country and get a logical conclusion.


If only you had any intention of being logical!  You aren't comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state.  You are comparing Somalia under one of the worst governments of the 20th century to Somalia without the state.  While few African governments earn any merit badges, try comparing Somalia to an African state that actually makes an effort to do government's job, like Botswana.



> Please watch:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As you can see in the presentation, your red herring is a failure.


ROTFL!!  You can't even see that fool's blatant illogic, such as attributing to statelessness the beneficial effects of Somalia's huge foreign remittance flows, which the video itself acknowledges amount to several thousand dollars per household per year, an amount that dwarfs even the foreign aid the Siad Barre government was living on.  Your hero also delicately avoids mentioning the fact that Somalia is home to the world's leading pirate fleet, which feeds Somalia's economic "miracle" with booty and ransoms from peaceful trading nations.



> By what right would you ever be an owner of what neither you nor anyone else ever produced, and which everyone would otherwise be at liberty to use?
> 			
> 		
> 
> This was in response to :
> 
> "All tax makes you a property renter, not owner. "
> 
> This is simply logical fact.


No, it's an absurd fabrication.  Do you think the annual taxes some states charge on automobiles make them rented, not owned?



> If you do not pay taxes on your land you are evicted from it and it is taken from you and sold to pay the taxes.


Blatant question begging fallacy.  What would make it "your land"?



> If you do not pay rent you are evicted by the landlord and are sued for the owed money, which can result in your property being sold to pay the difference. Hence, it is illogical to consider yourself an owner of any property being taxed.


More garbage.  Pretty much any asset can be seized for any debt.  If you don't pay your credit card debt, the credit card company can seize your house.  Does that mean you are renting your house from the credit card company?  Oops, you are also renting it from the mortgage company, and from the government too.

Your claims are just absurd, dishonest nonsense.



> It is clearly rented from the state.


No, it indisputably isn't.



> This also ignores imminent domain laws....which further make you a renter.


Wrong again.



> Collectives and species do not own natural resources.


Assertion lacking any factual support.  There is no basis on which an individual can claim ownership of natural resources that does not also apply to collectives.



> Individuals own property and all natural resources on it.


Assertion lacking any factual support other than the fallacious, "it's the law."



> All this geoism nonsense is anti-property.


No, that's a lie on your part.  Geoist principles support the individual right to property in the products of one's labor.



> Proof?:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				Do you want to be a "renter" or a thief? Most people want to be thieves.
> 			
> 		
> ...


No, that's you lying about what I plainly wrote, congratulations.  It is property in land and natural resources that is theft, because it forcibly deprives people of what they would otherwise have.  Property in products of labor doesn't, because products of labor did not otherwise exist.

You will now refuse to know that fact.



> Any part of a tax that has DWL will cause distortions in the market with consequences...so if you have DWL the tax is even worse.


I repeat: it is only the improvement value portion of property taxes that have a deadweight loss.  Remove that, and tax only land value, and there is no deadweight loss because supply is fixed.



> No, they aren't wrong.


Yes, they are.



> Deontological ethics hold until extreme circumstances where consequentialist ethics overrule them in an attempt to limit harm in a situation where no non-coercive choice exists.


There is no non-coercive way to allocate exclusive land tenure.  It is IMPOSSIBLE.



> You want to coerce, with or without extreme circumstance.


No, YOU want to coerce to enable greedy, idle, parasitic landowners to steal from the productive.  I am merely willing to know the fact that what you want is to coerce, and that there is no alternative to coercion if anyone is to enjoy exclusive land tenure.



> And even in extremes, coercion is a crime...it's just punished differently when there are mitigating and corroborating circumstances.


Except when the coercion is sanctioned by law, such as slavery and landowning.



> Extortion is a demand for an unearned benefit, backed by a threat to deprive you of what you would otherwise have. Exclusive tenure to land is not something you would otherwise have, and land rent is a benefit government and the community have earned, but you haven't.
> 			
> 		
> 
> Again, this is anti-property collectivism.


No, it is fact.



> No community owns my land, I do.


Blatant question begging fallacy.  That is exactly the same "logic" that slave owners used to justify slavery: "No gubmint owns mah niggahs.  I do."



> And no state is benefiting me.


You are lying.  The entire unimproved value of "your" land is a gift from government and the community.



> Property rights preceed states in history; see anthropology.


Not property "rights" in land.  Indeed, there was no known legal tradition of private property in land until Roman times.  Before that, there had always been a recognition that the landholder was a tenure holder only, not the owner of the land.



> No one is better off in your anti-property collectivist statist society.


More accurately, no one is impressed by your puerile name calling.  There has been no private ownership of land in Hong Kong for over 160 years, yet it has been a beacon of liberty, justice and prosperity, and no one but a stupid, lying ignoramus would claim it is an "anti-property collectivist statist society."



> If you want anti-propertry collectivist social contracts among willing participants, have at it...


Unlike my consensual contracts, *your* anti-justice feudal "contracts" demand *UN*willing participants: the enslaved who have been forcibly deprived of their rights to liberty without just compensation.



> but this precludes tax from existing (again, at that point, voluntary government not a state, all payments by the willing are donation or payment for service rendered).


Land value taxation is a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction: you pay market value for the economic advantage that government and the community secure to you, and of which you deprive others.  You just don't want to pay for what you are taking, because you are accustomed to receiving it as a gift.



> Again you make a false comparison.


Nope.



> As surely as stateless Somalia is better and improved w/o the state,


No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again.  Somalia is only approximately as bad without the state as it was under the horrendous Siad Barre -- who at least didn't infest the sea lanes around the Horn of Africa with pirates.



> stateless America would be better and improved w/o the state.


Laughable.  While the US government has its problems, the notion that it would be better on the Somali model is hilarious.



> You compare apples to oranges and call that logic.


Actually, apples and oranges can usefully be compared in a number of ways.



> I compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.


While claiming one of them is a coconut...



> Nice try. Please look up "informal logical fallacies" to continue argumentation while simultaneously having logic on your side.


LOL!  As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"



> So let me get this straight...


You are not interested in getting anything straight, as you are about to evade the false claim you made by trying to change the subject.



> your understanding of modern economics is that coerced monopolies


See?  You are dishonestly changing the subject, which was not "coerced monopolies" but your false and unsupported claim that the market will provide all necessary and desirable services cheaper, more efficiently and with better accountability than a public provider.  See your post #503 in this thread.



> that aren't subject to competition


Strawman fallacy.  No one said anything about not being subject to competition.

You are just lying about what I plainly wrote.  Apologists for greed, privilege and injustice always have to lie.  ALWAYS.



> DON'T cause higher prices, lower quality services, and no accountability?


Right.  Especially when private competitors are perfectly at liberty to enter the market, the public provider _has_ democratic accountability, and the alternative is a private monopoly not subject to competition, but WITHOUT democratic accountability.



> That's some interesting economic understanding you have there...LOL.


It is fact.  You just don't know any economics, and imagine that your infantile "meeza hatesa gubmint" Austrian school websites have something honest and factual to offer.



> Every bit of empirical evidence exists and shows that in the absence of coerced monopolies (not to be confused with voluntary monopolies) and monopsonies lower prices prevail, higher quality goods and services prevail, and more accountability exists than in the coerced monopolizaed situation.


<yawn>  Nice attempt to change the subject.  Try saying something relevant to your false and unsupported claim that the market will provide all necessary and desirable services cheaper, more efficiently and with better accountability than a public provider.



> Simply pick up a few books and you'd know this.


ROTFL!!  I have read millions of words on economic theory and history, dumpling, and millions more on the theory and history of taxation.  You have not.



> Georgism isn't modern economics my friend.


And Maxwell's equations aren't modern physics.  But they're still good enough for most practical purpose -- and the results of modern physics give much more reason for thinking it is an improvement on Maxwell than the results of modern economics give for thinking it is an improvement on George.



> Excuse me while I destroy your argument here


ROTFL!!!  Excuse me while I laugh at your rhetorical incompetence, and demolish you utterly:



> ...when buffalo were communally owned


<yawn>  When would that have been?  The only communally owned buffalo I know of are in Wood Buffalo National Park -- and they constitute the majority of buffalo in existence, as private appropriators and owners of buffalo had hunted them to the brink of extinction.



> they were slaughtered to near extinction.


<sigh>  They were slaughtered to near extinction by _private interests_ intent on _appropriating_ an _unowned_ and _unmanaged_ natural resource as private property.

You are destroyed.



> When they are owned privately they are brought back from the brink of extinction.


ROTFL!!  Your ignorance is astounding.  Virtually ALL the increase in buffalo population since the low point of the late 19th century was achieved by the _Canadian government_, managing the _communally owned_ herd in Wood Buffalo National Park.

You are destroyed.  You are destroyed utterly and completely, comprehensively and conclusively.  Nothing you can possibly say can make any difference any more, because you have just made such an absolute fool of yourself (OK, I helped a bit).



> When streams natives fished were collectively owned


When was that?  Provide some evidence for your claim of collective ownership, like a collective plan of management or allocation of use.

Thought not.



> they were depleted and the fish got smaller and smaller because people always took the largest fish for themselves. When the tribes owned the fish individually as opposed to all tribes equally claiming ownership, the streams were managed so that everyone was only permitted to fish small fish so the breeding selectively tended to make the fish larger and more plentiful. Soon taking the smallest fish was equal to the past of taking the largest fish, as the entire stock got larger.


Please provide a credible reference for this just-so story.



> The stock uof the natural resources got MORE plentiful under property rights, and less plentiful and more polluted under collective ownership.


Garbage refuted above.



> When collectives own property, the smaller the collective the better managed the resources. Why? Because the closer you get to individual property rights the better management occurs, and the farther you get from individuals (the closer you get to larger and larger collective groups) the worse the management becomes.


Ah.  That must explain the flourishing state of fish stocks worldwide through small private interests appropriating and managing the resource.



> Why? Because not having any percieved individual stake in the common property leads to market failure.


We'll add market failure to the economics of which you are known to be ignorant.



> Market failure is when individual rational pursuits result in collectively irrational outcomes...like when everyone has this thing called a state and they all push for "free" goodies on someone elses dime...


Like I said, you are ignorant of the economics of market failure, of which the state is most definitely not an example.



> this naturally results in deficits and debts,


You are also ignorant of monetary economics.  Check.



> and when the debt grows to say, idk, 15 trillion dollars, no one wants to give up their goodies (rationally) but the end result is collapse of the economy (collectively irrational. Hence nothing is more susceptible to market failure than the state. Why? Precisely because of it's extortion powers (tax). This is no different in practice than the fish and stream example among natives.


And you claim _Georgist_ economics is not up to the modern standard?   ROTFL!!



> Lastly, the free-rider problem is obvious. Around 50% of citizens in the state curently pay 0$ in net income tax, but recieve a disproprtionate amount of the servies...essentially free.


No, they do not.  They must pay landowners full market value for access to them.



> So about half of people under the state are free-riders.


Why are you lying that income tax is the only tax people pay?



> So how is it you can use the 'free-rider problem' criticism to suggest in anarchy this problem would be a cataclysmic aspect that would lead to the collapse of such a stateless system?


I said no such thing.  Free riders are the least of Somalia's problems.



> Of course, this is logical nonsense.


More accurately, it is dishonest garbage that you made up.



> It no more collapses the state now on it's own than it would anarchy. In fact, w/o legalized extortion (tax) the free-rider problem would DECREASE logically because no one could get "free" goodies at their neighbors expense w/o their neighbors consent.


You need to stop using the word, "logically."



> Everyoe would have to at least show to others they were attempting to pull their own weight, or no one would hand them anything.


You clearly have no idea how the privileged use their privileges to _make_ others hand them things.



> So all three of these economic criticisms effect the state far more than anarchy, logically.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk



> I don't care what his intention was...his intention was wrong.


He was correct.



> The fact stands that collective stewardship is far less efficient and far more detrimental to "commons" than private ownership.


Refuted above.  And by YOUR OWN EXAMPLE.



> BTW, I was aware that a commonly used leftist criticism of markets was in fact anti-privatization...I simply show how it's a bad argument.


See above.  You buffaloed yourself, chum.



> Also, Orwell intended 1984 to be a story about showing one world government was preferable to multiple nations.


LOL!!  Hilariously wrong.  Your ignorance is monumental.



> Unfortunately for him (but fortunaely for mankind) people saw the point as "wow, the state can be scary". It's now considered a great work of fiction that was intended to be statist, but ended up resulting in the best argument for libertarianism (anarchism).


Orwell in no way intended 1984 to be "statist."  You are just makin' $#!+ up.

----------


## Xerographica

> If only you had any intention of being logical!  You aren't comparing Somalia under the state to Somalia without the state.  You are comparing Somalia under one of the worst governments of the 20th century to Somalia without the state.  While few African governments earn any merit badges, try comparing Somalia to an African state that actually makes an effort to do government's job, like Botswana.


Hey!  Look!  I wonder if your reputation is badder than my own?  They should just make it a number instead so we can know for sure who is the most hated member.

helmuth_hubener told me to come visit this thread and do battle with you or something.  Remember that time when you posted in one of my very first threads about pragmatarianism... Confessions of a Libertarian?  Oh the good old days.

So...pragmatarianism says absolutely nothing about the taxing and the LVT says absolutely nothing about the spending.  So it's not really like the two are mutually exclusive.  I just don't promote the LVT because I don't think the problem has anything to do with the taxing.  Why do you think the problem is with the taxing rather than with the spending?  

Do you RSS subscribe to Mark Wadsworth's blog?

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## Roy L

> Hey!  Look!  I wonder if your reputation is badder than my own?  They should just make it a number instead so we can know for sure who is the most hated member.


I am, because I am promoting the real threat to greed, privilege, injustice and evil.  The evil therefore hate me more than anyone.



> helmuth_hubener told me to come visit this thread and do battle with you or something.


At least he knows when he is overmatched.



> Remember that time when you posted in one of my very first threads about pragmatarianism... Confessions of a Libertarian?  Oh the good old days.


Ah, another thread ruined by Reiver's monumental tediousness.



> So...pragmatarianism says absolutely nothing about the taxing and the LVT says absolutely nothing about the spending.


Wrong.  LVT recovers the value the spending creates.  If the spending is wasteful or corrupt, LVT won't raise as much revenue.



> So it's not really like the two are mutually exclusive.  I just don't promote the LVT because I don't think the problem has anything to do with the taxing.  Why do you think the problem is with the taxing rather than with the spending?


There are problems with both, but you can't solve the spending problem until you solve the taxing problem, because the incentive to pocket publicly created value will be too strong.  No matter what you do, without LVT, landowners will force excessive and inefficient spending to line their own pockets.  Remove that problem, and it becomes possible to address spending.



> Do you RSS subscribe to Mark Wadsworth's blog?


I know of Wadsworth, of course, but I don't subscribe to his blog.  He has done a pretty good job demolishing some stupid anti-LVT garbage.

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## Xerographica

> There are problems with both, but you can't solve the spending problem until you solve the taxing problem, because the incentive to pocket publicly created value will be too strong.  No matter what you do, without LVT, landowners will force excessive and inefficient spending to line their own pockets.  Remove that problem, and it becomes possible to address spending.


Can I spend your money "better" than you can?

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## Roy L

> Can I spend your money "better" than you can?


Maybe.  But that's not the point.  When you have paid the supermarket for the groceries you took home, it is not your money any more.  It's the supermarket's money, because they earned it by providing you with commensurate value, for which you _voluntarily exchanged_ your money.  In exactly the same way, when you voluntarily choose to take land and the associated advantages from the community of those who would otherwise be at liberty to use them, and compensate them justly for taking it from them, the money you paid in compensation is not your money any more.

What is happening here is very simple, Xero: government and the community have been giving the landowner a welfare subsidy, financed by taxes that rob the productive.  I have identified the fact that this system is unjust and economically destructive, and propose that instead, those who get the benefit of government spending should be the ones who pay for it.  You oppose this idea because you are accustomed to getting your welfare subsidy giveaway, and do not want to pay for it.  You oppose justice and economic efficiency, and are in favor of injustice and inefficiency, as long as you benefit by them.  You do not care that others' rights are violated, that they are forced into poverty, that millions of them are killed every year by the system you profit from.  Considerations of right and justice and simple human decency are of no more interest to you than they are to Steven or Helmuth or Eduardo or any other apologist for greed, privilege, injustice and evil.

The landowner has a magic button that puts a dollar into his  bank account and kills a random poor person he doesn't know every time he presses it.  He is happy to press that button all day long, and to scream stupid lies about socialism, statism, collectivism, property rights, blah, blah, blah if anyone suggests his magic button is an evil thing that no one should be pressing, or even possess.

----------


## Roy L

> Most other issues besides the issuance of money are almost trivial in comparison.


Right.  The only other one of comparable significance is intellectual property monopolies, which have increased in importance relative to land as government and the courts have broadened them, and will almost certainly continue to do so.  As technology advances faster and faster, and affects more and more of what people do, it will become difficult even to participate in society without paying off IP protection racketeers.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Considerations of right and and simple human decency [and the Apple Pie Way] are of no more interest to you [you horrible land-owner, Xero] than they are to Steven or Helmuth or Eduardo or any other apologist for greed, privilege, injustice and evil.


 Hey, I made the list!   

I'm a bit unsure as to what Mr. X. did to deserve to be on the list, as he seems quite open to and happy about LVT, but you are both internet addicts so it must be something he said on some other forum, probably years ago.




> The landowner has a magic button that puts a dollar into his  bank account and kills a random poor person he doesn't know every time he presses it.  He is happy to press that button all day long, and to scream stupid lies about socialism, statism, collectivism, property rights, blah, blah, blah.


 As for my own part, my posts were not screaming.  They were obviously lies and were unceasingly stupid, but screaming they were not.  No, I pride myself that I did not respond in kind to your vitriol, except for one time and that was only as a joke to try to show you how ridiculous your tactics are (it didn't work).  There are many of your posts, however, which are just over-the-top with rage, epithets, and fury.  Righteous fury, of course, at my ceaseless lies and stupidity, but certainly fury.

Anyway, just wanted to make sure to keep the record straight.  Carry on.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

In this article, I will criticize the followers of Henry George, or Georgists, from a libertarian perspective.  I see Georgism as a problematic philosophy incompatible with a free society.

There are a couple issues the Georgists have to deal with. First, to summarize the Georgist position: Land was not created by any human, thus it cannot be owned by any human and all landowners are really usurpers and thieves, depriving their poor fellow humans of the land they so ruthlessly claim.

Now, if the Georgists really believe this and if they really believed in justice and morality, it would follow that all land must be held in common forever and ever, amen. There can be no private land monopolization. Instead, they propose a land-value tax.  This land-value tax is a fee paid in order to secure permission to rip people off! To steal land from the masses! If we are seeking justice and morality, we do not base our society on handing out a phony "right" to steal and rip people off in exchange for money. Why not have the whole mass of people own the land in common and have the workers' council make all land decisions? Because the Georgists understand the incentive problem and perhaps they understand some of the other problems also involved in collective ownership.

So the first point to realize is that Georgism is a philosophy about expedience and utilitarianism. Absolute rights and justice are sacrificed right off the bat. They will get very excited about how landowners are thieves and property (in land) is theft, but do they call for an end to this theft? You know, I criticize theft because I am against it. Are they? Not at all! The solution they propose is: "because landowners are all thieves, we have to allow them to keep thieving but have them pay a recurring fee to 'society' for the right to continue their brigandry." Look, if landowners are thieves, they're scum. The immoral looting needs to be abolished, not taxed. One gets the feeling they would call for taxation on the owners of chattel slaves in order to pay back society for their crime and that such a tax would make everything OK.

The second issue is physical. In Georgism as in economics generally, land is defined as the entirety of the raw universe, excluding our bodies and the goods we create. That is, every ocean, every planet, every star, every bit of stray hydrogen, and the vast expanse of space in the cosmos. In Georgism, no one can own any of that. As soon as they improve it, they do own the improvement, but they still can never own the "land", that is, the space and matter which nature provided.

So, if a man homesteads a section of forest, cuts down some trees, and uses them to build a house there, he now owns the house, but not the land it sits on. Even if he fundamentally changes the make-up of the land by, e.g. planting a wheat field or digging a big hole, the underlying land can never be owned, only the improvements. That in and of itself seems fair and consistent. The man didn't create the land, he just happens to be using it (and thus preventing any of his equally-deserving fellows from using it, by the way) so how could he have any just claim to own it? The wheat, on the other hand, he very much had a hand in. The wheat would not exist without him, he created it with his laboring, and so it rightfully can be said to be his absolute property.

The problem becomes apparent when one realizes that not only is the wheat field making use of the matter and space provided for free via the existence of the universe, the wheat itself is making use of that free matter and space as well. The matter that was originally in the soil has been percolated up through the wheat stalk to become the kernel. One cannot simply create matter out of nothing. As Carl Sagan said: “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” I think we can all agree, then, that everything in existence, no matter how man-made, has land as one of its major components. That is, everything consists of raw matter gotten from the universe and of space for it to occupy.

Let us consider two different assets: a parking lot, and a chain saw. Both are considered fully ownable by libertarians, and indeed by most people. Georgists consider only the chain saw to be fully ownable. That is because the parking lot has a strong "land" ( land in the common sense, not the economic sense) component while the chain saw does not. Now the parking lot qua parking lot is ownable, the Georgists would be quick to clarify. The pavement, the painted lines, all of that is an improvement and thus ownable. The land that it is blanketing, however, is not ownable. That raw land should be taxed according to whatever its value would have been were it not leveled, tamped, and covered with pavement.

To be consistent, the same reasoning must apply to the chain saw. The chain saw should be taxed according to whatever value the ore, petroleum, etc. would have had were it not refined, cracked, made into steel, made into plastic, cast, injection-molded, and assembled into a chain saw. The raw elements composing the chain saw are just as much a part of the universe as the raw elements composing the parking lot.

But Georgists do not apply the same logic to the chain saw as to the parking lot. Part of this doubtless is because of their placement of expediency above the concepts of justice or consistency. The land in the case of the parking lot is big, static, and, as they are fond of pointing out, impossible to hide from the tax man. The land tucked away in the chain saw is small, portable, and can be hidden from the tax man. Thus, the Georgists want to tax the land of the parking lot, but not the land of the chain saw, because of the ease of taxation and for other practical reasons. Thus, when they speak of land-value taxation they mean only that very particular class of land that lays horizontally at the surface of the Earth and upon which men walk.

This inconsistency opens them up to all kinds of hypothetical absurdities and conundrums. What if a man were to fly to an asteroid and claim to own it? That claim would be invalid under Georgist thought, since the land of the asteroid is unownable. What if instead he were to carve a large chunk out of the Earth and launch it into space as an artificial asteroid? Since it becomes an artificial asteroid only through herculean human effort, it would seem to be fully ownable, for the same reasons the wheat kernel and the chain saw are fully ownable. Thus, a thousand years down the road, all the inhabitants on Asteroid B are enjoying full allodial property rights while on asteroid A they must pay land-value tax to humanity for the crime of monopolizing their pieces of the asteroid. But what is fundamentally different about these two asteroids at this point? Should the distant, murky past of the asteroids' respective beginnings really affect their property situation so?

What if I were to tunnel a shaft a mile down and at the bottom of it hollow out an enormous cavern. Would I then be responsible to pay land value tax? Would not this be essentially the same type of endeavor as the asteroid launch? One is putting solid mass where there is emptiness in order to create new livable square footage. The other is creating emptiness where there was solid mass in order to create new livable square footage.

If the artificial asteroid people and the hollow earth people can both escape the LVT via their shenanigans, what of those who drain swamps, manufacture islands, blow up mountains, or heat icy wastes and in so doing make these places habitable or useful when before they were not? The typical Georgist response to, e.g. the artificial island manufacturer, would be that while he may own the island, he does not own the land under the island and thus must pay tax on the value of the land under his island. But what about the land over the island? What about the land <i>in</i> the island which has merely been shuffled around? Why do we only care about what's underneath? Is land only land when it is "under" -- when men can stand on it? To figure out the taxable land do we simply calculate the surface area of the Earth's sphere, despite the fact that much of this is covered in ocean, making it impossible to "stand on" without application of improvements or technology?

The artificial island builder created the value of the land under his island, value which did not exist until he arrived. No one was using the land before him. For all practical purposes, it was not land. He has thus created new usable land, just as the Earth hollower created new usable land, and just as the asteroid launcher created new usable land. They have not created new land in an absolute sense if one defines land as the entirety of the universe, but they have changed the nature of the land. In doing so, they have created a valuable asset where none existed before. If the chain saw manufacturer, who does the same thing -- he rearranges the matter given by nature to create a new valuable asset -- if he can own his creation, these real-estate-improvers ought to be able to own their creations as well. To a lesser extent, the irrigator, the forest clearer, the mountain blaster, and the explorer all create value where there was none before. Their creations are tied to the horizontal surface of the Earth, true. That is a laughably arbitrary reason to deny them the fruits of their labors.

The chain saw monopolizes the scarce matter, or land, of the universe just as the parking lot does. The Georgists say that the parking lot owner must pay tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing, but the chain saw owner need pay no tax on the scarce matter his creation is monopolizing. Why? Because one collection of matter is arranged in a way that the Georgists recognize as land -- dirt laid out horizontally at the surface of the Earth.

Georgists are guilty of not thinking three-dimensionally. For them, the world is still flat and horizontal land still holds some sort of almost mystical quality making it unownable. As technology progresses, very small or nontraditional real-estate, as well as very large manufactured items, blur the line between what is taxable land and what is not. One path forward to rigorize this school of thought would be to introduce the idea of taxing the underlying land in boats, hammers, and chain saws in the same way as the land underlying skyscrapers, fish ponds, and parking lots. Another path forward would be to admit that although man did not create the universe we will nevertheless allow the entire universe to pass into private ownership, since the alternative is to create some sort of tax on the universe, whose purpose and benefit would be singularly unclear.

----------


## Xerographica

> Maybe.  But that's not the point.  When you have paid the supermarket for the groceries you took home, it is not your money any more.  It's the supermarket's money, because they earned it by providing you with commensurate value, for which you _voluntarily exchanged_ your money.  In exactly the same way, when you voluntarily choose to take land and the associated advantages from the community of those who would otherwise be at liberty to use them, and compensate them justly for taking it from them, the money you paid in compensation is not your money any more.
> 
> What is happening here is very simple, Xero: government and the community have been giving the landowner a welfare subsidy, financed by taxes that rob the productive.  I have identified the fact that this system is unjust and economically destructive, and propose that instead, those who get the benefit of government spending should be the ones who pay for it.  You oppose this idea because you are accustomed to getting your welfare subsidy giveaway, and do not want to pay for it.  You oppose justice and economic efficiency, and are in favor of injustice and inefficiency, as long as you benefit by them.  You do not care that others' rights are violated, that they are forced into poverty, that millions of them are killed every year by the system you profit from.  Considerations of right and justice and simple human decency are of no more interest to you than they are to Steven or Helmuth or Eduardo or any other apologist for greed, privilege, injustice and evil.
> 
> The landowner has a magic button that puts a dollar into his  bank account and kills a random poor person he doesn't know every time he presses it.  He is happy to press that button all day long, and to scream stupid lies about socialism, statism, collectivism, property rights, blah, blah, blah if anyone suggests his magic button is an evil thing that no one should be pressing, or even possess.


You don't know if I can spend your money "better" than you can?  The thing is...time is money and here you are spending your time promoting the LVT.  Can I spend your time "better" than you can?

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## Roy L

> There are many of your posts, however, which are just over-the-top with rage, epithets, and fury.  Righteous fury, of course, at my ceaseless lies and stupidity, but certainly fury.


How angry would it be appropriate to be over two Holocausts a year, year after year?

----------


## Roy L

> You don't know if I can spend your money "better" than you can?


I'm pretty sure you can't, or you would make more sense, and your posts would be more honest.  But you never know, and in any case I have identified the fact that the money in question is not yours, so you are just repeating a previously refuted red herring.



> The thing is...time is money and here you are spending your time promoting the LVT.


Overactive conscience.



> Can I spend your time "better" than you can?


No, but _I_ can spend my time better than by answering such puerile drivel.

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## rpwi

Have not read the entire thread but the premise is interesting.

Government can indeed create unjust privilege in how it allocates and delegates private land.  If a government had say awarded the entire continent of North America (to use an extreme) to one single landowner...this surely would be tyrannical as the dependency from the landless to the single landowner would create economic serfdom.  2 owners of North America would be almost as bad...as would say 4, 8, 16 and so forth...  It would be statistically impossible to say that land and it's derivative benefits have been equally delegated from government to the people.

The benefit of private land is stronger though than from politician managed land ...it allows diverse and creative means in which the land can be used, subdivided and supported by long term contracts.

In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other.  If the land is errantly allocated such that 1 sailor got 70% and the rest had to split the remaining 30% this would be unjust...but I'm not sure a land tax is the best way to rectify this.  For starters the 30% would have to pay a land tax...and even if they the islanders somehow manged to over-time re-equally allocate the island...they would still be paying the tax.

I've always liked the idea that you could escape to a cabin in the woods and as long as you kept care of yourself...you shouldn't be pestered to support the local pet causes of the month that politicians have invented.  In this way a land tax is invasive.  

But certainly I understand Henry George's point that land ownership can create privilege and false dependency.  The problem is finding a right balance.  Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance.  The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.

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## Sola_Fide

.Economics and Sound Money thread?

Donate to THOMAS MASSIE!!!

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Have not read the entire thread but the premise is interesting.
> 
> Government can indeed create unjust privilege in how it allocates and delegates private land.  If a government had say awarded the entire continent of North America (to use an extreme) to one single landowner...this surely would be tyrannical as the dependency from the landless to the single landowner would create economic serfdom.  2 owners of North America would be almost as bad...as would say 4, 8, 16 and so forth...  It would be statistically impossible to say that land and it's derivative benefits have been equally delegated from government to the people.


 Myself, I would say why have gov't allocating it at all?  Homesteading should allocate it.




> The problem is finding a right balance.  Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance.  The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.


 That is, in fact, exactly what Roy L. proposes.  It is also more or less what Steven Douglas proposes, interestingly enough.

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## helmuth_hubener

> How angry would it be appropriate to be over two Holocausts a year, year after year?


 Oh yes, exactly, I knew you'd say that.  Like I say, I was just setting the record straight on who was figuratively "screaming" and who was not.

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## Steven Douglas

> How angry would it be appropriate to be over two Holocausts a year, year after year?


That's where I think you lose pretty much everyone, save the most unhinged, glassy-eyed and severely logically impaired.

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## MattintheCrown

> Have not read the entire thread but the premise is interesting.
> 
> Government can indeed create unjust privilege in how it allocates and delegates private land.  If a government had say awarded the entire continent of North America (to use an extreme) to one single landowner...this surely would be tyrannical as the dependency from the landless to the single landowner would create economic serfdom.  2 owners of North America would be almost as bad...as would say 4, 8, 16 and so forth...  It would be statistically impossible to say that land and it's derivative benefits have been equally delegated from government to the people.


Close.  Even as the number of owners gets larger, the fact remains: the liberty to use all of the land has been abrogated, without compensation.  The degree to which that injustice inflicts suffering may be attenuated by having more landowners, but the nature of the problem remains.  And while 1 single landowner may be able to make de facto slaves of the rest of the population, the amount of rent can never be greater than if *any* number of landowners collected the market rent from producers.  If a single landowner looked to get as much wealth from the population as he could, the best strategy would be to issue short-term leases, at market rates.




> The benefit of private land is stronger though than from politician managed land ...it allows diverse and creative means in which the land can be used, subdivided and supported by long term contracts.


Politician-managed land is a strawman.  No geoist wants land allocation to be done by the government.  You've created a sort of false dilemma: aside from having land be private property or being directly allocated by the government, you can have land be sold on temporary leases, or treated as private property, contingent upon payment of market rent.  An allodial title would be land as private property; the system we have now is fee simple, which is ownership with contingencies.  Geoists generally want one of the contingencies to be that 'owners' of land pay the full market rent of their land in taxes.




> In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other.


I disagree.  Each part of the island is not the same as the other.  More importantly, even if each of the shipwrecked agreed absolutely with the distribution, what of their children?  Why are the children bound to such a contract?  Keep in mind, we're not talking about a contract to use something the group created, but something that they found and chose to use in some manner, and more importantly, something which none of them can live without.




> If the land is errantly allocated such that 1 sailor got 70% and the rest had to split the remaining 30% this would be unjust...but I'm not sure a land tax is the best way to rectify this.  For starters the 30% would have to pay a land tax...and even if they the islanders somehow manged to over-time re-equally allocate the island...they would still be paying the tax.


Think of it as compensation.  Here's an example I think you'll find instructive: once I rented a house with 2 of my friends.  Problem was, it had three bedrooms, and each had a different size.  This was before I'd heard of geoism, but even then, the answer was obvious:  I suggested that we bid against one another, with the highest bidder getting the biggest bedroom, and the lowest bidder getting the smallest.  In this manner, one person did get the use of the best bedroom, but he also paid the most rent each month. 

Carry that over to your island and your concerns about tax.  They could have theoretically allocated land use however they wanted, but if they were smart, they would have determined a system of compensation, with those with use of the most-desired land compensating those who got the least desirable land.  If they did that, it wouldn't matter if children were born, or people died: in any event, the system would adapt, and secure equal benefits for all.  Not by some government fiat, but by market action: the individuals bidding against one another for use of resources rightly owned by no one.

On a larger scale, it's impossible to have each individual bid against everyone else for the use of land.  But what *is* possible is to have landowners pay the market rent in tax, and to use the taxes to fund services and infrastructure that are beneficial to everyone.  It's silly to hand out privileges that enrich some small part of the population due mostly to accidents of history, and then levy taxes on production.  In fact, it's madness.




> I've always liked the idea that you could escape to a cabin in the woods and as long as you kept care of yourself...you shouldn't be pestered to support the local pet causes of the month that politicians have invented.  In this way a land tax is invasive.


Yeah, but if you're on land no one else wants, you don't pay taxes.  The LVT doesn't tax land _use_, it taxes the _privilege_ the landowner enjoys.  No privilege, no tax.

But really, who wants to live in such a way in the first place?  No one, really.  The fact that land near cities has such value is a proof as to the value individuals give to living proximate to society.  I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario is instructive when considering theory: the LVT passes, because the man who takes nothing from society isn't forced to give anything to society.  But, it's generally nothing more than a theoretical example, because the fact is that society is greatly beneficial to humans.




> But certainly I understand Henry George's point that land ownership can create privilege and false dependency.  The problem is finding a right balance.  Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance.  The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.


Roy's individual exemption is pretty good, IMO.  By giving each individual a by-value exemption, you give him a bit of land to use anywhere in the tax jurisdiction which he can use rent-free.

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## MattintheCrown

> That's where I think you lose pretty much everyone, save the most unhinged, glassy-eyed and severely logically impaired.


Heard of the Irish potato famine?  Some examples are more obvious than others, but the grinding poverty that consigns millions to die each year is caused directly by landowner privilege.  Private ownership of land denies individuals the product of their labor, and the inexorable consequent is poverty and death.

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## heavenlyboy34

> Heard of the Irish potato famine?  Some examples are more obvious than others, but the grinding poverty that consigns millions to die each year is caused directly by landowner privilege.  Private ownership of land denies individuals the product of their labor, and the inexorable consequent is poverty and death.


Heard of the Industrial Revolution?  Private ownership of property and means of production also correlate with vast improvements in living standards for everyone.  Hence, a "poor" person in the West is one who only has one big screen TV.   (see also my earlier example of the failure of "landownerless society" in 17th-early 18th century America)

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## MattintheCrown

> Heard of the Industrial Revolution?


The industrial revolution was in full swing as the Irish potato famine was going on.




> Private ownership of property and means of production also correlate with vast improvements in living standards for everyone.  Hence, a "poor" person in the West is one who only has one big screen TV.


The West?  You mean, where governments tax production to fund "welfare" programs?




> (see also my earlier example of the failure of "landownerless society" in 17th-early 18th century America)


Your example is worthless.  Where there's free land, there's no grinding poverty associated with landowner privilege.  That's the whole point.

----------


## Roy L

> Heard of the Industrial Revolution?  Private ownership of property and means of production also correlate with vast improvements in living standards for everyone.


Nope.  Only private ownership of CAPITAL correlates with improved living standards, not private ownership of LAND.  Poverty-stricken hell-holes like Bangladesh, the Philippines, Guatemala and Pakistan have private property in land, while free, prosperous and dynamic Hong Kong does not.  Every society you claim failed economically through lack of private landowning also lacked private property in capital; but there are examples of prosperous societies with private property in capital but no private landowner privilege, so your claim that failed societies that lacked both failed because they lacked private property in land is either grossly anti-logical or a blatant fabrication.



> Hence, a "poor" person in the West is one who only has one big screen TV.


Because Western governments intercede, massively and expensively, on behalf of the landless to save them from the Holocaust of the Landless.



> (see also my earlier example of the failure of "landownerless society" in 17th-early 18th century America)


Why are you lying, hb?  You know you have seen the proof that the Pilgrims DID NOT use private property in land to solve their economic crisis, but only private property in products of labor.  Land was held in common, and allocated to households who DID NOT OWN IT.  Combined with private ownership of products of labor, this system worked very well to bring prosperity to the colony.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> And while 1 single landowner may be able to make de facto slaves of the rest of the population, the amount of rent can never be greater than if any number of landowners collected the market rent from producers.


That's also Roy's supposition and assertion, one that I believe is as bizarre as it is ignorant of market dynamics and the very nature of any monopoly in its ability to manipulate scarce resources in ways dictate floor prices that are higher than what otherwise have been a normal ceiling in a market with multiple competing sellers.  

The "single firm" problem of determining market value in the absence of competition between owners is not dealt with under any version of LVT that I've seen -- except to deny that such a problem even exists.  Market rates vary dynamically, up and down, between floors and ceilings.  Sellers competing with one another establish floor prices, while buyers competing with each other establish ceilings.  This many-to-many relationship between multiple buyers and multiple sellers helps to establish fair market value. With LVT you are removing a critical component; namely, the relationship between multiple sellers who set floor prices, as well as the competition between sellers required to find that floor.  

With LVT the entire land rental market becomes a one-to-many relationship. A single seller to many buyers. The only "competition" is between buyers, with a single seller that is somehow presumed to be neutral, and will ostensibly do nothing whatsoever in an attempt to make its own market value determinations, create artificial scarcity, or do anything else that might otherwise establish a raised floor price on anything.  Whether a single seller would exercise such power or not, it should at least be acknowledged that such a power would indeed exist. 




> Even as the number of owners gets larger, the fact remains: the liberty to use all of the land has been abrogated, without compensation.


This begins by begging the question, with the implied assumption that the liberty to use all land is in fact a just claim, or right (even though you avoided the use of that word) to which everyone is entitled, and therefore something that indeed should be be compensated when/where/if denied.  Even the word abrogation implies a right, given that it is most often used in that context.  




> No geoist wants land allocation to be done by the government.


You are referring, of course, to allocations of specific land parcels to specific landholders, of course. This is kind of like saying that no apartment complex owner wants to allocate individual apartments.  As the reasoning goes, allocations would instead be decided by the tenants themselves, who would be free to allocate it for themselves, as they "freely choose" which apartments they wanted to occupy. 

Your statement ignores the biggest Allocation Elephant in the room, as all geoists I have ever read do indeed want a _single prior allocation_ of all land within a taxing jurisdiction to itself -- which would then be administered (politician/bureaucrat managed/administered) by that taxing jurisdiction. This land, once it has been annexed (allocated to the taxing jurisdiction), could then be _reallocated_, as it would have the equivalent of For Rent signs put on it, as renters/landholders would then be "free" to decide which land they wanted to use exclusively in exchange for a perpetual rental fee paid to that jurisdiction. 

Another problem lies in how "full market value" of the land is determined.  If that involves a government-created formula, or government-paid land value assessors, that is one more way in which the land would in fact be politician managed. Another would be zoning laws, or land-use restrictions.  




> Think of it as compensation. Here's an example I think you'll find instructive: once I rented a house with 2 of my friends. Problem was, it had three bedrooms, and each had a different size. This was before I'd heard of geoism, but even then, the answer was obvious: I suggested that we bid against one another, with the highest bidder getting the biggest bedroom, and the lowest bidder getting the smallest. In this manner, one person did get the use of the best bedroom, but he also paid the most rent each month.


In principle, this is no different than the landownership market now.  You pay more, you get more (of a combination of quantity and quality of land).  The difference in your example is that you are beginning with a landlord/tenants relationship that is already settled.  In today's world, people can choose to own, wherein the price paid can eventually, theoretically, come to an end, or you can choose to rent, wherein you remain on a perpetual treadmill and pay rents indefinitely.  In other words, to borrow from Izzy Izzard's routine, it is RIGHT NOW a choice between Cake or Death.   




Under LVT there would be no provision for ownership.  Where the choice was once Cake or Death, it is now reduced to "or Death".  The difference: the Landlord State would be spraying back at least some of that rent tax on wonderful infrastructure and other value, back onto the community as a whole. 




> It's silly to hand out privileges that enrich some small part of the population due mostly to accidents of history, and then levy taxes on production. In fact, it's madness.


What exactly is a privilege, and what is it, precisely, that is being "handed out"? 

One other problem I see that geoists seem to have a tough time dealing with, and that is the disparity between different types of commerce, the very productivity of which is on a spectrum. On one extreme, productivity is fully land-value based (e.g., farming/mining), while on the other end, there is commerce the productivity of which is not in any way tied to land-value.  That's on the payment side. On the collection and spending side, what is "infrastructure" and other state expenditures?  That can be a "handout" of "privileges" which have nothing whatsoever to do with land or land improvements.  

So it is conceivable that a taxing jurisdiction could be collecting the most revenues from those whose productivity is dependent on land, and land value, while "returning" (redistributing) value to those whose productivity is not in any way tied to land value. How do you reconcile that?  




> Yeah, but if you're on land no one else wants, you don't pay taxes. The LVT doesn't tax land use, it taxes the privilege the landowner enjoys. No privilege, no tax.


That presumes, of course, that such land is available. In Roy's particular version of LVT all land would simply be available -- because that's how he envisions it. That's also how he deals with the deadweight losses associated with monopolies as manipulate values based on artificial scarcity, as could come about through land use restrictions (locking out massive amounts of otherwise available and unused lands), zoning laws, etc., 

In your geoist version is there any room for artificial manipulations such as these, or do you even acknowledge the dynamics I just mentioned?




> But really, who wants to live in such a way in the first place? No one, really.


That's a projection, I think, one that ignores reality.  An enormous part of the population is hive-minded, of that there is no doubt, as seen by so many who cluster in and around the more metropolitan areas. But to say "No one, really" is to ignore the reality of a massive part of the population that really does prefer not to be part of a massive hive -- with all its attendant madness (including political attempts to manipulate and control the more rural from the more concentrated areas). 




> The fact that land near cities has such value is a proof as to the value many individuals give to living proximate to more concentrated population centers society.


There, I fixed it for you so that it's more accurate, without casting such a broad blanket over so many to which your original statement would not apply.  




> I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario is instructive when considering theory.


I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario, while a real phenomenon, is also a straw man. It marginalizes a serious problem facing geoists.  We're really talking about competing interests in lands, and taxing jurisdictions, and how that plays out in cases where the population concentration is not so great, and not enough competition between land users exists to create any meaningful value for an LVT to even exist.   In other words, if I have enough, and you have enough, and all my neighbors are content and feel that they have enough, nobody will see a need to pay anybody anything.  No competition, we're all content.  

Such "wide open" rural areas, would openly compete, and serve as a check and a balance on any areas where LVT rates are high.  And if that's the only source of revenue for the taxing jurisdiction, MANY would weigh their options, and MANY would opt to DISPERSE, rather than to collect and concentrate into areas where the costs are higher.  Capital flight is a real danger facing all taxing jurisdictions, which compete with each other for population and revenue sources.  That alone places a strong incentive for the taxing jurisdictions that depend on LVT for revenues to make such lands completely unavailable - to increase revenues by artificially preventing capital flight.

----------


## Roy L

> If a government had say awarded the entire continent of North America (to use an extreme) to one single landowner...this surely would be tyrannical as the dependency from the landless to the single landowner would create economic serfdom.  2 owners of North America would be almost as bad...as would say 4, 8, 16 and so forth...


Actually, it's serfdom for the landless no matter how many landowners there are.  See Ireland in the 19th century.  Because the supply of land is fixed, the land market is always inherently a monopoly market.  Steven does not understand this fact, as he knows no economics.  A single "rational" (profit maximizing) landowner can't do better than to charge the market rent for every parcel -- which is exactly the same as the best a million rational landowners could do.



> The benefit of private land is stronger though than from politician managed land ...it allows diverse and creative means in which the land can be used, subdivided and supported by long term contracts.


LVT does not let politicians manage land: they can't afford to pay the rent.



> In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other.


I'll take the 1/10th that has the fresh water source...

You see the problem?



> If the land is errantly allocated such that 1 sailor got 70% and the rest had to split the remaining 30% this would be unjust...but I'm not sure a land tax is the best way to rectify this.  For starters the 30% would have to pay a land tax...and even if they the islanders somehow manged to over-time re-equally allocate the island...they would still be paying the tax.


For such a simple desert-island scenario, each could have an exemption equal to the least valuable allotment taken up.



> I've always liked the idea that you could escape to a cabin in the woods and as long as you kept care of yourself...you shouldn't be pestered to support the local pet causes of the month that politicians have invented.  In this way a land tax is invasive.


Nope.  The land a cabin in the woods sits on -- including the modest surrounding area you might want to use exclusively for a garden, etc. -- isn't worth enough to exceed your individual land tax exemption.



> Perhaps a LVT but in which there is an exemption for the first xyz of property's worth might strike the right balance.  The individualist can leave simply but tax-free on his small bit of land...while the large land owners would pay the land value taxes.


Exactly.  But the exemption has to be per person, landholder and tenant alike, not per property.

----------


## Xerographica

> I'm pretty sure you can't, or you would make more sense, and your posts would be more honest.  But you never know, and in any case I have identified the fact that the money in question is not yours, so you are just repeating a previously refuted red herring.
> 
> No, but _I_ can spend my time better than by answering such puerile drivel.


Unless I'm mistaken...you agree that you should have the freedom to choose the "best" use of your time/money in the private sector.  Now, why shouldn't you also have the freedom to choose the "best" use of your money in the public sector?  In other words, why shouldn't you be allowed to choose which government organizations you give your taxes to?

In case you're not quite clear on the concept...here's a bit of overview.  Economics is the study of scarcity.  One use of a limited resource is not as good as any use.  Some uses are "better" than other uses.  Some uses are more "valuable" than other uses.  Some uses are more "productive" than other uses.  But the only way we can accurately determine how resources should be used is if people can choose how they spend their time/money.  If people can't choose how they spend their time/money then we'll have no idea who values which resources the most.

Therefore, the problem we face in the public sector has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing...and everything to do with the spending.  The "best" use of limited resources is a function of all our spending decisions.  Without all our spending decisions there is no "best" use...there is simply misuse of all our hard earned money.  Even the most perfect form of taxation wouldn't be able to solve the fundamental problems of disregarding economic facts in the public sector. 

Why do you want to disregard economic facts in the public sector?  Clearly you don't want to disregard economic facts in the private sector.  You know how I know?  Because you really don't want me to be in charge of how your money/time is spent in the private sector.  So why would you want somebody you've never met to be in charge of how your money is spent in the public sector?

----------


## rpwi

> In an ideal world...if 10 shipwreck sailers arrive on island X...they would each get 1/10th the island and none of them would pay taxes to the other.
> 			
> 		
> 
> I'll take the 1/10th that has the fresh water source...


I agree that is abusive since the water owner would have a monopoly.

But let's say...this is a crazy island.  It is subdivided like slices of a pie and miracle of miracles, all 10 slices are identical in every economic sense of the word.  In such a case, would there be a LVT?  

Guess what I'm getting at is that I worry that a LVT would be applied above and beyond what is necessary to rectify the wrongs created by government irresponsibility subdividing and delegating ownership of land.  For example, in Wisconsin, the 'education' system spends 8k to 19k per student per year.  To me this is a blackhole...and is financed...yes not by the LVT...but the property tax which is a cousin of the LVT.  IMO the amount of money we pay directly and indirectly in property taxes is above and beyond the privilege created by disproportionate land ownership (which comes from government).  Then even if this amount was correct...our politicians are too stupid to fairly reallocate this to the public at large.  

Other question would be about future generations...returning to the 10 people, 10 sections of land analogy...what if two of the people reproduced 10 more people...turns out this was irresponsible overpopulation as the island was not properly equipped to serve this many people.  Would it be fair to tax the individuals who acted responsibly and didn't over-populate and to force them to support those who did not practice proper judgment?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I agree that is abusive since the water owner would have a monopoly.
> 
> But let's say...this is a crazy island.  It is subdivided like slices of a pie and miracle of miracles, all 10 slices are identical in every economic sense of the word.  In such a case, would there be a LVT?


Theoretically, no.  No 'landowner' would have an advantage.  But again, as kids were born, the situation would change: the children would not have equal shares of the island.




> Guess what I'm getting at is that I worry that a LVT would be applied above and beyond what is necessary to rectify the wrongs created by government irresponsibility subdividing and delegating ownership of land.  For example, in Wisconsin, the 'education' system spends 8k to 19k per student per year.  To me this is a blackhole...and is financed...yes not by the LVT...but the property tax which is a cousin of the LVT.  IMO the amount of money we pay directly and indirectly in property taxes is above and beyond the privilege created by disproportionate land ownership (which comes from government).  Then even if this amount was correct...our politicians are too stupid to fairly reallocate this to the public at large.


Well, the problem with politicians is that they're a representation of the electorate.  That said, the LVT would leave society with a lot more money on hand, and would reduce costs, so all things being equal, even a poorly functional government under a LVT would be better than what we have now.




> Other question would be about future generations...returning to the 10 people, 10 sections of land analogy...what if two of the people reproduced 10 more people...turns out this was irresponsible overpopulation as the island was not properly equipped to serve this many people.  Would it be fair to tax the individuals who acted responsibly and didn't over-populate and to force them to support those who did not practice proper judgment?


I'd say population control is out of the purview of the LVT.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Well, the problem with politicians is that they're a representation of the electorate.  That said, the LVT would leave society with a lot more money on hand, and would reduce costs, so all things being equal, even a poorly functional government under a LVT would be better than what we have now.
> 
> .


No.  Politicians represent a small part of the electorate-the part with enough money to bribe the politicians.  If you really think representatives care about EVERYONE in their respective districts, you aren't very familiar with the system.

----------


## Roy L

> Unless I'm mistaken...you agree that you should have the freedom to choose the "best" use of your time/money in the private sector.  Now, why shouldn't you also have the freedom to choose the "best" use of your money in the public sector?


Once you have paid money to the grocery store for the things you are taking home for yourself, that money is no longer yours.  When you pay the community for what you are taking for yourself by excluding others from land, the money you paid is no longer yours.



> In other words, why shouldn't you be allowed to choose which government organizations you give your taxes to?


Same reason you can't pick which employees of the grocery store get the money you pay for a loaf of bread.  But with government, you do get a vote.



> In case you're not quite clear on the concept...here's a bit of overview.  Economics is the study of scarcity.


No, it isn't.  It's the study of how people overcome scarcity through production and allocation of scarce items.



> One use of a limited resource is not as good as any use.  Some uses are "better" than other uses.  Some uses are more "valuable" than other uses.  Some uses are more "productive" than other uses.  But the only way we can accurately determine how resources should be used is if people can choose how they spend their time/money.  If people can't choose how they spend their time/money then we'll have no idea who values which resources the most.


And LVT solves that problem by aligning government's financial interest with the public interest: if tax revenue is wasted, people won't be willing to pay as much for land, and next year's revenue will be less.  Same as if the grocery store wastes money on decor that people don't like, and tries to charge them for it through higher prices.



> Therefore, the problem we face in the public sector has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing...and everything to do with the spending.


Nope.  You still haven't understood: _LVT is radically different from all other taxes_ because it makes aggregate tax revenue identical with the market value created by public spending on services and infrastructure.



> The "best" use of limited resources is a function of all our spending decisions.  Without all our spending decisions there is no "best" use...there is simply misuse of all our hard earned money.  Even the most perfect form of taxation wouldn't be able to solve the fundamental problems of disregarding economic facts in the public sector.


Try to understand: land value _exactly measures_ all our decisions on public spending for services and infrastructure.



> Why do you want to disregard economic facts in the public sector?


It is you who are disregarding the fact that land value is identically equal to the minimum value the landowner expects to take from the community and not repay in taxes.  The Henry George Theorem shows that the value created by public spending on services and infrastructure -- and thus the efficiency of that spending -- is reflected in land value better than in any other measure.



> Clearly you don't want to disregard economic facts in the private sector.  You know how I know?  Because you really don't want me to be in charge of how your money/time is spent in the private sector.  So why would you want somebody you've never met to be in charge of how your money is spent in the public sector?


IT IS NO LONGER MY MONEY.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT THE GROCERY STORE TO BE IN CHARGE OF HOW THE MONEY YOU PAID IT FOR A LOAF OF BREAD IS SPENT?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE "INVISIBLE HAND" ARGUMENT?

LVT CREATES AN INVISIBLE HAND FOR PUBLIC EXPENDITURES.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> That's also Roy's supposition and assertion, one that I believe is as bizarre as it is ignorant of market dynamics and the very nature of any monopoly in its ability to manipulate scarce resources in ways dictate floor prices that are higher than what otherwise have been a normal ceiling in a market with multiple competing sellers.  
> 
> The "single firm" problem of determining market value in the absence of competition between owners is not dealt with under any version of LVT that I've seen -- except to deny that such a problem even exists.  Market rates vary dynamically, up and down, between floors and ceilings.  Sellers competing with one another establish floor prices, while buyers competing with each other establish ceilings.  This many-to-many relationship between multiple buyers and multiple sellers helps to establish fair market value. With LVT you are removing a critical component; namely, the relationship between multiple sellers who set floor prices, as well as the competition between sellers required to find that floor.  
> 
> With LVT the entire land rental market becomes a one-to-many relationship. A single seller to many buyers. The only "competition" is between buyers, with a single seller that is somehow presumed to be neutral, and will ostensibly do nothing whatsoever in an attempt to make its own market value determinations, create artificial scarcity, or do anything else that might otherwise establish a raised floor price on anything.  Whether a single seller would exercise such power or not, it should at least be acknowledged that such a power would indeed exist.


Nope.  Land is a natural monopoly.  Holding land out of use would only act to reduce aggregate rent, as it would limit production.




> This begins by begging the question, with the implied assumption that the liberty to use all land is in fact a just claim, or right (even though you avoided the use of that word) to which everyone is entitled, and therefore something that indeed should be be compensated when/where/if denied.  Even the word abrogation implies a right, given that it is most often used in that context.


We have an equal right to liberty, which private ownership of land violates.




> You are referring, of course, to allocations of specific land parcels to specific landholders, of course. This is kind of like saying that no apartment complex owner wants to allocate individual apartments.  As the reasoning goes, allocations would instead be decided by the tenants themselves, who would be free to allocate it for themselves, as they "freely choose" which apartments they wanted to occupy. 
> 
> Your statement ignores the biggest Allocation Elephant in the room, as all geoists I have ever read do indeed want a _single prior allocation_ of all land within a taxing jurisdiction to itself -- which would then be administered (politician/bureaucrat managed/administered) by that taxing jurisdiction. This land, once it has been annexed (allocated to the taxing jurisdiction), could then be _reallocated_, as it would have the equivalent of For Rent signs put on it, as renters/landholders would then be "free" to decide which land they wanted to use exclusively in exchange for a perpetual rental fee paid to that jurisdiction.


I have no idea what you're saying here.  I won't even hazard a guess.




> Another problem lies in how "full market value" of the land is determined.  If that involves a government-created formula, or government-paid land value assessors, that is one more way in which the land would in fact be politician managed. Another would be zoning laws, or land-use restrictions.


No, the land would not be "managed" by assessments.  That's just ridiculous.  And zoning laws and land-use restrictions apply now, without LVT.




> In principle, this is no different than the landownership market now.  You pay more, you get more (of a combination of quantity and quality of land).  The difference in your example is that you are beginning with a landlord/tenants relationship that is already settled.


Say instead of renting the house, we found the house abandoned.  In that scenario, the rooms could be allocated by bidding against one another.  Stupid people would do this as a one-time payment.  Smart people would realize that a one-time payment for ongoing benefits is insufficient for fairness.  The bidders should make their bids for how much they're willing to pay *each month* for use of the better rooms.  In that way, the resource nature provided freely for the 3 friends would be equally beneficial: those who got the lesser rooms would be compensated.




> In today's world, people can choose to own, wherein the price paid can eventually, theoretically, come to an end, or you can choose to rent, wherein you remain on a perpetual treadmill and pay rents indefinitely.  In other words, to borrow from Izzy Izzard's routine, it is RIGHT NOW a choice between Cake or Death.


The choice now is be a slave or a slavemaster.




> Under LVT there would be no provision for ownership.  Where the choice was once Cake or Death, it is now reduced to "or Death".  The difference: the Landlord State would be spraying back at least some of that rent tax on wonderful infrastructure and other value, back onto the community as a whole.


Yes, and reducing or eliminating taxes on production, which you seem to have forgotten.  Instead of being robbed of my production, I'm paying society for the benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land.  And that's fair.




> What exactly is a privilege, and what is it, precisely, that is being "handed out"?


Private use of some part of the United States is a privilege, and the USG handed it out, fairly willy-nilly.




> One other problem I see that geoists seem to have a tough time dealing with, and that is the disparity between different types of commerce, the very productivity of which is on a spectrum. On one extreme, productivity is fully land-value based (e.g., farming/mining), while on the other end, there is commerce the productivity of which is not in any way tied to land-value.  That's on the payment side. On the collection and spending side, what is "infrastructure" and other state expenditures?  That can be a "handout" of "privileges" which have nothing whatsoever to do with land or land improvements.


Once again, no idea what you're trying to say.  You're tying yourself in knots trying to avoid abandoning your beliefs.




> So it is conceivable that a taxing jurisdiction could be collecting the most revenues from those whose productivity is dependent on land, and land value, while "returning" (redistributing) value to those whose productivity is not in any way tied to land value. How do you reconcile that?


You're not taxing production.  You're taxing the benefit of using the land.  




> That presumes, of course, that such land is available. In Roy's particular version of LVT all land would simply be available -- because that's how he envisions it. That's also how he deals with the deadweight losses associated with monopolies as manipulate values based on artificial scarcity, as could come about through land use restrictions (locking out massive amounts of otherwise available and unused lands), zoning laws, etc., 
> 
> In your geoist version is there any room for artificial manipulations such as these, or do you even acknowledge the dynamics I just mentioned?


The dynamics you mentioned are wrong.  And the government can always be set up suboptimally, but so what?




> That's a projection, I think, one that ignores reality.


It's a fact.  Only a few sociopaths like to live out in the middle of nowhere and have no contact with society.  People like the Unabomber.




> An enormous part of the population is hive-minded, of that there is no doubt, as seen by so many who cluster in and around the more metropolitan areas. But to say "No one, really" is to ignore the reality of a massive part of the population that really does prefer not to be part of a massive hive -- with all its attendant madness (including political attempts to manipulate and control the more rural from the more concentrated areas).


I like how you try to denigrate human nature every chance you get.  You act as though the fact that humans are social animals is somehow shameful.  It's just a fact.  People who aren't social have mental problems.  You're not a sociopath yourself, are you?




> There, I fixed it for you so that it's more accurate, without casting such a broad blanket over so many to which your original statement would not apply.


  Thank you.  God forbid we forget about the sociopaths.




> I think the "lone man in the woods" scenario, while a real phenomenon, is also a straw man. It marginalizes a serious problem facing geoists.  We're really talking about competing interests in lands, and taxing jurisdictions, and how that plays out in cases where the population concentration is not so great, and not enough competition between land users exists to create any meaningful value for an LVT to even exist.   In other words, if I have enough, and you have enough, and all my neighbors are content and feel that they have enough, nobody will see a need to pay anybody anything.  No competition, we're all content.  
> 
> Such "wide open" rural areas, would openly compete, and serve as a check and a balance on any areas where LVT rates are high.  And if that's the only source of revenue for the taxing jurisdiction, MANY would weigh their options, and MANY would opt to DISPERSE, rather than to collect and concentrate into areas where the costs are higher.


What would the LVT have to do with that?  They're paying to live there in any case, so what does it matter whether they pay via LVT, or by buying or renting land?  The reason those values are high *is because people want to live there*.




> Capital flight is a real danger facing all taxing jurisdictions, which compete with each other for population and revenue sources.  That alone places a strong incentive for the taxing jurisdictions that depend on LVT for revenues to make such lands completely unavailable - to increase revenues by artificially preventing capital flight.


But they'd fail, because the rents are a reflection of desirability.  Forcing people to live where they don't want to live would just make them less productive, which would just reduce aggregate production, and thus aggregate land rents.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> No.  Politicians represent a small part of the electorate-the part with enough money to bribe the politicians.  If you really think representatives care about EVERYONE in their respective districts, you aren't very familiar with the system.


LOL, I like how the first thing Carlin mentions when he talks about the rich and powerful owning you, is that they own *all the important land*.  Yep.   But he's wrong about the schools.  They're really not all that bad.  That's a common misunderstanding.

----------


## Roy L

> No.  Politicians represent a small part of the electorate-the part with enough money to bribe the politicians.  If you really think representatives care about EVERYONE in their respective districts, you aren't very familiar with the system.


Oh, man.  You are actually rubbing your own nose in it, and you STILL can't smell it.

See 0:50 of YOUR OWN VIDEO.

It is _landowners_ who pocket the entire value of public spending on services and infrastructure.

It is _landowners_ who have the money to buy politicians.

Politics (especially local) is _all about_ giving away publicly created land value to rich, greedy, parasitic private landowners _WHO DO NOT GIVE A {U(|< ABOUT YOU_.

----------


## Roy L

> But let's say...this is a crazy island.  It is subdivided like slices of a pie and miracle of miracles, all 10 slices are identical in every economic sense of the word.  In such a case, would there be a LVT?


The inhabitants might agree to all pitch in an equal amount for some common amenity like a boat they could take turns using to fish.



> Guess what I'm getting at is that I worry that a LVT would be applied above and beyond what is necessary to rectify the wrongs created by government irresponsibility subdividing and delegating ownership of land.  For example, in Wisconsin, the 'education' system spends 8k to 19k per student per year.  To me this is a blackhole...and is financed...yes not by the LVT...but the property tax which is a cousin of the LVT.


Few American public schools get more than a modest fraction of their total spending from property taxes, and WI's public schools are actually not that bad.  The quality and proximity of local public schools is one of the best predictors of land value.  If you don't recover that value to pay for the schools, you are subsidizing landowners.  Why do you insist that landowners must be given a welfare subsidy?  Are they so poor that they need one?



> IMO the amount of money we pay directly and indirectly in property taxes is above and beyond the privilege created by disproportionate land ownership (which comes from government).


Objectively wrong.  Land value exactly measures how much LESS it is.



> Then even if this amount was correct...our politicians are too stupid to fairly reallocate this to the public at large.


But they are not too stupid to want more revenue next year.  The only way they can get it is by creating value through public expenditures.



> Other question would be about future generations...returning to the 10 people, 10 sections of land analogy...what if two of the people reproduced 10 more people...turns out this was irresponsible overpopulation as the island was not properly equipped to serve this many people.


It's mainly a question of competent and responsible management of the available natural resources to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to use them.  While there are a few known cases of overpopulation like Easter Island, the problems there arose because of private appropriation of the resources and lack of competent public management to conserve them for all.  More people are generally advantageous to the rest of the population, as each mouth comes with two hands and a brain, and more population enables a more efficient division of labor.



> Would it be fair to tax the individuals who acted responsibly and didn't over-populate and to force them to support those who did not practice proper judgment?


LVT never forces anyone to "support" anyone else.  It just requires them to recognize their equal rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.

----------


## Roy L

> Myself, I would say why have gov't allocating it at all?


LVT enables the market of productive users to allocate the land, not government.  Government merely administers the system.  You know this.  Stop lying about it.



> Homesteading should allocate it.


I.e., forcible theft should allocate it.

You know that your notion of "homesteading" that does not violate others' rights is nothing but a fabrication on your part.  You know that you cannot name a single square inch of land anywhere on earth whose current title can be traced in an unbroken line of consensual transactions to the first person to "homestead" it.  You know that when I challenged you to identify such a land parcel, the _best_ you could come up with was some remote corner of Utah that a local warlord invited some Mormons to settle on -- and that you could not demonstrate the warlord spoke legitimately for all who were at liberty to use the land (hint: he didn't), you could not demonstrate that the warlord came to possess the land by consent of its previous users, and you had to ignore the fact that possession of the land was later disputed by force, and settled only by the conclusive intervention of the US Army.

----------


## Xerographica

> IT IS NO LONGER MY MONEY.
> 
> WHY WOULD YOU WANT THE GROCERY STORE TO BE IN CHARGE OF HOW THE MONEY YOU PAID IT FOR A LOAF OF BREAD IS SPENT?
> 
> DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE "INVISIBLE HAND" ARGUMENT?
> 
> LVT CREATES AN INVISIBLE HAND FOR PUBLIC EXPENDITURES.


The invisible hand means that you get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.  The visible hand means that I get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.  The invisible hand means that you would get to choose which public goods you spent your taxes on.  The visible hand means that congress gets to choose which public goods you spend your taxes on.  

You understand that you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk...yet you don't understand that you should also have the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education.  How do you explain this disparity?

The problem is obvious.  Clearly you don't understand why you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  You've taken this freedom for granted.  You've never taken the time and effort to understand it.  If you had taken the time and effort to understand it then I wouldn't have to take the time and effort to try and help you understand the value of having the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education. 

Here's how it works...you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk because only you know whether you need a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk.  It would be a waste of your limited resources to spend your money on a loaf of bread if you already have a loaf of bread.  Same thing with a cartoon of milk.  The fact of the matter is that you respond to shortages of the things that you value.  We all respond to shortages of the things we value.  If there is no shortage of something we value then we don't respond.

Now that I've explained econ 101 to you...aka supply and demand...do you now understand that taxpayers should have the freedom to respond to shortages of the things they value in the public sector?   Do you now understand that the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing and everything to do with the spending?  

*In order to hedge my bets...would anybody else like to try and explain to Roy L why we should have the freedom to choose whether we spend our limited money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk?*

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Nope.  Land is a natural monopoly.


That's complete gibberish and totally incorrect. Land is naturally scarce, but that is not the definition of a monopoly. A monopoly by definition is exclusive possession or control over a commodity or service in trade.  Artificial in nearly all cases. I had to think about whether such a thing as a 'natural monopoly' could even exist.  By definition, it would have to be exclusive control over something _by virtue of nature_. One example of that would be Christopher Walken, who enjoys a natural monopoly on his unique face and voice.   




> Holding land out of use would only act to reduce aggregate rent, as it would limit production.


Are you confusing production as somehow being a de facto corresponding LVT payment to a taxing jurisdiction?  LVT is tied to land value only - not production - and you are overlooking the fundamental fact that not everyone is a farmer, miner or resort on a beachfront with a pretty view of the harbor. Only certain types of production are even tied to land, land value, or a need for the best available lands.    

For example, Hershey invested heavily into its automated plants so that its factors of production would not be dependent on land, location or labor costs.  So Hershey keeps plants in the small Pennsylvania town by that name, but chooses Oakdale, California, and Smiths Falls, Ontario as its rural targets for 'real production', and global production expansion. Local governments in both new places attempted to extract their usual pound of commerce-siphoning flesh anyway, but Hershey isn't some relatively powerless local. It has the means to leave both places in the proverbial dust, which it does, as it relocates its plants to Mexico -- and leaves a land value vacuum temporarily behind in its place. 

An LVT "single tax" regime with lands wide open for use would remove the incentive for Hershey to relocate to Mexico, but that doesn't mean they'd plop down in the middle of Metropolis land competition madness and start bid on the best lands there. Their entire business plan is designed to avoid that kind of revenue expectation madness. Instead of moving to Mexico, Hershey could move its automated plant to an American LVT version of Mexico - to the outskirts of a small rural community where the available land is plentiful, the land rent is naturally close to zero, and there is a sufficient low cost labor pool (less than a thousand, no real skills required on the whole).  And, insofar as possible, like they do already in Mexico, Hershey could pay for and maintain much of its own private infrastructure, bought and fully paid for without government, in the process.  Now you could argue that this still increases the value of that land, but under LVT, Hershey owns all its improvements.  Another company bidding for Hershey's landholding would have to reimburse Hershey for all its real improvements, so it's a zero sum gain, as Hershey could immediately grab another plot of nearby land with no land rent to speak of and relocate there.  Just like the other company could anyway. 

Land value in itself has everything to do with desirability of different types of competing lands, and competition for the best lands between people who actually have money, and/or are productive and can therefore pay rents.  Without competition for scarce lands there is no land value. The greater the competition (demand), the scarcer the resource (supply), the greater the price ceiling.  Reduce the number of competitors, and/or increase the supply of available land, and the price ceiling is also reduced -- both locally AND in the aggregate, since the new price ceiling increase in another (low rent) area would not be in proportion to the downward pressure placed on the price ceiling for the area that was abandoned, and now has one less competitor bidding for that land.  

You also seem to overlook another fundamental fact, and that is that the very entities that are in a position to pay rents are naturally scarce. They really are finite in any given moment. If you opened up land reserves and allowed these people to expand into them, the competition for the once-concentrated lands will be naturally diffused.  Their productivity on cheaper lands does not mean a corresponding increase in LVT, as less competition places downward pressure on aggregate rent for the taxing jurisdiction they leave.  These are market fundamentals which exist today, and would not go away under LVT.   

Hence, because Highly Productive Hershey is not dependent on exclusive use of the best lands, or even "good land", the only way to pressure them into paying any kind of meaningful LVT is to limit the available lands Hershey has to choose from.  Hard to do with a well funded corporation, which really can move to Mexico at any time - much easier with small companies and residents that are tied to a community. 




> We have an equal right to liberty, which private ownership of land violates.


Same trap as Roy - same fallacy of composition, as you employ the generic term "liberty" with a broad brush, without qualifying that it is not "liberty", per se, but a particular subset of liberty you are advancing, but want lumped in as simply "liberty".  Likewise with the term "right" as it applies to that particular kind of liberty.  You must be referring to a moral (normative, subjective, debatable) right, since that particular kind of "right to liberty" does not exist in any codified form, and thus no such "right" to that kind of liberty has been violated. 




> Stupid people would do this as a one-time payment.  Smart people would realize that a one-time payment for ongoing benefits is insufficient for fairness.


No True Scotsman fallacy as well as ad hominem - like saying that smart people prefer landownership as a matter of right, and don't buy into geoist delusions of 'fairness', because those who favor landownership as a right see (clearly and smartly) that true landownership rights are the only path to freedom from slavery.  Stupid people, on the other hand, fall for LVT, because of their short-sightedly simplistic idea that the inability to use someone else's land has 'enslaved' them, along with the truly stupid notion that they can turn landowners, who they see as slave masters, into renters, which of course tickles their highly distorted and quite primitive fairness sensibilities.




> The choice now is be a slave or a slavemaster.


And by slave you mean in part, of course, "renter". And its a false choice either/or, as you left out altogether the free person who is neither slave nor master; the landowner who pays no rent to anyone, makes productive use of his own land, and charges no rent to anyone.  The only way to define such a landowner as a slavemaster is by way of geoist rationale; to take that moral "right to liberty" (that everyone supposedly has to that current landowner's land) and reason it in such a way that this deprivation has somehow "enslaved" others.  This, along with the false assumption that they have 'taken/robbed' the community of the infrastructure it presumes to own by virtue of not paying perpetual rent for it. 

Renters are slaves only insofar as they are artificially deprived of options to not be renters. They are not slaves to the extent that they have pathways open to them to become free of rent. To the extent that these pathways are artificially blocked, however, they are indeed slaves.  Under LVT the only choice is slavery - by degree.  




> Yes, and reducing or eliminating taxes on production, which you seem to have forgotten.  Instead of being robbed of my production, I'm paying society for the benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land.  And that's fair.


All normative (should/ought), but we're not arguing that someone should not be robbed of their production. On that we agree. It's not an either/or for me.  Where we have profound disagreement is "benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land", as well as your subective "that's fair". For me and many others, that's arguing from the premise of some extremely unconvincing geoist gibberish.    




> It's a fact.  Only a few sociopaths like to live out in the middle of nowhere and have no contact with society.  People like the Unabomber.


Ignoring the No True Scotsman/Ad Hominem/Straw Man, look at the Hershey example instead.  They actively SEEK to be productive "out in the middle of nowhere", away from all densely populated areas with their productivity and equity siphoning government tentacles. Is the number one confectioner in the entire world now the exception to the rule - likened to a reclusive Unabomber? 




> I like how you try to denigrate human nature every chance you get.  You act as though the fact that humans are social animals is somehow shameful.  It's just a fact.  People who aren't social have mental problems.  You're not a sociopath yourself, are you?


News Flash: people who live in the lower populated more rural areas are arguably MUCH more social creatures than the hive-minded who are highly in favor of policies that force people to cluster and densely pack together in major population centers, many of whom don't even know - or care about - their neighbors.  From Shanghai and NYC to Podunk and Punxsutawney, I don't have such a narrow view of the human population on the whole. I denigrate what I see as a systemic phenomenon based on human nature taken to extremes, based on what I see as a product of artificial manipulation of human nature to begin with -- not human nature itself.  And by "hive-minded" I am not denigrating all those who live in densely populated areas. I'm denigrating the positions of those with a normalcy bias toward this, who think of this as "normal", and attempt to advance this as a society manipulating social engineer's model for all human living.  You, instead, view one aspect of human living, and call that "society" and "human nature", as if you've defined it all -- all else being the anomalous exception to your personal "society" and "human nature" rule.  




> But they'd fail, because the rents are a reflection of desirability.  Forcing people to live where they don't want to live would just make them less productive, which would just reduce aggregate production, and thus aggregate land rents.


Completely incorrect. Rents are a reflection of some combination of necessity, desirability, available supply and competition between renters (among other things) - but not necessarily productivity.  Rent is a form of consumption - the payments of which may be evidence of the fruits of productivity - but not productivity itself as a result of what is rented, to wit:  A man driving a leased Bentley and living in a leased castle on a thousand acres of leased land is not necessarily more productive because of any of these things.  Unless he's making a living offering Bentley rides, nature hikes and tours of his castle, in most cases the productivity comes from elsewhere.  But that's not the geoist mindset.  In the geoist mindset, exclusive use of lands = more productivity.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Oh, man.  You are actually rubbing your own nose in it, and you STILL can't smell it.
> 
> See 0:50 of YOUR OWN VIDEO.
> 
> It is _landowners_ who pocket the entire value of public spending on services and infrastructure.
> 
> It is _landowners_ who have the money to buy politicians.
> 
> Politics (especially local) is _all about_ giving away publicly created land value to rich, greedy, parasitic private landowners _WHO DO NOT GIVE A {U(|< ABOUT YOU_.


He was talking about the elites and politically well-connected, not land owners in general. He also talked about corporations in the broadest sense.  But feel free to bend his words to mean what you want-just quote him directly instead of putting words in his mouth.   People who actually watch the video and pay attention to context will know you're full of it.

ETA: another failure in the LVTers' reasoning is the assumption that the tax collectors will know how (or want) to distribute LVT monies "fairly".  We know they won't, as voluminous literature over 100+ years on central planning demonstrates.  Hong Kong, Roy's favorite example, had a net budget (revenues-expenditures) of *-3.8 BILLION* in 2010/11.  Some success!

----------


## MattintheCrown

Before I start, stop being so needlessly verbose.  This is nearly a filibuster.



> That's complete gibberish and totally incorrect. Land is naturally scarce, but that is not the definition of a monopoly. A monopoly by definition is exclusive possession or control over a commodity or service in trade.  Artificial in nearly all cases. I had to think about whether such a thing as a 'natural monopoly' could even exist.  By definition, it would have to be exclusive control over something _by virtue of nature_. One example of that would be Christopher Walken, who enjoys a natural monopoly on his unique face and voice.


Each site on earth is unique.  




> Are you confusing production as somehow being a de facto corresponding LVT payment to a taxing jurisdiction?  LVT is tied to land value only - not production - and you are overlooking the fundamental fact that not everyone is a farmer, miner or resort on a beachfront with a pretty view of the harbor. Only certain types of production are even tied to land, land value, or a need for the best available lands.


Irrelevant.  How much society produces as a whole is contingent upon how efficiently it produces.  Inefficiently allocate resources, and production will be checked.  Though the LVT doesn't tax production, it is dependent on how productive society is as a whole.




> For example, Hershey invested heavily into its automated plants so that its factors of production would not be dependent on land, location or labor costs.  So Hershey keeps plants in the small Pennsylvania town by that name, but chooses Oakdale, California, and Smiths Falls, Ontario as its rural targets for 'real production', and global production expansion. Local governments in both new places attempted to extract their usual pound of commerce-siphoning flesh anyway, but Hershey isn't some relatively powerless local. It has the means to leave both places in the proverbial dust, which it does, as it relocates its plants to Mexico -- and leaves a land value vacuum temporarily behind in its place.


Why you put "for example" before all this nonsense, the world will never know.




> An LVT "single tax" regime with lands wide open for use would remove the incentive for Hershey to relocate to Mexico, but that doesn't mean they'd plop down in the middle of Metropolis land competition madness and start bid on the best lands there. Their entire business plan is designed to avoid that kind of revenue expectation madness. Instead of moving to Mexico, Hershey could move its automated plant to an American LVT version of Mexico - to the outskirts of a small rural community where the available land is plentiful, the land rent is naturally close to zero, and there is a sufficient low cost labor pool (less than a thousand, no real skills required on the whole).  And, insofar as possible, like they do already in Mexico, Hershey could pay for and maintain much of its own private infrastructure, bought and fully paid for without government, in the process.  Now you could argue that this still increases the value of that land, but under LVT, Hershey owns all its improvements.  Another company bidding for Hershey's landholding would have to reimburse Hershey for all its real improvements, so it's a zero sum gain, as Hershey could immediately grab another plot of nearby land with no land rent to speak of and relocate there.  Just like the other company could anyway.


But by Hershey being more productive there, it would leave others to be more productive in other ways in other places.  If their use of resources was truly more efficient, aggregate production would be augmented, and people in jurisdictions where land values were high would pay more.  You have an inability to understand that the LVT doesn't tax production.  You're stuck inside the 'tax on production' box.  It's more of a tax on societal benefit.  Society benefits from ideal use of resources.




> Land value in itself has everything to do with desirability of different types of competing lands, and competition for the best lands between people who actually have money, and/or are productive and can therefore pay rents.  Without competition for scarce lands there is no land value.


Nope.  Proximity would provide advantages, even if land in general were not scarce.  Consider the value of having a retail shop in a big city, versus having the same shop in the suburbs.




> The greater the competition (demand), the scarcer the resource (supply), the greater the price ceiling.  Reduce the number of competitors, and/or increase the supply of available land, and the price ceiling is also reduced -- both locally AND in the aggregate, since the new price ceiling increase in another (low rent) area would not be in proportion to the downward pressure placed on the price ceiling for the area that was abandoned, and now has one less competitor bidding for that land.


Nope.  You continue to fail to understand the nature of the land market.




> You also seem to overlook another fundamental fact, and that is that the very entities that are in a position to pay rents are naturally scarce. They really are finite in any given moment. If you opened up land reserves and allowed these people to expand into them, the competition for the once-concentrated lands will be naturally diffused.  Their productivity on cheaper lands does not mean a corresponding increase in LVT, as less competition places downward pressure on aggregate rent for the taxing jurisdiction they leave.  These are market fundamentals which exist today, and would not go away under LVT.


It would make society as a whole more productive, and areas where there was tax would see tax increase, as the benefits of living there increased.  You seem to not understand that a place which is artificially over-crowded could possibly see rents decrease due to that over-crowding.




> Hence, because Highly Productive Hershey is not dependent on exclusive use of the best lands, or even "good land", the only way to pressure them into paying any kind of meaningful LVT is to limit the available lands Hershey has to choose from.  Hard to do with a well funded corporation, which really can move to Mexico at any time - much easier with small companies and residents that are tied to a community.


It's just irrelevant.




> Same trap as Roy - same fallacy of composition, as you employ the generic term "liberty" with a broad brush, without qualifying that it is not "liberty", per se, but a particular subset of liberty you are advancing, but want lumped in as simply "liberty".  Likewise with the term "right" as it applies to that particular kind of liberty.  You must be referring to a moral (normative, subjective, debatable) right, since that particular kind of "right to liberty" does not exist in any codified form, and thus no such "right" to that kind of liberty has been violated.


Gibberish.  Let me make the point simple: no one has any right to forcefully prevent others from using the resources nature provided.




> No True Scotsman fallacy as well as ad hominem - like saying that smart people prefer landownership as a matter of right, and don't buy into geoist delusions of 'fairness', because those who favor landownership as a right see (clearly and smartly) that true landownership rights are the only path to freedom from slavery.  Stupid people, on the other hand, fall for LVT, because of their short-sightedly simplistic idea that the inability to use someone else's land has 'enslaved' them, along with the truly stupid notion that they can turn landowners, who they see as slave masters, into renters, which of course tickles their highly distorted and quite primitive fairness sensibilities.


Nonsense.  It's just manifestly better for people to pay for ongoing benefits with ongoing payments.  You haven't even tried to argue otherwise, because you know I'm right.




> And by slave you mean in part, of course, "renter".


No, I mean the person who gives his production in return for nothing.




> And its a false choice either/or, as you left out altogether the free person who is neither slave nor master; the landowner who pays no rent to anyone, makes productive use of his own land, and charges no rent to anyone.


No such thing.  The landowner receives the product of others' labor in exchange for nothing.




> The only way to define such a landowner as a slavemaster is by way of geoist rationale; to take that moral "right to liberty" (that everyone supposedly has to that current landowner's land) and reason it in such a way that this deprivation has somehow "enslaved" others.  This, along with the false assumption that they have 'taken/robbed' the community of the infrastructure it presumes to own by virtue of not paying perpetual rent for it.


The value of land is a direct result of government spending and productivity of society.  The landowner simply robs everyone of it, in exchange for nothing.




> Renters are slaves only insofar as they are artificially deprived of options to not be renters.


Nope.  They're slaves because their labor is taxed by government to fund services and infrastructure which benefits landowners.  

Roy once produced one of my favorite quotes: The landowner effectively owns part shares in millions of part-time slaves called, "taxpayers."




> They are not slaves to the extent that they have pathways open to them to become free of rent.


This is no different than claiming slaves with the option to purchase their freedom aren't really slaves.  Obviously, that's stupid.




> To the extent that these pathways are artificially blocked, however, they are indeed slaves.  Under LVT the only choice is slavery - by degree.


Nope.  Under LTV, everyone denied use of land is compensated for the deprivation.




> All normative (should/ought), but we're not arguing that someone should not be robbed of their production. On that we agree. It's not an either/or for me.  Where we have profound disagreement is "benefits I rob them of by having exclusive use of land", as well as your subective "that's fair". For me and many others, that's arguing from the premise of some extremely unconvincing geoist gibberish.


It's inarguable.  Land values prove it.




> Ignoring the No True Scotsman/Ad Hominem/Straw Man, look at the Hershey example instead.  They actively SEEK to be productive "out in the middle of nowhere", away from all densely populated areas with their productivity and equity siphoning government tentacles. Is the number one confectioner in the entire world now the exception to the rule - likened to a reclusive Unabomber?


This is just dishonest.  Hershey didn't locate factories in the middle of nowhere, as you well know.




> News Flash: people who live in the lower populated more rural areas are arguably MUCH more social creatures than the hive-minded who are highly in favor of policies that force people to cluster and densely pack together in major population centers, many of whom don't even know - or care about - their neighbors.


We're not talking about rural areas.  We're talking about the middle of nowhere.  The original example was of someone living off in the woods somewhere, out of contact from society.  Poor attempt at a bait-and-switch.




> From Shanghai and NYC to Podunk and Punxsutawney, I don't have such a narrow view of the human population on the whole. I denigrate what I see as a systemic phenomenon based on human nature taken to extremes, based on what I see as a product of artificial manipulation of human nature to begin with -- not human nature itself.  And by "hive-minded" I am not denigrating all those who live in densely populated areas. I'm denigrating the positions of those with a normalcy bias toward this, who think of this as "normal", and attempt to advance this as a society manipulating social engineer's model for all human living.  You, instead, view one aspect of human living, and call that "society" and "human nature", as if you've defined it all -- all else being the anomalous exception to your personal "society" and "human nature" rule.


Human history shows that the great societies were a product of the "hive-mind" as you call it.  Sorry, you just hate human nature.




> Completely incorrect. Rents are a reflection of some combination of necessity, desirability, available supply and competition between renters (among other things) - but not necessarily productivity.  Rent is a form of consumption - the payments of which may be evidence of the fruits of productivity - but not productivity itself as a result of what is rented, to wit:  A man driving a leased Bentley and living in a leased castle on a thousand acres of leased land is not necessarily more productive because of any of these things.  Unless he's making a living offering Bentley rides, nature hikes and tours of his castle, in most cases the productivity comes from elsewhere.  But that's not the geoist mindset.  In the geoist mindset, exclusive use of lands = more productivity.


You're failing to see the big picture.  Your refusal to understand how society operates, and insistent focus on the individual blinds you.  From where does the man who builds a vast castle and drives a Bentley derive his wealth?  Sure: the same wealth production over a smaller area would mean higher rents.  But decrease the land area, and you also decrease production.  You're assuming all else is equal if land is held out of use, but all else isn't equal.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Before I start, stop being so needlessly verbose.  This is nearly a filibuster.


How's this, then:

Geoist-inspired LVT is nothing but human enslavement. It is real slavery masquerading as a solution to a completely imaginary form of slavery.  

Georgists think George somehow one-upped Marx, or distanced himself from him, when they're truly fundamentally no different from each other. Getting it on the land value side (the ground floor) with the state as a renter-not-seller of infrastructure and so-called "community created value" doesn't change the fact that it's collectivist ownership and state redistribution of productivity from it inception.  

Socialism, Facism, Communism, Georgism -- all from the same festering cesspool of mass manipulating humanity control-freak thought.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Human history shows that the great societies were a product of the "hive-mind" as you call it.  Sorry, you just hate human nature.


No.  The "great societies" were products of tinkerers working alone in their workshops and then sharing ideas with people who in turn added on to those ideas.  For example, no one man invented the symphony as we now know it (baroque "symphonies" were only a few minutes long), generations of men tinkered around with existing ideas in their writing shops-each one-upping the last.  Same can be said of any major field.  (this is one reason why IP is a fundamentally flawed idea, but that's for another thread)

----------


## MattintheCrown

> No.  The "great societies" were products of tinkerers working alone in their workshops and then sharing ideas with people who in turn added on to those ideas.  For example, no one man invented the symphony as we now know it (baroque "symphonies" were only a few minutes long), generations of men tinkered around with existing ideas in their writing shops-each one-upping the last.  Same can be said of any major field.  (this is one reason why IP is a fundamentally flawed idea, but that's for another thread)


This is utter nonsense.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> This is utter nonsense.


Which part needs to be broken down into little words for you to understand?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Which part needs to be broken down into little words for you to understand?


It's just stupid nonsense.  Obviously, the concentration of humans made such innovations possible.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Obviously, the concentration of humans made such innovations possible.


You have the cause and effect exactly backwards. Innovations facilitate concentrations of humans.  

A magician first creates an act and then draws a crowd. The crowd did not make the magician possible. The magician made the crowd possible.  The seed is the magician, not the crowd.   

An author writes a book. Whether it sells a million or remains unpublished and unread, the innovation itself was not the product of readers, but writers only. No concentration of humans required. 

One innovative guy designs a Disk Operating System. An even more innovative guy buys it for a song, licenses it, and gathers in thousands more innovators who innovate at his direction and on his behalf -- who then feed hundreds of millions who use it in their computers.  If you want to trace "operating system" back, there are individual innovators all along the way (the shoulders of giants), and while they can be viewed with an aggregate lens, it was NOT the concentration of humans, but rather innovative THOUGHTS within individual humans that made all innovations possible.

----------


## Roy L

> The invisible hand means that you get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.


Just as, with LVT, you get to choose which government services and infrastructure you spend your money on when you choose the land parcel(s) you wish to deprive others of.  Don't want to pay for schools?  No problem: don't deprive others of access to the schools.  Don't want to pay for roads?  Fine.  Don't deprive others of access to the roads.



> The visible hand means that I get to choose which groceries you spend your money on.


You say that like you imagine it has some relevance.  It doesn't.  Under LVT, you get to choose which government services and infrastructure you spend your money on.  You just don't get to tell the grocery store what it should spend the money you paid it for a loaf of bread on.  Your choice ends when you have chosen what you want.  You don't get to tell the store how to provide it, or what to put on the shelves.



> The invisible hand means that you would get to choose which public goods you spent your taxes on.


Which you do when you choose which parcel of land to exclude others from.



> The visible hand means that congress gets to choose which public goods you spend your taxes on.


<sigh>  Once you have paid the grocery store for what you are taking, the money is no longer yours.  Your brain just seems to be absolutely impervious to that fact.



> You understand that you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk...yet you don't understand that you should also have the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education.


I understand it just fine, as you would know if you had read the post to which you purport to be responding.  When you choose a land parcel, you can pick one that is near transit, or near schools, and thus pay for the mix of services and infrastructure that you want.



> How do you explain this disparity?


You're dyslexic?



> The problem is obvious.


Indeed: the problem is obviously that you want to have an argument with somebody who is advocating a tax other than LVT, and have mistakenly wandered into the wrong thread.



> Clearly you don't understand why you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.


Clearly you don't understand that when you choose a land parcel to use, you are choosing to spend your money on the bundle of government services and infrastructure that are conveniently accessible from that parcel.



> You've taken this freedom for granted.


No.  YOU have taken for granted that LVT is like other taxes, and is not related to benefits received.  But it is.  It is EQUAL to benefits received through landholding.  The unimproved value of land is IDENTICALLY EQUAL to the minimum value of what the landholder expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.  When you pay for land, you are paying for government.  You are just paying the wrong party.



> You've never taken the time and effort to understand it.


You have never taken the time and effort to read the posts to which you purport to respond.



> If you had taken the time and effort to understand it then I wouldn't have to take the time and effort to try and help you understand the value of having the freedom to choose whether you spend your taxes on public transportation or public education.


LOL!  Are you trying to provoke me into calling you what you are acting like, Xero?



> Here's how it works...you should have the freedom to choose whether you spend your money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk because only you know whether you need a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk.  It would be a waste of your limited resources to spend your money on a loaf of bread if you already have a loaf of bread.  Same thing with a cartoon of milk.  The fact of the matter is that you respond to shortages of the things that you value.  We all respond to shortages of the things we value.  If there is no shortage of something we value then we don't respond.
> 
> Now that I've explained econ 101 to you...aka supply and demand...do you now understand that taxpayers should have the freedom to respond to shortages of the things they value in the public sector?


You mean like, by paying market value for the government services and infrastructure they want the benefit of, as they would with LVT?



> Do you now understand that the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the taxing and everything to do with the spending?


Please read the posts to which you purport to be responding.  As long as the productive are forced to pay for government *twice* in order that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing, the problem will be with the taxing, not the spending.



> *In order to hedge my bets...would anybody else like to try and explain to Roy L why we should have the freedom to choose whether we spend our limited money on a loaf of bread or a cartoon of milk?*


Would anybody else like to try and explain to Xero that this thing works better if you read the posts to which you purport to respond?

----------


## Roy L

> He was talking about the elites and politically well-connected, not land owners in general.


He was talking about the power over others that ownership of the important land confers.  Corporations own about 70% of the land in the USA by value.  The richest 1% own about 70% of corporate stock by value.  You do the math.



> He also talked about corporations in the broadest sense.  But feel free to bend his words to mean what you want-just quote him directly instead of putting words in his mouth.


Listen to the video.



> People who actually watch the video and pay attention to context will know you're full of it.


They will know I am correct and you are lying.



> ETA: another failure in the LVTers' reasoning is the assumption that the tax collectors will know how (or want) to distribute LVT monies "fairly".  We know they won't, as voluminous literature over 100+ years on central planning demonstrates.


There is no central planning involved in LVT, stop lying.  Tax collectors and tax spenders are not the same people.  Government will spend money fairly under LVT because LVT aligns government's financial incentives with the public interest: waste money, and there will be less revenue next year.



> Hong Kong, Roy's favorite example, had a net budget (revenues-expenditures) of *-3.8 BILLION* in 2010/11.  Some success!


And what was the US deficit for 2010/11...? 

Most governments have deficits in most years.  Hong Kong continues to be an exemplar of freedom, justice and prosperity without any private landowning.

----------


## Roy L

> You have the cause and effect exactly backwards. Innovations facilitate concentrations of humans.


Nope.  False.  Innovation happens when there are a lot of ideas in the air and a lot of interaction between innovative people.



> A magician first creates an act and then draws a crowd. The crowd did not make the magician possible.


Yes, it did.  The magician could never have created his act without the help of society, especially all the previous magicians who created illusions, and the institutions that transmitted their ideas to later generations.



> The magician made the crowd possible.  The seed is the magician, not the crowd.


Wrong again.  The crowd is just looking for something to watch.  If not the magician, then something else.



> An author writes a book. Whether it sells a million or remains unpublished and unread, the innovation itself was not the product of readers, but writers only. No concentration of humans required.


As a professional writer, I can tell you that you know nothing, repeat, NOTHING about the process of writing.  A writer must first of all be a reader.  And that takes a vast community of other writers.

You could not be more wrong.



> One innovative guy designs a Disk Operating System. An even more innovative guy buys it for a song, licenses it, and gathers in thousands more innovators who innovate at his direction and on his behalf -- who then feed hundreds of millions who use it in their computers.


With the help of government-issued and -enforced monopolies.



> If you want to trace "operating system" back, there are individual innovators all along the way (the shoulders of giants), and while they can be viewed with an aggregate lens, it was NOT the concentration of humans, but rather innovative THOUGHTS within individual humans that made all innovations possible.


Utter garbage.  See Jane Jacobs's towering works on the central role of cities in economic life.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Homesteading should allocate it.
> 			
> 		
> 
>  I.e., forcible theft, [murder, and annual double-holocaust] should allocate it.
> 
> You know that your notion of "homesteading" that does not violate others' rights is nothing but a [dastardly] fabrication on your part.


What is property?

Property is, initially, established by claiming things that no one else has already claimed.  No one was claiming it before, so you're not violating anyone's rights, you're not aggressing against anyone, by appropriating  for yourself.  There are limits to how much you can claim, the whole "mixing your labor" in thing helps to solidify your claim, also marking the borders if the matter is fairly immobile, or moving the matter into a place you already possess if it's transportable.  

*That's what property is: stuff people claim*.  And then, stuff people buy or get given from those who originally claimed it.

http://mises.org/media/1147/How-We-Become-Owners





> You know that you cannot name a single square inch of land anywhere on earth whose current title can be traced in an unbroken line of consensual transactions to the first person to "homestead" it.


http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php

The various imaginary borders that various nation-states drew around the continent were of little relevance to St. George -- nor to the rest of the Mormon colonies in what is now Utah, but we are focusing on St. George for now, and just a few square inches within St George at that.  Take your pick of which inches from the above page, just let me know which ones you're claiming were got by aggression.

Which other tribes were previously possessing and occupying St. George, whom Paiutes "forced out"?  In what way did the Mormons in St. George use aggressive force to steal St. George from the Paiutes, or from anyone else?

Just pick one of the lots, and explain to me in simple words exactly who was dispossessed of this lot, and when.  Your position is that the history of the lot (as with all lots) is an unbroken line of bloodbath after bloodbath, holocaust after holocaust, with robbery, aggression, and other rights-violations mixed in.  So: *Show me the Blood!*

http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php

In fact, there were no rights violations which occurred in connection with the homesteading of any of the listed lots in St. George, so far as I am aware and history records.  Homesteading works.  Mutual respect for other human beings works.  Mutually acknowledging each other's land claims works.  Works all the time.

Aggression happens too.  Not as often as the programmer of Roy imagined (i.e.: always), but quite frequently.  The frequency of this aggression will lessen the more my own political philosophy -- the philosophy of liberty, the non-aggression principle -- takes hold and wins out over dead and dying cobbled-together Franken-philosophies like Georgism/Geoism and nation-statism.

To a bright tomorrow and an ever-growing cadre of youthful anarchocapitalists!  Lift your glasses and three cheers!

*Noli Me Tangre!

Liberty!

FREEEEEDOOOMMMMMMM!!*

----------


## Xerographica

> You have never taken the time and effort to read the posts to which you purport to respond.
> 
> Please read the posts to which you purport to be responding.  As long as the productive are forced to pay for government *twice* in order that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing, the problem will be with the taxing, not the spending.


I reread your post THREE times and am really confident that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  Just to be ridiculously certain...I read your post a FOURTH time and am now extremely certain that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  

You know how you can be certain that I know what your argument is?  Because I'm the guy that added Hayek's and Friedman's positive perspectives on "voting with your feet" to the Wikipedia entry on foot voting.  You didn't add their perspectives...I did.  Why didn't you add their perspectives?  Why did I add their perspectives?  Here's a link to a new article in the NY Times about foot voting...Competition is Good for Governments, Too.  Why did I share that link with you?

I have no problem with the concept of foot voting.  Why would any libertarian argue against foot voting?  I'm not arguing against foot voting...so why are you defending it?  

Rather than defending foot voting...please explain to me exactly why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  You ignored this request once...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  But each time you ignore this simple request I'll become more and more convinced that you lack an understanding of basic economics.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> What is property?
> 
> Property is, initially, established by claiming things that no one else has already claimed.


This is false.  Property is established by producing things, not by claiming them.




> No one was claiming it before, so you're not violating anyone's rights, you're not aggressing against anyone, by appropriating  for yourself.


What's to stop them from using it, but your force?




> There are limits to how much you can claim, the whole "mixing your labor" in thing helps to solidify your claim, also marking the borders if the matter is fairly immobile, or moving the matter into a place you already possess if it's transportable.


If you actually remove something from nature, you've created a product, and established a property right.  By removing it, you have removed the opportunity others have to use it.  Locations cannot be removed from nature.  There's no way to make a location into a product.  Any claim to a location is nothing more than a demand others not use it, with no just basis.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Property is established by producing things, not by claiming them.


 How does one produce a thing?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> How does one produce a thing?


By using his labor to create  something that didn't previously exist.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> By using his labor to create  something that didn't previously exist.


 Amazing.  Have you ever done this?  Do you know anyone who has?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Amazing.  Have you ever done this?  Do you know anyone who has?


Yes, and yes.  I dare say nearly everyone has.

----------


## mczerone

> Amazing.  Have you ever done this?  Do you know anyone who has?


I'll grant an absolute property right to anyone for anything they create in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics!

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I'll grant an absolute property right to anyone for anything they create in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics!


Of course, it would just be idiotic to claim that, because matter/energy cannot be created, things can't be created.  The monitor you're looking at now was brought into existence through labor.

----------


## mczerone

> Yes, and yes.  I dare say nearly everyone has.


You're missing the point: you don't create anything.

You claim natural products and transform them. you remix them.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> You're missing the point: you don't create anything.
> 
> You claim natural products and transform them. you remix them.


Nope.  I create products using natural materials.

----------


## mczerone

> Of course, it would just be idiotic to claim that, because matter/energy cannot be created, things can't be created.  The monitor you're looking at now was brought into existence through labor.


And the natural products were someone's property before they were remixed into a monitor. Someone owned the natural products because they had controlled the land they came from.

Controlling a plot of land via fences, social agreements, or continuous use is just as much a "creation" of a new thing (owned land) as the shaping of silicon and metal into a motherboard "creates" something.

----------


## mczerone

> Nope.  I create products using natural materials.


How do you legitimately USE natural materials if you don't own them (which you can't unless you "created" them, right?)

----------


## MattintheCrown

> And the natural products were someone's property before they were remixed into a monitor. Someone owned the natural products because they had controlled the land they came from.


Nope. Not necessarily.  There's no need or ownership of resources in the natural state.




> Controlling a plot of land via fences, social agreements, or continuous use is just as much a "creation" of a new thing (owned land) as the shaping of silicon and metal into a motherboard "creates" something.


Nope.  Nothing new is created by such a claim.

----------


## mczerone

> Nope. Not necessarily.  There's no need or ownership of resources in the natural state.


That's a pretty wild claim. Care to prove it, or are you going to take Twain's advice for fools?




> Nope.  Nothing new is created by such a claim.


Nothing new is created by drawing somethings called "circuits" onto printed boards either then. And then nothing should be property, eh?

----------


## Noble Savage

A good proportionation of this land mastication was fraudualentiously obtained from the Europeein' onslaughterization

----------


## MattintheCrown

Edit.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> How do you legitimately USE natural materials if you don't own them (which you can't unless you "created" them, right?)


Huh?  What is the deal with your ownership fetish?  How do you use the sun's rays to get a tan if you don't own the sun?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> That's a pretty wild claim. Care to prove it, or are you going to take Twain's advice for fools?


It's the most obvious thing in the world.  Obviously, you don't need to own the earth to use it.  Otherwise, how could humans even exist?  Duh.




> Nothing new is created by drawing somethings called "circuits" onto printed boards either then. And then nothing should be property, eh?


The circuits are created.  Duh.

----------


## Roy L

> How's this, then:
> 
> Geoist-inspired LVT is nothing but human enslavement. It is real slavery masquerading as a solution to a completely imaginary form of slavery.


Stupid, dishonest garbage disproved by both the conspicuously unslave-like condition of the people of Hong Kong, and the conspicuously slave-like condition of the landless in all countries where landowning is well established, but government does not intercede on behalf of the landless to rescue them from the enslavement that landowners would otherwise consign them to, such as Pakistan, the Philippines, Guatemala, Bangladesh, etc.

Your claim is all too obviously the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.



> Georgists think George somehow one-upped Marx, or distanced himself from him, when they're truly fundamentally no different from each other.


That is either monumental ignorance or a stupid lie.



> Getting it on the land value side (the ground floor) with the state as a renter-not-seller of infrastructure and so-called "community created value"


<yawn>  Calling it "so-called" community created value does not change the fact that it is community created value, Steven, sorry.



> doesn't change the fact that it's collectivist ownership and state redistribution of productivity from it inception.


Ungrammatical garbage.  What does " state redistribution of productivity" even mean?



> Socialism, Facism, Communism, Georgism -- all from the same festering cesspool of mass manipulating humanity control-freak thought.


Ignorant, dishonest and hateful nonsense beneath refutation.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> created





> created.  Duh.





> I create


"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"

The Hebrew word translated as "create" here could also be (better) translated as "build/establish," "organize," or perhaps "spatially separate."

What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. -Bertrand Russell

All creation is organization.  Moving matter around, or convincing other people to do so.

*Creation = Organization*

Are we agreed on this?

----------


## Roy L

> What is property?


What is owned.



> Property is, initially, established by claiming things that no one else has already claimed.


Nope.  Wrong.  That is just stupid, feudal propertarian nonsense with no basis in fact, logic, history or anthropology.  It is nothing but a formula for legal sanction of theft originated by the Romans, who were very big on theft.



> No one was claiming it before, so you're not violating anyone's rights, you're not aggressing against anyone, by appropriating for yourself.


No, that's clearly nothing but a stupid lie to provide an ex post facto rationalization for landowner greed and parasitism, as I have proved to you so many times already by the examples of the bandit in the pass, Dirtowner Harry and Thirsty, and Robbinthem Crusoe and Friday.



> There are limits to how much you can claim


"Claiming" is just stealing.



> the whole "mixing your labor" in thing helps to solidify your claim,


Nope.  Mixing labor with land is physically impossible.  It is nothing but a misleading metaphor.



> also marking the borders if the matter is fairly immobile,


Announcing your intention to violate others' rights does not remove those rights.



> or moving the matter into a place you already possess if it's transportable.


Unlike "claiming" it, moving it actually does create a property right in it.



> *That's what property is: stuff people claim*.


Nope.  Refuted above.  People can *claim* all sorts of stupid nonsense.  *Property* is stuff people *own*.



> And then, stuff people buy or get given from those who originally claimed it.


Only production or trade gets rightful ownership.  Claiming gets nothing.



> http://mises.org/media/1147/How-We-Become-Owners


Oh, look, some stupid garbage from mises.org.  What a surprise!



> http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php
> 
> The various imaginary borders that various nation-states drew around the continent were of little relevance to St. George -- nor to the rest of the Mormon colonies in what is now Utah, but we are focusing on St. George for now, and just a few square inches within St George at that.  Take your pick of which inches from the above page, just let me know which ones you're claiming were got by aggression.


They all were.



> Which other tribes were previously possessing and occupying St. George, whom Paiutes "forced out"?


Tribes?  What about individuals?  Are you claiming no individual ever used that land before the Mormons stole it?  On what basis?



> In what way did the Mormons in St. George use aggressive force to steal St. George from the Paiutes, or from anyone else?


The Paiutes?  Are you claiming the land was rightly owned by the Paiutes, a community?  On what basis?  I thought only individuals could "claim" land.

The Mormons didn't have to use force to steal the land from all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it.  They could -- and did -- get it through OTHERS' use of force, just as most other US land titles were obtained courtesy of government force, not force wielded by the land grantee.



> Just pick one of the lots, and explain to me in simple words exactly who was dispossessed of this lot, and when.


The Anasazi were dispossessed of it, but more importantly, all who would now like to use it have been dispossessed.



> Your position is that the history of the lot (as with all lots) is an unbroken line of bloodbath after bloodbath, holocaust after holocaust, with robbery, aggression, and other rights-violations mixed in.


No, Helmuth, you are lying.  My position is simply that your claim of rightful property depends on being able to establish that *all* the previous transfers were rightful, and you can't.



> So: *Show me the Blood!*


<yawn>  Show me the title transfer documents.



> http://stgeorgerealestate.idxco.com/...8/featured.php
> 
> In fact, there were no rights violations which occurred in connection with the homesteading of any of the listed lots in St. George, so far as I am aware and history records.


No, that's clearly false, as I have proved to you before:

"The Virgin River Anasazi were St. Georges earliest residents, inhabiting the area from approximately 200 B.C. to 1200 A.D. They left behind rock art and ruins of their dwellings. The reason for their departure is unknown to this day. The Pauite tribe arrived between 1100 and 1200 A.D."

http://www.utahsdixie.com/saint_george.html

Duh.  The Paiute arrived just when the Anasazi left.  If the Paiute had a good reason to go there, the Anasazi clearly had no good reason to leave -- other than the arrival of the Paiute.

Though no one was around to record the dates and locations of the battles, it is pretty obvious that the Paiute forcibly dispossessed the Anasazi.



> Homesteading works.


But not as well as LVT.



> Mutual respect for other human beings works.


Too bad mutual respect for other human beings is not compatible with landowners' unremitting efforts to enslave the landless, which they have always done whenever government let them.



> Mutually acknowledging each other's land claims works.  Works all the time.


For the claimers, perhaps.  Not for those consequently enslaved.

----------


## Roy L

> What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. -Bertrand Russell
> 
> All creation is organization.  Moving matter around, or convincing other people to do so.
> 
> *Creation = Organization*
> 
> Are we agreed on this?


No.  Simply ordering other people around because you have the power to do so is not work.  If it was, Robbinthem Crusoe would be working when he pointed his musket at Friday and ordered him to either get to work or get back in the water.  The rich and privileged just want to claim they are working when they order other people around but actually contribute nothing.

----------


## Roy L

> That's a pretty wild claim. Care to prove it, or are you going to take Twain's advice for fools?


Speaking of fools, are you perhaps unaware that animals all manage to survive without owning anything?



> Nothing new is created by drawing somethings called "circuits" onto printed boards either then.


That's indisputably false and absurd.



> And then nothing should be property, eh?


What someone produces should be property, because they are not then depriving anyone else of what they would otherwise have, while anyone who took it from them would be.  That is the only consistently defensible basis for property rights.

----------


## Roy L

> How do you legitimately USE natural materials if you don't own them (which you can't unless you "created" them, right?)


By removing them from nature, making them no longer natural materials, and creating a product of labor.  And by paying any relevant severance tax for depleting a resource that others would willingly pay to use.

----------


## Roy L

> Amazing.  Have you ever done this?  Do you know anyone who has?


We all have, Helmuth.  And you know it.

----------


## Roy L

> You're missing the point: you don't create anything.


You are not making any point.  All you are doing is committing an equivocation fallacy.  To create a product of labor DOES NOT MEAN to create it ex nihilo.



> You claim natural products and transform them. you remix them.


Please explain how the "claiming" part enables the transformation or remixing, as animals and even plants seem to be able to transform things in nature without claiming them first.

----------


## Roy L

> And the natural products were someone's property before they were remixed into a monitor. Someone owned the natural products because they had controlled the land they came from.


Please explain how, exactly, the monitor's production was aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay HIM for the natural resources that were already there, waiting to be used.

Take your time.



> Controlling a plot of land via fences, social agreements, or continuous use is just as much a "creation" of a new thing (owned land) as the shaping of silicon and metal into a motherboard "creates" something.


Absurd and dishonest garbage.  The motherboard did not previously exist.  The land did.  Claiming to own what nature provided does not create anything -- other than a presumption that one intends forcibly to violate others' rights to use it.

----------


## Xerographica

> Speaking of fools, are you perhaps unaware that animals all manage to survive without owning anything?
> 
> That's indisputably false and absurd.
> 
> What someone produces should be property, because they are not then depriving anyone else of what they would otherwise have, while anyone who took it from them would be.  That is the only consistently defensible basis for property rights.


Not sure if it was intentional or not...but you didn't respond to my post.  If you don't respond to it again then I'll be certain that you do not understand basic economics.  Here's my post again...




> You have never taken the time and effort to read the posts to which you purport to respond.
> 
> Please read the posts to which you purport to be responding.  As long as the productive are forced to pay for government *twice* in order that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing, the problem will be with the taxing, not the spending.


I reread your post THREE times and am really confident that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  Just to be ridiculously certain...I read your post a FOURTH time and am now extremely certain that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  

You know how you can be certain that I know what your argument is?  Because I'm the guy that added Hayek's and Friedman's positive perspectives on "voting with your feet" to the Wikipedia entry on foot voting.  You didn't add their perspectives...I did.  Why didn't you add their perspectives?  Why did I add their perspectives?  Here's a link to a new article in the NY Times about foot voting...Competition is Good for Governments, Too.  Why did I share that link with you?

I have no problem with the concept of foot voting.  Why would any libertarian argue against foot voting?  I'm not arguing against foot voting...so why are you defending it?  

Rather than defending foot voting...please explain to me exactly why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  You ignored this request once...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  But each time you ignore this simple request I'll become more and more convinced that you lack an understanding of basic economics.

----------


## Roy L

> I reread your post THREE times and am really confident that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.


Maybe because that's not what I was explaining.  I was explaining that choosing which land parcel(s) to spend their money on is just as much an exercise of people's freedom to choose as choosing to spend it on bread or milk, and that fact is not altered if they voluntarily pay the same amount of money to government for the land rather than to a private landowner.



> Just to be ridiculously certain...I read your post a FOURTH time and am now extremely certain that you did not explain why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.


<yawn>



> You know how you can be certain that I know what your argument is?


You have proved conclusively that you *don't* know what it is, and have no intention of ever finding out what it is.



> Because I'm the guy that added Hayek's and Friedman's positive perspectives on "voting with your feet" to the Wikipedia entry on foot voting.  You didn't add their perspectives...I did.  Why didn't you add their perspectives?  Why did I add their perspectives?  Here's a link to a new article in the NY Times about foot voting...Competition is Good for Governments, Too.  Why did I share that link with you?


Delusions of significance?



> I have no problem with the concept of foot voting.  Why would any libertarian argue against foot voting?  I'm not arguing against foot voting...so why are you defending it?


You think that's what I'm doing?



> Rather than defending foot voting...please explain to me exactly why people should have the freedom to choose whether they spend their limited money on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.


Same reason they should -- and do -- have the freedom to choose which government services and infrastructure they spend their limited money on when they choose which land they want to use.



> You ignored this request once...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  But each time you ignore this simple request I'll become more and more convinced that you lack an understanding of basic economics.


I'm terrified of your opinion.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Abandonment of a resource of course frees it up for homesteading again.  Just because a resource was at some point in the distant past owned by someone does not mean it necessarily still is owned.  It may have been abandoned sometime in the interim.

Your mentioning of the Anasazi kind of astounds me, since the sudden total disappearance of the Anasazi -- not just from St. George, but from everywhere -- was one of the great unsolved mysteries of history when I learned about it.  Perhaps new discoveries have since been made, I haven't kept up with it, but in any case I doubt that "the Paiutes showed up and stole their land" is the new state-of-the-art historical explanation.  That's just an interesting side note, though an ultimately irrelevant one, because of course the unraveling of ancient mysteries is irrelevant to whether St. George was properly homesteaded or not if it had since been abandoned.  The important consideration is the one below.

Upon the Later-day Saints' arrival in St. George there were no individuals who objected in any way to the homesteading of the land there by the LDS and their building of a town there.  Again, as far as I know.  I have invited you to show me the evidence to the contrary and I will cheerfully change my opinion when you do so .  If there was any force initiated by the LDS when they arrived, any forceful or even acrimonious appropriation away from any person who was already there, then you would be right that was not a legitimate homestead; rather, it would be an illegitimate robbery.

Your position is two-fold.  First, that the right and proper way to homestead as put forth by libertarians is a violation of humanity's Georgist rights.  Second, that _even if_ it were not, even granting us our craziness, that there has never been a single square inch of land which has actually been homesteaded in the way which we libertarians describe which we falsely and evilly claim would be right and proper.  I give you the example of St. George to address the latter claim.  I am under the impression that you cannot show me a single square inch of St. George for which any type of robbery occurred when the LDS people arrived and homesteaded the resources there.  It was indeed an instance of homesteading in the pure libertarian manner, with no complications or caveats.  No asterisk needed.  In fact, though St. George was ostensibly within the borders of the Mexican Empire, the Mexican state was not exactly anywhere to be found.  St. George, Utah was more or less a de facto voluntary or anarchistic society, with no distant states exercising any meaningful degree of control.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Huh?  What is the deal with your ownership fetish?  How do you use the sun's rays to get a tan if you don't own the sun?


 What is ownership?

I would claim that you can, in fact, homestead a right to the sun's rays by using them.  You could think of this right as an easement, or as part of a bundle of rights such as mineral rights, water rights, etc., which you may have homesteaded along with the locational rights of your land.  Let's say you put up a bunch of solar panels.  Or you just like to go outside and bask on your deck and get a tan.  What if then I come along and park my floating island above your land?  I am violating your property rights.  You receiving the sun's rays was the established situation and order of things.  I came in and upset the order of things.  I must not do that.  I must move my floating island so that it overshadows a place where either no one was using the sun's rays and so there's no one to object, or where the user(s) is(are) willing to go without the rays, perhaps in exchange for a payment from me.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> This is false.  Property is established by producing things, not by claiming them.


Mr. Crown asserts that, while a man or his assigns may be entitled to the produce of his own labor or anything exchanged for it, he is not entitled to own land, since it is a gift of nature. For one man to appropriate this gift is alleged to be an invasion of a common heritage that all men deserve to use equally. This is a self-contradictory position, however. A man cannot produce anything without the co-operation of original nature-given factors, if only as standing room. In order to produce and possess any capital good or consumers good, therefore, he must appropriate and use an original nature-given factor. He cannot form products purely out of his labor alone; he must mix his labor with original nature-given factors. Therefore, if property in nature-given factors (economic land) is to be denied man, he cannot obtain property in the fruits of his labor.

Furthermore, in the question of land, it is difficult to see what better title there is than the first bringing of this land from a simple unvaluable thing into the sphere of production. For that is what the first user does. He takes a factor that was previously unowned and unused, and therefore worthless to anyone, and converts it into a tool for production of capital and consumers goods. It continues to be difficult for me see why the mere fact of being born should automatically confer upon one some aliquot part of the worlds land. For the first user has mixed his labor with the land, while neither the newborn child nor his ancestors have done anything with the land at all.

The problem will be clearer if we consider the case of animals. Animals are economic land, because they are equivalent to physical land in being original, nature-given factors of production. Yet will anyone deny title to a cow to the man that finds and domesticates her, putting her to use? For this is precisely what occurs in the case of land. Previously valueless wild land, like wild animals, is taken and transformed by a man into goods useful for man. The mixing of labor gives equivalent title in one case as in the other.

We must remember, also, what production entails. When man produces, he does not create matter. To bake an apple pie from scratch, one must first create the universe. He uses given materials and transforms and rearranges them into goods that he desires. In short, he moves matter further toward consumption. His finding of land or animals and putting them to use is also such a transformation.

So, what is production?  Production is transformation.  Production is organization.  Production is some sort of rearranging (or "remixing" as mczerone put it) of already-existing resources.  Domesticating a cow is one such transformation.  Domesticating a location is another.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> What is ownership?
> 
> I would claim that you can, in fact, homestead a right to the sun's rays by using them.


While that's false and stupid, it's also beside the point.  My point was you don't need to own something to use it.




> You could think of this right as an easement, or as part of a bundle of rights such as mineral rights, water rights, etc., which you may have homesteaded along with the locational rights of your land.  Let's say you put up a bunch of solar panels.  Or you just like to go outside and bask on your deck and get a tan.  What if then I come along and park my floating island above your land?  I am violating your property rights.  You receiving the sun's rays was the established situation and order of things.  I came in and upset the order of things.  I must not do that.  I must move my floating island so that it overshadows a place where either no one was using the sun's rays and so there's no one to object, or where the user(s) is(are) willing to go without the rays, perhaps in exchange for a payment from me.


Hmm.  What happens in your little libertarian utopia when you have land you like to sun on, and someone builds a tall building to the south of that land, so that it casts a shadow over the whole of your land from 10AM to 3PM?

The problem with homesteading is that it makes no attempt to reconcile equal rights.  It's nothing more than people saying "mine" and demanding everyone else do without.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Mr. Crown asserts that, while a man or his assigns may be entitled to the produce of his own labor or anything exchanged for it, he is not entitled to own land, since it is a gift of nature. For one man to appropriate this gift is alleged to be an invasion of a common heritage that all men deserve to use equally.


Nope.  Not deserve to use equally: all have equal right to use.  More to the point, no one has a right to forcefully prevent others from using it.




> This is a self-contradictory position, however. A man cannot produce anything without the co-operation of original nature-given factors, if only as standing room. In order to produce and possess any capital good or consumers good, therefore, he must appropriate and use an original nature-given factor. He cannot form products purely out of his labor alone; he must mix his labor with original nature-given factors. Therefore, if property in nature-given factors (economic land) is to be denied man, he cannot obtain property in the fruits of his labor.


Every man has an equal right to use the earth, and transform land into products of labor.  No man has a right to prevent others from using the earth.




> Furthermore, in the question of land, it is difficult to see what better title there is than the first bringing of this land from a simple unvaluable thing into the sphere of production. For that is what the first user does. He takes a factor that was previously unowned and unused, and therefore worthless to anyone, and converts it into a tool for production of capital and consumers goods.


It obviously wasn't worthless to anyone.




> It continues to be difficult for me see why the mere fact of being born should automatically confer upon one some aliquot part of the worlds land.


It doesn't.  It confers upon him equal rights, which include liberty to use the earth.




> For the first user has mixed his labor with the land,


"Labor mixing" is a nonsensical concept.




> while neither the newborn child nor his ancestors have done anything with the land at all.


So?  Before a baby takes its first breath, he's never used the atmosphere.  That doesn't mean existing users of the atmosphere have a right to suffocate him.  The mere fact that a newborn deserves equal rights demands that he be given a right to breathe, and a right to use the earth.  What else could it mean?




> The problem will be clearer if we consider the case of animals. Animals are economic land, because they are equivalent to physical land in being original, nature-given factors of production. Yet will anyone deny title to a cow to the man that finds and domesticates her, putting her to use?


No, because domesticated animals are a product of labor, and would not exist but for labor.




> For this is precisely what occurs in the case of land. Previously valueless wild land, like wild animals, is taken and transformed by a man into goods useful for man. The mixing of labor gives equivalent title in one case as in the other.


Nonsense.  Putting a "no-trespassing" sign up does not magically transform land and make it usable.




> We must remember, also, what production entails. When man produces, he does not create matter. To bake an apple pie from scratch, one must first create the universe. He uses given materials and transforms and rearranges them into goods that he desires. In short, he moves matter further toward consumption. His finding of land or animals and putting them to use is also such a transformation.


If he makes them into products, sure.  But a location cannot be made into a product.




> So, what is production?  Production is transformation.  Production is organization.  Production is some sort of rearranging (or "remixing" as mczerone put it) of already-existing resources.  Domesticating a cow is one such transformation.  Domesticating a location is another.


There's no such thing as domesticating a location.  Locations are usable without any labor.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> He takes a factor that was previously unowned and unused, and therefore worthless to anyone, and converts it into a tool for production of capital and consumers’ goods.
> 			
> 		
> 
> It obviously wasn't worthless to anyone.


 When economics talks about people's values, it is talking about demonstrated values: values the person has _demonstrated_ to exist, via _actions_ he has taken.  He may deep in his heart really value having the hand of some damsel in marriage, but unless he acts upon that desire, it is a matter for psychology, not economics.

As demonstrated by their actions -- or more precisely lack of action -- no one valued the land.  For no one else was using it.  No one else was taking any action to put the location nor the matter present there to use.  That lack of action demonstrates that as far as economics is concerned, they did not value the land.

No one else objected when he claimed it.  Someone may come along later, after the fact of homesteading, and claim his rights were _retroactively_ violated back years ago by what happened.  I do not take the anguished cries of such "victims" very seriously.  These Johnny-come-latelies do not possess the power to retroactively change the nature of events which happened in the past, unless they have discovered a way to violate the laws of causality.





> confer upon one some aliquot part of the world’s land.
> 			
> 		
> 
> It doesn't. It confers upon him equal liberty to use the earth.


 These two statements are synonymous as I see it.




> For the first user has mixed his labor with the land,
> 			
> 		
> 
> "Labor mixing" is a nonsensical concept.


 I do not see it that way, but let us just use your preferred terminology then and say that the first user has _produced_ something, has _created_ something which didn't exist before.  What did he produce/create?  Why, the land as it now exists, as what he transformed it into.  Perhaps a plowed field, for example.  Surely no plowed field existed before, and now it does.  He created that, using his labor.  It is a product of his labor.  It would be really nice if his rights of property in the fruits of his labor could be respected.




> Yet will anyone deny title to a cow to the man that finds and domesticates her, putting her to use?
> 			
> 		
> 
> No, because domesticated animals are a product of labor, and would not exist but for labor.


 Is your position really so cut and dry?  You would deny the justice of my claim to a field I have plowed.  Would you then accept as just my claim to a herd of bison which I put a fence around?  In the case of bison, domestication does not even consist of any training or breeding or other process changing the animal.  The animal remains physically (temperamentally, biologically, etc.) identical; I did nothing to change it at all.  My domestication process consist entirely of appropriation.  Now they are fenced in and I can take and kill them occasionally and sell the meat.  Are my actions just?  If so, why?  How are my actions as a buffalo rancher philosophically different than my actions as a beet farmer?




> Domesticating a location is another.
> 			
> 		
> 
> There's no such thing as domesticating a location. Locations are usable without any labor.


 Truly?  I am able to think of many arbitrary coordinates which are entirely unusable in the absence of a massive expenditure of human labor.  The vast majority, in fact, of coordinates which exist in the universe would appear to fit this description.  We cannot use them without first expending a great deal of effort and intelligence.  Is the product of the labor of those intrepid men to go unrewarded?  Is the distant asteroid any more or less useless than the distant polar bear, before being appropriated/domesticated?  And if one goes out and voyages to either one, captures it, and puts it to some use, is it not morally roughly the same act in both cases?  Whether one arrives on a rocket or an icebreaker, whether one uses the "land" (a polar bear is economic land) for a circus act or a mining operation, these details seem to fundamentally alter the moral nature of the act not at all.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> While that's false and stupid, it's also beside the point.  My point was you don't need to own something to use it.


 What is ownership?





> Hmm.  What happens in your little libertarian utopia when you have land you like to sun on, and someone builds a tall building to the south of that land, so that it casts a shadow over the whole of your land from 10AM to 3PM?


 Conventions arise.




> The problem with homesteading is that it makes no attempt to reconcile equal rights.  It's nothing more than people saying "mine" and demanding everyone else do without.


 Scarce resources must (and will) be rationed somehow.  First-come first-served is a principle which seems to have quite a lot of justice going for it.  You offer an alternative: that no one "do without."  That seems to be synonymous with saying that everyone have as much as they like.  While your proposal is a nice idea, outside of the Garden of Eden it does not seem to be consistent with the nature of reality.  Wouldn't you agree?

----------


## Roy L

> Abandonment of a resource of course frees it up for homesteading again.


Tell that to the owners of all the vacant lots in NYC.



> Just because a resource was at some point in the distant past owned by someone does not mean it necessarily still is owned.


Blatant question begging fallacy.  You have simply assumed away any right to liberty, and substituted your own objectively false assumption that only ownership carries any right of use.



> Your mentioning of the Anasazi kind of astounds me, since the sudden total disappearance of the Anasazi -- not just from St. George, but from everywhere -- was one of the great unsolved mysteries of history when I learned about it.  Perhaps new discoveries have since been made, I haven't kept up with it, but in any case I doubt that "the Paiutes showed up and stole their land" is the new state-of-the-art historical explanation.


Trying reading the quote I provided.  The Paiutes showed up, and the Anasazi simultaneously disappeared.  You do the math.



> That's just an interesting side note, though an ultimately irrelevant one, because of course the unraveling of ancient mysteries is irrelevant to whether St. George was properly homesteaded or not if it had since been abandoned.


I see.  So, if A murders or forcibly dispossesses B, leaving the land B was using vacant, then that land has been "abandoned," and C can rightly appropriate it?  How convenient for the white land thieves who followed along after the US Army's program of forcibly dispossessing and exterminating American aboriginal populations.



> The important consideration is the one below.


No, the important consideration is that you are just evading and question begging to rationalize greed and evil.



> Upon the Later-day Saints' arrival in St. George there were no individuals who objected in any way to the homesteading of the land there by the LDS and their building of a town there.


Evidence for this idiotic claim?  Of course not.  All you really know is that no one who objected dared to do anything about it.



> Again, as far as I know.


And if any inconvenient facts to the contrary are adduced, you can always just refuse to know them, preserving your convenient ignorance.



> I have invited you to show me the evidence to the contrary and I will cheerfully change my opinion when you do so .


I have already identified such evidence, and you have refused to know it.



> If there was any force initiated by the LDS when they arrived, any forceful or even acrimonious appropriation away from any person who was already there,


Another blatant question begging fallacy: you have simply *ASSUMED* that only someone who was "already there" (by *your* fallacious definition of claiming, appropriation and occupation) had any right to use the land.  What about the people who were using it at low intensity, maybe for a short time each year, and when the Mormons showed up, simply didn't want to take the risk of disputing the matter with the known-murderous white man?



> then you would be right that was not a legitimate homestead; rather, it would be an illegitimate robbery.


OK, so you at least agree that there is no legitimate title to the 99+% of land that has unambiguously been appropriated by force.



> Your position is two-fold.


Thanks for the warning that you will now lie about my position.



> First, that the right and proper way to homestead as put forth by libertarians is a violation of humanity's Georgist rights.


It indisputably removes people's rights to liberty.  When all the land is owned, you serve a landowner or you die.



> Second, that _even if_ it were not, even granting us our craziness, that there has never been a single square inch of land which has actually been homesteaded in the way which we libertarians describe which we falsely and evilly claim would be right and proper.


No.  There may indeed have been such initial appropriations at various times, when people who already had agriculture and fixed improvement technology first entered and settled previously uninhabited land (examples might be Iceland and Madagascar).  My position is that those events, almost all in the remote past, are irrelevant, as there has since that time been at least one forcible appropriation that invalidates all subsequent transfers.



> I give you the example of St. George to address the latter claim.


Which is nothing but a ludicrous and dishonest load of crap, given the prevailing regime of forcible white dispossession of aboriginals throughout the area:

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_cha...relations.html

Claiming that St George was settled in splendid isolation from the violent conflict over land prevailing in the area is laughable, and no different from claiming that exterminating the adult male natives was not genocide, as it left the women and children alive.



> I am under the impression that you cannot show me a single square inch of St. George for which any type of robbery occurred when the LDS people arrived and homesteaded the resources there.


Another question begging fallacy, as proved above.  The local warlord who invited the Mormons to settle in the area had no democratic mandate to do so, as proved by the almost immediate outbreak of violence:

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_cha...walkerwar.html



> It was indeed an instance of homesteading in the pure libertarian manner, with no complications or caveats.  No asterisk needed.


That's just a flat-out lie, as proved above.  ALL FEUDAL LIBERTARIAN APOLOGISTS FOR GREED, PRIVILEGE AND INJUSTICE MUST ALWAYS LIE.



> In fact, though St. George was ostensibly within the borders of the Mexican Empire, the Mexican state was not exactly anywhere to be found.  St. George, Utah was more or less a de facto voluntary or anarchistic society, with no distant states exercising any meaningful degree of control.


Ignorance, idiocy, or lie, as proved above.

----------


## Roy L

> I would claim that you can, in fact, homestead a right to the sun's rays by using them.  You could think of this right as an easement, or as part of a bundle of rights such as mineral rights, water rights, etc., which you may have homesteaded along with the locational rights of your land.


Or you could refrain from trying to concoct fallacious, absurd and dishonest rationalizations for landowner greed and parasitism, and think of it as a right to liberty.



> Let's say you put up a bunch of solar panels.  Or you just like to go outside and bask on your deck and get a tan.  What if then I come along and park my floating island above your land?  I am violating your property rights.


I see.  So, only landowners have any right to be out in the sun.  Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....



> You receiving the sun's rays was the established situation and order of things.  I came in and upset the order of things.  I must not do that.


"Me ownin' mah niggahs was the 'stablished situation an' order o' things.  You come in an' upset that order o' things.  Y'all mustn't do that, son."

Your claim that the existing situation is always sacred and must not be disturbed is just false and ridiculous.  Using a resource does not establish a right to use it exclusively in perpetuity, forcibly extinguishing others' rights to use it.  If anything, the first user has had his turn, and it is now someone else's turn.



> I must move my floating island so that it overshadows a place where either no one was using the sun's rays and so there's no one to object, or where the user(s) is(are) willing to go without the rays, perhaps in exchange for a payment from me.


??  Wasn't there a lying apologist for greed, privilege and injustice who claimed no payment or other consideration could ever compensate for even the tiniest impairment of one's liberty?

----------


## JebSanderson

Roy isn't even bothering to hide his sock puppet account this time. Matt even has the same posting style (line by line quotes) and language as Roy.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Roy isn't even bothering to hide his sock puppet account this time. Matt even has the same posting style (line by line quotes) and language as Roy.


Bad timing with this post, seeing as we're both online now.

----------


## JebSanderson

> Bad timing with this post, seeing as we're both online now.


A computer can run more than one browser at a time. Also many people have a laptop and a smartphone. It's not difficult to be online with multiple accounts...

----------


## MattintheCrown

> A computer can run more than one browser at a time. Also many people have a laptop and a smartphone. It's not difficult to be online with multiple accounts...


That'd be a lot of work to go through for no conceivable purpose.

----------


## JebSanderson

> That'd be a lot of work to go through for no conceivable purpose.


lol opening another browser window is hard? And you(Roy) have gone through about 1000 posts with your LVT drivel for no conceivable purpose already, not to mention an already banned sock puppet account.

----------


## Roy L

> What is ownership?


A bundle of rights normally understood to include those of possession, control, benefit and disposition.



> Conventions arise.


Or more often, are forcibly imposed by those on whom the existing situation has conferred the most power.



> Scarce resources must (and will) be rationed somehow.  First-come first-served is a principle which seems to have quite a lot of justice going for it.


But you don't mean "first come, first served," because that implies the first-comers get no more than their share, and yield the rest to later-comers.  The principle you are championing is, "grabber gets."  I don't perceive any significant quantum of justice in "grabber gets."



> You offer an alternative: that no one "do without."  That seems to be synonymous with saying that everyone have as much as they like.


But it doesn't seem that way to intelligent and honest people, who are willing to know the fact that an equal right of all to use a limited fund of resources does not imply that everyone can use all they like.  It simply implies that everyone can use some, and those who choose to use more than their share will justly compensate those whom they deprive of their shares.



> While your proposal


Which you made up.



> is a nice idea, outside of the Garden of Eden it does not seem to be consistent with the nature of reality.  Wouldn't you agree?


If 10 people each have a right to pick apples growing wild on a tree, and there are 100 apples on the tree, there are a number of ways to make sure no one has to do without, yet not say everyone can take as many as they like.  They could line up, and then take turns picking one apple at a time, with those who had all they wanted dropping out of the rotation.  They could auction off an exclusive privilege of picking the apples, with the high bidder keeping all the apples he picked in excess of his bid, and distributing the bid amount equally among the other nine people.  They could each pick 10 apples, and then those who had more than they wanted could trade their surplus apples for other things.  Etc.

Wouldn't you agree?

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Upon the Latter-day Saints' arrival in St. George there were no individuals who objected in any way to the homesteading of the land there by the LDS and their building of a town there.
> 			
> 		
> 
> All you really know is that no[ne of the poor, downtrodden victims] who objected dared to do anything about it.


That is exactly true.  Ah, sweet consensus.  Thank you for agreeing with me.  We agree completely on this matter.  We both know that no person anywhere did anything whatsoever to suggest that they objected to the Latter-day Saints' homesteading, at least neither of us are aware of any such actions, and history seems to record none such.

Economics deals with human _action_ and _demonstrated_ preferences, not with the secret thoughts which may hypothetically be lurking deep in the subconscious of someone who may hypothetically be feeling victimized.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy isn't even bothering to hide his sock puppet account this time. Matt even has the same posting style (line by line quotes) and language as Roy.


I am not Matt, nor have I ever used any account but this one on this forum.  Like me, Matt is skilled in the English language, and he holds similar views.  That's all.  While Matt's posts are not as obviously made by a different person as JohnLVT's were, an attentive reader can still find differences in how we respond to the fallacious, absurd and dishonest garbage that apologists for landowner greed, privilege and parasitism offer in place of fact and logic.  Matt is able to bring greater equanimity to the debate, and does not seem to experience the horror of the Annual Holocaust of the Landless as acutely as I do.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> A bundle of [vicious, evil] rights normally understood to include those of possession, control, benefit and disposition.


 I have no particular disagreement with this, though I subsume these into two divisions: use and control.  I do note you have left out one of the five items normally on this list, "exclusion," for reasons known to yourself.

Possession: I don't know for sure what you mean by this one.  Perhaps just that the owner has the right to possess, or in the case of land we would usually use the word "occupy," his property.  And that's true.  That would be one way he could use it.  Of course he also could use it in any number of ways which do not involve his physical presence.  So this is just a specific type of *use*.
Control: The owner makes the ultimate decisions concerning the property.
Benefit: This is what I call "*use*."
Disposition: I take this to be transferability (being able to sell it, to gift it, etc.), which is just one specific aspect of *control*.  If one cannot make the decision to get rid of a property, one's decision-making power over that property has been abrogated to that extent.




> But you don't mean "first come, first served," because that implies the first-comers get no more than their share, and yield the rest to [poor down-trodden] later-comers.  The principle you are championing is, "grabber gets."  I don't perceive any significant quantum of justice in "grabber gets."


 Ah, but I do.  _Someone_ gets it.  The first to want it (who _demonstrates_ his want by homesteading it) is a good candidate.




> It simply implies that everyone can use some, and [the minions of Satan] who choose to use more than their share will justly compensate those whom they deprive of their shares.


 I'm a little bit foggy on how much is "some."  Likewise confused on how much is "their share."  And I'm really not clear on how much the bill for "justly" comes to.




> [Let's all share apples equally].
> 
> Wouldn't you agree?


 Are they all 1/10ths partners in the tree?

----------


## Roy L

> And you(Roy) have gone through about 1000 posts with your LVT drivel for no conceivable purpose already,


Devotion to liberty, justice and truth is only a purpose that is inconceivable to YOU.



> not to mention an already banned sock puppet account.


I don't know why the JohnLVT account was banned, but I assume that if it was for being a sock puppet of this account, this one would have been banned, too.

----------


## Roy L

> That is exactly true.  Ah, sweet consensus.  Thank you for agreeing with me.  We agree completely on this matter.


We agree that you refuse to know the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.  Right.



> We both know that no person anywhere did anything whatsoever to suggest that they objected to the Latter-day Saints' homesteading, at least neither of us are aware of any such actions, and history seems to record none such.


No, you know I already proved that's a lie, remember?

http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_cha...relations.html



> Economics deals with human _action_ and _demonstrated_ preferences, not with the secret thoughts which may hypothetically be lurking deep in the subconscious of someone who may hypothetically be feeling victimized.


Despicable.  By that evil "logic," the Jews who did not resist being herded into freight cars and ultimately gas chambers had no objection to being exterminated.

----------


## Roy L

> I have no particular disagreement with this, though I subsume these into two divisions: use and control.  I do note you have left out one of the five items normally on this list, "exclusion," for reasons known to yourself.


Exclusion is implied by possession.



> Possession: I don't know for sure what you mean by this one.  Perhaps just that the owner has the right to possess, or in the case of land we would usually use the word "occupy," his property.  And that's true.  That would be one way he could use it.  Of course he also could use it in any number of ways which do not involve his physical presence.  So this is just a specific type of *use*


Possession and use are two different things, obviously.



> Benefit: This is what I call "*use*."


But it isn't.  A trustee has a right to use and control a property, but not to benefit by it.



> Disposition: I take this to be transferability (being able to sell it, to gift it, etc.), which is just one specific aspect of *control*.  If one cannot make the decision to get rid of a property, one's decision-making power over that property has been abrogated to that extent.


Allodial title usually does not include a right of disposition.



> Ah, but I do.


Right: you think stealing is justice.



> _Someone_ gets it.


Why?  No one ever got it before.



> The first to want it (who _demonstrates_ his want by homesteading it) is a good candidate.


No, the first to perceive an opportunity to enslave his fellows by seizing the resources they need to use to survive is not a good candidate for anything but burning eternally in the Pit that is Bottomless.



> I'm a little bit foggy on how much is "some."


That depends on circumstances, the nature of the resources, etc.  What a typical person would use is close enough.



> Likewise confused on how much is "their share."


As above.



> And I'm really not clear on how much the bill for "justly" comes to.


Market value.



> Are they all 1/10ths partners in the tree?


I said it was wild, so you know it can't rightly be owned.  You know that people rightly picked fruit from wild trees without owning them since before there were people.  Why pretend you don't?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> When economics talks about people's values, it is talking about demonstrated values: values the person has _demonstrated_ to exist, via _actions_ he has taken.  He may deep in his heart really value having the hand of some damsel in marriage, but unless he acts upon that desire, it is a matter for psychology, not economics.
> 
> As demonstrated by their actions -- or more precisely lack of action -- no one valued the land.  For no one else was using it.  No one else was taking any action to put the location nor the matter present there to use.  That lack of action demonstrates that as far as economics is concerned, they did not value the land.


You're just switching uses of "value" here.  You were not speaking economically before.  The land will have economic value when more than one person wants to use it, irrespective of whether it's owned or not.




> No one else objected when he claimed it.  Someone may come along later, after the fact of homesteading, and claim his rights were _retroactively_ violated back years ago by what happened.  I do not take the anguished cries of such "victims" very seriously.  These Johnny-come-latelies do not possess the power to retroactively change the nature of events which happened in the past, unless they have discovered a way to violate the laws of causality.


Johnny-come-latelies such as every single person born after the land has been claimed, you mean?  The problem is not with actions in the past: it's with actions in the present.  By making land into private property, you violate people's equal rights; the landless effectively have no rights at all, because a right to life requires a right to live _somewhere_.




> These two statements are synonymous as I see it.


Think more carefully.




> I do not see it that way, but let us just use your preferred terminology then and say that the first user has _produced_ something, has _created_ something which didn't exist before.  What did he produce/create?  Why, the land as it now exists, as what he transformed it into.  Perhaps a plowed field, for example.  Surely no plowed field existed before, and now it does.  He created that, using his labor.  It is a product of his labor.  It would be really nice if his rights of property in the fruits of his labor could be respected.


The plowed field is indeed a product of his labor.  The location is not.




> Is your position really so cut and dry?  You would deny the justice of my claim to a field I have plowed.  Would you then accept as just my claim to a herd of bison which I put a fence around?  In the case of bison, domestication does not even consist of any training or breeding or other process changing the animal.  The animal remains physically (temperamentally, biologically, etc.) identical; I did nothing to change it at all.  My domestication process consist entirely of appropriation.


Then it's not domestication.




> Now they are fenced in and I can take and kill them occasionally and sell the meat.  Are my actions just?  If so, why?  How are my actions as a buffalo rancher philosophically different than my actions as a beet farmer?


Essentially, you're saying you captured a number of buffalo.  That's fair enough (assuming you didn't capture an entire herd that other people hunted to survive, or something).




> Truly?  I am able to think of many arbitrary coordinates which are entirely unusable in the absence of a massive expenditure of human labor.  The vast majority, in fact, of coordinates which exist in the universe would appear to fit this description.  We cannot use them without first expending a great deal of effort and intelligence.  Is the product of the labor of those intrepid men to go unrewarded?


If the mere act of using a site is very difficult, there's not likely to be much competition for it.  The point of the LVT is to reconcile rights where there's a conflict over equal rights to use land.  Want to use land in Antarctica?  No one's likely to stop you.




> Is the distant asteroid any more or less useless than the distant polar bear, before being appropriated/domesticated?  And if one goes out and voyages to either one, captures it, and puts it to some use, is it not morally roughly the same act in both cases?  Whether one arrives on a rocket or an icebreaker, whether one uses the "land" (a polar bear is economic land) for a circus act or a mining operation, these details seem to fundamentally alter the moral nature of the act not at all.


Obviously, an asteroid isn't a location, nor is a polar bear.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> You're just switching uses of "value" here.  You were not speaking economically before.


 Fascinating.  In what sense was I speaking?




> Johnny-come-latelies such as every single person born after the land has been claimed, you mean?


 Yes, among others.




> These two statements are synonymous as I see it.
> 			
> 		
> 
> Think more carefully.


 I'm sorry.  I'm just not that smart.  Quite sincerely, I see no distinction.  You will have to get all pedantic on me and explain what the distinction is between those two statements.





> The plowed field is indeed a product of his labor.  The location is not.


 Ah.  So you actually just feel that ownership of _locations_ is evil, is that right?  Not of natural resources in general.  _Matter_ (like the plowed soil) can be owned, and you're hunky-dory with that, am I following you correctly?  _Location_ is what's holy, location is what's sacred, location is the only holy, sacred thing which must never be owned.  So your moralistic position has nothing to do with "land" as defined in economics at all.  Only with the subset of land called location, and its holy, untouchable nature.  Specifically, its property that supposedly man cannot create/produce it, while matter we _can_ create/produce.  





> Then it's not domestication.


 Whatever you want to call it then.  I have taken a wild and useless animal and made it into my own personal cash crop.





> Essentially, you're saying you captured a number of buffalo.  That's fair enough (assuming you didn't capture an entire herd that other people hunted to survive, or something).


 So you're OK with homesteading as a principle.  Your caveat is just stipulating that it must be actual homesteading; that is, that you're not stealing _other people's_ buffalo.  And I agree completely.

But perhaps this is just being consistent with the position that you seem to have that ownership of matter is feasible and possibly just, whereas ownership of locations never can be.

Of course, all matter has a location component too, even buffalo, but I guess buffalo are more movable than golf courses.  Not sure why you'd build a system of morality out of that, out of degrees of portability.  I don't even see any necessary moral distinction between the two.




> If the mere act of using a site is very difficult, there's not likely to be much competition for it.  The point of the LVT is to reconcile rights where there's a conflict over equal rights to use landlocation.  Want to use land in Antarctica?  No one's likely to stop you.


 How is it possible that _you_ have an equal right to use a location, and that _I_ also have a conflicting equal right to use a location?  How did these rights arise?  Where did they come from?  How did we get them?  What was their philosophical genesis?  And why do they conflict?





> Obviously, an asteroid isn't a location, nor is a polar bear.


 Right, they are both a combination of matter and location.  Since it is your position that It's A-OK for me to go homestead the polar bear, or even a few of them (assuming the moral situation is the same as with the bison: "That's fair enough") it should also be the case that it is A-OK for me to homestead the asteroid.  No problem.  I can be an asteroid land baron, and not be despicable or robbing or enslaving anyone.  Wonderful.  If this is true, that's swell news.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Exclusion is implied by possession.
> 
> Possession and use are two different things, obviously.
> 
> But it isn't.  A trustee has a right to use and control a property, but not to benefit by it.
> 
> Allodial title usually does not include a right of disposition.


 I love how you just reply totally randomly to every line, trying to sound as contradictory as you possibly can even when you don't disagree with me at all.

Sniping is so much easier than composing an entire series of coherent paragraphs, following a logical line of thought.




> I said it was wild [_WILD_ I tell you!], so you know it can't rightly be owned.  You know that people rightly picked fruit from wild trees without owning them since before there were people.  Why pretend you don't?


 These ten people are all hanging out around the wild tree, jointly taking the apples and enjoying them somehow, and jointly making decisions about the tree, such as whether to chop it down?  Sounds like joint ownership to me.

----------


## Steven Douglas

OK, just to make sure we're all on the same page here:

It appears that All Truly Intelligent, Wise, Honest and Good People (as well as those True Scotsmen who are Proper Propertarians), agree that landownership is Freedom from Rent Enslavement, and a Wonderful Opportunity for everyone, right?  

Good. 

And since the opportunity for landownership perfectly facilitates this Freedom From Perpetual Rent Enslavement, I trust that we are also in agreement that the liberty to use someone else's land is not, and should never be, considered anyone's right? Of course, silly me -- theft by any other name and all that. 

Perfect. 

And I also take it that All Good and Proper Propertarians are in good agreement that forcibly excluding non-landowners like Roy, Matt and others from land while not "compensating" them (via the "community") for rent payments on anything else they might feel collectively, perpetually entitled, is not in any way an unjust deprivation, let alone any form of enslavement to any of them? Of course it wouldn't be. Why, that would be a reach and half by the strangest leaps of logic, only possible through a system of Collective Entitlement, rather than Private Opportunity. 

Cool.  

Finally, All Truly Intelligent, Wise, Honest and Good People would of course agree that exclusion from land that is already privately claimed and/or occupied as private landownership by others is not a form of enslavement of any kind to those excluded (provided, of course, that they were not artificially restricted from having the same opportunities).  Well, naturally, ridiculous to even think of it in another way.  Slaves, by nature, are _force-included_, _not excluded_ - forced to labor against their will, not excluded from what is not theirs to begin with against their will.  As long as they have the opportunity to own lands of their own, they are not Rent Slaves to anyone. 

Excellent.   

Geoists - go get your own lands and be free. There's still plenty for everyone, you know.  And by all means, pay for infrastructure and improvements -- as you need them, when you want them, and as you choose to afford them - with bonds, special assessments (paid for specifically and voluntarily by those who actually want and would benefit most by them) - not perpetual rents.  Pay for what you need, as you need it, and be done with it, like everything else.  That includes paying for upkeep.  And stop with all the envy of those who accumulated value by simply being there first, on the ground floor so to speak, and the desire to turn them all into a renter class.  I know that tickles your class envy sensibilities, but the fact is, people who bought Apple and Microsoft early have an absolute right to a greater return later.  They were there first, offering first support, with first risks, and really are entitled to a greater return.  Meanwhile, latecomers who want to buy can pay more, that's how it works.  That's value returned to the people who really are entitled.  

Making the land versions of Apple and Microsoft publicly owned so that rents can be collected might sound good to you on paper, but when it comes down to it, it is nothing but Collectivist Theft. 

Go suck on an LVT egg somewhere else. There is very little "libertarian" about "geolibertarian".  You want your strange notions of liberty to be someone else's perpetual enslavement.  That's not going to fly. Not here of all places.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Fascinating.  In what sense was I speaking?


General.




> Yes, among others.


LOL, so, for the crime of not being born on time, people shouldn't have any right to exist?




> I'm sorry.  I'm just not that smart.  Quite sincerely, I see no distinction.  You will have to get all pedantic on me and explain what the distinction is between those two statements.


Quote it, and I'll walk you through it.




> Ah.  So you actually just feel that ownership of _locations_ is evil, is that right?  Not of natural resources in general.


Ownership of that which isn't crated is evil.  More accurately, preventing others from using what nature provides is evil.




> _Matter_ (like the plowed soil) can be owned, and you're hunky-dory with that, am I following you correctly?


It's not the matter: it's the specific arrangement of matter.  It's similar to the way I don't blame the matter that comprises you for your nonsense.  You are comprised of matter, but the matter itself is not the relevant consideration.




> _Location_ is what's holy, location is what's sacred, location is the only holy, sacred thing which must never be owned.  So your moralistic position has nothing to do with "land" as defined in economics at all.  Only with the subset of land called location, and its holy, untouchable nature.  Specifically, its property that supposedly man cannot create/produce it, while matter we _can_ create/produce.


It flows from the non-aggression principle.  You have no right to deprive others of what nature provides.  In the case of natural resources, using them removes the opportunity for others to use them; if I remove iron ore from the earth's crust, the opportunity for others to use it no longer exists.  But you cannot remove the opportunity for others to use locations.  In the case of resources which more than one person wishes to exhaust, there should be some mechanism to reconcile rights (ie, severance tax).




> Whatever you want to call it then.  I have taken a wild and useless animal and made it into my own personal cash crop.


Good for you.




> So you're OK with homesteading as a principle.


Nope.




> Your caveat is just stipulating that it must be actual homesteading; that is, that you're not stealing _other people's_ buffalo.  And I agree completely.


Nope.  Capturing buffalo requires labor, and the nature of an exhaustible resource such as buffalo is not the same as an inexhaustible resource such as a locaiton.




> But perhaps this is just being consistent with the position that you seem to have that ownership of matter is feasible and possibly just, whereas ownership of locations never can be.


No.  Ownership of products is possible.




> Of course, all matter has a location component too, even buffalo, but I guess buffalo are more movable than golf courses.  Not sure why you'd build a system of morality out of that, out of degrees of portability.  I don't even see any necessary moral distinction between the two.


It has little to do with portability. 




> How is it possible that _you_ have an equal right to use a location, and that _I_ also have a conflicting equal right to use a location?  How did these rights arise?  Where did they come from?  How did we get them?  What was their philosophical genesis?  And why do they conflict?


Because we were both born in a world we have to share.  Duh.




> Right, they are both a combination of matter and location.  Since it is your position that It's A-OK for me to go homestead the polar bear,


"Homesteading" is just a dishonest term here.  You don't "homestead" a polar bear.  You capture it.  You're just trying to equivocate.




> or even a few of them (assuming the moral situation is the same as with the bison: "That's fair enough") it should also be the case that it is A-OK for me to homestead the asteroid.  No problem.  I can be an asteroid land baron, and not be despicable or robbing or enslaving anyone.  Wonderful.  If this is true, that's swell news.


Yeah, why not?  It's not like asteroids are scarce.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

*On this matter of homesteading amounting to an initiation of force:*

If there is no one present to initiate force against (nor any of their property to initiate force against), one cannot be initiating force.  If a man claims a location, and no one is yet present in that location -- and that is what homesteading _means_ -- then he absolutely cannot be initiating force against anyone when he makes that claim.  There's no one there!  He cannot be molesting anyone, for there is no one around to molest.

I think that one would, of necessity, to remain a rational being, agree with the above.  It is further confirmed by Mr. theCrown's statement that no one is being aggressed against if I wish to homestead a plot in Antarctica or some other desolate and unoccupied area. (Mr. L. has likewise made statements to this effect in the past). 

If, then, Antarctica were to remain in this unoccupied and undemanded state, with no one but me (the lonely homesteader) interested in coming there and exercising their supposed innate "natural liberty" to the resources there, then in that case no rights-violation would ever occur.  No force would ever have been initiated, nor ever would be.  Where Georgists say the "initiation" of force comes in is when, years later, more people come to the area and this conversation ensues:

"Hey, it's getting crowded, it's not fair you own that large location just because you got there first, we want to take it from you.  Nature gave it to us, as well as you, after all."  

"I claimed this location as my own.  No one objected to my claim.  I consider it legitimate.  I have made many improvements to the original state of nature at this location -- improvements which would be very difficult or impossible to relocate to a different location.  Please, respect my property as I respect yours."

"Ha!  Meet my gun barrel, you puke-faced slaver.  We won't stand for your feudalistic lies."

The homesteader, by taking exception to the mob's claim on that location, is thus, the Georgist claims, initiating, or starting, an act of force against the mob.  One wonders if the definitions of defense and aggression have gotten a little tangled.  The homesteader didn't start anything.  It is logically impossible to pretzel any way in which he could be said to have "initiated" the force.  The homesteader was already there.  The homesteader just wants to _defend_ what he sees as his property.  No one else has any claim on it.  Thus, no one in the mob has any legal or moral standing to challenge the homesteader.

It is indeed true that the landowner's claim on the land is ultimately backed up by the implicit threat of force.  But so is any property owner's claim to his property.  For any _right_ worthy of the name, force may justly be resorted to in order to defend the right.  Libertarianism does not condemn force, all force, across the board, but only _initiation_ of force.  We see initiatory force and defensive force as, in many ways, moral polar opposites.   Defensive killing is not murder, and building a fence (or otherwise excluding vagrants from your backyard) bears no resemblance to slavery.  Georgists label this as slavery, but they are off in La-La Land!  They are doing intellectual somersaults all in the service of the entitlement complex.  All of their loop-de-loops are just an elaborate justification for the entitlement complex.  A vagrant wanders by my house and says to himself: "It ain't right that he got that land while I got nothin'.  I've got as much right to that land as him, haven't I?  I oughta have a fair share of that land."  I shake my head and say: "No sir, I'm sorry: it is, you don't, and you oughtn't."  The Georgist, though, his eyes light up and he gets very excited and tells the vagrant: "Yes!  Yes!  You've jolly well got it!  You're absolutely right; you are actually being actively robbed in a very real sense by not getting a fair share of that land.  Let me invite you to dinner and I'll explain further, and together, comrade, we can launch a glorious Georgist Revolution."

Now we libertarians do not believe that all current land claims and titles should be continued.  This is a false characterization which has nevertheless been constantly thrown and bandied about by the Georgists with careless abandon.  No, we believe only in just titles, based on homesteading.  If a title can be shown to be illegitimate, based on initial aggression (or aggression at any point along the way), then it should be declared invalid and the victims or their heirs regain their rightful property which was stolen from them.  Aboriginal peoples robbed of their land through broken treaties, for instance, would have standing to bring claim against the holders of the robbed land.  Descendants of slaves would have partial claim to the plantations of the slaveholders, for another instance.

Let us correct what wrongs can be corrected, and them commence establishing a libertarian framework to make possible the just and moral homesteading of new, currently unowned, resources moving forward(including oceans, Antarctica, northern Canada, many other currently-desolate places, aerial and underground locations, off-Earth locations, etc., etc.).  Humanity has a bright future ahead of it as our wealth, technology, and freedom grows.  Let us spread throughout the Universe on a sound moral footing: the principle of private property, rooted in libertarian homestead theory.


*On this matter of production bestowing just ownership:*

What is production?  Production is mere transformation, taking matter, space, and perhaps other abstractions, and forming them into something different and presumably more to your liking.  When one produces a chainsaw, he transforms ores, oils, and fibers, into this finely-tuned tree-massacre machine.  So how is it different to take and transform an empty prairie into a parking lot?  One takes a location, transforms the matter there to be more smoothly perpendicular to the direction of gravitation, tamps it down to make it harder and better able to support weight, and perhaps adds in matter from other locations to create phenomenon like pavement, paint, and lighting.  Both the chainsaw and the parking lot are produced from the raw resources of the Universe.  Those raw resources have been transformed into something greater, or at least different, than their original form.  The chainsaw, the Georgist will say, has been produced, while the land on which the parking lot sits has not.  But my friend, it has!  That land has been transformed, just as assuredly as the raw resources in the chainsaw.  If one can appropriate for one's self some pieces of the raw Universe by building a chainsaw with them, one can just as justly appropriate some pieces of it by building a parking lot with them.  The raw ores were there all along.  The surface of the Earth was there all along.  Fine.  But you changed it.  You produced something with it.  Matter is matter.  Location is location.  If you accept that the chainsaw owner can have absolute ownership over the matter composing the chainsaw, and the three-dimensional space which it monopolizes, you should at least be able to understand why I think it possible for the parking lot owner to have absolute ownership over the matter composing the parking lot and the three-dimensional space which it happens to occupy.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> I'll walk you through it.


 Thank you.  I patiently await that learning experience.




> Ownership of that which isn't created is evil.


 Why?




> How is it possible that you have an equal right to use a location, and that I also have a conflicting equal right to use a location? How did these rights arise? Where did they come from? How did we get them? What was their philosophical genesis? And why do they conflict?
> 			
> 		
> 
> Because we were both born in a world we have to share. Duh.


 We were both born in a world, that much is true.  What do you mean that "we have to share [it]"?  And how in the world does that lead to all the conclusions quoted above?  All these rights, mutually impossible rights, mysteriously appearing out of nowhere because.... 

...we were born?


Much more addressed in my post above.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> *On this matter of homesteading amounting to an initiation of force:*
> 
> If there is no one present to initiate force against (nor any of their property to initiate force against), one cannot be initiating force.  If a man claims a location, and no one is yet present in that location -- and that is what homesteading _means_ -- then he absolutely cannot be initiating force against anyone when he makes that claim.  There's no one there!  He cannot be molesting anyone, for there is no one around to molest.


Nope.  The only way a location can be claimed is by initiating force against all comers.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Thank you.  I patiently await that learning experience.
> 
>  Why?


Because it robs people of what they'd otherwise have.




> We were both born in a world, that much is true.  What do you mean that "we have to share [it]"?


It is a common resource available to both of us, and neither of us has the right to decide the other has no right to use it.




> And how in the world does that lead to all the conclusions quoted above?  All these rights, mutually impossible rights, mysteriously appearing out of nowhere because.... 
> 
> ...we were born?


The logical consequent of non-initiation of force.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Upon further reflection, I have determined that in fact even "use and control" is a clumsy and inadequate definition of ownership.  Both use and control come under the umbrella of one single consideration, the sole defining characteristic of an owner of property:

Ultimate decision-making.

To be the one ultimately making all the decisions concerning a property is to own that property.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Upon further reflection, I have determined that in fact even "use and control" is a clumsy and inadequate definition of ownership.  Both use and control come under the umbrella of one single consideration, the sole defining characteristic of an owner of property:
> 
> Ultimate decision-making.
> 
> To be the one ultimately making all the decisions concerning a property is to own that property.


No question about it. That's pretty much how I thought of control.  Not physical control, per se, but having the ultimate decision-making power over the disposition or disposal - use or non-use of land that is owned, including rights of transfer. 

The word for me is Sovereignty - full allodial title, with sole despotic dominion over privately held lands -- which is another way of saying ultimate decision-making.  I am, in principle, steadfastly against anything or anyone that seeks to dilute, abridge or erode the concept of individual sovereignty.  That distinction strikes at the heart at what I believe is the only possible nature of the purest, most honest form of government conceivable on Earth. 

For me, live individuals are the States. The original State. In my eyes, every individual is a fully fledged government (the ONLY GOVERNMENT that is sacred and truly matters to me, each and every one), and a community in his or herself.  Not a couple. Not a family. Not a community.  A person; _singular_. Their kingdom, their sovereignty, is WITHIN THEM. Inherent, intrinsic, unalienable. 

There is NO greater form of government on Earth than the individual. NONE. And the extent to which any government dilutes the sovereign power of the individual is the extent to which that government is corrupt.  The individual is the first order community which should have far and away the most concentrated power and authority, not over others, but over their own lives, their own destiny. Each and every one. And that necessarily includes borders (which we call fences) and State Capitols (or Castles, which we call houses and homes), and sole despotic dominion over those borders, their own lands, which they must have a right to acquire for themselves. Hence, my neighbors are no different to me, fundamentally speaking, than Turkey and Greece, or France and Germany -- or any other neighboring states are to one another globally. 

The only distinction, as a matter of principle, I would make between the sovereignty of individuals and the sovereignty of the State would be that ultimate sovereignty becomes more and more concentrated the smaller you go.  Thus, the individual trumps the community, the community of individuals trumps the State, and the States trump the conglomerations of States, even as conglomerations of States Trump the World.  That is exactly backwards from the way most people see it, and from the way OUR government has devolved and became corrupted over time.  The pyramid is upside-down everywhere you look.  The global is all powerful, the federal is next in line, the states have been watered down, forced in line, and diluted into subjects, even as the communities are left to feed on themselves. The individuals - the People Themselves - are at the mercy of it all, with no real control, like so much political flotsam and jetsam.   

I want nothing to do with the concept of being a "subject" of some kind of collectivized sovereignty, wherein everyone is presumed to have given up, rather than individually and always temporarily delegated A SMALL PART of their sovereign powers. That is no different than a Crown, or kingdom by any other name. I see all of us in the ideal sense as actual sovereigns, who ourselves are governed according to our individual, not collective, consent.  Without the individual - as in EACH - as a check and balance on political power at all times, tyranny will always be the ultimate result.

Meeza doesn't hates gubmint - meeza lubs the only government that is truly sacred, and truly matters. The Sovereign Individual. Not ALL. *EACH*.   

We have what I consider to be some truly nasty people in the world who have little to no wisdom as to the importance of individual sovereignty, including rights in land, and our ability to secure life, liberty and property, including private sovereign land.  ULTIMATELY, when you listen to them, you will find that they have a very secondary, little or highly diluted regard for individuals, and individual dissent (over their own lives and property, no less).  They move people around like so many disposable pawns on political chess boards (or, like Roy says, F#@! Granny).  Individual sovereignty is always trumped by some form of collectivized assent, like "the greater good", or Star Trek's completely evil "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".   The individual is only important to their schemes, but they do not serve as a real check and balance except through some collective mechanism.

----------


## Roy L

> I love how you just reply totally randomly to every line, trying to sound as contradictory as you possibly can even when you don't disagree with me at all.
> 
> Sniping is so much easier than composing an entire series of coherent paragraphs, following a logical line of thought.


From long and bitter experience, I have found it is necessary to examine minutely and correct insistently all assertions by lying apologists for greed, privilege and injustice, as they will seize on the slightest inaccuracy of expression -- usually initiated by them and attributed to me -- and construct on it a tower of fallacy.



> These ten people are all hanging out around the wild tree, jointly taking the apples and enjoying them somehow, and jointly making decisions about the tree, such as whether to chop it down?  Sounds like joint ownership to me.


No one said anything about chopping it down.  That's something you just made up, and have by implication now attributed to me.

See above.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> No question about it. That's pretty much how I thought of control.  Not physical control, per se, but having the ultimate decision-making power over the disposition or disposal - use or non-use of land that is owned, including rights of transfer. 
> 
> The word for me is Sovereignty - full allodial title, with sole despotic dominion over privately held lands -- which is another way of saying ultimate decision-making.  I am, in principle, steadfastly against anything or anyone that seeks to dilute, abridge or erode the concept of individual sovereignty.  That distinction strikes at the heart at what I believe is the only possible nature of the purest, most honest form of government conceivable on Earth. 
> 
> For me, live individuals are the States. The original State. In my eyes, every individual is a fully fledged government (the ONLY GOVERNMENT that is sacred and truly matters to me, each and every one), and a community in his or herself.  Not a couple. Not a family. Not a community.  A person; _singular_. Their kingdom, their sovereignty, is WITHIN THEM. Inherent, intrinsic, unalienable. 
> 
> There is NO greater form of government on Earth than the individual. NONE. And the extent to which any government dilutes the sovereign power of the individual is the extent to which that government is corrupt.  The individual is the first order community which should have far and away the most concentrated power and authority, not over others, but over their own lives, their own destiny. Each and every one. And that necessarily includes borders (which we call fences) and State Capitols (or Castles, which we call houses and homes), and sole despotic dominion over those borders, their own lands, which they must have a right to acquire for themselves. Hence, my neighbors are no different to me, fundamentally speaking, than Turkey and Greece, or France and Germany -- or any other neighboring states are to one another globally. 
> 
> The only distinction, as a matter of principle, I would make between the sovereignty of individuals and the sovereignty of the State would be that ultimate sovereignty becomes more and more concentrated the smaller you go.  Thus, the individual trumps the community, the community of individuals trumps the State, and the States trump the conglomerations of States, even as conglomerations of States Trump the World.  That is exactly backwards from the way most people see it, and from the way OUR government has devolved and became corrupted over time.  The pyramid is upside-down everywhere you look.  The global is all powerful, the federal is next in line, the states have been watered down, forced in line, and diluted into subjects, even as the communities are left to feed on themselves. The individuals - the People Themselves - are at the mercy of it all, with no real control, like so much political flotsam and jetsam.   
> ...


This post has almost nothing to do with the thread, but man, what a sociopathic screed it is.

The truth about individuality is this: the individual is nothing.  Individuals simply aren't equipped to survive in this world.  That's not how humans evolved.  We're only capable of surviving in societies.  This is not an opinion or outlook, but a simple fact about human nature.  To say that the individual trumps society is simply wrong.  The only way the individual can exist is by getting on with society.  Literally, we must work together.  This includes sharing the common providential resources.

Your position amounts to nothing more than greed: whether you admit it or not, society is greatly beneficial to you.  But you don't want to have any duties to society.  You want a one-way relationship: you taking, but giving nothing in return.  You want to claim an area of the earth and have others respect the claim simply because you say so.  I won't guess what motivates such an antisocial outlook, but you should seriously stop and consider your beliefs.  Quite literally, it's not healthy.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> *On this matter of production bestowing just ownership:*
> 
> What is production?  Production is mere transformation, taking matter, space, and perhaps other abstractions, and forming them into something different and presumably more to your liking.  When one produces a chainsaw, he transforms ores, oils, and fibers, into this finely-tuned tree-massacre machine.  So how is it different to take and transform an empty prairie into a parking lot?  One takes a location, transforms the matter there to be more smoothly perpendicular to the direction of gravitation, tamps it down to make it harder and better able to support weight, and perhaps adds in matter from other locations to create phenomenon like pavement, paint, and lighting.  Both the chainsaw and the parking lot are produced from the raw resources of the Universe.  Those raw resources have been transformed into something greater, or at least different, than their original form.  The chainsaw, the Georgist will say, has been produced, while the land on which the parking lot sits has not.  But my friend, it has!  That land has been transformed, just as assuredly as the raw resources in the chainsaw.


Nope.  The location is unalterable.  Consider a site in Manhattan.  Whether it was bare land, or had a parking lot on it, it will command the same rent regardless.  That's because the location itself is valuable; what's in it is irrelevant.  If you build a parking lot, that's yours.  But the site itself isn't.  Your use of that site prevents others using the site, and if there are others who want to use it, and are willing to pay to do so, you should compensate society for its loss.

Why should Londoners pay millions each year to the Duke of Westminster?  He provides them with nothing, and in return they pay him millions each year.  *That's* the result of your nonsense homesteading "principle."  The Duke of Westminster simply acts as a toll-booth: people pay him for the right to live and work in Westminster.  If that money was collected by the government instead, there wouldn't be a need for the government to steal people's income.




> If one can appropriate for one's self some pieces of the raw Universe by building a chainsaw with them, one can just as justly appropriate some pieces of it by building a parking lot with them.  The raw ores were there all along.  The surface of the Earth was there all along.  Fine.  But you changed it.  You produced something with it.  Matter is matter.  Location is location.  If you accept that the chainsaw owner can have absolute ownership over the matter composing the chainsaw, and the three-dimensional space which it monopolizes, you should at least be able to understand why I think it possible for the parking lot owner to have absolute ownership over the matter composing the parking lot and the three-dimensional space which it happens to occupy.


Nope.  Just the lot, not the space it occupies.  If you don't upkeep your lot, and it returns to nature, why would your claim to the site remain?  That's the gist of your position.  You want a one-time use of an area of the earth to confer an eternal claim to that site.  But there's no reason it should.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> That's the gist of your position.  You want a one-time use of an area of the earth to confer an eternal claim to that site.  But there's no reason it should.


 I am so thrilled that you know my position so fully, even better than myself, for I had no idea I wanted such a thing.  One might refer to my previous essay wherein I said:




> *Now we libertarians do not believe that all current land claims and titles should be continued. This is a false characterization which has nevertheless been constantly thrown and bandied about by the Georgists with careless abandon. No, we believe only in just titles, based on homesteading.*


And also refer to my thoughts on abandonment, in the context of ancient peoples who once lived in SW Utah.  Definitely if one abandons a property it eventually becomes open for homesteading again.

Ah, ah, ah, but, but, but, you do the same thing to Mr. Roy L., you may accuse.  Turn-about is fair play.  And indeed in this very thread I have said to Mr. L. "your position is such-and-such."  And then it always tells me I'm wrong, of course, and that such-and-such is in fact not its position.  The difference is that, having read many hundreds of its posts and gone back and forth with it at length, occasionally even extracting from it sincere and actual answers to questions about what its programmer believed, I am in a position that I actually know what it believes regarding LVT and related issues, to a significant degree.  Yes, Mr. L. always tells me I'm wrong and lying about its beliefs, but this always turns out to be a technical issue of jargon, to be a meaningless issue wherein the program has been made to draw distinctions where none exist (no no, that's not a 'just claim to use', it's a 'right to liberty'), to be due to an inherent internal conflict of his position (I am lying when I say Roy must believe everyone has a claim to the Earth's resources, and I am lying when I say that it must believe that no one has such a claim), or to be a case where what the lie was is never even explained, the lie is just stipulated.  Plus, Roy is just a Turing machine anyway, so I don't really care.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I am so thrilled that you know my position so fully, even better than myself, for I had no idea I wanted such a thing.  One might refer to my previous essay wherein I said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				Now we libertarians do not believe that all current land claims and titles should be continued. This is a false characterization which has nevertheless been constantly thrown and bandied about by the Georgists with careless abandon. No, we believe only in just titles, based on homesteading.


This doesn't contradict what I wrote.  If someone uses an area of land, to you that constitutes an act of "homesteading."  In your mind, that makes that area into property, permanently.  From that point on, the owner can "use" the site however he likes, *including* simply charging others for its use.  Thus, an act of labor somehow turns into a right to charge others for access to the earth, in perpetuity.  What a scheme!




> And also refer to my thoughts on abandonment, in the context of ancient peoples who once lived in SW Utah.  Definitely if one abandons a property it eventually becomes open for homesteading again.


Define "abandons."




> Ah, ah, ah, but, but, but, you do the same thing to Mr. Roy L., you may accuse.  Turn-about is fair play.  And indeed in this very thread I have said to Mr. L. "your position is such-and-such."  And then it always tells me I'm wrong, of course, and that such-and-such is in fact not its position.  The difference is that, having read many hundreds of its posts and gone back and forth with it at length, occasionally even extracting from it sincere and actual answers to questions about what its programmer believed, I am in a position that I actually know what it believes regarding LVT and related issues, to a significant degree.  Yes, Mr. L. always tells me I'm wrong and lying about its beliefs, but this always turns out to be a technical issue of jargon, to be a meaningless issue wherein the program has been made to draw distinctions where none exist (no no, that's not a 'just claim to use', it's a 'right to liberty'), to be due to an inherent internal conflict of his position (I am lying when I say Roy must believe everyone has a claim to the Earth's resources, and I am lying when I say that it must believe that no one has such a claim), or to be a case where what the lie was is never even explained, the lie is just stipulated.  Plus, Roy is just a Turing machine anyway, so I don't really care.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> This doesn't contradict what I wrote.
> ...
> Define "abandons."


vvv



> If you don't upkeep your lot, and it returns to nature, why would your claim to the site remain? That's the gist of your position.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> vvv


So you have to maintain fixed improvements for the claim to remain valid?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> This post has almost nothing to do with the thread, but man, what a sociopathic screed it is.


It had everything to do with the thread, because the power geolibs want for groups completely evaporates at the level of the individual.   The moment two or more gather together and occupy land exclusively near one another, you have them immediately and artificially at odds with each other, with a de facto presumption that without LVT they are actually stealing from each other.   




> "...the individual is nothing."


Hate to break it to you, Matt, but it is the sociopaths who have no empathy, no regard for individuals.  In fact, _that is a defining characteristic of a sociopath_.  




> Your position amounts to nothing more than greed: whether you admit it or not, society is greatly beneficial to you.


And whether you want to admit it or not, every individual benefits _differently_ from that nebulous thing called "society", just as every individual brings a different benefit to that same society.   




> But you don't want to have any duties to society. You want a one-way relationship: you taking, but giving nothing in return.


Wrong - straw man and a false choice.  It's not "LVT or nothing".  You also don't comprehend how a truly free society and a truly free market even works; namely, how voluntary actions of those acting in their own self-interest benefit others who are acting in theirs in different ways.  




> You want to claim an area of the earth and have others respect the claim simply because you say so.


It goes a little further than that.  It's a little thing called 'mutual', even universal, respect.  My expectation for the respect for the ability to do that extends to literally everyone else.  See that, Matt?  Respect for everyone. All individuals in their pursuit of the same thing. 




> I won't guess what motivates such an antisocial outlook, but you should seriously stop and consider your beliefs.  Quite literally, it's not healthy.


You see the word "antisocial" and think "society" or "groups" - always in general, always in the abstract.  But while people are social within groups, they are never social _with_ groups. Only each other. Individuals. You want the abstract to trump the individual - which I consider worse than unhealthy.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> It had everything to do with the thread, because the power geolibs want for groups completely evaporates at the level of the individual.   The moment two or more gather together and occupy land exclusively near one another, you have them immediately and artificially at odds with each other, with a de facto presumption that without LVT they are actually stealing from each other.


No, that's just false.  They're only at odds with each other *if they're at odds with each other.*  There's nothing artificial about it.  If it's just you and me, there's no problem if we each want to use separate areas.  The problem arises when we both want to use a given area.  These "a few men" examples aren't worth much but to confuse the issue, however; in virtually all cases, there's a large number of people who belong to some society, and the issue of land becomes the right of the individual v. the right of society.  In the case of land, even the most elementary of investigations shows how the system of private land ownership unfairly benefits landowners at the expense of society.  The case of the Duke of Westminster makes it clear enough, but the reductio ad absurdum of a single owner of the world makes it crystal clear.




> Hate to break it to you, Matt, but it is the sociopaths who have no empathy, no regard for individuals.  In fact, _that is a defining characteristic of a sociopath_.


Right.  Which you lack.  For you, it's to hell with everyone else, the individual is all.  You want yours, full stop.




> And whether you want to admit it or not, every individual benefits _differently_ from that nebulous thing called "society", just as every individual brings a different benefit to that same society.


So what?  We're all a part of a greater social being.  If anything, the beauty of the LVT is it allows individuals to choose how much they benefit from, and how much they give to society.  I think the true hermit has mental issues, but I also believe society ought to leave him alone, as long as he's willing to reciprocate.




> Wrong - straw man and a false choice.  It's not "LVT or nothing".  You also don't comprehend how a truly free society and a truly free market even works; namely, how voluntary actions of those acting in their own self-interest benefit others who are acting in theirs in different ways.


On the contrary: you don't.  Your idea of a free society is self-refuting, as you believe the very area in which society is forced by it's nature to exist can be owned by some portion of society.  You aren't interested in a free society.  You want privileges for some, and slavery for others.  Moreover, again and again, you sneer at the very idea of people congregating for mutual benefit, decrying it as "hive mentality."  Simply put, your outlook on human nature is counter-factual and diseased.




> It goes a little further than that.  It's a little thing called 'mutual', even universal, respect.  My expectation for the respect for the ability to do that extends to literally everyone else.  See that, Matt?  Respect for everyone. All individuals in their pursuit of the same thing.


Nope.  Because you refuse to acknowledge that society is owed compensation when the right of liberty of its constituent members is diminished by private land ownership.  Even though making areas of the earth into private property manifestly deprives humanity of what it would otherwise have, you see no reason why the beneficiary of that arrangement should pay restitution.




> You see the word "antisocial" and think "society" or "groups" - always in general, always in the abstract.  But while people are social within groups, they are never social _with_ groups. Only each other. Individuals. You want the abstract to trump the individual - which I consider worse than unhealthy.


This is just nonsense.  Being social means getting along not only with other individuals, but also other groups.  That's mankind's survival strategy, as evidenced by all of human history.  There's simply no point in fighting that fact.  We're a species that gets on by having successful societies.  The path to the greatest benefit to the individual, then, is the path to a beneficent society.  Geoist society reconciles rights, yours doesn't.  Time to adapt your beliefs.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Why should Londoners pay millions each year to the Duke of Westminster?  He provides them with nothing, and in return they pay him millions each year.  *That's* the result of your nonsense homesteading "principle."  The Duke of Westminster simply acts as a toll-booth: people pay him for the right to live and work in Westminster.  If that money was collected by the government instead, there wouldn't be a need for the government to steal people's income.


Beautiful. Originally a military title for a ruling class, the Duke of Westminster is an extension of the Crown, or State.  The title itself (Duke of Westminster) was created by Queen Victoria in 1874.  My great grandfather was a Cockney "magic lantern" maker in London who lived on the original Duke's land.  So it's like saying, "If that money was collected by the government instead of the government...". 

Your criticism of the Duke is that he "provides them with nothing" while collecting money, but that's not what makes his position and the money he collects truly insidious in my mind, nor is it any kind of reflection of the American "homesteading principle". Grosvenor's particular holdover from European feudalism was monopolistic hereditary STATE titles (House of Lords) of VAST all-encompassing land areas, along with the prohibition on landownership by any but the nobility or ruling classes (which were in turn exclusive of anybody not born into them). 

What made titled landowning by nobility in England truly oppressive: 

1) Vast areas of land (WHOLE COMMUNITIES) designated by the states as belonging to an extension of the State/Crown. 
2) Perpetual rents paid in exchange for nothing but the privilege of using land, AND 
3) No avenue available without a political title (no landownership possible) for freedom from such rent payments. 

Geolibs LOVE the concepts of:

1) Sequestering vast areas of land (whole communities), designated as belonging to extensions of the larger state, and
2) Perpetual rent payments paid to the subdivision/taxing jurisdiction of the state as a wealth redistribution mechanism, and
3) No avenue available to anyone except an extension of the state for landownership that would facilitate freedom from such rent payments.

They like the ENTIRE CONCEPT of what happened in England - they just don't like WHO those rent payments are going to, and the fact that those rents aren't the sole revenue source of the State.

The homesteading concept in England is in profound contrast to the homesteading principle in America.  In America the landownership became a right to all Citizens by virtue of their (very different) titles, to wit: 




> "...at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects...with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty." 
> CHISHOLM v. GEORGIA (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp471-472


That was our Supreme Court. Congress moved quickly to water down that sovereignty with the Eleventh Amendment, but the principle still stands.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Beautiful. Originally a military title for a ruling class, the Duke of Westminster is an extension of the Crown, or State.  The title itself (Duke of Westminster) was created by Queen Victoria in 1874.  My great grandfather was a Cockney "magic lantern" maker in London who lived on the original Duke's land.  So it's like saying, "If that money was collected by the government instead of the government...". 
> 
> Your criticism of the Duke is that he "provides them with nothing" while collecting money, but that's not what makes his position and the money he collects truly insidious in my mind, nor is it any kind of reflection of the American "homesteading principle". Grosvenor's particular holdover from European feudalism was monopolistic hereditary STATE titles (House of Lords) of VAST all-encompassing land areas, along with the prohibition on landownership by any but the nobility or ruling classes (which were in turn exclusive of anybody not born into them). 
> 
> What made titled landowning by nobility in England truly oppressive: 
> 
> 1) Vast areas of land (WHOLE COMMUNITIES) designated by the states as belonging to an extension of the State/Crown. 
> 2) Perpetual rents paid in exchange for nothing but the privilege of using land, AND 
> 3) No avenue available without a political title (no landownership possible) for freedom from such rent payments.


I knew you might raise this objection.

But what of the actual history?  Would the situation be any different if the Duke's ancestors had "justly" homesteaded that land?  Obviously not.  While his actual title may not be legitimate to you, such a title _theoretically could be_, given your land theory.  Even if the land had been homesteaded exactly according to your ideals, the situation would still be the Duke raking in hundreds of millions each year in exchange for nothing.  There's no arguing this point.  You simply don't care that landowners are privileged.




> Geolibs LOVE the concepts of:
> 
> 1) Sequestering vast areas of land (whole communities), designated as belonging to extensions of the larger state, and
> 2) Perpetual rent payments paid to the subdivision/taxing jurisdiction of the state as a wealth redistribution mechanism, and
> 3) No avenue available to anyone except an extension of the state for landownership that would facilitate freedom from such rent payments.


3 strawmen.




> They like the ENTIRE CONCEPT of what happened in England - they just don't like WHO those rent payments are going to, and the fact that those rents aren't the sole revenue source of the State.


It's not a matter of liking or not.  It's a matter of fact.  The fact is, land rents exist.  The fact is, they stem from three sources:

1. the resources provided by nature
2. the opportunities and amenities provided by the community
3. the infrastructure and services provided by government

The question is, how do we arrange society to account for these facts?  You say, "let the landowners charge society for these benefits," whereas I say "let society charge the landowners for these benefits."  Your philosophy leads to the government having to steal the labor of individuals, whereas mine leads to individuals paying for the benefits society provides them with.




> The homesteading concept in England is in profound contrast to the homesteading principle in America.  In America the landownership became a right to all Citizens by virtue of their (very different) titles, to wit: 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				"...at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects...with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty." 
> CHISHOLM v. GEORGIA (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp471-472
> 			
> ...


Irrelevant.  No matter how land becomes private property, the relationship is the same.  Landowners are simply privileged to collect the values created by society.  Period.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> The problem arises when we both want to use a given area.


You mean when one or more of them gets greedy, or covetous of another's given area, even though there are alternatives available?

Most private land is available to own, outright, at a fair market price.  Some is not, but there are ALWAYS alternatives which are. For the self-interested (or greedy and covetous, as you will) an appeal to the landowner's interests would solve the problem of transfer of exclusive use -- with just compensation to the real owner who is truly entitled -- while avoiding the problem of Perpetual Rent Payment Enslavement altogether.  That leaves your Infrastructure Auto-perpetual Funding Source problem unsolved, but that's a different issue.  LVT isn't the only revenue stream game in town.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> You mean when one or more of them gets greedy, or covetous of another's given area, even though there are alternatives available?


No, not really.




> Most private land is available to own, outright, at a fair market price.  Some is not, but there are ALWAYS alternatives which are. For the self-interested (or greedy and covetous, as you will) an appeal to the landowner's interests would solve the problem of transfer of exclusive use -- with just compensation to the real owner who is truly entitled -- while avoiding the problem of Perpetual Rent Payment Enslavement altogether.  That leaves your Infrastructure Auto-perpetual Funding Source problem unsolved, but that's a different issue.  LVT isn't the only revenue stream game in town.


Except, of course, you've never shown that the landowner is entitled to charge others for use of what nature provided.  You're just assuming your argument.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I knew you might raise this objection.
> 
> But what of the actual history?  Would the situation be any different if the Duke's ancestors had "justly" homesteaded that land?  Obviously not.


No, and that's why it's a straw man.  It has nothing to do with the title, or "justly", and it's not just "land". It's whole swashes of land, COMMUNITIES WORTH of land, with _whole populations living thereon included_.  The same problem faced with geolibs who want the EXACT same thing for different reasons. 




> While his actual title may not be legitimate to you, such a title _theoretically could be_, given your land theory.


It MIGHT be, theoretically, under a private landownership regime (it's not - Bill gates doesn't own every parcel in Seattle - millions do), but it DEFINITELY WOULD BE under LVT.   Just change the name of Duke of Westminster to "LVT Community, Inc.".  




> Geolibs LOVE the concepts of:
> 
> 1) Sequestering vast areas of land (whole communities), designated as belonging to extensions of the larger state, and
> 2) Perpetual rent payments paid to the subdivision/taxing jurisdiction of the state as a wealth redistribution mechanism, and
> 3) No avenue available to anyone except an extension of the state for landownership that would facilitate freedom from such rent payments. 
> 			
> 		
> 
> 3 strawmen.


Don't make blind assertions. Argue your point.  Show me how EACH of these does NOT apply to LVT.  To the extent that they are not accurate, they can be argued as being straw men. But if the shoe fits and they are accurate, then they are not straw men, but simply points in fact that you would prefer not be pointed to. 




> It's not a matter of liking or not.  It's a matter of fact.  The fact is, land rents exist.  The fact is, they stem from three sources:


*1. the resources provided by nature* 
- all open and available to individual claims.
*2. the opportunities and amenities provided by the community*
 - Vague and nebulous, a meaningless and an unwarranted collectivizing conflation of public and private interests without distinction. When a list is given, look for the most fatally flawed to be slipped into the middle of that list.  Most of the LVT rationale hinges on this one. The "community" does not own these opportunities and amenities, and is not entitled to a return on them. Those opportunities and amenities related to commonly used infrastructure are NOT-FOR-PROFIT. 
*3. the infrastructure and services provided by government*
- all of which can be bought, paid for and maintained, as needed or wanted, through any number of revenue streams, without a requirement that land rents be claimed by the government as that source.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> No, and that's why it's a straw man.  It has nothing to do with the title, or "justly", and it's not just "land". It's whole swashes of land, COMMUNITIES WORTH of land, with _whole populations living thereon included_.  The same problem faced with geolibs who want the EXACT same thing for different reasons.


In other words, "no."




> It MIGHT be, theoretically, under a private landownership regime (it's not - Bill gates doesn't own every parcel in Seattle - millions do), but it DEFINITELY WOULD BE under LVT.   Just change the name of Duke of Westminster to "LVT Community, Inc.".


Uh, it is, now.  It may be the Duke, or tens or thousands like him, but that's the case now.  Geoism makes publicly-created values public.  It's not like there's a question whether rents will exist or not; they will exist.  The question is simply one of who will collect them.  You think that private landowners should collect them for no reason, whereas I think society should collect them because society created them.




> Don't make blind assertions. Argue your point.  Show me how EACH of these does NOT apply to LVT.  To the extent that they are not accurate, they can be argued as being straw men. But if the shoe fits and they are accurate, then they are not straw men, but simply points in fact that you would prefer not be pointed to.


1. there's no sequestering of land
2. there's no wealth redistribution
3. freedom from payments would simply be settling on land that has no rent

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Except, of course, you've never shown that the landowner is entitled to charge others for use of what nature provided.  You're just assuming your argument.


No need, as even geolibs have no problem with charging rents on what nature provided.  You're not out to shut down rental car agencies, or equipment rental places.  Geolibs just don't this concept applied to lands.   The burden of showing that a landowner is NOT entitled is on them/you.  You're trying to make that case, but it's a normative assertion that isn't flying too well. I don't have a problem with rents charge on anything nature provides, including coordinates on a map - provided someone doesn't wax completely evil and tyrannical and try to make those coordinates all-encompassing in some way (e.g., try to throw a lasso around a whole community from which to extract rent payments), or excluding of the possibility of landownership.

----------


## MattintheCrown

By the way:



> *1. the resources provided by nature* 
> - all open and available to individual claims.


But not by people born later.




> *2. the opportunities and amenities provided by the community*
>  - Vague and nebulous, a meaningless and an unwarranted collectivizing conflation of public and private interests without distinction. When a list is given, look for the most fatally flawed to be slipped into the middle of that list.  Most of the LVT rationale hinges on this one. The "community" does not own these opportunities and amenities, and is not entitled to a return on them. Those opportunities and amenities related to commonly used infrastructure are NOT-FOR-PROFIT.


Nonsensical.  The value is market-determined, and very real.




> *3. the infrastructure and services provided by government*
> - all of which can be bought, paid for and maintained, as needed or wanted, through any number of revenue streams, without a requirement that land rents be claimed by the government as that source.


Of course, but not justly.  Those who benefit by government infrastructure and services should pay for them.  Basic fairness.  All you're doing is arguing that the Duke of Westminster has a right to charge residents of Mayfair and Belgravia for use of those lands, even though the benefit is clearly the product of government and society as a whole.  Your rationale completely ignores justice.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> No need, as even geolibs have no problem with charging rents on what nature provided.


Nope.  Geosists understand that rents are due to society, as compensation.




> You're not out to shut down rental car agencies, or equipment rental places.  Geolibs just don't this concept applied to lands.   The burden of showing that a landowner is NOT entitled is on them/you.  You're trying to make that case, but it's a normative assertion that isn't flying too well. I don't have a problem with rents charge on anything nature provides, including coordinates on a map - provided someone doesn't wax completely evil and tyrannical and try to make those coordinates all-encompassing in some way (e.g., try to throw a lasso around a whole community from which to extract rent payments), or excluding of the possibility of landownership.


Your position assumes that individuals have some claim to prevent others from using the earth, which they manifestly do not.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Geoism makes publicly-created values public.


Not-so-subtle sleight-of-hand, but you said it entirely wrong. 

Geoism makes *privately-created value* public.  Remember? You listed "opportunities and amenities provided by the community", which includes a BUTTLOAD of privately owned, privately controlled value-providing entities, and simply made them "public". Tsk tsk, naughty naughty. 

*1. there's no sequestering of land*
BUZZZZ...thanks for playing!  Under LVT, if landownership titles are revoked, all land considered to be part of an LVT taxing jurisdiction are "sequestered" for that purpose.

*2. there's no wealth redistribution*
Strike two.  Whether you're for or against LVT, the fact that rents charged are a form of wealth redistribution is not at issue. 

*3. freedom from payments would simply be settling on land that has no rent*
Strike three. Just like Roy, wherein HIS particular theoretical version of LVT would have all lands available and open for usage, with plenty of lands in which no rent payments are due.  But I don't hear the opening up of all lands, the abolishing of zoning laws, or anything that would prohibit the state from making land artificially scarce, as ANY part of the LVT propaganda - except to make bogus claims that it's somehow not in the state's interest to do that.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Your position assumes that individuals have some claim to prevent others from using the earth, which they manifestly do not.


They do.  But if you really believe this claim, why are you living in a house/apartment/etc?  Your claiming a living space is preventing the poor from using it!  (Your hypocrisy is showing  )

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Not-so-subtle sleight-of-hand, but you said it entirely wrong. 
> 
> Geoism makes *privately-created value* public.  Remember? You listed "opportunities and amenities provided by the community", which includes a BUTTLOAD of privately owned, privately controlled value-providing entities, and simply made them "public". Tsk tsk, naughty naughty.


Nope.  Those entities are part of society, and not landowners, qua landowners.




> *1. there's no sequestering of land*
> BUZZZZ...thanks for playing!  Under LVT, if landownership titles are revoked, all land considered to be part of an LVT taxing jurisdiction are "sequestered" for that purpose.


Nope.  Even you put "sequestered" in quotes, because you know it's a lie.




> *2. there's no wealth redistribution*
> Strike two.  Whether you're for or against LVT, the fact that rents charged are a form of wealth redistribution is not at issue.


Only in the sense that the abolition of slavery redistributes wealth.




> *3. freedom from payments would simply be settling on land that has no rent*
> Strike three. Just like Roy, wherein HIS particular theoretical version of LVT would have all lands available and open for usage, with plenty of lands in which no rent payments are due.  But I don't hear the opening up of all lands, the abolishing of zoning laws, or anything that would prohibit the state from making land artificially scarce, as ANY part of the LVT propaganda - except to make bogus claims that it's somehow not in the state's interest to do that.


In other words, you envision a plan which has nothing to do with what I'm advocating, and you criticize that.  Hoo-rah.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> They do.


Nope.




> But if you really believe this claim, why are you living in a house/apartment/etc?  Your claiming a living space is preventing the poor from using it!  (Your hypocrisy is showing  )


Duh, I have no choice.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Nope.  Those entities are part of society, and not landowners, qua landowners.


Nice try. Private entities, which includes landowners and non-landowners, do not in any way become de facto "public entities" by virtue of the fact that they are part of society. 




> Nope.  Even you put "sequestered" in quotes, because you know it's a lie.


You didn't even bother to look it up, which is why you are point blank off the deep end on this one.  In law, sequestration specifically means the seizure of property, including land.

The action of taking forcible possession of something; confiscation.The action of taking legal possession of assets until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met.The act of removing, separating, or seizing anything from the possession of its owner under process of law for the benefit of creditors or the state.
In other words, to revoke land titles for the purpose of administering seized lands for rent payments to the state, is to forcibly seize land for the benefit of the state.  That fits _precisely_ the definition of "sequestration". With or without quotes, which is irrelevant. 




> Only in the sense that the abolition of slavery redistributes wealth.


Slavery has to be the perfect corollary of Godwin's law for LVT threads.  "As an online LVT discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving slavery approaches 1."

And that's not to say it's a fallacy or one-sided, mind you, because I fully equate LVT with slavery.   Mine's a much easier argument, however, as I can show how sharecropping, making payments to the forever plantation-owning state is nothing but an extension of slavery, assuming the opportunity to purchase lands that are never subject to rents was removed.  And don't tell me how the state at least "returns value". So did slave-owning plantation owners, who fed and housed their slaves, and provided all the wonderful plantation infrastructure.   And don't tell me how under LVT someone can be free from paying plantation rents by simply moving to lands nobody else wants. That was true under a sharecropping regime. 

Meanwhile, you are stuck with having to show (and really convince people) how rent payments charged on privately owned lands is a form of _enslavement_ in a state where opportunity paths to private landownership (freedom from making rent payments to anyone) are wide open and readily available to everyone.  Likewise under your paradigm, forcible exclusion from privately owned (read=plantation) lands equals slavery. In other words, not being allowed on the plantation somehow makes you a slave!

Talk about a tough sell. I can't even imagine the mental acrobatics required to sell those premises to yourself, let alone others. 




> In other words, you envision a plan which has nothing to do with what I'm advocating, and you criticize that.  Hoo-rah.


Backwards.  My criticism of something you are advocating is that it dismisses or ignores current and historical reality that is contradictory. 

I could advocate a Supreme Benevolent Ruler as a perfect answer to everything, no LVT required. The Supreme Benevolent Ruler - our _Deus Ex Machina_ who is there to save the day, would simply make sure that everything is absolutely fair and just for everyone. Simple! Perfect! 

Now one could certainly object, saying that without checks and balances in place there is an historical likelihood of a Terrible Evil Tyrant cropping up instead. I could easily dismiss that criticism with your tactic, saying, "Why would he do that? It's not in the tyrant's interests! Why, don't you know, isn't it obvious, that a dictator will stand to gain much more if s/he is benevolent and fair? Don't you see that?!" And I would be right, of course, because that is most definitely true; not that the dictator would be fair, but only that it's in his interests to be.

Furthermore, I could dismiss that objection as a completely ridiculous straw man, since I am advocating a Supreme Benevolent Ruler, not a Terrible Evil Tyrant. Duh.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Duh, I have no choice.


You absolutely have a choice.  You could allow anyone who wants to squat at your domicile.  Yet you don't.  Why not practice what you preach?

----------


## Roy L

> They do.  But if you really believe this claim, why are you living in a house/apartment/etc?  Your claiming a living space is preventing the poor from using it!  (Your hypocrisy is showing  )


Garbage.  Built space is not the earth that nature provided for all.  You know this.

----------


## Roy L

> You absolutely have a choice.  You could allow anyone who wants to squat at your domicile.  Yet you don't.  Why not practice what you preach?


He doesn't preach socialization of products of labor, and you know it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Garbage.  Built space is not the earth that nature provided for all.  You know this.


Nature doesn't "provide for all".  That's a decidedly human construct. Nature provides for "any", and "some", at times, and never in equal quantities, types, configurations or proportions.   It provides plenty of ice and cold in Antarctica, plenty of sand and heat in the Sahara, and a variety of other plenties in other regions.  




> He doesn't preach socialization of products of labor, and you know it.


No, just socialization of land rent. Same as you. 

Libertarians certainly don't preach socialization of products of labor OR ad valorem taxes of any kind. Both taxes are generally despised and rejected for different reasons.  And rejecting both of these taxes is not a rejection of concept of revenue for funding necessary services that *the people provide to themselves* via their governments which act as agents and servants with limited delegated and enumerated powers on their behalf, to serve their common needs and interests.  

Innat cool?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Nice try. Private entities, which includes landowners and non-landowners, do not in any way become de facto "public entities" by virtue of the fact that they are part of society.


Irrelevant.  The question is not whether the value those entities produce goes to *those entities* or government: it's whether it goes to *landowners* or government.  Remember?  If anything, at least government represents those entities and will spend the money on goods and services which benefit them.  The landowners don't, and won't.




> You didn't even bother to look it up, which is why you are point blank off the deep end on this one.  In law, sequestration specifically means the seizure of property, including land.
> 
> The action of taking forcible possession of something; confiscation.The action of taking legal possession of assets until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met.The act of removing, separating, or seizing anything from the possession of its owner under process of law for the benefit of creditors or the state.
> In other words, to revoke land titles for the purpose of administering seized lands for rent payments to the state, is to forcibly seize land for the benefit of the state.  That fits _precisely_ the definition of "sequestration". With or without quotes, which is irrelevant.


Of course, you just made up the revoking land titles bit.




> Slavery has to be the perfect corollary of Godwin's law for LVT threads.  "As an online LVT discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving slavery approaches 1."


It's a good comparison.  The government steals from producers and gives to landowners.




> And that's not to say it's a fallacy or one-sided, mind you, because I fully equate LVT with slavery.   Mine's a much easier argument, however, as I can show how sharecropping, making payments to the forever plantation-owning state is nothing but an extension of slavery, assuming the opportunity to purchase lands that are never subject to rents was removed.


But somehow, the actual sharecropping that takes place under private land ownership is ok?




> And don't tell me how the state at least "returns value". So did slave-owning plantation owners, who fed and housed their slaves, and provided all the wonderful plantation infrastructure.   And don't tell me how under LVT someone can be free from paying plantation rents by simply moving to lands nobody else wants. That was true under a sharecropping regime.


I'll instead tell you that an exemption (or, if you like, a dividend) provides you with enough land to live on, free of charge.  Unlike the current system, where you cannot get land to use free of charge: you are obliged to give your labor in exchange for the right to live.  Slavery.




> Meanwhile, you are stuck with having to show (and really convince people) how rent payments charged on privately owned lands is a form of _enslavement_ in a state where opportunity paths to private landownership (freedom from making rent payments to anyone) are wide open and readily available to everyone.


The "opportunity paths" you speak of are nothing more than buying your freedom.  




> Likewise under your paradigm, forcible exclusion from privately owned (read=plantation) lands equals slavery. In other words, not being allowed on the plantation somehow makes you a slave!


I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. 




> Talk about a tough sell. I can't even imagine the mental acrobatics required to sell those premises to yourself, let alone others.


That's rich.  Yet, you somehow have to defend the Duke of Westminster!  You dishonestly tried to weasel out of it by claiming that his titles aren't legitimate, but you must admit that you have no problem whatever with his relation to society.  In fact, in your ideal world, there's theoretically no reason why one man ought not come to own the earth, and charge the rest of the world rent.  And you call that justice.




> Backwards.  My criticism of something you are advocating is that it dismisses or ignores current and historical reality that is contradictory. 
> 
> I could advocate a Supreme Benevolent Ruler as a perfect answer to everything, no LVT required. The Supreme Benevolent Ruler - our _Deus Ex Machina_ who is there to save the day, would simply make sure that everything is absolutely fair and just for everyone. Simple! Perfect! 
> 
> Now one could certainly object, saying that without checks and balances in place there is an historical likelihood of a Terrible Evil Tyrant cropping up instead. I could easily dismiss that criticism with your tactic, saying, "Why would he do that? It's not in the tyrant's interests! Why, don't you know, isn't it obvious, that a dictator will stand to gain much more if s/he is benevolent and fair? Don't you see that?!" And I would be right, of course, because that is most definitely true; not that the dictator would be fair, but only that it's in his interests to be.  
> 
> Furthermore, I could dismiss that objection as a completely ridiculous straw man, since I am advocating a Supreme Benevolent Ruler, not a Terrible Evil Tyrant. Duh.


You just flat out refuse to know the nature of land monopoly.  You continue to claim, falsely, that it would be in the government's interest to make land artificially scarce.  But it wouldn't.  That doesn't mean the government couldn't do something not in its interest, but so what?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> You absolutely have a choice.  You could allow anyone who wants to squat at your domicile.  Yet you don't.  Why not practice what you preach?


My domicile is a product of labor.  The land I occupy, I have to pay some landowner to use.  I'd rather that money was used to compensate those deprived of it, but that's beyond my control.  I'm doing all I can to rectify the situation.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Irrelevant.  The question is not whether the value the produce goes to *those entities* or government: it's whether it goes to *landowners* or government.  Remember?


Never lost sight of it, and you're absolutely wrong.  Those things you are calling "opportunities and amenities provided by the community" take on myriad forms, and are not exclusively enjoyed as land rent.  The rain falls and the sun shines on everyone.  Opportunities and amenities benefit everyone in the community in different ways; not just landowners, and for that matter not just members of the community. Pointing out increases in land rents is as incidental as it is an unfair isolation.  Increases in labor and foreign commerce opportunities also abound, among other incidental perks in a thriving community, but I don't hear any argument from you that either of those should be taxed on that basis. So much the better for landowners (which, of course, anyone can become), but they are far from the only ones benefiting, and there is no rational reason that they should be singled out. 

The state does not own the market, and has no claim on "opportunities and amenities" that are privately-provided-but-publicly-available.   




> If anything, at least government represents those entities and will spend the money on goods and services which benefit them.  The landowners don't, and won't.


Again, you're still doing it from a paradigm that implies as its premise that the state is the owner of the market, and you're still talking about entities that are singled out for their particular benefits, as if no other value increases or other benefits existed for anyone else.  Which means non-landowners get a completely free ride.  This presupposes that landowners are truly a different class, and not just decision-makers as to their investments, in a state where the benefits of the rights of landownership are freely available to everyone - to the degree that they can and want to afford them.   




> Of course, you just made up the revoking land titles bit.


Are you suggesting that landownership and said titles would remain intact under LVT?  If the state asked you for the pink slip on your car, which you own outright, and revised it so that it read, in effect, _Rental Contract_ - your ownership title would be effectively REVOKED.  No, not made up at all. Not even a little bit. 




> It's a good comparison.  The government steals from producers and gives to landowners.


Only true when you're down the rabbit hole, with pretzeled logic in the Land of Opposites. 




> But somehow, the actual sharecropping that takes place under private land ownership is ok?


If other opportunities exist, especially pathways that lead to landownership? Of course.  Then sharecropping is optional - a choice that anyone could make. Or not.   If, on the other hand, pathways to landownership are artificially barred, or blocked, such that sharecropping becomes the only option - then no.  But it's not that sharecropping would be wrong.  Rather the artificial blockage from the liberty to have the opportunity to become a landowner - that would be the wrong. 




> I'll instead tell you that an exemption (or, if you like, a dividend) provides you with enough land to live on, free of charge.


Exemptions.  For "enough land to live on" - but you're not talking about a fixed quantity of land - you're talking about an exemption amount, whatever that might be - one that would be established by the state or taxing jurisdiction, which could then be applied as an exemption to land rent payments.  That's a nebulous Promise Plum not worth jumping for, and the camel's nose in the proverbial tent, as he promises to play nice if you'll agree.  Like a mafia bribe - you'll get a little taste if you promise to keep your trap shut and go along with the plan.  

Then there's the real world.  Like North Dakota.  Several Billion in surpluses from 30+ different revenue streams with 3 billion in a state savings account that grows every day, and $400 million set aside for property tax relief (to a VERY angry and stressed electorate) to help with a property tax that isn't even needed (or an income tax for that matter). And the relief that is set aside (but not allocated yet) will only keep the people at the angry level. Not the absolute OFF WITH THEIR HEADS level.   Meanwhile, property values are on the rise.  Not real. _State assessed._ Despite all the very vocal anger, assessments are going way up: 30% increase IN ONE YEAR for agricultural lands, residential property up 13 percent and commercial property up 20 percent - all so that local governments can increase spending without touching state surpluses. 

Meanwhile, ad valorem exemptions are the root of all land and property tax abuse evils - because they aren't just given to individuals.  Their real political corrupting power is when they are doled out to commercial interests - CRONY CAPITALISM.  So-called "Enterprise Zones".  Line up for your free ride - the state is the landlord, and can give exemptions away. 

Nah. An exemption for "an amount enough to live on"?  I'll pass.  Just give me access to land I can own, and I'll pay for my own exemption, in a truly free market, to some former landowner as I take his place, thanks. 




> Unlike the current system, where you cannot get land to use free of charge: you are obliged to give your labor in exchange for the right to live.  Slavery. The "opportunity paths" you speak of are nothing more than buying your freedom.


With landownership you are buying your freedom, and your security, both of which have costs.  In this case, the cost is finite. There is such a thing as a final payment, after which you OWN your freedom, and your security. With LVT some are exempt (whatever that means), but nobody is ever truly free. That's why it's nothing but slavery - as a rule, all exceptions notwithstanding.  




> Likewise under your paradigm, forcible exclusion from privately owned (read=plantation) lands equals slavery. In other words, not being allowed on the plantation somehow makes you a slave! 
> 			
> 		
> 
> I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.


Under real slavery you're forced onto the plantation, forced to labor against your will for someone else's benefit.  With an LVT view, someone who is excluded from the plantation is somehow "enslaved".   




> That's rich.  Yet, you somehow have to defend the Duke of Westminster!  You dishonestly tried to weasel out of it by claiming that his titles aren't legitimate, but you must admit that you have no problem whatever with his relation to society.


Wrong on all counts.  His titles ARE legitimate. That has nothing to do with right or wrong.  It is _morally_ wrong in my estimation because they draw a lasso around vast areas of lands that include whole populations.  Just...like...geolibs want to do. Like I said, just change the name from Duke of Westminster to "LVT Taxing Jurisdiction Inc."  Thus, I equate geolibs with the Duke of Westminster.  You want to do PRECISELY what he is doing, only you think, "at least it's for noble and just reasons".  




> In fact, in your ideal world, there's theoretically no reason why one man ought not come to own the earth, and charge the rest of the world rent.  And you call that justice.


That would be you, not me.  Remember? I'm not in favor of ANYONE, public or private, artificially cutting off opportunities for individual landownership and freedom from paying land rents to anyone. YOU ARE. 




> You just flat out refuse to know the nature of land monopoly.


I don't think you even know what the word monopoly means, to be honest. That showed when you wrote the very strange "land is a natural monopoly".  I think you think monopoly is somehow synonymous with finite in quantity, or scarce.  That may be wrong, but if it is right, that isn't it at all. 




> You continue to claim, falsely, that it would be in the government's interest to make land artificially scarce.  But it wouldn't.  That doesn't mean the government couldn't do something not in its interest, but so what?


I already answered this several pages back - you didn't respond then, but you're now making the same bogus claims I already responded to.  Go back, read what I wrote (especially about the scarcity of actual people in a position to pay land rents, and the finite quantity of RIGHT NOW money available for land rents), and respond to and argue against the points I already made. Then we can have a discussion about it.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Never lost sight of it, and you're absolutely wrong.  Those things you are calling "opportunities and amenities provided by the community" take on myriad forms, and are not exclusively enjoyed as land rent.


What in god's name is this supposed to mean?




> The rain falls and the sun shines on everyone.  Opportunities and amenities benefit everyone in the community in different ways; not just landowners, and for that matter not just members of the community. Pointing out increases in land rents is as incidental as it is an unfair isolation.


Opportunities and amenities provided by the community are one of the sources of land rent.  They're *why* people are willing to pay money for use of land.  What part of that do you not understand?




> Increases in labor and foreign commerce opportunities also abound, among other incidental perks in a thriving community, but I don't hear any argument from you that either of those should be taxed on that basis.


They show up as land rent.  Hello?




> So much the better for landowners (which, of course, anyone can become), but they are far from the only ones benefiting, and there is no rational reason that they should be singled out.


Except, of course, for the fact that they get to charge the community for those benefits.




> The state does not own the market, and has no claim on "opportunities and amenities" that are privately-provided-but-publicly-available.


But the community *does* have a claim on them, and the only way to recover them for the community is via the community's agent: government.




> Again, you're still doing it from a paradigm that implies as its premise that the state is the owner of the market,


That's a lie.  I've never said or implied any such thing.




> and you're still talking about entities that are singled out for their particular benefits, as if no other value increases or other benefits existed for anyone else.


Also a lie.  I've never said nor implied that, either.  What I said was that landowners are privileged to collect value created by society.




> Which means non-landowners get a completely free ride.


No, of course they don't.  They have to pay landowners to live and work there.  How else would they get access to the benefits?




> This presupposes that landowners are truly a different class, and not just decision-makers as to their investments, in a state where the benefits of the rights of landownership are freely available to everyone - to the degree that they can and want to afford them.


No, that's also false.  It supposes, correctly, that landownership is a privilege.




> Are you suggesting that landownership and said titles would remain intact under LVT?  If the state asked you for the pink slip on your car, which you own outright, and revised it so that it read, in effect, _Rental Contract_ - your ownership title would be effectively REVOKED.  No, not made up at all. Not even a little bit.


Land ownership is contingent upon payment of property taxes *right now*.  I know of nowhere on earth where land is allocated according to your idiotic ideals.




> If other opportunities exist, especially pathways that lead to landownership? Of course.  Then sharecropping is optional - a choice that anyone could make. Or not.


Not if it's all you can afford.  Many were sharecroppers their whole lives, and not by choice.  It's still slavery if you have a "pathway" to buy your freedom.




> If, on the other hand, pathways to landownership are artificially barred, or blocked, such that sharecropping becomes the only option - then no.  But it's not that sharecropping would be wrong.  Rather the artificial blockage from the liberty to have the opportunity to become a landowner - that would be the wrong.


Nope.  Not paying for a privilege is wrong.




> Exemptions.  For "enough land to live on" - but you're not talking about a fixed quantity of land - you're talking about an exemption amount, whatever that might be - one that would be established by the state or taxing jurisdiction, which could then be applied as an exemption to land rent payments.  That's a nebulous Promise Plum not worth jumping for, and the camel's nose in the proverbial tent, as he promises to play nice if you'll agree.  Like a mafia bribe - you'll get a little taste if you promise to keep your trap shut and go along with the plan.


What a stupid, nonsensical response. 




> Then there's the real world.  Like North Dakota.  Several Billion in surpluses from 30+ different revenue streams with 3 billion in a state savings account that grows every day, and $400 million set aside for property tax relief (to a VERY angry and stressed electorate) to help with a property tax that isn't even needed (or an income tax for that matter). And the relief that is set aside (but not allocated yet) will only keep the people at the angry level. Not the absolute OFF WITH THEIR HEADS level.   Meanwhile, property values are on the rise.  Not real. _State assessed._ Despite all the very vocal anger, assessments are going way up: 30% increase IN ONE YEAR for agricultural lands, residential property up 13 percent and commercial property up 20 percent - all so that local governments can increase spending without touching state surpluses.


It's probably going up because greedy speculators think they can get the tax burden reduced or removed entirely.




> Meanwhile, ad valorem exemptions are the root of all land and property tax abuse evils - because they aren't just given to individuals.  Their real political corrupting power is when they are doled out to commercial interests - CRONY CAPITALISM.  So-called "Enterprise Zones".  Line up for your free ride - the state is the landlord, and can give exemptions away.


It can also round up all the Jews and gas them.  So what?




> Nah. An exemption for "an amount enough to live on"?  I'll pass.  Just give me access to land I can own, and I'll pay for my own exemption, in a truly free market, to some former landowner as I take his place, thanks.


Fact: you have to buy your freedom in your system, but it's guaranteed in mine.




> With landownership you are buying your freedom, and your security, both of which have costs.


Right.  But whereas *government* actually secures your freedom and security, you pay *a landlord*.  You see that?  Not only are you making a one-time payment for ongoing benefits, you're also paying the wrong party.




> In this case, the cost is finite.


The payment is finite, but the costs are ongoing.  Which is a reason a one-off payment for land is unjust.




> There is such a thing as a final payment, after which you OWN your freedom, and your security. With LVT some are exempt (whatever that means), but nobody is ever truly free. That's why it's nothing but slavery - as a rule, all exceptions notwithstanding.


Nope.  You get enough land to live on free of charge.  You pay for any extra you may want.




> Under real slavery you're forced onto the plantation, forced to labor against your will for someone else's benefit.  With an LVT view, someone who is excluded from the plantation is somehow "enslaved".


This continues to make no sense.




> Wrong on all counts.  His titles ARE legitimate. That has nothing to do with right or wrong.  It is _morally_ wrong in my estimation because they draw a lasso around vast areas of lands that include whole populations.  Just...like...geolibs want to do. Like I said, just change the name from Duke of Westminster to "LVT Taxing Jurisdiction Inc."  Thus, I equate geolibs with the Duke of Westminster.  You want to do PRECISELY what he is doing, only you think, "at least it's for noble and just reasons".


The Duke of Westminster pockets the money.  That's not what I want to do.  I want to spend it on services and infrastructure that benefit the community that creates it.  Government extends a train and the rents in the serviced area rise?  Rents are spent on funding the train.

I have no idea why you morally object to the Duke though.  There's no reason you should.  What's puzzling is why you believe that the Duke of Westminster, or any landowner anywhere, deserves to pocket the value created by the community and government.




> That would be you, not me.  Remember? I'm not in favor of ANYONE, public or private, artificially cutting off opportunities for individual landownership and freedom from paying land rents to anyone. YOU ARE.


Who said anything about cutting anything off?  Using your theory, a man could theoretically buy up all the land.  Sure, he *could* sell some of it off, but he doesn't have to.  It's up to him.  


But then, that's pretty much the end-game of your system, isn't it?  If there's no tax due on land, the best way to get rich is to own as much of it as possible.  And the more you own, the more you can afford.  Result?  Concentration of all land into the hands a few.  Feudalism.  If you own all of England, why sell the land off?  Just have a handful of loyal lords, who charge rent to serfs.

You're simply advocating feudalism.  Obviously, violence and economic stagnation would result.




> I don't think you even know what the word monopoly means, to be honest. That showed when you wrote the very strange "land is a natural monopoly".  I think you think monopoly is somehow synonymous with finite in quantity, or scarce.  That may be wrong, but if it is right, that isn't it at all. 
> 
> I already answered this several pages back - you didn't respond then, but you're now making the same bogus claims I already responded to.  Go back, read what I wrote (especially about the scarcity of actual people in a position to pay land rents, and the finite quantity of RIGHT NOW money available for land rents), and respond to and argue against the points I already made. Then we can have a discussion about it.


If you want to dredge it up again, I'll refute it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Opportunities and amenities provided by the community are one of the sources of land rent.  They're *why* people are willing to pay money for use of land.  What part of that do you not understand?


I understand it perfectly. Opportunities and amenities provided by the community really are *one* of the sources of land rent. That isn't difficult to understand, nor is it at issue. 

However, that particular "source of land rent" also has sources.  It's not "the community".  It's mostly non-collectivized, non-socialized _private_ interests. Both landowners and non-landowners contribute and benefit in different ways, and for which there is no collective claim on it by anyone.  

You want to throw a lasso around it, stick a flag in it, and claim collectivized ownership of that value on behalf of "the community", or state.  In other words, you want PRIVATELY CREATED "opportunities and amenities" to be collectivized and socialized - imputed as PUBLICLY (READ=STATE) OWNED value.  You want to do this by labeling  those mostly privately created and provided opportunities and amenities  "COMMUNITY PROVIDED".   Using those words almost gives it a pseudo-air that makes it sound "public" (like "federal" or "NPR" or "PBS").  Not because it's state-owned or controlled, but because it's simply "in the public", or "offered to the public".  

Nothing doing. It's still private. Stick your flag somewhere else, the vast majority of those opportunities and amenities are incidental benefits enjoyed by the public at large.  Whichever opportunities are the result of bought-and-paid-for infrastructure - aren't there to be rented out to landowners at a profit to the state.  

The fact that they "show up as land rent" is but one part of the picture. They also show up as increased labor and commerce opportunities, even for people who are not part of the community.  And those who get those opportunities and amenities, both landowners and non-landowners (and foreigners) alike, ALL get to "charge the community" for those benefits.  Not just landowners. EVERYONE. But you want landowners to become "landholders" so that they can be singled out for payment, while everyone else gets a free ride.  




> Land ownership is contingent upon payment of property taxes *right now*.


Perhaps not for long.  Times be a-changing.  




> Not if it's all you can afford.  Many were sharecroppers their whole lives, and not by choice.  It's still slavery if you have a "pathway" to buy your freedom.


If you can buy or work off your freedom then it's more like indentured servitude. Which has an end point. An actual light at the end of the tunnel.  True slavery, as would exist under LVT, is where there are NO pathways to even buy your freedom.  




> Fact: you have to buy your freedom in your system, but it's guaranteed in mine.


Yeah, guaranteed locked out forever.  Only available as an "exemption". And "exception to the slavery rule". 




> But whereas *government* actually secures your freedom and security...


Bwahahaha! Oh, it actually does, huh?  Well, I want my government to protect me from enemies, foreign and domestic, public and private, as I take _the opportunity_ to secure these rights and liberties for myself, thanks.  




> you pay *a landlord*.  You see that?  Not only are you making a one-time payment for ongoing benefits, you're also paying the wrong party.


Yes, I see it - a one-time payment for ongoing benefits.  That is what one-time payments for anything durable _should receive_. Nothing special there. It works for goods as well as land.  A cast-iron griddle in my family, handed down through five generations.  A one-time payment, materials and labor included, purchased more than a hundred years ago, with ongoing benefits to my family, generations even, to this very day (pancakes and eggs last night, no less).  AND my great-great-grandfather paid the right person, and for the right reasons - not for the conditional use for a time, which would be a not-so-bright option, but an option, but for as long as it remained in our family - for as long as we actually own it.  

So on the one hand, I can pay a landlord a one time payment for ongoing benefits of land and become that landlord myself (just like anyone else can), or I can pay the state under your LVT regime the first of a serious of never-ending, probably ever-increasing, payments. Payments which never end, so long as the land is held.  All to the state-landlord - the only entity actually permitted to own land, as everyone else is either a) on the treadmill FOREVER, or b) an exception to the forever treadmill rule that you would like established as the default rule.  

No thank you.  I'll pay a fellow landlord, as anyone should have the equal right to do, to receive ongoing benefits for a one-time payment.   




> The payment is finite, but the costs are ongoing.  Which is a reason a one-off payment for land is unjust.


By costs, you mean privately paid for infrastructure as needed and wanted and paid for, of course.  That's a separate issue. No LVT required for that.  A bond or a special assessment (wherein I pay for benefits directly received, as a ONE-TIME cost each time), or any number of other revenue mechanisms is sufficient for that.  No need to make the state or anyone else a partner -- or an overlord. 




> Nope.  You get enough land to live on free of charge.  You pay for any extra you may want.


Yeah, that's Roy's Personal Guaran-damn-tee as well. 




> I have no idea why you morally object to the Duke though.  There's no reason you should.


For the exact same reason I morally object to LVT in the first place.  Acquiring massive areas of populated lands acquired, publicly or privately makes no difference to me - FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Blocking off access to landownership while making rent payments the rule, only to rent it out to those already in possession, in exchange for the promise to "give back" infrastructure, all of which can be paid for in full as needed, without all the slavery attached.  No, screw the Duke, and screw anyone who wants to enslave an entire population in that way.  It's not the ownership. It's the monopoly on ownership that I object to.  The claim of ownership for one  (public or private) that is artificially denied to another - so that rents can be collected in perpetuity.  Screw that noise forever. 




> What's puzzling is why you believe that the Duke of Westminster, or any landowner anywhere, deserves to pocket the value created by the community and government.


I told you the difference in my last answer.  The landowner next door to me is not artificially barring me from the opportunity to acquire land for myself.  That's the difference between a landowner and an absolute scoundrel - it doesn't matter if that scoundrel does it under public or private auspices. That is the defining difference between a homeowner or farmer and a private Duke or his LVT public counterpart who wants the same power for different [stated] reasons. 




> Who said anything about cutting anything off?  Using your theory, a man could theoretically buy up all the land.  Sure, he *could* sell some of it off, but he doesn't have to.  It's up to him.


Sure, and in reality it doesn't work that way at all, does it? As evinced by the sheer number of landowners in the US, and the sheer availability of good lands for purchase. Right now, and always. 




> But then, that's pretty much the end-game of your system, isn't it?  If there's no tax due on land, the best way to get rich is to own as much of it as possible.


Firstly, the land market can't be cornered. Not without a Queen Victoria granting a title, or some scoundrel in America pushing for the sequestration of lands for a state-run monopoly.   And then there's the fallacy of thinking that the rich secure their fortunes by burying them.  Land, by itself, is a HEDGE against a debauched currency.  MOST land, economy-wide doesn't actually "earn" anything.  It just holds its value.  Exceptions to that would be scarcer lands like beachfront lakeside or downtown area real estate.  But for as much as that is, those are most definitely not the rule, and nobody's getting a lock on what it takes for the average person to survive in the process.  




> If you own all of England, why sell the land off?  Just have a handful of loyal lords, who charge rent to serfs.


OR...you could run amok with that completely unfounded fear (as shown above), as this isn't England, there are no handful of Lords for a Crown to give out landowning titles to. You could bypass all that and jump straight to LVT.  Then everyone is a serf (yours and Roy's personally guaranteed exemption notwithstanding), and serfdom and rent payments become the rule of the day. 




> If you want to dredge it up again, I'll refute it.


No, and likewise. I already did the refuting, and put the ball squarely back in your court. No need for me to go chase it down for you. If you want to refute it, go get it.

----------


## Roy L

> Nature doesn't "provide for all".


Whom do you claim nature has excluded?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right: those who have proved, by not owning land, that "nature" considers them fit only to be enslaved or murdered.



> That's a decidedly human construct.


No.  It's human understanding -- something you lack -- of what nature is.



> Nature provides for "any", and "some", at times, and never in equal quantities, types, configurations or proportions.


That is a lie.  Nature grants the liberty of her gifts to all, and does not exclude anyone.



> No, just socialization of land rent. Same as you.


Because society creates it, not the landowner.  You just want landowners to be privileged to take for themselves the value that society creates.



> Libertarians certainly don't preach socialization of products of labor OR ad valorem taxes of any kind.


Feudal libertarians, like you and Helmuth, preach socialization of costs and risks, and privatization of the resulting benefits as a welfare subsidy giveaway to the rich and privileged at the expense of the honest and productive.



> Both taxes are generally despised and rejected for different reasons.


But we've seen where the priority is: abolish property taxes, not income taxes.  Or worse, abolish corporate, property, estate and income taxes, and fund government entirely on sales taxes.



> And rejecting both of these taxes is not a rejection of concept of revenue for funding necessary services that *the people provide to themselves* via their governments which act as agents and servants with limited delegated and enumerated powers on their behalf, to serve their common needs and interests.


Right.  It is only a rejection of the concept that those who get the benefits should be the ones paying for them.

----------


## Roy L

> Beautiful. Originally a military title for a ruling class, the Duke of Westminster is an extension of the Crown, or State.  The title itself (Duke of Westminster) was created by Queen Victoria in 1874.


In fact, the Duke of Westminster's title has nothing to do with any military or government service.  It was created purely because the man's landholdings in London made him so rich and powerful.



> My great grandfather was a Cockney "magic lantern" maker in London who lived on the original Duke's land.  So it's like saying, "If that money was collected by the government instead of the government...".


Nope.  Wrong.  The Duke of Westminster's ancestor was a PRIVATE, UNTITLED LANDOWNER who became rich and powerful by collecting rent on land that started out as a modest 500-acre farm west of London in Tudor times.  Over the centuries, the family became immensely rich by following three simple rules: collect the land rent; use it to buy up more land; don't sell land.

You will notice the total absence of any contribution to production or society.



> Your criticism of the Duke is that he "provides them with nothing" while collecting money, but that's not what makes his position and the money he collects truly insidious in my mind, nor is it any kind of reflection of the American "homesteading principle". Grosvenor's particular holdover from European feudalism was monopolistic hereditary STATE titles (House of Lords) of VAST all-encompassing land areas, along with the prohibition on landownership by any but the nobility or ruling classes (which were in turn exclusive of anybody not born into them).


That's a flat-out lie.  The Grosvenor estate was not vast, only a farm -- a homestead -- of about 500 acres.  But London grew over it, and it became fabulously valuable.  By collecting the rent of that little area, never selling off any of it, and using the money to buy up land elsewhere, the Grosvenors became the richest family in Britain, next to the royals.



> What made titled landowning by nobility in England truly oppressive: 
> 
> 1) Vast areas of land (WHOLE COMMUNITIES) designated by the states as belonging to an extension of the State/Crown.


As proved above, that is false.  The area was modest, and there was no community living on the land at the time the duke's PRIVATE LANDOWNER ancestors acquired ownership of it.



> 2) Perpetual rents paid in exchange for nothing but the privilege of using land,


As private landowners are privileged to charge.



> AND 3) No avenue available without a political title (no landownership possible) for freedom from such rent payments.


That's another flat-out lie.  Landowning has pretty much always been an option for ordinary Britons.  IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO BUY IT.  Just as liberty was pretty much always an option for slaves, if they could afford to buy their liberty from their owners. 



> Geolibs LOVE the concepts of:
> 
> 1) Sequestering vast areas of land (whole communities), designated as belonging to extensions of the larger state, and
> 2) Perpetual rent payments paid to the subdivision/taxing jurisdiction of the state as a wealth redistribution mechanism, and
> 3) No avenue available to anyone except an extension of the state for landownership that would facilitate freedom from such rent payments.


All three of which I have proved were not characteristic of the British "landed gentry."



> They like the ENTIRE CONCEPT of what happened in England


Again, and as usual, you have no choice but to lie about what we have plainly written.



> - they just don't like WHO those rent payments are going to, and the fact that those rents aren't the sole revenue source of the State.


Which is about as honest as saying that you like income tax, you just don't like who the payments are going to.



> The homesteading concept in England is in profound contrast to the homesteading principle in America.  In America the landownership became a right to all Citizens by virtue of their (very different) titles,


Absolute garbage.  Vast areas of private land grants by European colonial powers were recognized by the US government at the time of independence, and later when additional  territories were purchased or annexed.  The great majority of privately owned land value in the USA was NOT obtained by homesteading, and is now corporate-owned.

Your claims are reliably the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I understand it perfectly. Opportunities and amenities provided by the community really are *one* of the sources of land rent. That isn't difficult to understand, nor is it at issue. 
> 
> However, that particular "source of land rent" also has sources.  It's not "the community".  It's mostly non-collectivized, non-socialized _private_ interests. Both landowners and non-landowners contribute and benefit in different ways, and for which there is no collective claim on it by anyone.


Landowners, *as landowners* create nothing.  Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production.




> You want to throw a lasso around it, stick a flag in it, and claim collectivized ownership of that value on behalf of "the community", or state.  In other words, you want PRIVATELY CREATED "opportunities and amenities" to be collectivized and socialized - imputed as PUBLICLY (READ=STATE) OWNED value.  You want to do this by labeling  those mostly privately created and provided opportunities and amenities  "COMMUNITY PROVIDED".   Using those words almost gives it a pseudo-air that makes it sound "public" (like "federal" or "NPR" or "PBS").  Not because it's state-owned or controlled, but because it's simply "in the public", or "offered to the public".  
> 
> Nothing doing. It's still private. Stick your flag somewhere else, the vast majority of those opportunities and amenities are incidental benefits enjoyed by the public at large.  Whichever opportunities are the result of bought-and-paid-for infrastructure - aren't there to be rented out to landowners at a profit to the state.  
> 
> The fact that they "show up as land rent" is but one part of the picture. They also show up as increased labor and commerce opportunities, even for people who are not part of the community.  And those who get those opportunities and amenities, both landowners and non-landowners (and foreigners) alike, ALL get to "charge the community" for those benefits.  Not just landowners. EVERYONE. But you want landowners to become "landholders" so that they can be singled out for payment, while everyone else gets a free ride.


What a stupid evasion this is.

The question is still this: why should the landowners get to pocket the benefit that society creates?  You can't answer that, you you throw out a big wall of nonsensical BS text.  Furthermore, you ignore that a great deal of the land rent is attributable to services and infrastructure provided by government.




> Perhaps not for long.  Times be a-changing.


More evasion.




> If you can buy or work off your freedom then it's more like indentured servitude. Which has an end point. An actual light at the end of the tunnel.


If you have to buy your freedom you're a slave.




> True slavery, as would exist under LVT, is where there are NO pathways to even buy your freedom.


But, you know this is false, because the LVT can secure each person land enough to live on through exemptions or dividends.  Unlike your system, where landless are, by your own admission, akin to indentured servants, who can only get their freedom by purchasing it from landlords.




> Yeah, guaranteed locked out forever.  Only available as an "exemption". And "exception to the slavery rule".


More stupid nonsense.




> Bwahahaha! Oh, it actually does, huh?  Well, I want my government to protect me from enemies, foreign and domestic, public and private, as I take _the opportunity_ to secure these rights and liberties for myself, thanks.


Indecipherable.




> Yes, I see it - a one-time payment for ongoing benefits.  That is what one-time payments for anything durable _should receive_. Nothing special there.


Services aren't durable.  Duh.




> It works for goods as well as land.  A cast-iron griddle in my family, handed down through five generations.  A one-time payment, materials and labor included, purchased more than a hundred years ago, with ongoing benefits to my family, generations even, to this very day (pancakes and eggs last night, no less).  AND my great-great-grandfather paid the right person, and for the right reasons - not for the conditional use for a time, which would be a not-so-bright option, but an option, but for as long as it remained in our family - for as long as we actually own it.


But a privilege to exclude others from use of the earth is not a durable good: it's a government service.




> So on the one hand, I can pay a landlord a one time payment for ongoing benefits of land and become that landlord myself (just like anyone else can), or I can pay the state under your LVT regime the first of a serious of never-ending, probably ever-increasing, payments. Payments which never end, so long as the land is held.  All to the state-landlord - the only entity actually permitted to own land, as everyone else is either a) on the treadmill FOREVER, or b) an exception to the forever treadmill rule that you would like established as the default rule. 
> 
> No thank you.  I'll pay a fellow landlord, as anyone should have the equal right to do, to receive ongoing benefits for a one-time payment.


Right: you don't want a value-for-value transaction.  You want to rob society.   




> By costs, you mean privately paid for infrastructure as needed and wanted and paid for, of course.  That's a separate issue. No LVT required for that.  A bond or a special assessment (wherein I pay for benefits directly received, as a ONE-TIME cost each time), or any number of other revenue mechanisms is sufficient for that.  No need to make the state or anyone else a partner -- or an overlord.


No, I mean the costs of defending your privilege of exclusive use of the land.




> Yeah, that's Roy's Personal Guaran-damn-tee as well.


Unresponsive.




> For the exact same reason I morally object to LVT in the first place.  Acquiring massive areas of populated lands acquired, publicly or privately makes no difference to me - FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Blocking off access to landownership while making rent payments the rule, only to rent it out to those already in possession, in exchange for the promise to "give back" infrastructure, all of which can be paid for in full as needed, without all the slavery attached.  No, screw the Duke, and screw anyone who wants to enslave an entire population in that way.  It's not the ownership. It's the monopoly on ownership that I object to.  The claim of ownership for one  (public or private) that is artificially denied to another - so that rents can be collected in perpetuity.  Screw that noise forever.


See Roy's post.




> I told you the difference in my last answer.  The landowner next door to me is not artificially barring me from the opportunity to acquire land for myself.  That's the difference between a landowner and an absolute scoundrel - it doesn't matter if that scoundrel does it under public or private auspices. That is the defining difference between a homeowner or farmer and a private Duke or his LVT public counterpart who wants the same power for different [stated] reasons.


Unresponsive.  Try again.




> Sure, and in reality it doesn't work that way at all, does it? As evinced by the sheer number of landowners in the US, and the sheer availability of good lands for purchase. Right now, and always.


Luckily, the most people aren't as foolish as you are, and we have taxes on land.  Our fee simple system recognizes the inherent power in land ownership, and that it must be limited, and cannot be treated like other property.




> Firstly, the land market can't be cornered.


Sure it can, as history proves.  What's stopping it from being cornered?




> Not without a Queen Victoria granting a title, or some scoundrel in America pushing for the sequestration of lands for a state-run monopoly.   And then there's the fallacy of thinking that the rich secure their fortunes by burying them.  Land, by itself, is a HEDGE against a debauched currency.  MOST land, economy-wide doesn't actually "earn" anything.  It just holds its value.  Exceptions to that would be scarcer lands like beachfront lakeside or downtown area real estate.  But for as much as that is, those are most definitely not the rule, and nobody's getting a lock on what it takes for the average person to survive in the process.


Any land that people want to use generates a rent: the owner can just lease it to others.  You're just flat-out wrong here.

Why do you think, Steven, that countries have gone to war historically?




> OR...you could run amok with that completely unfounded fear (as shown above), as this isn't England, there are no handful of Lords for a Crown to give out landowning titles to. You could bypass all that and jump straight to LVT.  Then everyone is a serf (yours and Roy's personally guaranteed exemption notwithstanding), and serfdom and rent payments become the rule of the day.


Nope: land rents being spent on society is the opposite of feudalism.  You want landowners to collect land rents, which is feudalism. 




> No, and likewise. I already did the refuting, and put the ball squarely back in your court. No need for me to go chase it down for you. If you want to refute it, go get it.


Have it your way.

----------


## Roy L

> Not-so-subtle sleight-of-hand, but you said it entirely wrong.


You will now prevaricate.



> Geoism makes *privately-created value* public.


Nope.  Wrong.  Geoism recovers publicly created value for public purposes and benefit.  The only privately created value that it recovers (the land value that privately produced opportunities and amenities create) cannot be made public by geoism because it is ALREADY public WITHOUT geoism: it has already moved out of its private producers' hands and settled on nearby land.  That is very much the point.  It is just currently being taken by landowners who had nothing to do with its creation.



> Remember? You listed "opportunities and amenities provided by the community", which includes a BUTTLOAD of privately owned, privately controlled value-providing entities, and simply made them "public". Tsk tsk, naughty naughty.


No, it does no such thing, you are LYING, tsk tsk, naughty naughty.  NONE of the privately owned opportunities and amenities are made public, that is just a flat-out lie from you, as usual.  It is the ALREADY-PUBLIC LAND VALUE they create that is recovered rather than being given away to landowners.  The amenities stay in private hands, and their value stays in private hands; it is only the value they give to nearby _land_, which the privately produced amenities' owners weren't able to recoup anyway, that LVT recovers.



> *1. there's no sequestering of land*
> BUZZZZ...thanks for playing!  Under LVT, if landownership titles are revoked, all land considered to be part of an LVT taxing jurisdiction are "sequestered" for that purpose.


Equivocation fallacy.  You were shrieking stupid lies about land being held out of use to force up rents.  That makes no economic sense.  Now you are trying to switch to a different sense of "sequester" that does not hold land out of use, but is merely a legal term for a type of asset transfer other than contractual exchange.  It's just deceitful and despicable crap.



> *2. there's no wealth redistribution*
> Strike two.  Whether you're for or against LVT, the fact that rents charged are a form of wealth redistribution is not at issue.


More equivocation.  When apologists for greed, privilege, injustice and evil shriek their lies about geoist "wealth redistribution," the accusation is that LVT *introduces* wealth redistribution where there was none before.  But of course, that is false.  The current system of landowner privilege is _itself_ a system of wealth redistribution: it redistributes wealth from the productive to idle landowners.  LVT REMOVES that system of wealth redistribution, enabling the productive to keep the full fruits of their labor.  Therefore, to claim that LVT is "wealth redistribution" is logically equivalent to claiming that restoring stolen property to its rightful owners is "wealth redistribution."  Yes, you could say it is wealth redistribution -- but only if you first ASSUME that the wealth is rightly owned by those who stole it.



> *3. freedom from payments would simply be settling on land that has no rent*
> Strike three.


LOL!  You just fouled out.



> Just like Roy, wherein HIS particular theoretical version of LVT would have all lands available and open for usage, with plenty of lands in which no rent payments are due.


The simple fact is, almost everyone would end up paying much less both for land (i.e., being FREER from land rent) and in taxes than they do now.  You just don't want that, because it would mean no more money being shoveled into greedy, idle, parasitic landowners' pockets in return for nothing.



> But I don't hear the opening up of all lands, the abolishing of zoning laws, or anything that would prohibit the state from making land artificially scarce, as ANY part of the LVT propaganda - except to make bogus claims that it's somehow not in the state's interest to do that.


There's nothing bogus about it.  It's straightforward economics.  You just don't understand it, because you do not know any economics.

Presumably not _all_ lands would be opened up because the government needs some for military purposes, some would be kept as parks, some is too vulnerable to erosion or flooding, etc.  But there would certainly be millions of acres of good, usable land available for those who wanted to use a modest amount of land for free -- i.e., PERMANENTLY FREE OF RENT.

Zoning would not disappear but would become far more rational, and geared to enabling the most efficient use of natural features and infrastructure, rather than to shoveling money into politically connected landowners' pockets.  Your strident demands that all lands must be opened up, all zoning abolished, blah, blah, blah is just your usual ignorant "meeza hatesa gubmint" nonsense.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Landowners, *as landowners* create nothing.  Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production.


Ah, the very premise that productivity (read=labor? capital? both?) is somehow the determinant for a moral claim on a value return from control over natural resources - but only when that resource is land, which is _fixed in quantity and space_.  That "deserving by virtue of productivity" trap is precisely where I believe Henry George and Karl Marx were in perfect ideological agreement, as a mattered of core shared principle.  They both _favored_ labor, or "productivity" which they saw from a labor-not-capital lens, but each had different ideas on the best methods for how to protect that kind of politico-economic favoritism.  And each, with their fatally flawed premises, created their own unintended consequence trappings as a result.

Let's go to one version of Brave New LVT World, where everyone thinks in those terms. 

My landholding in the hilly boondocks of LVTinyHills was ugly and remote. Nobody else wanted my parcel, so it had practically no land rent value. But it was natural, peaceful, and far away from the mad hustle and bustle of MegaLVTopolis, so I was comfortable and liked it very much. 

One day, while digging in my little backyard, I found a 20 lb. lump of gold in its natural state. Biggest find ever. The gold that I "produced" (as in kicked over some loose dirt and picked it up with a grunt) was a single massive lump. Nothing productive about it, really, and not part of a vein of any kind. But wow!

I ran to my lifelong friend and neighbor Jed and told him about it. Jed immediately went to his backyard, kicked and poked around, and found some nuggets on his landholding. Why, Me and Jed, neither of us created a thing, but I'm rich, and Jed might be too! 

We're a small tight community, and word gets out quickly, as our fellow geolibertarian neighbors saw me walk into to the assayer's office with my gold. And while I did incur everyone's envy, I also had their respect, and got a full pass. That gold was 100% mine, free and clear by virtue of my exemption, and primarily because it's no longer part of the fixed land, and I can walk off with it all at once -- before the land rents increase as result of that find.  

Well, being a devout community of Patriotic Geoists, the friendly LVT bidding war commenced almost immediately. Within a month my land rent quintupled. Nobody else wanted access to it before, but now virtually everyone wanted their fair crack at it - as is their natural liberty right, of course. Jed's landholding as well. Gold fever speculation caused his land rent and the land rents of surrounding neighbors to skyrocket as well.    

Now me, I'm not so greedy. Never was, but now I don't have to be. I'm now the richest man in the community, and could easily outbid everyone to hold onto the land, but I have more than enough already, and gold mining isn't my thing anyway. I won't fight for space with strangers in a big city, so I'm not about to fight for space in a little community of people I care for dearly. Time to move on, I think to myself. Let everyone else have their shot at some of that good stuff.  So I vacate my landholding to the highest bidder - who just happens (not so coincidentally or surprisingly), to be the second richest man in the community - which is evidence, of course, of how much more productive he was to begin with anyway.  

I take my gold, my store of wealth and the evidence of my productivity, and move completely out of my old community, as is also my natural liberty right.  I move to the nearby coast, and settle on an out-of-the-way piece of land that few people want using just my LVT exemption.  I then used some of my gold to buy a nice big boat - my own piece of artificial floating land-_but-not-really-land_, with no land rent payable to anyone, since nobody was deprived.  I also use some of the money to buy several more boats. I rent these out to those who can't afford to buy a boat outright, but don't want to wait to live the same life.  Nothing wrong with that, of course. That kind of 'enhanced liberty' always comes at a price.  And because it's not land, the economic advantages I receive from those boats belong exclusively to me.  In this way, I can continue to receive value long after my one-time payments, and for little more than the cost of upkeep - which I factor into the rental costs anyway.  

*Back to LVTinyHills and The Miniature Gold Rush:* 

Jed competed well, and hung onto his landholding because the nuggets he found in the first week allowed him to at least compete with the more "well healed" pillars of the community without incurring any debt.  The increased land rent payments cost him most of the gold he had. This meant he was under pressure now to produce, so that he could continue making those increased land rent payments. But Jed felt confident, as he was finding new nuggets, and was willing to take that risk and continue to compete. 

Our surrounding neighbors were poor to begin with, just like Jed and I once were, and could not even begin to compete. Half the neighbors living closest to us wanted to get loans from the bank on speculation - but unfortunately they had no assets, and were not able to compete with the more credit-worthy, who posed less risk to banks - or had privately accumulated capital of their own. The other half of our neighbors didn't want to take on any risk or incur any debt anyway so that wasn't a problem. So all but Jed were all forced to vacate their landholdings, to make way for those who had sufficient capital to pay the _massively increased_ surrounding land rents.  

It did break the neighbors' hearts to be forced to move off land where they had buried their kin and had lived for generations. It was more than just an inconvenience to them, but fair is fair, and that's the price you pay for making sure that equal liberty access to better lands is secured for those who are in a position to pay more for the advantages they believe they will receive. The former landholders were at least compensated for their shacks, and their LVT exemption was sufficient for enough good land to live on - away from the 'better lands' closer to and associated with the new find.  

*EPILOGUE*

What nobody knew at the time of my find, but would later learn:  I had 20 lbs. of gold on my landholding, and Jed had not quite 5 lbs. of gold on his, all told. Total. That's all the gold there was for hundreds of miles.  The gold on Jed's landholding was spread out, not all on the surface, and took ten years and a lot of hard work to extract it. But talk about some Real Productivity.  Part of that gold went to compensate the community for the increased land rent he enjoyed.  Another part of it went to buy equipment and provide employment, because he really did need a lot of resources and help from others.  In the end, after all factors of production were paid for, a part of all of that was Jed's to keep. Not much, but Jed had no complaints. His family was fed, his bills were paid, and he was now a pillar of the community.  

The new neighbors who helped drive up the land rents (for themselves) had no gold on their newly acquired landholdings, so they really didn't receive any of the economic advantages they paid for and expected from the land. But that's the nature of land speculating anyway.  Some gave up early, but most lost a fortune in the process, even as several went bankrupt.  Local banks lost a fortune in that process, and one even went belly-up.  Eventually the land rents returned to a fraction of their former levels, given that most of the land was destroyed in the process of digging for all the gold that wasn't there.  

In the end, the one who got his early and bugged out without a single land rent payment or compensation to anyone but himself - was me.  The slot machine called my former landholding had only one jackpot in it, and by making way for others to access the land, I made out like a two-armed bandit.  So did the community, which received compensation for the temporary skyrocket in increase value. 

I realized, as many Good Honest Productive Geolibertarians like myself did, that if you don't want to pay for the advantages that are afforded by land rents paid to a community, it's not a problem. No shame in that, just don't use those them. Step aside and make them available to others instead.  By not competing, and thus not driving up land rents for others, I serve an extremely valuable role to fellow landholders, as I help more people to receive the same economic advantages at a much lower cost. 

As for my little enterprise, a lot of people were employed making those boats for me, and I'm sure the local boating community was compensated for a lot of land rents there.  And what I paid out was returned manifold back, as I profited perpetually from those who worked hard (or kicked the ground and found some gold of their own) to pay me rents on my boats.  I took the value that I freely received from nature, from land, and invested that, not into more land, but the best floating assets my productive money could buy. It was important to me that my investments especially and specifically not be tied to land that is fixed in space.  That way I leave others to enjoy the advantages of the best lands at a lower cost, even as I am the one who gets a return of value from my property long after the one-time initial costs are borne. It is in this way that I am able to live on rents, but remain land-rent free. 




> If you have to buy your freedom you're a slave.


Freedom is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a matter of degree, and there is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a price to freedom. To think otherwise is to be a slave. Under your scenario freedom is not even for sale. It's for rent! Only. A conditional exemption from a non-freedom rule is for all practical purposes freedom destroyed. 




> But, you know this is false, because the LVT can secure each person land enough to live on through exemptions or dividends.  Unlike your system, where landless are, by your own admission, akin to indentured servants, who can only get their freedom by purchasing it from landlords.


Everyone should have full access to the opportunity to be _their own landlord_ - with none above them.  One of the few valid reasons for the existence for the State in my mind is to guarantee that nobody stands in the way of another's pursuit of this kind of freedom -- from all would-be enslaving landlords and overlords, foreign and domestic, public and private - who want to cut off access to others for this equal status under the law. 




> More stupid nonsense. Indecipherable. Services aren't durable.  You want to rob society.  Unresponsive. See Roy's post. Unresponsive. Try again. Luckily, the most people aren't as foolish as you are... You're just flat-out wrong here.


Another turing machine, anyone?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Ah, the very premise that productivity (read=labor? capital? both?) is somehow the determinant for a moral claim on a value return from control over natural resources - but only when that resource is land, which is _fixed in quantity and space_.


There's no way to puzzle any semblance of meaning from this.  You've devolved into utter nonsense in your attempts to avoid knowing the truth.




> That "deserving by virtue of productivity" trap is precisely where I believe Henry George and Karl Marx were in perfect ideological agreement, as a mattered of core shared principle.  They both _favored_ labor, or "productivity" which they saw from a labor-not-capital lens, but each had different ideas on the best methods for how to protect that kind of politico-economic favoritism.  And each, with their fatally flawed premises, created their own unintended consequence trappings as a result.


What was that fatally flawed premise?  I mean, if labor doesn't earn it's reward, what does?




> Let's go to one version of Brave New LVT World, where everyone thinks in those terms.


Amusing choice of titles for your stupid nonsense:  




> But to return to the future . . . If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity -- a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque cooperative.
> 
> -Aldous Huxley in his forward to the second edition of _Brave New World_


<stupid nonsense ignored, snipped>




> Freedom is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a matter of degree, and there is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a price to freedom.


Equivocation.  There's a difference between having to defend freedom from those who wish to rob you and freedom being a commodity you must purchase from a privileged class.




> To think otherwise is to be a slave. Under your scenario freedom is not even for sale. It's for rent! Only. A conditional exemption from a non-freedom rule is for all practical purposes freedom destroyed.


Nope.  Under my system, anyone can use marginal land for free, or use supermarginal land with an exemption.




> Everyone should have full access to the opportunity to be _their own landlord_ - with none above them.


All you're saying is that you want each individual to be a sovereign.  But that's just feudalism.




> One of the few valid reasons for the existence for the State in my mind is to guarantee that nobody stands in the way of another's pursuit of this kind of freedom -- from all would-be enslaving landlords and overlords, foreign and domestic, public and private - who want to cut off access to others for this equal status under the law.


How could the state do that, if individuals are given absolute rights to land?  If there's no cost to holding land, the smartest thing to do is to acquire as much of it as you can, and never sell it.  And that's exactly what would inevitably happen.  Inevitable result?  Feudalism. 




> Another turing machine, anyone?


There's no other way to reply to your spew of inanity.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Mr. theCrown,

I'm still waiting patiently for an explanation of the difference between the two statements.  I'm sure you'll post one shortly.  Thank you so much for your sincere educational efforts.

Expectantly Yours,

----------


## Steven Douglas

> What was that fatally flawed premise?  I mean, if labor doesn't earn it's reward, what does?


Um...capital? It's not either/or. It's either or both. 

You wrote that, "Landowners, as landowners create nothing. Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production."

...as if "production" was somehow key to something you obviously think is important (deservedness?).  

Landowners aren't the only ones who behave as landowners. If I buy a bunch of moving equipment (one time purchase, minimal upkeep) and do nothing but rent it all out - there's far more capital than labor involved, and not a whole lot productivity on my end.  Just tools, offered for rent, to help someone with theirs. 

Labor is not the only "deserving" game in town. That's the point. 

<stupid nonsense ignored, snipped>




> There's a difference between having to defend freedom from those who wish to rob you and freedom being a commodity you must purchase from a privileged class.


Geolib Gibberish.  Geolibberish. 




> Under my system, anyone can use marginal land for free, or use supermarginal land with an exemption.


Excellent.  But what happens after you die and it's no longer your system?  You seem like a well-intending enough camel, but I'd kind of hate to let the camel's nose in the tent, because chances are it wouldn't be your nose to begin with.  I know the history of the income tax.  I get how that works. 

LVT entails giving up all landownership rights, first and foremost, as a matter of first order principle, _regardless how it's implemented_, all best intentions and different versions notwithstanding and completely irrelevant to that fact.  I don't care what your particular version is, there's no guarantee of anything afterward. Not for exemptions or dividend, nor that other taxes wouldn't continue to roll merrily along, side-by-side, as LVT is just yet another juicy revenue stream. Nothing.  

2041 - News Editorial - "Did you know that LVT as originally proposed and implemented in 2018 had exemptions for individuals? It's true.  Of course, we know now how impractical that is. Everyone knows there's no such thing as a free lunch. We all need to pull our weight. If that was attempted today, the loss in badly needed revenue for critical government services would come to a standstill. Think of the roads, think of the children, think of the elderly, blah blah blah..."

Not hard to imagine at all.  We do it now, and people are genuinely surprised to learn that the income tax is not that old, and not anything like it was when implemented a hundred years ago.   And those who objected that it would grow - that was dismissed as foolishness, with assurances that nothing like that could possibly happen. 




> All you're saying is that you want each individual to be a sovereign.  But that's just feudalism.


The antithesis of feudalism, actually.  Feudalism, by its very nature, allocated sovereignty titles, which included subjects who were bound -- and could not be -- sovereign. Artificial (Crown) selection and forced subjugation is what made feudalsim so oppressive.  Today some try to claim that corporations are like feudal states. But they're obviously not.  You're not bound to a corporation.  And you can always start one of your own.  That is what makes it not feudal in nature.  

LVT is feudalism that grants title to a taxing jurisdiction, as opposed to an individual, with everyone a subject, or commoner.




> How could the state do that, if individuals are given absolute rights to land?  If there's no cost to holding land, the smartest thing to do is to acquire as much of it as you can, and never sell it.  And that's exactly what would inevitably happen.  Inevitable result?  Feudalism.


If that was true, it should have happened by now.  Land is amassed, land is bought as protection from a deliberately debauched currency.  And yet go to realtor.com and pick ANY city - from the tiniest to the largest, and see how much land is available for sale.  Right now.  Some of it cheaper-than-cheaper-than cheap. 

There are too many landowners in the United States for anyone to get a worthwhile monopoly on land.  Most people aren't interested in selling and not buying again anyway.  And monopoly on land would take too long, and would not be economically feasible.  It would take literally trillions of dollars, most of which would be money sitting around doing nothing.   

So no, your fear of that happening couldn't be more unfounded.  If anyone has a shot at such a thing, it's those who are sitting on MASSIVE amounts of land titles now. The government, the Fed, and predatory lenders.  Not people.

----------


## Roy L

> Um...capital? It's not either/or. It's either or both.


ROTFL!!

You have just admitted that contributing labor or capital to production earns a commensurate share of production; but one cannot contribute land to production, as the land was already there, ready to use, without being contributed.  So you have just agreed that the landowner qua landowner does not earn any share of production.

So, why do you demand that he be privileged to take a share of production from those who HAVE earned it, and contribute nothing in return?



> You wrote that, "Landowners, as landowners create nothing. Some of the productive people may have been landowners, but that status has no bearing on their production."
> 
> ...as if "production" was somehow key to something you obviously think is important (deservedness?).


There is no way to earn a share of production but by commensurate contribution to production.  If anyone gets a share of production without making a commensurate (or any) contribution to production, as landowners do, then it is by stealing from those who do contribute to production.



> Landowners aren't the only ones who behave as landowners.


It's true that there are other kinds of greedy, privileged parasites, like bankers under our current debt money system.  But they are not privileged specifically to pocket other people's taxes, as landowners are, and their privileges can be abolished.  Land can't.



> If I buy a bunch of moving equipment (one time purchase, minimal upkeep) and do nothing but rent it all out - there's far more capital than labor involved, and not a whole lot productivity on my end.  Just tools, offered for rent, to help someone with theirs.


THE TOOLS WOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE TO THE PRODUCER WITHOUT THE CAPITALIST (YOU).  _LAND WOULD_ BE AVAILABLE TO THE PRODUCER WITHOUT THE LANDOWNER.

You just have to refuse to know that fact.



> Labor is not the only "deserving" game in town. That's the point.


But landowning is not one of the deserving games.  THAT'S the point.



> Geolib Gibberish.  Geolibberish.


Fact.



> But what happens after you die and it's no longer your system?  You seem like a well-intending enough camel, but I'd kind of hate to let the camel's nose in the tent, because chances are it wouldn't be your nose to begin with.  I know the history of the income tax.  I get how that works.


Income tax is inherently wrongful.  LVT is inherently rightful.  No one can predict what the future will hold, but that is hardly the point.  An engineer designs a bridge according to accepted principles of physics.  He doesn't guarantee that a barge will never hit the bridge.  Your stupid "meeza hatesa gubmint" garbage is just a cretinous claim that a bridge designed according to accepted principles should be able to keep barges away, too.  It's just stupid, dishonest crap.



> LVT entails giving up all landownership rights, first and foremost, as a matter of first order principle, _regardless how it's implemented_, all best intentions and different versions notwithstanding and completely irrelevant to that fact.


Wrong.  It only entails giving up the PRIVILEGE of excluding others from the land without making just compensation.



> I don't care what your particular version is, there's no guarantee of anything afterward. Not for exemptions or dividend, nor that other taxes wouldn't continue to roll merrily along, side-by-side, as LVT is just yet another juicy revenue stream. Nothing.


"How can you say your bridge design will work when there's no guarantee that the contractor won't build it upside down?"
<stupid, dishonest crap snipped>



> Not hard to imagine at all.  We do it now, and people are genuinely surprised to learn that the income tax is not that old, and not anything like it was when implemented a hundred years ago.   And those who objected that it would grow - that was dismissed as foolishness, with assurances that nothing like that could possibly happen.


??  Oh, OK, I get it: you are merely unaware of the fact that the US income tax was designed precisely to sabotage the movement for LVT by allying socialists with bankers and landowners, and that the main objectors who warned that it would become a wage tax -- which it now is -- were LVT advocates.



> The antithesis of feudalism, actually.


Nope.



> Feudalism, by its very nature, allocated sovereignty titles, which included subjects who were bound -- and could not be -- sovereign.


Flat wrong.  Feudalism was (and is) simply a system of government by sovereign private landowners who allocate land tenure by (usually hereditary) contracts of personal fealty.



> Artificial (Crown) selection and forced subjugation is what made feudalsim so oppressive.


Nope.  Flat wrong.  Feudalism in post-Roman Europe coalesced around the large landed estates that had been accumulated over the centuries by the ancient Roman noble families using their exemption from land taxation.  There was no "Crown selection," and the forced subjugation was simply the inevitable effect of the removal of people's rights to liberty by landowning.



> Today some try to claim that corporations are like feudal states. But they're obviously not.  You're not bound to a corporation.  And you can always start one of your own.  That is what makes it not feudal in nature.


What makes the corporation not a feudal state is the presence of the actual state.



> LVT is feudalism that grants title to a taxing jurisdiction, as opposed to an individual, with everyone a subject, or commoner.


No, that's just a stupid lie from you, and -- inevitably -- the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.  Feudalism is essentially government by private landowners.  LVT removes their political power along with their unearned incomes.



> If that was true, it should have happened by now.


No.  In Rome, it took the nobles 800 years to acquire effectively all the land, and that was with their land tax exemption.  The great reliance of state and local governments on property taxes in the USA, especially before WW II, has prevented extreme concentration of land ownership despite large grants of land to politically connected interests like railroads.



> Land is amassed, land is bought as protection from a deliberately debauched currency.


Garbage.  Land is bought because it privileges the owner to pocket other people's taxes.



> And yet go to realtor.com and pick ANY city - from the tiniest to the largest, and see how much land is available for sale.  Right now.  Some of it cheaper-than-cheaper-than cheap.


So?  If the government were issuing licenses to steal in certain geographical areas, some of them would be cheap, too. 



> There are too many landowners in the United States for anyone to get a worthwhile monopoly on land.


The land market is always a monopoly market.



> So no, your fear of that happening couldn't be more unfounded.  If anyone has a shot at such a thing, it's those who are sitting on MASSIVE amounts of land titles now. The government, the Fed, and predatory lenders.  Not people.


Every landowner is a monopolist.  I have explained this to you before.  A single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply.  You just don't understand what that means, because you do not know any economics.

----------


## Roy L

> I'm still waiting patiently for an explanation of the difference between the two statements.  I'm sure you'll post one shortly.  Thank you so much for your sincere educational efforts.


This was your statement:

"It continues to be difficult for me [to] see why the mere fact of being born should automatically confer upon one some aliquot part of the world’s land."

This is the statement Matt made:

"It doesn't. It confers upon him equal liberty to use the earth."

You implausibly profess an inability to discern any difference between these statements, but are self-evidently lying.

The difference is that your statement is a stupid and dishonest strawman lie, as you know perfectly well, while Matt's is a principled, honest, and accurate statement about the equal human right to liberty.

To have an "aliquot part of the world's land" as one's birthright would be to own roughly 1/7,000,000,000th of the land, to the exclusion of others, and have no right to access or use any other land (all of which would likewise be owned by others as their aliquot parts).  Clearly, such a notion is absurd and impossible (what happens to all the aliquot parts when the next child is born?), and bears no discernible resemblance to the condition of equal liberty to use all land that Matt described, which was the practical reality enjoyed by our hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding ancestors before landowners forcibly removed their rights to liberty.

----------


## Roy L

> Ah, the very premise that productivity (read=labor? capital? both?) is somehow the determinant for a moral claim on a value return from control over natural resources - but only when that resource is land, which is _fixed in quantity and space_.


Cannot parse.



> That "deserving by virtue of productivity" trap is precisely where I believe Henry George and Karl Marx were in perfect ideological agreement, as a mattered of core shared principle.


No, Steven, you are either ignorant or lying again.  Marx did not recognize that the capitalist's contribution of capital goods (tools, buildings, etc.) to production implied a rightful claim on a share of production.  George did.  Marx finessed the logic by an appeal to a collectivist fallacy of composition, claiming in effect that "the workers" produced the tools and buildings, so "the workers" were really the ones who contributed them, and should get the associated share of production.  George explicitly refuted that fallacy.



> They both _favored_ labor, or "productivity" which they saw from a labor-not-capital lens,


Another flat-out lie.  Either that, or you have never read George (which is about 99% probable in any case).  George explicitly stated that the Marxist view of "labor vs capital" was utterly wrong, and it was actually, "labor and capital vs landowners."



> but each had different ideas on the best methods for how to protect that kind of politico-economic favoritism.  And each, with their fatally flawed premises, created their own unintended consequence trappings as a result.


Anti-rational gibberish.



> Let's go to one version of Brave New LVT World, where everyone thinks in those terms. 
> 
> My landholding in the hilly boondocks of LVTinyHills was ugly and remote. Nobody else wanted my parcel, so it had practically no land rent value. But it was natural, peaceful, and far away from the mad hustle and bustle of MegaLVTopolis, so I was comfortable and liked it very much. 
> 
> One day, while digging in my little backyard, I found a 20 lb. lump of gold in its natural state. Biggest find ever. The gold that I "produced" (as in kicked over some loose dirt and picked it up with a grunt) was a single massive lump. Nothing productive about it, really, and not part of a vein of any kind. But wow!


Sometimes productive effort pays off big, sometimes not.  Ask any angler.



> I ran to my lifelong friend and neighbor Jed and told him about it. Jed immediately went to his backyard, kicked and poked around, and found some nuggets on his landholding. Why, Me and Jed, neither of us created a thing,


Lie.  You have produced gold that is ready to refine and use.



> but I'm rich, and Jed might be too!


And good for you.  You got lucky.  Nothing wrong with that.  You haven't violated anyone's rights.



> We're a small tight community, and word gets out quickly, as our fellow geolibertarian neighbors saw me walk into to the assayer's office with my gold. And while I did incur everyone's envy, I also had their respect, and got a full pass. That gold was 100% mine, free and clear by virtue of my exemption, and primarily because it's no longer part of the fixed land, and I can walk off with it all at once -- before the land rents increase as result of that find.


More accurately, it's no longer something nature provided.  You removed it.



> Well, being a devout community of Patriotic Geoists, the friendly LVT bidding war commenced almost immediately. Within a month my land rent quintupled. Nobody else wanted access to it before, but now virtually everyone wanted their fair crack at it - as is their natural liberty right, of course. Jed's landholding as well. Gold fever speculation caused his land rent and the land rents of surrounding neighbors to skyrocket as well.


Yes, people in hypothetical examples can be remarkably stupid, can't they?  The main problem is that they really can't be any smarter than whoever is making up the hypothetical example.



> Now me, I'm not so greedy. Never was, but now I don't have to be. I'm now the richest man in the community, and could easily outbid everyone to hold onto the land, but I have more than enough already, and gold mining isn't my thing anyway. I won't fight for space with strangers in a big city, so I'm not about to fight for space in a little community of people I care for dearly. Time to move on, I think to myself. Let everyone else have their shot at some of that good stuff.  So I vacate my landholding to the highest bidder - who just happens (not so coincidentally or surprisingly), to be the second richest man in the community - which is evidence, of course, of how much more productive he was to begin with anyway.


At least he didn't get that way by idly owning land.



> I take my gold, my store of wealth and the evidence of my productivity, and move completely out of my old community, as is also my natural liberty right.  I move to the nearby coast, and settle on an out-of-the-way piece of land that few people want using just my LVT exemption.  I then used some of my gold to buy a nice big boat - my own piece of artificial floating land-_but-not-really-land_, with no land rent payable to anyone, since nobody was deprived.  I also use some of the money to buy several more boats. I rent these out to those who can't afford to buy a boat outright, but don't want to wait to live the same life.  Nothing wrong with that, of course. That kind of 'enhanced liberty' always comes at a price.  And because it's not land, the economic advantages I receive from those boats belong exclusively to me.  In this way, I can continue to receive value long after my one-time payments, and for little more than the cost of upkeep - which I factor into the rental costs anyway.


"A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money."

Good luck with that.



> *Back to LVTinyHills and The Miniature Gold Rush:* 
> 
> Jed competed well, and hung onto his landholding because the nuggets he found in the first week allowed him to at least compete with the more "well healed" pillars of the community without incurring any debt.  The increased land rent payments cost him most of the gold he had. This meant he was under pressure now to produce, so that he could continue making those increased land rent payments. But Jed felt confident, as he was finding new nuggets, and was willing to take that risk and continue to compete.


LVT can't cure stupidity.  Sad but true.



> Our surrounding neighbors were poor to begin with, just like Jed and I once were,


Are you sure you were living in a LVT community?



> and could not even begin to compete. Half the neighbors living closest to us wanted to get loans from the bank on speculation - but unfortunately they had no assets, and were not able to compete with the more credit-worthy, who posed less risk to banks - or had privately accumulated capital of their own. The other half of our neighbors didn't want to take on any risk or incur any debt anyway so that wasn't a problem. So all but Jed were all forced to vacate their landholdings, to make way for those who had sufficient capital to pay the _massively increased_ surrounding land rents.


At least unlike some stupid, greedy, lying sacks of $#!+, they didn't think they were qualified to second-guess the market.



> It did break the neighbors' hearts to be forced to move off land where they had buried their kin and had lived for generations.


But at least the money was used for public purposes they benefited from, and they were free to live on other comparable land for free, and were not just being evicted from land where they had lived for generations by a greedy, parasitic private landlord.



> It was more than just an inconvenience to them, but fair is fair, and that's the price you pay for making sure that equal liberty access to better lands is secured for those who are in a position to pay more for the advantages they believe they will receive. The former landholders were at least compensated for their shacks, and their LVT exemption was sufficient for enough good land to live on - away from the 'better lands' closer to and associated with the new find.


Liberty and justice don't imply that everyone will always be happy with whatever others choose to do with their liberty.  Sad but true.



> *EPILOGUE*
> 
> What nobody knew at the time of my find, but would later learn:  I had 20 lbs. of gold on my landholding, and Jed had not quite 5 lbs. of gold on his, all told. Total. That's all the gold there was for hundreds of miles.  The gold on Jed's landholding was spread out, not all on the surface, and took ten years and a lot of hard work to extract it. But talk about some Real Productivity.  Part of that gold went to compensate the community for the increased land rent he enjoyed.  Another part of it went to buy equipment and provide employment, because he really did need a lot of resources and help from others.  In the end, after all factors of production were paid for, a part of all of that was Jed's to keep. Not much, but Jed had no complaints. His family was fed, his bills were paid, and he was now a pillar of the community.  
> 
> The new neighbors who helped drive up the land rents (for themselves) had no gold on their newly acquired landholdings, so they really didn't receive any of the economic advantages they paid for and expected from the land. But that's the nature of land speculating anyway.  Some gave up early, but most lost a fortune in the process, even as several went bankrupt. Local banks lost a fortune in that process, and one even went belly-up.  Eventually the land rents returned to a fraction of their former levels, given that most of the land was destroyed in the process of digging for all the gold that wasn't there.  
> 
> In the end, the one who got his early and bugged out without a single land rent payment or compensation to anyone but himself - was me.  The slot machine called my former landholding had only one jackpot in it, and by making way for others to access the land, I made out like a two-armed bandit.  So did the community, which received compensation for the temporary skyrocket in increase value.


Like I said: LVT is not a cure for stupidity.  Only injustice and extortion.



> I realized, as many Good Honest Productive Geolibertarians like myself did, that if you don't want to pay for the advantages that are afforded by land rents paid to a community, it's not a problem. No shame in that, just don't use those them. Step aside and make them available to others instead.  By not competing, and thus not driving up land rents for others, I serve an extremely valuable role to fellow landholders, as I help more people to receive the same economic advantages at a much lower cost.


Huh?  How?  The cost is no lower than if you had never existed.



> As for my little enterprise, a lot of people were employed making those boats for me, and I'm sure the local boating community was compensated for a lot of land rents there.  And what I paid out was returned manifold back, as I profited perpetually from those who worked hard (or kicked the ground and found some gold of their own) to pay me rents on my boats.


You don't seem to understand that by devoting your purchasing power to providing boats for rent, you increased the supply and reduced the rental price.  You EARNED your profits by making it cheaper for people to rent boats.



> I took the value that I freely received from nature, from land, and invested that, not into more land, but the best floating assets my productive money could buy. It was important to me that my investments especially and specifically not be tied to land that is fixed in space.  That way I leave others to enjoy the advantages of the best lands at a lower cost, even as I am the one who gets a return of value from my property long after the one-time initial costs are borne. It is in this way that I am able to live on rents, but remain land-rent free.


Well, that's an equivocation fallacy, of course, but as you're so pleased with yourself, it seems curmudgeonly to mention it.



> Freedom is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a matter of degree, and there is ALWAYS AND FOREVER a price to freedom.


And the honest know that the price of freedom ALWAYS includes freedom for others, and never "freedom" to take others' freedom away.



> To think otherwise is to be a slave. Under your scenario freedom is not even for sale. It's for rent! Only.


No; with LVT, _all have the maximum freedom that all can have equally,_ for free.  It is only the privilege of denying others their freedom that is for rent.



> A conditional exemption from a non-freedom rule is for all practical purposes freedom destroyed.


Garbage.  It is being deprived of one's freedom to sustain one's own life that destroys freedom.



> Everyone should have full access to the opportunity to be _their own landlord_ - with none above them.


Garbage.  Full access to the "opportunity" to be a slave owner requires that others be enslaved.  Likewise, the only way everyone can have the "opportunity" to be their own landlord "with none above them" is through feudalism, where everyone has the opportunity to become a feudal lord -- by defeating and killing another feudal lord to take his lands.



> One of the few valid reasons for the existence for the State in my mind is to guarantee that nobody stands in the way of another's pursuit of this kind of freedom -- from all would-be enslaving landlords and overlords, foreign and domestic, public and private - who want to cut off access to others for this equal status under the law.


Another load of absurd, dishonest garbage.  "Equal status under the law" does not mean everyone has "full access to the opportunity" to obtain privileges under the law.  You are essentially claiming that freedom means being free to buy a license to enslave others -- from one of the current license holders. If you can afford it.

That is just stupid, dishonest, evil filth.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You have just admitted that contributing labor or capital to production earns a commensurate share of production; but one cannot contribute land to production, as the land was already there, ready to use, without being contributed.  So you have just agreed that the landowner qua landowner does not earn any share of production.


This argument is destroyed by your infrastructure argument.  Was the land upon which infrastructure was created also "ready to use"? It was certainly _ready to be altered_ to a desired use. Roads must be graded and paved, trenches dug, all manner of pipes and cables laid, to name just a few of the "land alterations" required to make it "ready for use".  

This is no different in most cases than any capital equipment, the materials of which come from the earth.  The ore and other materials used to make it are ready to be altered, not "ready to be used" - not as an end product, and not in its current form. For capital equipment to be of any real value, parts of land must be extracted, refined, shaped, molded, combined and recombined.   

Consider the blank silicon wafer: 



That is raw "computer land", nothing but glass - made from nothing but sand.  Virtually ALL computer integrated circuits, including the microprocessor and hundreds of other IC's in the computer you are now using, are founded on this very substrate - this "land" - pure, raw silica - a refined form of what comprises 90% of of the earth's silica-rich continental mineral crust. 

A wafer sliced from a silicon ingot has very little commercial value, and must first undergo many processes before it begins to take on any real utility or market value.  It has to be lapped (graded), smoothed, polished and chemically prepped just to get it ready for a foundation. And it's not until that foundation is laid, and layers of integrated circuit "buildings" are added and tested that all factors of production combined, including the massively altered silicon substrate itself, finally equates to anything of real commercial value.

 

The same is true of MOST land that has any commercial value that is in use by humans.  Just like ore, land's starting value in raw form is in its POTENTIAL, which is UTTERLY DEPENDENT on our ability to alter it to a desired use. 



Land, like a silicon wafer or any kind of capital equipment (anything of value created from anything that came from the earth), is of little or no commercial value until it is first altered by both capital and labor improvements.  Grading, shaping, drilling, plumbing, trenching, with new labor and materials added both into and above the ground.  

It didn't get that way by simply being there. Land, _in most cases_, starts out as a factor of production only, like raw ore, ready to be altered to a desired purpose, but _almost never_ "ready to use".   



*Proof:* Pass a law over a single piece of commercial land, such that commercial developers may erect anything, and that any activity can take place on that land, so long as it is above ground only, and only on condition that the land itself not be substantially altered in any way on that particular parcel - no grading, no drilling, no digging, no trenching - no underground holes, tunnels, pipes, cables, etc., and no adding or removing any materials into or from the earth. Nothing.  Above ground only. Do that, and watch the value of that particular parcel of land _plummet_. 

Take away the capital and labor requirements for altering raw land, and most commercial land becomes worth very little. 

You just have to refuse to know that fact.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> The land market is always a monopoly market.
> 
> Every landowner is a monopolist.


Like Matt, you don't even know what a monopoly is. You think it can be parsed and still be considered a monopoly.  

China has an effective monopoly on rare earth minerals, because the vast majority of it is mined in China.  If I own all factors of production for a single thing, I do indeed have a monopoly on that factor of production. However, if that same factor of production is owned and controlled by a million different people, each _could_ be said to have a monopoly on THEIR portion of it, but not a monopoly on the aggregate - and therefore not a monopoly on the market itself. 




> A single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply.


You couldn't be more wrong. That assumes that by "supply" you mean "total quantity in existence" - not the very different total *artificially available/unavailable* supply.  

A supply is not a supply until it is "supplied". 

As for behavior, China does indeed behave very differently with its rare earth minerals than it otherwise would if it only controlled a minor portion of its only supply that it WITHHOLDS OR MAKES AVAILABLE TO THE MARKET, and only because it enjoys an effective monopoly on that market.

China does not control the abundance or existence of all rare earth minerals in the earth. That quantity is indeed fixed by nature. But that's _not_ the supply.  China can AND DOES INDEED control the available supply *to the market* (artificial scarcity), which does indeed, in turn, have a profound effect on both its market value and price - which China can and does establish.  Tomorrow China could slash the price of all rare earth minerals in half - and that would establish both the market value and the price.  China can, and does, also decide/control how much of its own supply can even be placed on the market - which artificial scarcity in turn affects both the value and the price. 

Likewise, no single entity in control of all land in existence could affect the total amount _available to itself_.  But if a single entity was in control of all that land, it COULD INDEED control *the availability of the supply* of that land *to others* - i.e., to the actual market.  Like what is happening now, as government allocates lands for NON-USE (which it labels as    ????-Usage). That is land that is _physically accessible, but not a "supply", since it is economically unavailable_.

You just don't understand what that means, because you do not know anything about reality and logic, and how you distort it to your own ends.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> This argument is destroyed by your infrastructure argument.  Was the land upon which infrastructure was created also "ready to use"? It was certainly _ready to be altered_ to a desired use. Roads must be graded and paved, trenches dug, all manner of pipes and cables laid, to name just a few of the required "land alterations".


LOL.  Alteration is obviously a subset of usage.  Your entire "point" such as it is, is obliterated by that manifest fact.

I'll continue, though, strictly for lulz...




> This is no different in most cases than any capital equipment, the materials of which come from the earth.  The ore and other materials used to make it are ready to be altered, not "ready to be used" - not as an end product, and not in its current form. For capital equipment to be of any real value, parts of land must be extracted, refined, shaped, molded, combined and recombined.


Nope.  Gold or copper, or any scarce but desirable material is valuable in its natural state: people are willing to pay to extract it.




> Consider the blank silicon wafer: 
> 
> 
> 
> That is raw "computer land", nothing but glass - made from nothing but sand.  Virtually ALL computer integrated circuits, including the microprocessor and hundreds of other IC's in the computer you are now using, are founded on this very substrate - this "land" - pure, raw silica - a refined form of what comprises 90% of of the earth's silica-rich continental mineral crust.


Right.  Silica is generally worthless.  People aren't willing to pay for it in its natural state.  It's only the products that are made from it which have value.  Unlike more scarce materials, *or locations*.  Hello?




> A wafer sliced from an silicon ingot has very little commercial value, and must first undergo many processes before it begins to take on any real value.  It has to be lapped (graded), smoothed, polished and chemically prepped just get it ready for a foundation. And it's not until that foundation is laid, and layers of integrated circuit "buildings" are added and tested that all factors of production, including the silica itself, finally equates to anything of real commercial value.
> 
>  
> 
> The same is true of MOST land that has any commercial value that is in use by humans.  Just like ore, land's starting value in raw form is in its POTENTIAL, which is UTTERLY DEPENDENT on our ability to alter it to a desired use.


Nope.  Silica has no value until it is worked into something useful, whereas real estate is valuable prior to being used at all.




> Land, like a silicon wafer or any kind of capital equipment (anything of value created from anything that came from the earth), is of little or no commercial value until it is first altered by both capital and labor improvements.  Grading, shaping, drilling, plumbing, trenching, with new labor and materials added both into and above the ground.


This is just objectively and inarguably false.  




> It didn't get that way by simply being there. Land, _in most cases_, starts out as a factor of production only, ready to be altered to a desired purpose, but _almost never_ "ready to use".


LOL, what do you think that could even mean?  How is "ready to be altered" in any sense different from "ready to be used?"  

Roy said, early on, that opponents of truth and justice inevitably resort to lies and absurdities: this is you fulfilling his prophecy.  What could be more absurd than claiming that there's a difference between being 'ready to be altered' and being 'ready to be used?'

You are, quite literally, spouting nonsense.  If you have any sense of shame, you should be ashamed now.




> *Proof:* Pass a law over a single piece of commercial land, such that commercial developers may erect anything, and that any activity can take place on that land, so long as it is above ground only, and only on condition that the land itself not be substantially altered in any way on that particular parcel - no grading, no drilling, no digging, no trenching - no underground holes, tunnels, pipes, cables, etc., and no adding or removing any materials into or from the earth. Nothing.  Above ground only. Do that, and watch the value of that particular parcel of land _plummet_. 
> 
> Take away the capital and labor requirements for altering raw land, and most commercial land becomes worth very little. 
> 
> You just have to refuse to know that fact.


All you're saying is that, if particular usages of land are restricted, the land will have less value.  Duh.  Hey!  Also, if you only let people who are left-handed use land, land values will drop!  Checkmate, Geoists! LOL!  

Precious.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Like Matt, you don't even know what a monopoly is. You think it can be parsed and still be considered a monopoly.  
> 
> China has an effective monopoly on rare earth minerals, because the vast majority of it is mined in China.  If I own all factors of production for a single thing, I do indeed have a monopoly on that factor of production. However, if that same factor of production is owned and controlled by a million different people, each _could_ be said to have a monopoly on THEIR portion of it, but not a monopoly on the aggregate - and therefore not a monopoly on the market itself. 
> 
> 
> 
> You couldn't be more wrong. That assumes that by "supply" you mean "total quantity in existence" - not the very different total *artificially available/unavailable* supply.  
> 
> A supply is not a supply until it is "supplied". 
> ...


You'd do well to learn the history of the board game Monopoly.  Maybe not, though.  You seem to be conscientiously ineducable.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You'd do well to learn the history of the board game Monopoly.  Maybe not, though.  You seem to be conscientiously ineducable.


You would have to actually make and argue a point, and say how and where such and education applies to anything for your statement to be meaningful in any way. 

Like this: "You would do well to study a dictionary and educate yourself in the actual meaning of the words you so loosely and incorrectly employ, Matt. Like the word monopoly you completely misuse and don't seem to understand. Maybe not, though. You seem to be conscientiously consciously ineducable."

Like that.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> LOL.  Alteration is obviously a subset of usage.  Your entire "point" such as it is, is obliterated by that manifest fact.


That's obviously because you don't understand anything about business or economics.  Otherwise you would understand the difference between *factors of production*, of which land is one most of the time, and *finished goods* (ready for consumption or productive use), which most land is not. 




> Nope.  Gold or copper, or any scarce but desirable material is valuable in its natural state: people are willing to pay to extract it.


I never said it didn't have value in its natural state.  ALL raw materials have some value in their natural state, but mostly as a _factor of production only_, without which most of it would have little to no value.  The value of copper and aluminum ore, for example, are *100% dependent* on what can be done with them them once they are supplied as factors of production.  Absent the extraction and refining process, this ability to turn them into yet more factors of production and ultimately finished goods - virtually NOBODY would value or have any use whatsoever for either of these ores. 




> Right.  Silica is generally worthless.  People aren't willing to pay for it in its natural state.  It's only the products that are made from it which have value.  Unlike more scarce materials, *or locations*.  Hello?


Hello? You immediately contradicted yourself. ("_People aren't willing to pay for it in its natural state..._" versus _"...people are willing to pay to extract it..."_)

"People" (end users of finished goods) aren't willing to pay for MOST materials in their natural state, regardless of scarcity or location.  Not just sand. But that does not mean they are "generally worthless".  SILICON WAFER FOUNDRIES and glass-makers ARE willing to pay (or pay to extract - _see above where you wrote exactly that_) sand (silica). But that is _as a factor of production only_, and _only_ because they know that they can apply capital and labor to convert these raw materials into their more useable and valuable forms. Otherwise, without this capacity, it would be generally worthless - to practically everyone - including them.  

You can get dirty, flea-ridden sand from a beach for free, but you can also go to Home Depot and buy a bag of clean, white sand for your kid's sandbox, because someone applied capital and labor to that dirty free sand, and turned it into something more valuable.  

The same thing is true of most land. Simply existing in space is not enough.  Absent our ability to apply capital and labor to alter the very land itself (grade, mold, shape, dig, drill, trench, add to and remove materials, etc.,) so as to adapt it to a desired use, most of it would have little to no value.  As such, most land has value as a factor of production only, and not as a finished good.   




> Nope.  Silica has no value until it is worked into something useful, whereas real estate is valuable prior to being used at all.


Thoroughly refuted. See above. 




> Land, like a silicon wafer or any kind of capital equipment (anything of value created from anything that came from the earth), is of little or no commercial value until it is first altered by both capital and labor improvements. Grading, shaping, drilling, plumbing, trenching, with new labor and materials added both into and above the ground.
> 			
> 		
> 
> This is just objectively and inarguably false.


A dismissive assertion in the absence of an argument is code for no argument on your part, and no ability to refute.  See, Matt, the way it works is, you have to actually make an argument for it to be counted as a refutation.  




> LOL, what do you think that could even mean?  How is "ready to be altered" in any sense different from "ready to be used?"


Already covered - basic Economics 101 - factors of production versus finished goods.  

Hammer = both a finished good and a subsequent factor of production.
Ore to make the hammer = factor of production only.  Must be altered to become a finished good.  




> Roy said, early on, that opponents of truth and justice inevitably resort to lies and absurdities: this is you fulfilling his prophecy.


Roy's a prophet, huh? Are you even aware of what you're resorting to?  




> You are, quite literally, spouting nonsense.  If you have any sense of shame, you should be ashamed now.


Look at what you are appealing to now.  There was absolutely nothing unclear or unintelligible about what I wrote.  It was argued coherently and logically. The fact that it comes out as incoherence or gibberish to you reflects on you, not what I wrote.  




> All you're saying is that, if particular usages of land are restricted, the land will have less value.


Get off that side of the yin/yang fence, and get up here where you can see both sides of a whole picture. You're focused on the side that was restricted from use only, while completely ignoring the inevitable effects on all the other land. 

If a particular land is restricted from a particular use the value of that particular land becomes irrelevant, as it no longer in supply.  It's no different than if that land dropped into the ocean, never to be seen again.  The REMAINING LAND that is still available, however, and which is not restricted for that particular use - becomes more scarce, and _therefore more valuable_. 

And it's not just "land made available" in general that affects value and create deadweight losses through artificial scarcity. Special land usage restrictions (e.g. via zoning laws) can make land _for a particular use_ artificially scarce.  Economics 101 takes over from there, as natural market forces respond in kind.  

Zoning laws are a double whammy, actually, because whatever land is zoned, or reserved exclusively for a specific usage only, might as well have dropped off the map completely where other land for other uses is concerned.  




> Duh.  Hey!  Also, if you only let people who are left-handed use land, land values will drop!  Checkmate, Geoists! LOL! Precious.


Too funny, you argue against yourself all the time.  If you only let people who are left-handed use certain lands, the value would indeed drop for those lands, given the sudden and utter DEARTH of competition for them, as more than 90% of the available competitors for that land in the world are removed entirely from the picture.  What you fail to see is that zoning laws have a similar effect. Substitute "left-handed only" for "agricultural only", or "residential only" or "office only" or "light industrial only" - and you have artificial scarcity.  Not of people, but of _land available_ for a given usage.  The artificial decrease in land available for a particular usage, while the number of available users only increases, causes that land to steadily increase in value.  

Cue your entitlement to feel stupid about now.  And cue that sentiment in others toward you even if you don't get it.

----------


## Roy L

> This argument is destroyed by your infrastructure argument.


No, of course it isn't, don't be stupid.



> Was the land upon which infrastructure was created also "ready to use"?


Yep.



> It was certainly _ready to be altered_ to a desired use. Roads must be graded and paved, trenches dug, all manner of pipes and cables laid, to name just a few of the "land alterations" required to make it "ready for use".


No, you are lying, Steven.  You know that the land was already ready for the contractor to use to build the infrastructure on.  You know that the land was CHOSEN for its particular state of readiness: its location, the slope, the type of soil and subsoil, the drainage, etc.  You know that its particular readiness for use was WHY the infrastructure was built on that particular land.

You _know_ these facts, Steven.  Of course you do.  You have merely realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil, so you have very consciously and deliberately decided to lie about them.



> This is no different in most cases than any capital equipment, the materials of which come from the earth.


But must be produced by labor.



> The ore and other materials used to make it are ready to be altered, not "ready to be used" - not as an end product, and not in its current form.


They are ready to be used BY THE PRODUCER to PRODUCE something.  That is what "ready to use" MEANS.



> For capital equipment to be of any real value, parts of land must be extracted, refined, shaped, molded, combined and recombined.


<sigh>  Which is precisely what makes it "capital," and not "land."  Which is the point.  Which you have to find some way to prevent yourself from knowing:



> Consider the blank silicon wafer: 
> 
> 
> 
> That is raw "computer land", nothing but glass - made from nothing but sand.  Virtually ALL computer integrated circuits, including the microprocessor and hundreds of other IC's in the computer you are now using, are founded on this very substrate - this "land" - pure, raw silica - a refined form of what comprises 90% of of the earth's silica-rich continental mineral crust. 
> 
> A wafer sliced from a silicon ingot has very little commercial value, and must first undergo many processes before it begins to take on any real utility or market value.  It has to be lapped (graded), smoothed, polished and chemically prepped just to get it ready for a foundation. And it's not until that foundation is laid, and layers of integrated circuit "buildings" are added and tested that all factors of production combined, including the massively altered silicon substrate itself, finally equates to anything of real commercial value.


Aside from not knowing the difference between silica and silicon, you have given an admirable example of the ignoratio elenchi fallacy.



> The same is true of MOST land that has any commercial value that is in use by humans.  Just like ore, land's starting value in raw form is in its POTENTIAL, which is UTTERLY DEPENDENT on our ability to alter it to a desired use.


But it is dependent above all on how _profitable_ that use will be.  Land out in the desert can easily be altered to put a hotel on it.  But it isn't worth anything because such a hotel will just lose money -- unless it enjoys the publicly created economic advantage of being in a community like Las Vegas.  And that economic advantage comes from government and the community, not the landowner.



> Land, like a silicon wafer or any kind of capital equipment (anything of value created from anything that came from the earth), is of little or no commercial value until it is first altered by both capital and labor improvements. Grading, shaping, drilling, plumbing, trenching, with new labor and materials added both into and above the ground.


Nope.  Now you're just flat-out lying.  The unimproved value of land is by definition BEFORE any capital or labor improvements.  It reflects how much more profitable it will be to put those capital and labor improvements THERE rather than out in the desert.



> It didn't get that way by simply being there.


Yes.  It did.



> Land, _in most cases_, starts out as a factor of production only, like raw ore, ready to be altered to a desired purpose, but _almost never_ "ready to use".


Anti-logical gibberish.  If it's not ready to use, how could anyone use it to build improvements on?



> *Proof:* Pass a law over a single piece of commercial land, such that commercial developers may erect anything, and that any activity can take place on that land, so long as it is above ground only, and only on condition that the land itself not be substantially altered in any way on that particular parcel - no grading, no drilling, no digging, no trenching - no underground holes, tunnels, pipes, cables, etc., and no adding or removing any materials into or from the earth. Nothing.  Above ground only. Do that, and watch the value of that particular parcel of land _plummet_.


And watch it plummet even more if you pass a law that anyone who works on the site has to be upside down while they work, and wear ski mitts and welding glasses.

Sorry, Steven, but your "proof" isn't proof of anything but your inability to muster an argument.



> Take away the capital and labor requirements for altering raw land, and most commercial land becomes worth very little.


I.e., take away the ability to utilize the economic advantage government and the community give the land, and it won't be worth as much.  What an earth-shattering conclusion!



> You just have to refuse to know that fact.


It's obvious, and obviously irrelevant.

----------


## Roy L

> Like Matt, you don't even know what a monopoly is. You think it can be parsed and still be considered a monopoly.


??  "Parsed"?

Land is a canonical example of monopoly because supply cannot be altered.



> China has an effective monopoly on rare earth minerals, because the vast majority of it is mined in China.  If I own all factors of production for a single thing, I do indeed have a monopoly on that factor of production. However, if that same factor of production is owned and controlled by a million different people, each _could_ be said to have a monopoly on THEIR portion of it, but not a monopoly on the aggregate - and therefore not a monopoly on the market itself.


Each land parcel is unique.  Land is a monopoly because its substitutability is typically poor and never perfect.



> You couldn't be more wrong.


I am definitely correct.



> That assumes that by "supply" you mean "total quantity in existence" - not the very different total *artificially available/unavailable* supply.


Supply means quantity available to the market.  As all land is available to the market and no more can be produced, its supply is fixed.



> A supply is not a supply until it is "supplied".


All land has already been supplied.



> As for behavior, China does indeed behave very differently with its rare earth minerals than it otherwise would if it only controlled a minor portion of its only supply that it WITHHOLDS OR MAKES AVAILABLE TO THE MARKET, and only because it enjoys an effective monopoly on that market.


It can affect supply.  The landowner cannot.



> China does not control the abundance or existence of all rare earth minerals in the earth. That quantity is indeed fixed by nature. But that's _not_ the supply.


It is if you are talking about the natural ore and not the refined product of labor.  You seem to be confused on that point.



> China can AND DOES INDEED control the available supply *to the market* (artificial scarcity), which does indeed, in turn, have a profound effect on both its market value and price - which China can and does establish.  Tomorrow China could slash the price of all rare earth minerals in half - and that would establish both the market value and the price.  China can, and does, also decide/control how much of its own supply can even be placed on the market - which artificial scarcity in turn affects both the value and the price.


You are talking about the product, not the natural resource.



> Likewise, no single entity in control of all land in existence could affect the total amount _available to itself_.  But if a single entity was in control of all that land, it COULD INDEED control *the availability of the supply* of that land *to others* - i.e., to the actual market.


No.  The landholder is himself a market participant, just as much as anyone else who wants land.  The only difference is that he already has some.  Consider the market for original artworks by dead artists.  Supply is by definition fixed: it's how many there are, not how many change hands, or how many are put up for sale.  Those who already own them are just as much in the market as those who want to buy them.



> Like what is happening now, as government allocates lands for NON-USE (which it labels as    ????-Usage). That is land that is _physically accessible, but not a "supply", since it is economically unavailable_.


It is available to the market, and has been taken up by one of the market participants: the government.  As with the artworks, selling it or not selling it has no effect on the supply, because selling it just means someone else has it.  The quantity hasn't changed.  This is something that many economically naive people struggle to understand.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Marx did not recognize that the capitalist's contribution of capital goods (tools, buildings, etc.) to production implied a rightful claim on a share of production.  George did.  Marx finessed the logic by an appeal to a collectivist fallacy of composition, claiming in effect that "the workers" produced the tools and buildings, so "the workers" were really the ones who contributed them, and should get the associated share of production.  George explicitly refuted that fallacy.


Henry George explicitly refuted Marx' collectivist fallacy of composition, even as he replaced it with several of his own.  

Both George and Marx identified a form of private capital ownership as the root of all  evils, even while seeking to put the State in the very position of those  evil owners who were vilified as the problem.  Both Marx and George operated under a collectivist delusion of a Benevolent "People's State". 





> George explicitly stated that the Marxist view of "labor vs  capital" was utterly wrong, and it was actually, "labor and capital vs  landowners."


Yes, and both missed the mark entirely. The laborer's problem missed by the Marxist Delusion was a lack of capital for laborers, just as the capitalist/laborer's problem missed by the Georgist Delusion is "lack of landownership" by non-landowners. 

Both Marx and George proposed solutions that involved eliminating a category of owners permanently.  Rather than remove artificial barriers to entry that could make ownership accessible to all, both Marx and George proposed collectivist solutions, one's that made everyone equally subject to the same barriers they railed against when privately controlled, while simultaneously making those barriers permanently insurmountable.  
Marx' solution was to put all capital under State control, thus turning all prior capitalists into laborers.  The State would be the ultimate capitalist, which would then be called "Communist" or "Socialist", depending.George's solution was to place all land under State control, thus turning all prior landowners into renters. The State would be the ultimate landowner and landlord.
 In both cases the essential structure would remain intact, with prior ownership rights vilified as evil privilege only, even as the State would assume the very roles of those who were previously vilified and laid low. The State would assume ownership, management and (ostensibly) benevolent control, on the rationale and belief that the State would at least be answerable to the people, and would have all the incentive in the world, as a Singular Benevolent Collectivist entity to turn around and shower  the people with returns that the former private owners would never make by themselves.  

*Some of George's Fallacies:
* 
A collective entity called "Community" is entitled to all land rents based on Community contributions to land value, both public and private, 100% of which is collectivized.All members of the Community are effectively and collectively imputed as being equal contributors to land rents by virtue of membership in the community, with equal-but-collective entitlement thereto, regardless of individual contributions.Landowners, whether they are part of the community, or not, are deemed to have contributed nothing of value to the land which could not rightly be collectivized - imputed as a public entitlement.Landowners contribute nothing of value by virtue of ownership alone, including whatever ownership came at the very price that established market value.



> Anti-rational gibberish.


You misspelled it. It's "anti-rationale" against Geogibberish.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Supply means quantity available to the market.  As all land is available to the market and no more can be produced, its supply is fixed.


You always did have a serious problem understanding that one. It is one of your core fallacies of your collectivist reasoning.  You honestly think that something taken off the market is "_available to the market_" simply because it is in someone's possession already.  Which means you don't have the foggiest notion about what "the market" even is, Roy.  Not the slightest clue.

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## MattintheCrown

> That's obviously because you don't understand anything about business or economics.  Otherwise you would understand the difference between *factors of production*, of which land is one most of the time, and *finished goods* (ready for consumption or productive use), which most land is not.


While this describes you, and not me, it is also unresponsive to the point.




> I never said it didn't have value in its natural state.  ALL raw materials have some value in their natural state, but mostly as a _factor of production only_, without which most of it would have little to no value.  The value of copper and aluminum ore, for example, are *100% dependent* on what can be done with them them once they are supplied as factors of production.  Absent the extraction and refining process, this ability to turn them into yet more factors of production and ultimately finished goods - virtually NOBODY would value or have any use whatsoever for either of these ores.


Right.  So?




> Hello? You immediately contradicted yourself. ("_People aren't willing to pay for it in its natural state..._" versus _"...people are willing to pay to extract it..."_)


That simply isn't a contradiction.  I was talking about two different things.




> "People" (end users of finished goods) aren't willing to pay for MOST materials in their natural state, regardless of scarcity or location.


"People" aren't only end users of finished goods.  They're everyone, including producers.  And many people are willing to pay for many materials in their natural state (and locations), as everyone with a functioning brain knows.




> Not just sand. But that does not mean they are "generally worthless".  SILICON WAFER FOUNDRIES and glass-makers ARE willing to pay (or pay to extract - _see above where you wrote exactly that_) sand (silica). But that is _as a factor of production only_, and _only_ because they know that they can apply capital and labor to convert these raw materials into their more useable and valuable forms. Otherwise, without this capacity, it would be generally worthless - to practically everyone - including them.


Again, so?




> You can get dirty, flea-ridden sand from a beach for free, but you can also go to Home Depot and buy a bag of clean, white sand for your kid's sandbox, because someone applied capital and labor to that dirty free sand, and turned it into something more valuable.


Right.  *So???*




> The same thing is true of most land. Simply existing in space is not enough.  Absent our ability to apply capital and labor to alter the very land itself (grade, mold, shape, dig, drill, trench, add to and remove materials, etc.,) so as to adapt it to a desired use, most of it would have little to no value.  As such, most land has value as a factor of production only, and not as a finished good.[/b]


So, what?  Duh.




> Thoroughly refuted. See above.


LOL, _refuted_?





> Land, like a silicon wafer or any kind of capital equipment (anything of value created from anything that came from the earth), is of little or no commercial value until it is first altered by both capital and labor improvements. Grading, shaping, drilling, plumbing, trenching, with new labor and materials added both into and above the ground.
> 			
> 		
> 
> This is just objectively and inarguably false.
> 			
> 		
> 
> A dismissive assertion in the absence of an argument is code for no argument on your part, and no ability to refute.  See, Matt, the way it works is, you have to actually make an argument for it to be counted as a refutation.


No, there's no need to refute what you said.  Everyone in the world knows that a site can and often does have value prior to alteration.  You've just decided to refuse to know it in an attempt at making some nonsensical point.




> It didn't get that way by simply being there. Land, in most cases, starts out as a factor of production only, ready to be altered to a desired purpose, but almost never "ready to use".
> 			
> 		
> 
> LOL, what do you think that could even mean? How is "ready to be altered" in any sense different from "ready to be used?"
> Already covered - basic Economics 101 - factors of production versus finished goods.
> 			
> 		
> 
> ...


And how is ore not ready to be used?




> Roy's a prophet, huh? Are you even aware of what you're resorting to?


Laughing at your fulfillment of the predictable claim.




> Look at what you are appealing to now.  There was absolutely nothing unclear or unintelligible about what I wrote.  It was argued coherently and logically. The fact that it comes out as incoherence or gibberish to you reflects on you, not what I wrote.


LOL.  It was indeed clear an intelligible, and I suppose you could even call it coherent at at least internally logical.  But it was also nonsense:  you've just chosen to pretend "ready for alteration" is not the same thing as "ready for use."

If that nonsensical distinction is accepted on it's face, your "argument" is aces.  Problem is, no one with an IQ above room temperature would accept such a distinction as meaningful.




> Get off that side of the yin/yang fence, and get up here where you can see both sides of a whole picture. You're focused on the side that was restricted from use only, while completely ignoring the inevitable effects on all the other land. 
> 
> If a particular land is restricted from a particular use the value of that particular land becomes irrelevant, as it no longer in supply.  It's no different than if that land dropped into the ocean, never to be seen again.  The REMAINING LAND that is still available, however, and which is not restricted for that particular use - becomes more scarce, and _therefore more valuable_. 
> 
> And it's not just "land made available" in general that affects value and create deadweight losses through artificial scarcity. Special land usage restrictions (e.g. via zoning laws) can make land _for a particular use_ artificially scarce.  Economics 101 takes over from there, as natural market forces respond in kind.  
> 
> Zoning laws are a double whammy, actually, because whatever land is zoned, or reserved exclusively for a specific usage only, might as well have dropped off the map completely where other land for other uses is concerned.


None of this has anything to do with the argument you were making.  You now seem to want to make a different argument.  Now that's logical!




> Too funny, you argue against yourself all the time.  If you only let people who are left-handed use certain lands, the value would indeed drop for those lands, given the sudden and utter DEARTH of competition for them, as more than 90% of the available competitors for that land in the world are removed entirely from the picture.  What you fail to see is that zoning laws have a similar effect. Substitute "left-handed only" for "agricultural only", or "residential only" or "office only" or "light industrial only" - and you have artificial scarcity.  Not of people, but of _land available_ for a given usage.  The artificial decrease in land available for a particular usage, while the number of available users only increases, causes that land to steadily increase in value.


Maybe, but you weren't arguing about zoning, or about land use restrictions.




> Cue your entitlement to feel stupid about now.  And cue that sentiment in others toward you even if you don't get it.


I'm glad you've decided to abandon your idiotic argument, and shift the discussion toward land use restrictions.  That said, I doubt you'll do much better there.

----------


## Roy L

> That's obviously because you don't understand anything about business or economics.


You have proved many times that you know no economics, and will continue to do so.



> Otherwise you would understand the difference between *factors of production*, of which land is one most of the time, and *finished goods* (ready for consumption or productive use), which most land is not.


The difference is that factors of production are ready for producers to use, and finished goods are ready for consumers to use.  Producers are willing to pay for factors of production (like land) based on how economically advantageous they are to use, consumers for finished goods based on their utility (capacity to satisfy desire).  I'm not sure why this is such a mystery to you.



> I never said it didn't have value in its natural state.


Yes, you did.



> ALL raw materials have some value in their natural state,


No, they don't.



> but mostly as a _factor of production only_, without which most of it would have little to no value.


See above.  It is a mystery to me what point you imagine you are making.



> The value of copper and aluminum ore, for example, are *100% dependent* on what can be done with them them once they are supplied as factors of production.


No, because copper and aluminum ore have _already_ been supplied as factors of production, by nature.  They already exist, ready to be extracted, and the grade of the ore, its location, local infrastructure and labor supply, the tax and regulatory environments, etc. determine its value to the producer who wants to use it to make copper or aluminum products.



> Absent the extraction and refining process, this ability to turn them into yet more factors of production and ultimately finished goods - virtually NOBODY would value or have any use whatsoever for either of these ores.


Which thread was that statement intended to be relevant to?  It certainly isn't relevant to this one.



> Hello? You immediately contradicted yourself. ("_People aren't willing to pay for it in its natural state..._" versus _"...people are willing to pay to extract it..."_)


That's a flat-out lie.  The first statement was about silica, the second about gold or copper ore.  People aren't willing to pay for silica in its natural state because it is not scarce: it makes up half of the earth's crust.  They ARE willing to pay for the opportunity to extract gold or copper ore because it IS scarce.



> "People" (end users of finished goods)


LOL!  To correct Mitt Romney, "Producers are people, my friend."



> aren't willing to pay for MOST materials in their natural state, regardless of scarcity or location.


Depends on what you mean by "most."  Producers -- who are people, btw -- actually ARE willing to pay for most of the different types of nature-provided raw materials they want to use in their natural state: hundreds of different ores; standing virgin timber; coal, oil and gas deposits in the ground; fresh water; etc.



> Not just sand. But that does not mean they are "generally worthless".  SILICON WAFER FOUNDRIES and glass-makers ARE willing to pay (or pay to extract - _see above where you wrote exactly that_) sand (silica).


Only when the deposit's purity, accessibility, etc. make it more economically advantageous than just scooping it off the nearest sandy beach.



> But that is _as a factor of production only_, and _only_ because they know that they can apply capital and labor to convert these raw materials into their more useable and valuable forms. Otherwise, without this capacity, it would be generally worthless - to practically everyone - including them.


Right.  The value of natural resources like unimproved land and minerals in the ground is determined by the economic advantage obtainable by using them.  Were you under an erroneous impression that this fact was an argument against something we have said?



> You can get dirty, flea-ridden sand from a beach for free, but you can also go to Home Depot and buy a bag of clean, white sand for your kid's sandbox, because someone applied capital and labor to that dirty free sand, and turned it into something more valuable.


Again: how do you imagine this fact is an argument against anything we have said?



> The same thing is true of most land. Simply existing in space is not enough.  Absent our ability to apply capital and labor to alter the very land itself (grade, mold, shape, dig, drill, trench, add to and remove materials, etc.,) so as to adapt it to a desired use, most of it would have little to no value.


More important to its value than our ability to alter it is how profitable it would be to use it once altered.  That is what determines whether the decision will be taken to invest in altering it.



> As such, most land has value as a factor of production only, and not as a finished good.


Very good, Steven.  Unimproved land -- i.e., land in the economic sense -- is precisely a production factor, and cannot possibly be a finished good.  It's gratifying that after hundreds of posts, we have managed to implant at least that one small fact into your brain.



> Thoroughly refuted. See above.


ROTFL!!  Oh, dear.  You were doing so well, too.  What happened, Steven?



> A dismissive assertion in the absence of an argument is code for no argument on your part, and no ability to refute.  See, Matt, the way it works is, you have to actually make an argument for it to be counted as a refutation.


There is no need, nor indeed any way, to refute statements that are already self-evidently and indisputably absurd on their face.



> Already covered - basic Economics 101 - factors of production versus finished goods.


What you haven't explained is how that is relevant.



> Hammer = both a finished good and a subsequent factor of production.
> Ore to make the hammer = factor of production only.  Must be altered to become a finished good.


And...?



> Roy's a prophet, huh?


Well, I am definitely without honor in my own country....



> Are you even aware of what you're resorting to?


Something to keep from barfing, is my guess.



> Look at what you are appealing to now.  There was absolutely nothing unclear or unintelligible about what I wrote.  It was argued coherently and logically. The fact that it comes out as incoherence or gibberish to you reflects on you, not what I wrote.


Sorry, Steven, but your "arguments" are indeed fallacious, absurd, and dishonest anti-logical gibberish.  See, e.g.:



> You're focused on the side that was restricted from use only, while completely ignoring the inevitable effects on all the other land.


See?



> If a particular land is restricted from a particular use the value of that particular land becomes irrelevant, as it no longer in supply.


Of course it's still in the supply.  Don't be absurd.



> It's no different than if that land dropped into the ocean, never to be seen again.


Idiocy.  Just because one can't use a particular land parcel for some things doesn't mean you can't use it for anything.  Give your head a shake.



> The REMAINING LAND that is still available, however, and which is not restricted for that particular use - becomes more scarce, and _therefore more valuable_.


Which is why landowners devote so much effort and money to getting zoning restrictions placed on each other's land.



> And it's not just "land made available" in general that affects value and create deadweight losses through artificial scarcity. Special land usage restrictions (e.g. via zoning laws) can make land _for a particular use_ artificially scarce.  Economics 101 takes over from there, as natural market forces respond in kind.


No, it's actually public choice theory that takes over from there, as greedy landowning interests dominate decisions based on rational land use and infrastructure planning in the public interest.



> Zoning laws are a double whammy, actually, because whatever land is zoned, or reserved exclusively for a specific usage only, might as well have dropped off the map completely where other land for other uses is concerned.


Ludicrously wrong.  Land used for designated purposes still affects the economic advantage of nearby land.  Land zoned for residential use, for example, means that there will be a labor force available to work on nearby commercial and industrial land, and consumers to support productive use of the commercial land.  Zoning laws are often irrational and destructive because they are controled by private landowners for their own profit through the civic election and government systems, but LVT removes that perverse incentive.



> Too funny, you argue against yourself all the time.


No, you just don't understand the arguments.



> If you only let people who are left-handed use certain lands, the value would indeed drop for those lands, given the sudden and utter DEARTH of competition for them, as more than 90% of the available competitors for that land in the world are removed entirely from the picture.  What you fail to see is that zoning laws have a similar effect. Substitute "left-handed only" for "agricultural only", or "residential only" or "office only" or "light industrial only" - and you have artificial scarcity.  Not of people, but of _land available_ for a given usage.  The artificial decrease in land available for a particular usage, while the number of available users only increases, causes that land to steadily increase in value.


Zoning often has that effect NOW because landowners use it to steal from each other and producers.  LVT removes the landholders' financial motive to buy influence over zoning laws for anti-social purposes.

----------


## Roy L

> You always did have a serious problem understanding that one.


No, you did, and still do.



> It is one of your core fallacies of your collectivist reasoning.


<yawn>  It is the accepted definition, and there is nothing "collectivist" about it.



> You honestly think that something taken off the market is "_available to the market_" simply because it is in someone's possession already.


No, I am aware of the fact that it is _not_ taken off the market just because it is in someone's possession already.  That is exactly the point.  Everything that is owned is already in someone's possession, including the things that you erroneously imagine exhaust the list of what counts as "supply," so being already in someone's possession does not mean it is not part of the supply.  What makes something part of supply is not (contrary to your misapprehension) the owner's decision to sell it, but the _possibility_ of selling it.  That is why economists draw a distinction between the "supply" of something like land or housing and the "market inventory" of properties whose owners are actively trying to sell them.  Owners who are trying to sell their properties are typically also in the market to buy other properties, and swapping the supply around does not alter that supply, no matter how fast the stuff changes hands.  It only changes who owns it.  You are merely unaware of that fact of economics.  Compare the market in original artworks by dead artists.  That is indisputably an example of fixed supply, and being already in someone's possession DOES NOT mean such an artwork is no longer part of the supply, it just means the owner is satisfied to retain possession of it until someone offers him enough that he will trade it.



> Which means you don't have the foggiest notion about what "the market" even is, Roy.  Not the slightest clue.


<sigh>  You are making a fool of yourself.  Google "definition of supply in economics" and start reading.  As I said, many economically naive people have trouble with this concept, and you are definitely one of them.

----------


## Roy L

> Henry George explicitly refuted Marx' collectivist fallacy of composition, even as he replaced it with several of his own.


No, he did not, and you cannot identify any such fallacy.  All you can do is deny the facts and substitute your false opinions.



> Both George and Marx identified a form of private capital ownership as the root of all evils,


Nope.  Wrong.  Land is not capital.  Conflating the two is Marx's basic error, and you have just proved that you are making the exact same basic error, the exact same fallacy Marxism is based on.

_Socialists pretend capital is land to justify stealing capital; capitalists pretend land is capital to justify stealing land._



> even while seeking to put the State in the very position of those  evil owners who were vilified as the problem.


Lie.  Just some of the relevant differences between the state and the landowner are that:

1) The state's JOB is to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty (including the liberty to use what nature provided for all), and property in the fruits of their labor;
2) Unlike the landowner, the state CREATES the land value it should rightly recover to fund its operations; and
3) The state is accountable for its performance of these functions through democratic institutions.



> Both Marx and George operated under a collectivist delusion of a Benevolent "People's State".


That's another flat-out lie.



> Yes, and both missed the mark entirely.


Nope.  George has been proved right.



> The laborer's problem missed by the Marxist Delusion was a lack of capital for laborers,


Silliness.



> just as the capitalist/laborer's problem missed by the Georgist Delusion is "lack of landownership" by non-landowners.


Aside from being tautological, that is uninformative for another reason: it completely misses the point of George's analysis.



> Both Marx and George proposed solutions that involved eliminating a category of owners permanently.


Hehe.  Nope.  Wrong again.  Marx proposed eliminating ALL "categories of owners."  George, by contrast, like those other great heroes of liberty, justice, truth and human rights, the abolitionists, _did_ propose eliminating a "category of owners": a category consisting of greedy, privileged, evil, parasitic, thieving, vicious, murdering scum.  The only filthy scum more evil, vicious and despicable is the scum that lies and lies and lies to rationalize and justify such evil.



> Rather than remove artificial barriers to entry


Such claims are false, absurd and dishonest.  The fixity of land's supply is the "barrier to entry," and it is not "artificial" but an immutable fact of objective physical reality.



> that could make ownership accessible to all,


Deceitful filth.  LVT combined with the universal individual exemption ACTUALLY WOULD make ownership accessible to all, unlike your stupid, self-refuting, anti-economic, anti-human ideology, which would make landownership "accessible to all" only in the same deceitful, evil sense that slavery made liberty "accessible to all": all who could afford to buy it from its owners.



> both Marx and George proposed collectivist solutions,


Yes, and they both thought 2+2=4.  So?  Society _is_ a collective, and the only individualist "solution" to land allocation is feudalism.  Deal with it.



> one's that made everyone equally subject to the same barriers they railed against when privately controlled, while simultaneously making those barriers permanently insurmountable.


Nonsense.  It's true that George missed the necessity of a universal individual land tax exemption to restore the equal human rights to life and liberty, but LVT all by itself makes the barrier to ownership much lower than private landowning: the buyer need not pay all the future rent up front.



> [*]Marx' solution was to put all capital under State control, thus turning all prior capitalists into laborers.  The State would be the ultimate capitalist, which would then be called "Communist" or "Socialist", depending.


Marx advocated abolition of ALL private property, not just capital.



> [*]George's solution was to place all land under State control, thus turning all prior landowners into renters. The State would be the ultimate landowner and landlord.


Nope, you're lying again.  All land is _already_ "under state control" -- i.e., its possession and use is administered by government -- because that's what government IS.



> In both cases the essential structure would remain intact, with prior ownership rights


Blatant question begging fallacy.  There is no "right" of land ownership, as proved by its total absence from human society before a few thousand years ago; but there _is_ a right of capital ownership.



> vilified as evil privilege only, even as the State would assume the very roles of those who were previously vilified and laid low.


No, that's just another absurd fabrication on your part.  The role of the landowner is that of a pure parasite, as unlike the capitalist, he is not the source of either land or its value.  Government and the community, by contrast, ARE the source of land value, which is therefore rightfully recovered for the purposes and benefit of the public and public institutions that create it.  



> The State would assume ownership, management and (ostensibly) benevolent control,


Already refuted.  The state ALREADY HAS control of land.  The only question is, will it adopt LVT, exercising that control to discharge its legitimate function of securing and reconciling the equal human rights of all, or will it continue the current plan, and only serve the narrow financial interests of a greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite.  Your lie is in claiming that private landowning is somehow a natural order that arose through consensual interaction, and not itself merely another creature of state power bent to the service of parasitic oppressors.



> on the rationale and belief that the State would at least be answerable to the people, and would have all the incentive in the world, as a Singular Benevolent Collectivist entity to turn around and shower  the people with returns that the former private owners would never make by themselves.


Which all history confirms to be the case.  Hong Kong, or Bangladesh.  It's that simple.  



> *Some of George's Fallacies:* [*]A collective entity called "Community" is entitled to all land rents based on Community contributions to land value, both public and private, 100% of which is collectivized.


That is not a fallacy.  It is simply a fact that you deny.  Land rent is publicly created precisely BECAUSE it is inherently impossible to disentangle, to measure, or even estimate all the different public and private contributions to it.  The best we can do is observe statistical relationships, such as the higher land values around government-provided services and infrastructure and privately created employment, consumption and social opportunities.



> [*]All members of the Community are effectively and collectively imputed as being equal contributors to land rents by virtue of membership in the community, with equal-but-collective entitlement thereto, regardless of individual contributions.


Lie.  There is no such assumption, and no such result.  The members of the community are equal not in their contributions to land rents, but in their rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.  The right to life indisputably requires that no one be forcibly deprived by others of access to the natural resources and opportunities needed to sustain life: nature-provided air to breathe, nature-provided water to drink, and nature-provided land from which to obtain food to eat.  LVT with a universal individual exemption secures that right.  Your proposal forcibly violates and removes it, permanently enslaving the landless and murdering them by the millions whenever they can't afford to meet the demands of greedy, parasitic private landowners.



> [*]Landowners, whether they are part of the community, or not, are deemed to have contributed nothing of value to the land which could not rightly be collectivized - imputed as a public entitlement.


That is an indisputable fact.  The unimproved value of land owes nothing to its owner by definition.



> [*]Landowners contribute nothing of value by virtue of ownership alone,


Again, that is indisputable.



> including whatever ownership came at the very price that established market value.


While that is laughable.  Value is what makes people willing to _pay_ the price.  Price is just normally the best way to _observe_ value empirically.  It is certainly not an infallible method, nor is it epistemologically prior to value.  Price can be wrong as a measure of value, just as a clock can be wrong as a measure of time.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> What makes something part of supply is not (contrary to your misapprehension) the owner's decision to sell it, but the _possibility_ of selling it.  That is why economists draw a distinction between the "supply" of something like land or housing and the "market inventory" of properties whose owners are actively trying to sell them.


Wow. Well, for the first time, I am officially embarrassed for you.  Those are not the words of a businessman or an economist, and you are so far off on this this one it's pathetic. Rather having me go out and Google things for you, why not just post and cite a couple of your favorite and most authoritative examples?  Because you have inventory and supply reversed, along with a seriously distorted and incorrect view of market supply and how it is counted.  




> *Investopedia explains 'Supply'* (emphasis mine)
> 
> Supply and demand trends form the basis of the modern economy. Each specific good or service will have its own supply and demand patterns based on price, utility and personal preference. *If people demand a good and are willing to pay more for it, producers will add to the supply*. As the supply increases, the price will fall given the same level of demand. Ideally, markets will reach a point of equilibrium where the supply equals the demand (no excess supply and no shortages) for a given price point; at this point ,consumer utility and producer profits are maximized.  
> 
> Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#ixzz1sjjByNmh


If you did any actual Googling yourself, you would see myriad examples that define supply as:

"The total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase _at a given price_."

http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm

Not at any price; at any _given_, or _specified_, price.  In economics you can't even begin to talk about supply without a specific reference price in mind. From there we can take all possible prices and make a supply curve for that particular thing. If a thing is not for sale at a given price it is not counted as part of the "supply available to the market" *at that price*. 




> Compare the market in original artworks by dead artists.  That is  indisputably an example of fixed supply, and being already in someone's  possession DOES NOT mean such an artwork is no longer part of the  supply, it just means the owner is satisfied to retain possession of it  until someone offers him enough that he will trade it.


The owner's decision not to sell at a given price is precisely what EXCLUDES it from being counted as available to the market (supply) _at that price_.  You are attempting to count the aggregate total of a thing in existence that _might possibly_ otherwise be available AT ANY POSSIBLE PRICE (or at any possible time in the future) and calling that "the entire supply available to the market". That is absolutely incorrect. That's how a supply curve is created, NOT how supply itself is counted. 

So to rephrase your words so that they read accurately:

_"Being already in someone's possession does not mean a thing is no longer part of the supply.  In economics the determining factor as to whether or not a thing is counted as part of the available supply is the price the owner would be willing to accept - and this is true for all goods and services in a free market - a price that is somewhere between zero and infinity. Above a given price, it may be counted as part of the supply. Below that same given price it may not be counted as part of the available supply. This price, and not mere possession, is the very basis of the supply curve in economics, upon which curve multiple quantities of the same thing can be theoretically plotted."_

Since actual supply available to the market is dependent upon the quantity sellers are willing to part with _for a given price_, supply is plotted as *individual coordinates on a supply curve, the plot points of which are specified reference prices* -- not the entire curve, not the maximum supply possible on that curve, and not the aggregate total based on the possibility that any of it could sell if the price was high enough.  

Whatever sellers will not part with at a given price, for ANY REASON, _is not counted on that part of the curve as part of the supply_ for that price. That includes land that is publicly or privately withheld from the market at a given price *for any reason whatsoever -- even if the reason for withholding it from sale is not related to price.* 

If you have an economist, economics paper or textbook entry that states otherwise, cite the source, as I would very much like to read it.  Show me otherwise. Don't tell me, using your own rationale and trying to pass that off as basic economics. Show me. Arguments backed by actual sources. 

I'll answer your other post after we settle this once and for all.  Good luck.

----------


## Steven Douglas

-- double post

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Land is not capital.
> 
> _Socialists pretend capital is land to justify stealing capital; capitalists pretend land is capital to justify [not having their land stolen]._



*LVT vs. CVT*

I think that land is a legitimate subject of ownership, so it is unavoidable for me to believe taxing it would be theft. Just so, you would believe that taxing me for using a computer would be theft, I think.

The LVT advocates will claim that it is not the worst thing in the world to lose your land due to inability to pay your LVT.  If you cannot pay, there is some very good reason for that.  It will be due to taxes increasing but the profitability of your use of the land remaining stable, or perhaps even the profitibility of your land use going down, or any scenario wherin the tax of the land becomes more than the value you're getting from the land.  

Let's take the example of a farmer on the edge of an expanding city.  He's a hold-out, he wants to keep farming, but "society" would find it more valuable for his land to be converted to condos.  Now under my own preferred system of freedom, he can just keep farming as long as he likes, forever, no one can stop him.  They can offer him huge wads of money to change his mind, but they cannot use force.  That's the best situation for him.  But under LVT, if the tax is high that means there are a number of buyers lined up willing to pay a high price for the land, and so our recalcitrant farmer can take their money and use it to buy double the acreage somewhere else.  Not too bad a deal, eh?

So I agree with LVT advocates that this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But neither would it be the worst thing if you had this same set-up for capital goods. You charge a CVT (capital value tax) on capital goods, determined based on assessors, market prices, and some sophisticated computer model Roy L. has. Just like LVT. The owners of injection molds and CNC lathes would then pay an annual tax. Normally, as long as they were putting them to reasonably good use they'd be able to afford the tax. If the tax is high and the factory can't afford the tax, there is some very good reason. We can assume there are many buyers waiting in line to pay the higher price of the machines. Perhaps society needs every available unit of a specialized machine the factory has, in order to produce the new iPhone which is in a desperate shortage. The owner is lucky to be in such a position! With the money, he can buy even better machines and twice as many, and manufacture to his heart's delight.

But if you believe in an absolute property right in capital goods, such a CVT would still be theft.

One other thing I wanted to respond to is the alleged metaphysical difference between a factory and land, that of the land already being there, while the factory, allegedly, isn't.

But it is.  It's already there.  It's already been built.  The factory's existence is a fact of life.  It's a done deal.  The same efficiency argument applies to it as to the land: it's there anyway, so let's tax whoever owns it to force them into increased efficiency by lowering their profit margins.  Taxing the factory doesn't make the factory disappear, any more than taxing land makes _it_ disappear.  It just gets run more efficiently.  In fact, remember, if the factory were to be abandoned, it eventually would become philosophically land.  In Will Smith's "I Am Legend" New York,  (leaving aside the property rights of the zombies) all the skyscrapers, the cars, the gasoline, the canned food... these are all "land" for him.  They are all just provided to him by nature as far as from an ethical or economic point of view.  So why wait for it to be abandoned?  Tax it now!

Now taxing factory owners does provide a disincentive going forward to build *more* factories, but so does taxing the Universe provide a disincentive going forward to open up more parts and resources of the Universe to productive use.  And while land and factories may be metaphysically unable to disappear, yet you tax them too much and even the existing land and factories will be abandoned, and crumble or go fallow.  They will cease to exist _in the economy_.  This goes back to what I keep saying: the amount of land in the economy can increase or decrease, and does all the time.  It's not fixed at all!

So all our disagreements really just come down to the moral question: Is land a legitimate subject of ownership?  If it is, then the free land party is right.  If it is not, then the proposals of the socialize land party, while they will cause economic destruction (land being abandoned and going fallow as mentioned above, among other problems) at least they have a moral basis of sorts: no human can justly own land, so we should have the government (a group of such humans) own the land.  One can see the moral logic.  Kind of.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> *LVT vs. CVT*
> 
> I think that land is a legitimate subject of ownership, so it is unavoidable for me to believe taxing it would be theft. Just so, you would believe that taxing me for using a computer would be theft, I think.


You may think that, but you're wrong.  You cannot justify such a belief.




> The LVT advocates will claim that it is not the worst thing in the world to lose your land due to inability to pay your LVT.  If you cannot pay, there is some very good reason for that.  It will be due to taxes increasing but the profitability of your use of the land remaining stable, or perhaps even the profitibility of your land use going down, or any scenario wherin the tax of the land becomes more than the value you're getting from the land.  
> 
> Let's take the example of a farmer on the edge of an expanding city.  He's a hold-out, he wants to keep farming, but "society" would find it more valuable for his land to be converted to condos.  Now under my own preferred system of freedom, he can just keep farming as long as he likes, forever, no one can stop him.  They can offer him huge wads of money to change his mind, but they cannot use force.  That's the best situation for him.  But under LVT, if the tax is high that means there are a number of buyers lined up willing to pay a high price for the land, and so our recalcitrant farmer can take their money and use it to buy double the acreage somewhere else.  Not too bad a deal, eh?


Right.  More importantly, the farmer, *along with everyone else*, greatly benefits by living a society where land is allocated efficiently.  The returns he gets to his labor, along with the returns everyone else gets to *their* labor, are much greater if land is allocated efficiently.

That's the whole point.  I suggest you read Book IX, Chapter I of _Progress and Poverty_ to get a fuller idea of just how true this is.




> So I agree with LVT advocates that this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But neither would it be the worst thing if you had this same set-up for capital goods. You charge a CVT (capital value tax) on capital goods, determined based on assessors, market prices, and some sophisticated computer model Roy L. has. Just like LVT. The owners of injection molds and CNC lathes would then pay an annual tax. Normally, as long as they were putting them to reasonably good use they'd be able to afford the tax. If the tax is high and the factory can't afford the tax, there is some very good reason. We can assume there are many buyers waiting in line to pay the higher price of the machines. Perhaps society needs every available unit of a specialized machine the factory has, in order to produce the new iPhone which is in a desperate shortage. The owner is lucky to be in such a position! With the money, he can buy even better machines and twice as many, and manufacture to his heart's delight.
> 
> But if you believe in an absolute property right in capital goods, such a CVT would still be theft.


Right.  Aside from considerations of utility, it's morally wrong.  A man cannot satisfy his desires without the right to claim what he produces, just as he can't satisfy his desires without use of the earth.




> One other thing I wanted to respond to is the alleged metaphysical difference between a factory and land, that of the land already being there, while the factory, allegedly, isn't.
> 
> But it is.  It's already there.  It's already been built.  The factory's existence is a fact of life.  It's a done deal.  The same efficiency argument applies to it as to the land: it's there anyway, so let's tax whoever owns it to force them into increased efficiency by lowering their profit margins.  Taxing the factory doesn't make the factory disappear, any more than taxing land makes _it_ disappear.  It just gets run more efficiently.  In fact, remember, if the factory were to be abandoned, it eventually would become philosophically land.  In Will Smith's "I Am Legend" New York,  (leaving aside the property rights of the zombies) all the skyscrapers, the cars, the gasoline, the canned food... these are all "land" for him.  They are all just provided to him by nature as far as from an ethical or economic point of view.  So why wait for it to be abandoned?  Tax it now!


But you're about to undermine your argument:




> Now taxing factory owners does provide a disincentive going forward to build *more* factories, but so does taxing the Universe provide a disincentive going forward to open up more parts and resources of the Universe to productive use.


Half-right.  From a utilitarian standpoint, your CVT fails as well, because it will indeed result in a diminution of the stock of capital.  Taxing land, by value, will not.




> And while land and factories may be metaphysically unable to disappear, yet you tax them too much and even the existing land and factories will be abandoned, and crumble or go fallow.  They will cease to exist _in the economy_.  This goes back to what I keep saying: the amount of land in the economy can increase or decrease, and does all the time.  It's not fixed at all!


Taxing land at a rater higher than 100% of the rent would indeed cause people to abandon it, which is why no one would do that.  It's literally in no one's interest to try.




> So all our disagreements really just come down to the moral question: Is land a legitimate subject of ownership?


I also believe this is wrong.  There's two sides to the issue: a moral side, and a utilitarian side.  If we agree that taxes must be collected, but that any tax is morally wrong, we should at least resort to taxes which are the least obstructive to the economy.  LVT wins here, hands down, because it does not burden production, as other taxes do.




> If it is, then the free land party is right.  If it is not, then the proposals of the socialize land party, while they will cause economic destruction (land being abandoned and going fallow as mentioned above, among other problems) at least they have a moral basis of sorts: no human can justly own land, so we should have the government (a group of such humans) own the land.  One can see the moral logic.  Kind of.


It's not that the government would own the land, it's that the government would manage the land in the best interests of society.  Like a trustee does with an asset.  It's the only way equal rights can be reconciled, because equal rights include the right to liberty, and exclusion from parts of the earth limits those rights.  Compensation, then, is due.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Wow. Well, for the first time, I am officially embarrassed for you.  Those are not the words of a businessman or an economist, and you are so far off on this this one it's pathetic. Rather having me go out and Google things for you, why not just post and cite a couple of your favorite and most authoritative examples?  Because you have inventory and supply reversed, along with a seriously distorted and incorrect view of market supply and how it is counted.  
> 
> 
> 
> If you did any actual Googling yourself, you would see myriad examples that define supply as:
> 
> "The total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase _at a given price_."
> 
> http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm
> ...


The supply curve for land is a vertical line.  Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.

----------


## Roy L

> Rather having me go out and Google things for you, why not just post and cite a couple of your favorite and most authoritative examples?


Here's one from Investopedia, YOUR OWN SOURCE:

"Definition of 'Supply'
A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1slRO3sIy



> Because you have inventory and supply reversed, along with a seriously distorted and incorrect view of market supply and how it is counted.


Supply is the available amount.



> If you did any actual Googling yourself, you would see myriad examples that define supply as:
> 
> "The total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase _at a given price_."
> 
> http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm


Ah, I see: you don't understand what "price" means, either.  That is also a very common misapprehension among the economically naive.  Price is what a thing trades for.  IF AN ITEM DOES NOT TRADE FOR A GIVEN AMOUNT, THAT IS NOT ITS PRICE.  You probably hold the naive view that if a store has a price sticker on an item, that is its price.  But in fact, that is only its price if someone actually buys it for that amount.  Otherwise, it is just a hope.  Similarly, we can only say that a given amount of money is the "price" of a parcel of land IF THE LAND TRADES FOR THAT AMOUNT.  That is what makes the supply of land fixed: ALL THE LAND TRADES FOR ITS PRICE, NO MORE AND NO LESS, because price is _defined as_ the amount an item trades for.

Here's another reference:

"supply
Definition
The total amount of a good or service available for purchase;"

http://www.investorwords.com/4822/supply.html



> Not at any price; at any _given_, or _specified_, price.


See above.  All land trades at any given price, because its price IS what it trades for.  A number pulled out of the air is not a price, it's just a hope, or a guess.



> In economics you can't even begin to talk about supply without a specific reference price in mind.


Nonsense.  Economists talk about the supply of gold, for example, meaning the total amount available in above-ground stocks, not the amount trading at one particular price. 



> From there we can take all possible prices and make a supply curve for that particular thing. If a thing is not for sale at a given price it is not counted as part of the "supply available to the market" *at that price*.


If a thing exists, it is available to the market.  If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its price.



> The owner's decision not to sell at a given price


Self-contradiction.  It that is its price, he sells it for that price by definition.



> is precisely what EXCLUDES it from being counted as available to the market (supply) _at that price_.


No, the fact that the owner doesn't sell it proves that _isn't_ its price.



> You are attempting to count the aggregate total of a thing in existence that _might possibly_ otherwise be available AT ANY POSSIBLE PRICE (or at any possible time in the future) and calling that "the entire supply available to the market".


That is exactly right, because _that is what "price" means_.



> That is absolutely incorrect. That's how a supply curve is created, NOT how supply itself is counted.


The supply curve IS supply, and the supply curve for land is a vertical line, meaning the supply of land is fixed: whatever the price, it all trades at that price, no more and no less.



> Since actual supply available to the market is dependent upon the quantity sellers are willing to part with _for a given price_, supply is plotted as *individual coordinates on a supply curve, the plot points of which are specified reference prices* -- not the entire curve, not the maximum supply possible on that curve, and not the aggregate total based on the possibility that any of it could sell if the price was high enough.


Any price is by definition high enough.  The only point of talking about supply at a given price is that for products of labor, a higher price will stimulate additional production.  But as land is not produced, its price is irrelevant to supply.

I suspect you will not be able to wrap your head around that.



> Whatever sellers will not part with at a given price, for ANY REASON, is not counted on that part of the curve as part of the supply for that price.


If that's the price, the sellers DO part with it, by definition.  PRODUCERS MIGHT JUST NOT DECIDE TO PRODUCE IT.



> That includes land that is publicly or privately withheld from the market at a given price for any reason whatsoever -- even if the reason for withholding it from sale is not related to price.


There is no such thing as "withholding from the market" at a given price.  It is self-contradictory.  There is only such a thing as DECIDING NOT TO PRODUCE at a given price -- but that means the item IS TRADING for that price.



> If you have an economist, economics paper or textbook entry that states otherwise, cite the source, as I would very much like to read it.  Show me otherwise. Don't tell me, using your own rationale and trying to pass that off as basic economics. Show me. Arguments backed by actual sources. 
> 
> I'll answer your other post after we settle this once and for all.  Good luck.


Show me an economist, economics paper or textbook that says a price is any amount other than the amount a thing trades for.

----------


## Steven Douglas

Beautiful. Let's roll. 




> Here's one from Investopedia, YOUR OWN SOURCE:
> 
> "Definition of 'Supply'
> A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers."
> 
> http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1slRO3sIy
> 
> Supply is the available amount.


You omitted the most important part. Here's the entire paragraph from that source you accepted:




> A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers. *Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph.* This relates closely to the demand for a good or service at a specific price; all else being equal, the supply provided by producers will rise if the price rises because all firms look to maximize profits.
> 
> Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#ixzz1spRrFHGp





> Price is what a thing trades for.  IF AN ITEM DOES NOT TRADE FOR A GIVEN AMOUNT, THAT IS NOT ITS PRICE.


Correct! And if it does not trade for a given amount, it cannot be considered "available to the market", given that it never traded _for that amount_.  See how that works?  




> You probably hold the naive view that if a store has a price sticker on an item, that is its price.  But in fact, that is only its price if someone actually buys it for that amount.  Otherwise, it is just a hope.


Thank you.  And no, I understood completely, and knew that's where you would go with it. We don't have a conflict on the definition of price, Roy. We have a conflict on the definition of SUPPLY, and your misuse of the word.  Keep reading.




> Similarly, we can only say that a given amount of money is the "price" of a parcel of land IF THE LAND TRADES FOR THAT AMOUNT.


Thank you again, and you are correct again. We're getting somewhere!  




> That is what makes the supply of land fixed: ALL THE LAND TRADES FOR ITS PRICE, NO MORE AND NO LESS, because price is _defined as_ the amount an item trades for.


And you were doing fine until this. Your wagon wheels fall off with your misapprehension of supply as it relates to price. It also explains why you might have left out the complete quote I provided, which comes in very handy, because now we are talking about supply as it relates to price:

*Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph.*

The problem is, where do we plot the supply of something that exists but has never traded for a price, or isn't available for trade at any price?  Technically we can't even plot it, because it has never traded, and therefore has yet to have a price established.  




> If a thing exists, it is available to the market.  If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its price.


Oops.  Remember? That "isn't its price" _because it hasn't traded_.

I accept your premise, for the sake of discussion, that anything that already exists COULD trade on the market.  But that does not change the economic definition of supply, and is also where your price trap slams shut on you.  

Like you said, _there is no price until a thing actually trades_.  Thus, for a thing to be considered "available to the market at a specific price (since we are talking about supply as it relates to economics) - there has to be an actual trade!  That's how you know it was "available" to the market _at that price_. 

So to correct your sentence once again for completeness and accuracy:

If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its the price at which it is considered available to the market. 




> The supply curve IS supply...


Circular reference, and also the source of your misapprehension - your incomplete understanding of supply. You can't use the same word to define a word, and you can't jump conveniently from a economic definition to a common definition. It doesn't work that way.  The curve itself is nothing but a string of individual "quantity per specific price" points, each with their own meaning as it relates to supply.  You can only pull points off the curve to see what the supply was at a given price.  You can't take an entire supply curve and extrapolate a "supply" meaning that simply isn't there, because for each SPECIFIC PRICE point the QUANTITY SUPPLIED answer will be different! 

That's what I meant when I said "collectivized" reasoning.  You're trying to collectivize a curve into a single answer, which is absolutely meaningless.  Saying "the supply curve IS supply" is like saying "the speedometer IS the speed", or "the voltmeter IS volts!". 

Some more reading for you:




> Economists have a very precise definition of supply. Economists describe supply as the relationship between the quantity of a good or service consumers will offer for sale and the price charged for that good. More precisely and formally supply can be thought of as *"the total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase at a given price."*
> 
> *What Supply Is Not:*
> 
> Supply is not simply the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, such as '5 oranges' or '17 pairs of boots', because supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good. *The specific quantity desired to sell of a good at a given price is known as the quantity supplied.* Typically a time period is also given when describing quantity supplied.
> 
> Read more at http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm


So just as supply is not the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, it is also not the amount of land, total or parceled, Earth has on its shelf. You cannot even discuss supply of a thing in economic terms _except in terms of its relation to a specific given price_ -- the amount a thing actually trades for -- which then establishes the "quantity supplied".  




> ...and the supply curve for land is a vertical line...


Absolutely incorrect. Land is parceled, and different parcels trade for different amounts (read=are supplied at a given price) at different times.  Some land never trades at all. You can say "that's not its price", but that's silly, because price, by economic definition, requires a trade. And actual transaction.




> ...meaning the supply of land is fixed: whatever the price, it all trades at that price, no more and no less.


Gibberish - which is understandable, given your utter lack of understanding of the economic concept of supply, which is to say amount available to the market and its dependent relationship on price (what it actually trades for). 




> There is no such thing as "withholding from the market" at a given price. It is self-contradictory.


Incorrect in the absolute.  To sum up:

a) Supply is defined as "_quantity made available to the market at a specific price_".  Hence,
b) Supply is a dependent relationship between the quantity of a thing AT the price it actually trades for.
c) *Omit price and you are no longer talking about the economic definition of supply.* 
d) Like you said, price is not established until a trade actually occurs. _Ergo_,
e) The "quantity made available to the market" (supply, or quantity supplied), which is completely dependent on price, is also not established until a trade actually occurs. 

Are you getting it yet?  

 Since price is dependent on an event that occurs in real time, real market supply is nothing but an historical snapshot in time based on actual transactions - a quantity traded at a given price.  If it wasn't traded at a given price, it cannot appear as "quantity supplied" at that price. 

*BONUS ROUND*




> But as land is not produced, its price is irrelevant to supply.


And that's where you went off the deep end, because the economic definition of supply is inextricably linked to and wholly DEPENDENT on price (which is, as you correctly pointed out, dependent on an actual trade). So it price is not just "not irrelevant" - it is absolutely dependent, and has nothing to do with whether it is produced by anyone or not.  Land, like fixed quantities of works of dead artists, is no exception to the supply rule.  That's another huge source of your misapprehension (love that word).  

I produce widgets for the semiconductor industry. But I also purchase and resell surplus widgets - at a MUCH higher profit margin (most factors of production paid for by someone else, once upon a time). Lots of them. A small warehouse full, in fact.  These were already produced, sold, used by industry and later discarded as junk. I buy at junk prices, clean and recalibrate them because of my special knowledge, equipment and skills, and put them on my shelf as part of my inventory, as they wait to become part of the actual "supply" (as defined in economics).   

Sometimes I get these widgets as finished goods, still in their original packaging. Like parcels of land, I "might" put some capital and labor into the widgets (factors of production to finished goods) to make them more saleable - sometimes not, but never much in either case. The "supply" of these widgets available to the market is based on the amount that I actually trade them for at a given price (the actual economic definition of supply).  And I have FULL control how much _I_ choose to make available for supply at any specific price level. That has nothing to do with whether or not I produced them, or whether that price level (my willingness to offer it for sale at that amount) will be established as the actual price based on a transaction.

There are companies, on the other hand, that would like to buy these widgets for $500 a piece, as they have full control over their demand, or amount they would be willing to purchase for a given price level.  But I don't make these widget available for $500, so they never actually trade at that amount, and cannot therefore be considered that price, let alone the supply at that price. I would like to get $2,000 a piece for them, but since absolutely none of my customers are willing to pay that amount, none of these widgets are ever considered part of the economic supply at that price either. The optimum price, historically, is around $750 per widget. That is about 70% of new, and the price at which the profits and quantity sold PER UNIT OF TIME are maximized. 

Your biggest problem with understanding this as it relates to land is that while you may argue that land may not be produced (cannot be considered a factor of production), you cannot argue that it is immune to the laws of supply and demand, or the economic definition of supply -- else there could be no LVT to even propose.  The "supply" of land, economically speaking, is not fixed because the economic definition of supply is absolutely dependent on quantity _at a given price_ -- the actual quantity of land that actually trades for a specific price at a given point in time.  

Show me an economist who thinks that land (or any scarce, finite resource) has a different economic definition when it comes to supply.

----------


## oyarde

Obviously , I have not read this thread , otherwise , I would have to get , at , least one bottle of 100 proof Old Grand Dad and drink it before I shot myself . However , let us not stray . Liberty , no person , but Jesus , should get a free pass to tax my lands . If you feel you must , I offer you only the revolver , the Whiskey is for me to celebrate after you are gone . For those that disagree , I have a plan to satisfy all , the govt owns most lands , they can tax the living $#@! out of themselves at whatever rate they see fit and deduct it from govt employee checks, not authorized , by Article One , Section Eight . If anyone disagrees , please send me a pm and I will give you an address to mail donations to my Foundation . Thank you and good night all .

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## Steven Douglas

> The supply curve for land is a vertical line.  Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.


There are two cases I can think of in a free market where a supply curve would be truly vertical, in that the supply is available at all prices:  

1) Quantity supplied by the seller is FREE (e.g., freeware or donations in exchange for something, where you may pay nothing or anything you want), or 
2) An auction, where the quantity supplied may be any amount at any price, as buyers compete, and the seller accepts any outcome.  

In the case of LVT the supply curve for land (to begin with at least) could be truly vertical. Emphasis on _'could be'_. This would ONLY be true on the condition that LVT behaves purely as an auction, with ABSOLUTELY NO FLOOR (no minimum bid or reserve requirement of any kind). If there is no provision made for ZERO PRICE as an acceptable outcome, then the supply curve is anything but vertical.  But let's pretend that a penny (or whatever is the absolute smallest unit of monetary exchange) counts as nothing, so that we have a vertical straight line supply curve that's "close enough for government work".  If someone bids .01 cent (per unit of time per specific quantity of landholding), and nobody else answers that with a higher bid, and the "provider/controller" of the supply accepted this amount, that would then be counted as the economic "supply" or quantity of land at that specific price.  

The vertical supply curve rule, however, would only remain true if each subsequent auction began with the same conditions: no floor, no minimum bid, no reserve amount (a penny notwithstanding or quibbled over).  Otherwise we would have a supply curve (over time) that is anything but vertical.   

That's the PRICE component of the supply curve.  The QUANTITY AVAILABLE component is also a factor of economic supply, which cannot be disregarded. Whatever land is not available at a given price, _for any reason_, cannot be counted as part of the "available supply" at that [proposed] price.  (Roy's semantics games on price and inability to understand how it affects supply notwithstanding)

The community capital building lawn and the local park, for example, will not have supply curves that are vertical.  The community is likely not going to be charging itself for land rents on these lands, nor is it going to respond favorably to my .01 cent offer for any of them.  If I offer a gazillion for use of those particular lands accommodations would likely be made, and even these lands would likely be made available, but the supply curve would also not be vertical, but rather somewhere between .01 cent and a gazillion per unit of land per time.   

The problem with using the vertical supply curve scenario for land as a rationale for LVT is that it *DOES NOT APPLY* to a propertarian landownership regime.  Which is also I'm sure why Roy doesn't want to think in terms of anything but an anti-propertarian framework, which is the only 'reality' he wants everyone to consider.  In a landownership regime the supply curve for almost all land is anything but vertical, as it is not in most cases treated as a no-floor/no-minimum-bid-or-reserve auction, and the seller is not forced to make anything available to the market at any proposed price. As such, the supply curve behaves much the same way for land as it would any other scarce/finite resource.

----------


## Roy L

> *LVT vs. CVT*
> 
> I think that land is a legitimate subject of ownership,


For the exact same reasons slave owners think slaves are legitimate subjects of ownership.  Right.



> so it is unavoidable for me to believe taxing it would be theft.


Actually, that's nothing but a massive non sequitur fallacy.



> Just so, you would believe that taxing me for using a computer would be theft, I think.


You mean the way Bill Gates taxes people for using computers?  Could be.



> The LVT advocates will claim that it is not the worst thing in the world to lose your land due to inability to pay your LVT.


No, the LVT advocates merely observe that there is no way it could ever rightly have become "your" land in the sense that the product of your labor is rightly yours.  We also observe that far from being the worst thing in the world when an unproductive user yields possession of a resource to a more productive user, such improved efficiency of allocation is actually one of the benefits of living in a free market system.  You just do not want a free market system.  You want a system of forcible theft, where a greedy, privileged, parasitic minority of thieves takes from the productive and contributes nothing in return.



> If you cannot pay, there is some very good reason for that.  It will be due to taxes increasing but the profitability of your use of the land remaining stable, or perhaps even the profitibility of your land use going down, or any scenario wherin the tax of the land becomes more than the value you're getting from the land.


I.e., where someone else will use the land more productively, and you decide you don't want to subsidize your own inefficiency out of your other assets.



> Let's take the example of a farmer on the edge of an expanding city.  He's a hold-out, he wants to keep farming, but "society" would find it more valuable for his land to be converted to condos.  Now under my own preferred system of freedom, he can just keep farming as long as he likes, forever, no one can stop him.


But as you know, that is not a system of "freedom" at all.  You are just lying.  Your farmer is forcibly depriving others of their freedom to use the land, a freedom they would certainly enjoy if he did not deprive them of it, and is making no effort to compensate them for what he is depriving them of.



> They can offer him huge wads of money to change his mind, but they cannot use force.


Right: under your preferred system of plunder and enslavement, _he_ is the one who is privileged to use force against others, and they are deprived even of their right of self-defense.  They must meekly allow him to murder them, just as private landowners murder millions of innocent people every year.



> That's the best situation for him.


Right.  And because under your system he has rights and others do not, the fact that it is not the best -- is indeed a horrible -- situation for them is ignored.  Your basic principle is that it is better for millions of non-landowners to be murdered than for even one single landowner to suffer the intolerable inconvenience of moving to land better suited to his needs and means.

Of course, it is possible that there is a more evil view on land than that.  I'm just trying to think of one....

Nope.  Couldn't do it.  Sorry.



> But under LVT, if the tax is high that means there are a number of buyers lined up willing to pay a high price for the land, and so our recalcitrant farmer can take their money and use it to buy double the acreage somewhere else.  Not too bad a deal, eh?


Not quite.  LVT removes the exchange value of land.  The willing buyers will be paying the high price to the community for the value it created, not him.  Why on earth would they pay _him_?  He didn't do anything to earn the money.

So actually, under LVT he can sell the fixed improvements he has made (in your scenario they will likely be worth little or nothing), but he can't charge others for the land value the community created.  This means landholders will be subject to the same free market discipline that currently encourages capitalists and entrepreneurs to invest in capital wisely and efficiently, and not to waste resources on equipment, buildings, etc. that won't pay for themselves.



> So I agree with LVT advocates that this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But neither would it be the worst thing if you had this same set-up for capital goods.


But it would nevertheless be a much worse thing than having that set-up for land, for reasons that have been demonstrated to you many times: taxing capital goods will reduce the supply of capital goods below an efficient level; taxing land will not reduce the supply of land at all.  In fact, it will make more land available as speculators disgorge what they are hoarding out of use.



> You charge a CVT (capital value tax) on capital goods, determined based on assessors, market prices, and some sophisticated computer model Roy L. has. Just like LVT.


Except that the value of capital goods comes from their producers, and therefore ultimately from the people who paid the producers to produce them.  You seem to lose track of little details like that rather easily, Helmuth.



> The owners of injection molds and CNC lathes would then pay an annual tax. Normally, as long as they were putting them to reasonably good use they'd be able to afford the tax. If the tax is high and the factory can't afford the tax, there is some very good reason. We can assume there are many buyers waiting in line to pay the higher price of the machines. Perhaps society needs every available unit of a specialized machine the factory has, in order to produce the new iPhone which is in a desperate shortage. The owner is lucky to be in such a position! With the money, he can buy even better machines and twice as many, and manufacture to his heart's delight.


That is roughly the line of reasoning Louis XIV's finance minister, Colbert, used to justify a 10% tax on capital (being evil, he of course opposed taxing land).  The result of this tax was that over the course of about the next 50 years, France was effectively de-industrialized, and the mantle of industrial, economic and technological leadership passed to England (a similar process is occurring now, as the USA deindustrializes itself in favor of more-geoist China by such measures as property tax reductions, massive subsidies to greedy parasites in the financial and real estate sectors, etc.).  A few decades later, the relentlessly increasing poverty and oppression of the ancien regime plunged France into revolution and the Terror.  Something similar will also happen in the USA.  People who claim a tax on land is like a tax on capital are always very willing to destroy their own countries to preserve the unearned wealth and incomes of the greedy, privileged parasites they serve.  But of course, in the end it never works, and all are swept away by either the anger of the oppressed or the competition from more enlightened societies.



> But if you believe in an absolute property right in capital goods, such a CVT would still be theft.


But not as unambiguously as landowning is theft.



> One other thing I wanted to respond to is the alleged metaphysical difference between a factory and land, that of the land already being there, while the factory, allegedly, isn't.


The distinction, more accurately, is that the land is already there _without any help from its owner or anyone else._  The factory most certainly isn't.  It has to be built.  That is indisputable.  However, I am aware that you need to contrive some way of not knowing the fact that a factory is produced by labor and land is not.



> But it is.  It's already there.  It's already been built.  The factory's existence is a fact of life.  It's a done deal.


Not like the presence of the land is a done deal: the land's existence was a done deal long before the factory's.  You know this.



> The same efficiency argument applies to it as to the land: it's there anyway, so let's tax whoever owns it to force them into increased efficiency by lowering their profit margins.


Garbage.  The factory is not "there anyway."  That is just a lie from you.  It has to be maintained.  Tax it, and the owner will start thinking about insurance, arson, and putting his money into a safe and profitable untaxed investment like land, instead.  Of course, that's just fine with you.  Who needs factories when landowners, those Heroes of Entrepreneurial Productivity, can produce any amount of value they like by just bidding up the prices of each other's land?  It certainly worked for Japan in the 1980s.  I was there, and they thought just the way you do: "It's great that Japan's landowners are getting rich for doing nothing!  Our banks are the biggest and strongest, and the money is just flowing like water!  We'll buy up the whole world by just borrowing against our own constantly rising land values!"



> Taxing the factory doesn't make the factory disappear, any more than taxing land makes _it_ disappear.


That's what Colbert thought.  But he was grotesquely, catastrophically wrong, and so are you.

I guess as you have never read any economics other than stupid propertarian sites like mises.org, you are unaware of the famous example of Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ottoman ruler of Egypt, who decided it would be a good idea to tax date palms -- and then wondered why there was a shortage of dates after the people cut down all the date palms.



> It just gets run more efficiently.  In fact, remember, if the factory were to be abandoned, it eventually would become philosophically land.


And thus relieved of the burden of taxation.  Which is very much the point.  The practical results of your idiotic anti-economic nonsense can be seen in every blighted neighborhood full of abandoned buildings and trash-filled vacant lots in any major American city.  



> In Will Smith's "I Am Legend" New York,  (leaving aside the property rights of the zombies) all the skyscrapers, the cars, the gasoline, the canned food... these are all "land" for him.  They are all just provided to him by nature as far as from an ethical or economic point of view.  So why wait for it to be abandoned?  Tax it now!


Maybe because we don't want factories to be abandoned?



> Now taxing factory owners does provide a disincentive going forward to build *more* factories, but so does taxing the Universe provide a disincentive going forward to open up more parts and resources of the Universe to productive use.


No, it does not.  It provides precisely accurate incentives to utilize every resource in the most efficient and appropriate way.



> And while land and factories may be metaphysically unable to disappear,


Wrong.  Factories are very metaphysically able to disappear.



> yet you tax them too much and even the existing land and factories will be abandoned, and crumble or go fallow.


LVT cannot tax land too much (assuming it is administered competently), because it cannot exceed the land rent.



> They will cease to exist _in the economy_.  This goes back to what I keep saying: the amount of land in the economy can increase or decrease, and does all the time.  It's not fixed at all!


Wrong again.  Even if it is unused, land is still very much "in the economy," as any land speculator could inform you, if you were willing to be informed.



> So all our disagreements really just come down to the moral question: Is land a legitimate subject of ownership?


Nonsense.  You just refuse to know the facts of economics that demonstrate the crushing superiority of LVT over other taxes independently of the moral status of landowning.



> If it is, then the free land party is right.


No, because making land private property is the very antithesis of "free land."  The _actual_ free land party is the LVT + individual exemption party, because that really _does_ make _good_ land _free_: free to acquire, and free to use exclusively, for everyone.  Calling the land appropriation party the "free land" party is like calling the atmosphere appropriation party the "free air" party: having to pay a greedy parasite rent for air to breathe is not "free air" any more than having to pay a greedy parasite rent for land to live on is "free land."  To claim otherwise is grotesquely dishonest.



> If it is not, then the proposals of the socialize land party, while they will cause economic destruction (land being abandoned and going fallow as mentioned above, among other problems)


Nope.  That's just a stupid lie, refuted above.  The only land that could be abandoned under LVT is land that has inefficiently been pressed into use by speculators holding the better land vacant.  Some land SHOULD be abandoned, because the resources needed to make it productive would be more productively applied elsewhere.  But there is probably very little of it.



> at least they have a moral basis of sorts: no human can justly own land, so we should have the government (a group of such humans) own the land.


No, just administer its possession and use, as government does in any case, and as a trustee does.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> The supply curve for land is a vertical line.  Whatever the price, there is the same amount of land available.


 Consider exploration, and other expansionary acts, extending the reach of civilization to heretofore unreachable, and thus valueless and irrelevant, natural resources (also known as "land").  Oceanic voyages, oil drilling, space colonization, etc., all increase the amount of economically relevant land.

----------


## Roy L

> Consider exploration, and other expansionary acts, extending the reach of civilization to heretofore unreachable, and thus valueless and irrelevant, natural resources (also known as "land").  Oceanic voyages, oil drilling, space colonization, etc., all increase the amount of economically relevant land.


But not the supply.  Many factors increase the _value_ of resources without increasing their _supply_.  All the "irrelevant" land is merely available for a price of zero (unless speculators appropriate it and start charging in advance for access to whatever opportunities government and the community will create there in the future).

----------


## Roy L

> There are two cases I can think of in a free market where a supply curve would be truly vertical, in that the supply is available at all prices:  
> 
> 1) Quantity supplied by the seller is FREE (e.g., freeware or donations in exchange for something, where you may pay nothing or anything you want), or 
> 2) An auction, where the quantity supplied may be any amount at any price, as buyers compete, and the seller accepts any outcome.


For better or worse, reality and the facts of economics are not governed by what you can think of.  Hope that isn't too much of a shock to your system.



> In the case of LVT the supply curve for land (to begin with at least) could be truly vertical. Emphasis on _'could be'_. This would ONLY be true on the condition that LVT behaves purely as an auction, with ABSOLUTELY NO FLOOR (no minimum bid or reserve requirement of any kind). If there is no provision made for ZERO PRICE as an acceptable outcome, then the supply curve is anything but vertical.  But let's pretend that a penny (or whatever is the absolute smallest unit of monetary exchange) counts as nothing, so that we have a vertical straight line supply curve that's "close enough for government work".  If someone bids .01 cent (per unit of time per specific quantity of landholding), and nobody else answers that with a higher bid, and the "provider/controller" of the supply accepted this amount, that would then be counted as the economic "supply" or quantity of land at that specific price.


And it's the same no matter what the price.



> The vertical supply curve rule, however, would only remain true if each subsequent auction began with the same conditions: no floor, no minimum bid, no reserve amount (a penny notwithstanding or quibbled over).  Otherwise we would have a supply curve (over time) that is anything but vertical.


No, we wouldn't.



> That's the PRICE component of the supply curve.  The QUANTITY AVAILABLE component is also a factor of economic supply, which cannot be disregarded. Whatever land is not available at a given price, _for any reason_, cannot be counted as part of the "available supply" at that [proposed] price.


You again prove you do not understand what price is.  All land is available at its price.



> (Roy's semantics games on price and inability to understand how it affects supply notwithstanding)


<sigh>  *Fixed* supply *MEANS* that price does *not* affect supply.



> The community capital building lawn and the local park, for example, will not have supply curves that are vertical.


They will.



> The community is likely not going to be charging itself for land rents on these lands, nor is it going to respond favorably to my .01 cent offer for any of them.


It effectively charges itself rent by foregoing the rent others would pay, and this would likely be recognized with appropriate entries in the community's accounts.



> If I offer a gazillion for use of those particular lands accommodations would likely be made, and even these lands would likely be made available, but the supply curve would also not be vertical, but rather somewhere between .01 cent and a gazillion per unit of land per time.


The lands are *already* available, and are being used.  Duh.



> The problem with using the vertical supply curve scenario for land as a rationale for LVT is that it *DOES NOT APPLY* to a propertarian landownership regime.


Yes, it does, as explained.



> Which is also I'm sure why Roy doesn't want to think in terms of anything but an anti-propertarian framework, which is the only 'reality' he wants everyone to consider.  In a landownership regime the supply curve for almost all land is anything but vertical, as it is not in most cases treated as a no-floor/no-minimum-bid-or-reserve auction, and the seller is not forced to make anything available to the market at any proposed price.


You again prove you do not know what price is.



> As such, the supply curve behaves much the same way for land as it would any other scarce/finite resource.


Any other NATURAL resource, which is fixed in supply and therefore has a vertical supply curve.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> But not the supply.


 Amount = supply.  A asteroid off in space does not exist economically right now.  It's not doing anything, it's not relevant, it doesn't exist.  I spend a lot of money and launch an expedition.  I set up camp there and start mining noble metals.  Now it exists.  I just increased the amount of natural resources at humanity's disposal.  I just increased the supply of "land" in the economic sense (land in the economic sense, as we all know, is the "raw natural resources" component, or factor, utilized in the production of goods).

You will never admit this, I know, because that's not your style, nor will you even let slip any clue that you so much as understand me, but I nevertheless believe that by now you do understand my point.  And you probably even realize that I'm right.  So, that's that.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Amount = supply.  A asteroid off in space does not exist economically right now.  It's not doing anything, it's not relevant, it doesn't exist.


It does exist. 




> I spend a lot of money and launch an expedition.  I set up camp there and start mining noble metals.  Now it exists.


Obviously, it existed already.




> I just increased the amount of natural resources at humanity's disposal.  I just increased the supply of "land" in the economic sense (land in the economic sense, as we all know, is the "raw natural resources" component, or factor, utilized in the production of goods).


No, you increased the amount of wealth.  The asteroid was already there, ready to use.  By mining it, you turned the extracted bits into wealth.




> You will never admit this, I know, because that's not your style, nor will you even let slip any clue that you so much as understand me, but I nevertheless believe that by now you do understand my point.  And you probably even realize that I'm right.  So, that's that.


You should now understand that you're irretrievably wrong.

----------


## Roy L

> Amount = supply.


Bingo.



> A asteroid off in space does not exist economically right now.  It's not doing anything, it's not relevant, it doesn't exist.


It does exist.  You are telling an absurd lie.  As I predicted you would.



> I spend a lot of money and launch an expedition.  I set up camp there and start mining noble metals.  Now it exists.


Helmuth, I would never dare to suggest that you are so stupid that you would spend a lot of money and launch an expedition to an asteroid that does not exist, and I won't stand for you saying it, either.  You spent that money and launched that expedition precisely because that asteroid DID exist, and you knew it.  So please apologize to yourself and retract your claim.



> I just increased the amount of natural resources at humanity's disposal.


So now you're not part of humanity...?  How could you set up camp and start mining an asteroid that was not at your disposal?



> I just increased the supply of "land" in the economic sense (land in the economic sense, as we all know, is the "raw natural resources" component, or factor, utilized in the production of goods).


No, you didn't.  Unused land is still land whether it is in the middle of Manhattan or on the fringes of the galaxy.  You just started using land that was already there.  You know this.  You didn't spend that money and fire off that rocket aimed at nothing.  To claim that you did is nothing but a lie and an absurdity, which I predicted you would resort to, as you know.

Quit trying to make me look like a prophet.



> You will never admit this, I know, because that's not your style, nor will you even let slip any clue that you so much as understand me, but I nevertheless believe that by now you do understand my point.  And you probably even realize that I'm right.  So, that's that.


ROTFL!!  Of course I understand you, Helmuth.  I understand you perfectly, in fact much better than you understand yourself.  That is very much your problem.  YOU need to understand that you don't get to "right" by telling me absurd lies.  You should know that by now.

----------


## Roy L

> You omitted the most important part.


No, I didn't, stop lying.



> Here's the entire paragraph from that source you accepted:


Which reconfirms what I said.



> And if it does not trade for a given amount, it cannot be considered "available to the market", given that it never traded _for that amount_.


??  Yes, of course it can, don't be stupid.



> See how that works?


I see that you are just makin' stupid $#!+ up to waste my time.



> We don't have a conflict on the definition of price, Roy. We have a conflict on the definition of SUPPLY, and your misuse of the word.  Keep reading.


You do not know what price is, you continue to use the word incorrectly, and you consequently don't know what supply is, either.



> We're getting somewhere!


If only!



> Your wagon wheels fall off with your misapprehension of supply as it relates to price.


I am correct and you are wrong.



> It also explains why you might have left out the complete quote I provided, which comes in very handy, because now we are talking about supply as it relates to price:


You are actually talking about something else.  I don't know what, and won't hazard a guess.  Your post is starting to look like what Matt suggested: a filibuster.



> *Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph.*


And fixed supply means those amounts are the same.



> The problem is, where do we plot the supply of something that exists but has never traded for a price, or isn't available for trade at any price?  Technically we can't even plot it, because it has never traded, and therefore has yet to have a price established.


We plot it at the amount that exists, because that is the amount that will trade at its price.  Claiming it "isn't available for trade at any price" is question begging.



> Oops.  Remember? That "isn't its price" _because it hasn't traded_.


Oops, that's what I just told you, oops.



> But that does not change the economic definition of supply, and is also where your price trap slams shut on you.


<yawn>  Speaking of shutting traps...



> Like you said, _there is no price until a thing actually trades_.  Thus, for a thing to be considered "available to the market at a specific price (since we are talking about supply as it relates to economics) - there has to be an actual trade!


Your idea of a "specific price" is incoherent, as the price is specifically what the item trades for, no more, no less.



> That's how you know it was "available" to the market _at that price_.


Garbage.  It's available to the market at that price because that is what price MEANS.



> So to correct your sentence once again for completeness and accuracy:


I.e., to lie about what I said and the facts of economics...



> If a thing is not for sale for some given amount, it just means that isn't its the price at which it is considered available to the market.


No, it just means that's not its price.



> Circular reference, and also the source of your misapprehension - your incomplete understanding of supply.


There is nothing circular about it, stop lying, and it is you who do not understand supply.



> You can't use the same word to define a word,


I trust it was obvious that by "the supply curve" I didn't mean the drawing on a piece of paper or a computer screen, but the relationship of quantity to price that that drawing represents.  Maybe you're not even *that* clued in, though...



> and you can't jump conveniently from a economic definition to a common definition.


I didn't.



> The curve itself is nothing but a string of individual "quantity per specific price" points, each with their own meaning as it relates to supply.


I have no idea what you imagine that means, if anything, which I doubt.



> You can only pull points off the curve to see what the supply was at a given price.


Would be, not was.



> You can't take an entire supply curve and extrapolate a "supply" meaning that simply isn't there, because for each SPECIFIC PRICE point the QUANTITY SUPPLIED answer will be different!


Unless supply is fixed, as the supply of land is.



> That's what I meant when I said "collectivized" reasoning.  You're trying to collectivize a curve into a single answer, which is absolutely meaningless.


Huh?



> Saying "the supply curve IS supply" is like saying "the speedometer IS the speed", or "the voltmeter IS volts!"


Nonsense.  The supply curve does not measure supply, it describes supply.



> Some more reading for you:


I guess you missed this bit:

"supply represents *the entire relationship* between the quantity available for sale and *all possible prices* charged for that good."



> So just as supply is not the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, it is also not the amount of land, total or parceled, Earth has on its shelf.


Yes, it is, because unlike the number of boots or oranges a store has on its shelf, the supply of land earth has on its shelf is *fixed*.  Read the damned sentence you so unwisely just told me to read, from YOUR OWN SOURCE:

"Supply is not simply the number of an item a shopkeeper has on the shelf, such as '5 oranges' or '17 pairs of boots', because *supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices* charged for that good.



> You cannot even discuss supply of a thing in economic terms _except in terms of its relation to a specific given price_ -- the amount a thing actually trades for -- which then establishes the "quantity supplied".


Wrong.  Discussions of supply are typically all about hypothetical prices.



> Absolutely incorrect. Land is parceled, and different parcels trade for different amounts (read=are supplied at a given price) at different times.


LOL!  You could with equal "logic" claim that the supply of paintings by dead artists is not fixed (vertical supply curve) because different ones sell for different prices at different times.



> Some land never trades at all. You can say "that's not its price", but that's silly, because price, by economic definition, requires a trade.


So, why would it be "silly" to remind you of that fact?

Oh.  Right.



> Gibberish - which is understandable, given your utter lack of understanding of the economic concept of supply, which is to say amount available to the market and its dependent relationship on price (what it actually trades for).


<sigh>  The amount of land available to the market is NOT dependent on price.  The amount of land that trades for its price is the same no matter what that price is.  That is very much the point.



> Incorrect in the absolute.


It is definitely correct, and in fact true by definition.



> a) Supply is defined as "_quantity made available to the market at a specific price_".


Or the relationship of quantity to price over all prices.



> Hence, b) Supply is a dependent relationship between the quantity of a thing AT the price it actually trades for.


Cannot parse.



> c) *Omit price and you are no longer talking about the economic definition of supply.*


Wrong.  The supply curve describes a relationship over all prices, not just one price.



> d) Like you said, price is not established until a trade actually occurs. _Ergo_,
> e) The "quantity made available to the market" (supply, or quantity supplied), which is completely dependent on price, is also not established until a trade actually occurs.


Garbage.  The quantity is NOT completely -- or in any way -- dependent on price when supply is fixed, and it is indisputably self-contradictory to claim that an item is not available to the market until it actually trades.  How could it trade if it was not available to the market?  You have again descended into absurdity, striving mightily to make me look like a prophet.



> Are you getting it yet?


If by "it" you mean "incredulous," yes.



> Since price is dependent on an event that occurs in real time, real market supply is nothing but an historical snapshot in time based on actual transactions - a quantity traded at a given price.  If it wasn't traded at a given price, it cannot appear as "quantity supplied" at that price.


As proved above, an item does not have to trade to be available to the market, and therefore part of supply.



> And that's where you went off the deep end, because the economic definition of supply is inextricably linked to and wholly DEPENDENT on price (which is, as you correctly pointed out, dependent on an actual trade).


How can an actual trade occur if the item is not *already* available to the market?

<crickets>



> So it price is not just "not irrelevant" - it is absolutely dependent, and has nothing to do with whether it is produced by anyone or not.  Land, like fixed quantities of works of dead artists, is no exception to the supply rule.  That's another huge source of your misapprehension (love that word).


More garbage.  Works of dead artists are a canonical example of fixed supply.



> The "supply" of these widgets available to the market is based on the amount that I actually trade them for at a given price (the actual economic definition of supply).  And I have FULL control how much _I_ choose to make available for supply at any specific price level. That has nothing to do with whether or not I produced them,


That's clearly false.  If you weren't producing them, you'd have no control.



> or whether that price level (my willingness to offer it for sale at that amount) will be established as the actual price based on a transaction.


Incoherent.



> Your biggest problem with understanding this as it relates to land is that while you may argue that land may not be produced (cannot be considered a factor of production),


<sigh>  Wrong.  Land is the factor of production that by definition* is not* produced.



> you cannot argue that it is immune to the laws of supply and demand, or the economic definition of supply -- else there could be no LVT to even propose.


<yawn>  Those "laws of supply and demand" are presumably the same ones that resurrected Michelangelo from the dead and made him produce more paintings and sculptures...



> The "supply" of land, economically speaking, is not fixed because the economic definition of supply is absolutely dependent on quantity _at a given price_ -- the actual quantity of land that actually trades for a specific price at a given point in time.


How much land trades at its price?  Is that amount altered by how much the price is?



> Show me an economist who thinks that land (or any scarce, finite resource) has a different economic definition when it comes to supply.


It's the elasticity that is different, not the definition.

Show me one who thinks the supply of original works by dead artists is not fixed.

Thought not.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Any other NATURAL resource, which is fixed in supply and therefore has a vertical supply curve.


Roy, you don't know what price is as it relates to supply, because you confuse two different uses of the word (the ASK price vs. actual market price).

You also don't understand supply, or "available to the market" is it relates to a seller's *willingness* to make a given quantity available to the market at a given price. You argue that "price" is only established after a trade has been made, and I tried to go along with that in order to make a point, but it's actually wrong.  That's the market price only, which does NOT control the ASK price, which is _the only thing_  used to to determine supply on a supply curve.  

Here's a chart, a simplified version of a more general figure representing a comprehensive ABM market model described elsewhere (Filatova, Parker et al. 2007; Filatova , van der Veen et al. 2007; Parker and Filatova 2008))   that illustrates this, including the supply/price relationship in economics:



Note how the actual market price of land is differentiated from the Ask price in the Ask formation. The "actual land price" or "market price" is to the right of SUPPLY SIDE. This is determined by actual transactions (i.e., when Bid=Ask ---> MARKET TRANSACTION). This market price (established, and always in the past) is no longer part of the supply, but only serves as informational feedback  that helps both sellers and buyers in their future "Ask price formation" and  "Bid price formation", respectively.  But in a free market neither are bound by it, which is why market price (past) does not control supply or demand (present) which, when consummated as future transactions, determine future market price.  

The *DEMAND SIDE* and *SUPPLY SIDE* (Bid/Ask formation) occur BEFORE market price is established, and as separate entities, which come together during the *PRICE NEGOTIATION PROCESS*.  Because the market price is determined by supply and demand, and not the other way around, there is lineage that leads back to an original transaction - for which a market price had yet to be established. Thus, no chicken/egg paradox exists for supply, because the FIRST SUPPLY of a thing does not require a market price. Only an Ask price. 

The market price (as historical information) is often used by buyers and sellers in their respective Bid/Ask formation, but as decision making feedbacks only. It DOES NOT determine or control them, and is NOT, therefore, a controlling factor on supply or demand. Only buyers control the demand side (willingness to buy a specific quantity at a specific bid price), just as only sellers control the supply side (willingness to sell a specific quantity at a specific ask price).  

Again, from that same source: (which shows the word "prices" in "ask" and "bid" context)





Supply is neither defined as nor controlled by what HAS BEEN made available for purchase in the past. It is constrained to the quantity that is NOW made available by sellers for FUTURE purchase at a given minimum *ask price*. 

Ask Price determines supply, not Market Price.

Thus, if a seller has 10 acres of land divided into ten 1 acre parcels, that seller can decide which of these parcels he is willing to make available to the market at a given price. The seller may even FIX that supply as a function of quantity (area) made available for a given price over a specified time (the seller's supply schedule).  That's the supply of that land made available to the market, which has nothing to do with market price, the total quantity, or even whether any of it actually trades. 

A little more reading for you, to help you understand: (emphasis mine)




> The quantity of land, in terms of geographic area, are fixed. But *that does not necessarily mean that the number of tracts or acres to be offered for sale on the market will not vary with price of land* or that changes in relative product prices will not encourage changes in products. 
> 
> _In the market-schedule sense the definition of supply of land follows that of other economic goods_; the supply schedule refers to the relation between prices and the quantities (area) that owners are willing to sell.  *The supply price is the seller's minimum asking price.*


I can see why it's important for you to remove the seller's decision making power and its role in supply as it relates to land, and why you would attempt to change well-established economics theory to make "market price" rather than "ask  price" the determinant for supply. After all, if "supply" indeed equals the  total quantity in existence, you can then claim that the supply itself  fixed.   But that is not reality, not the truth, and certainly not established economic theory as it relates to supply and demand.

You want to think of supply in terms of production only, such that anything rare, already in existence and non-reproducible as a factor of production as somehow ALL "available to the  market" and therefore "fixed supply", on the basis that it exists in the aggregate in fixed quantity, which can then be placed somewhere on a supply curve. You erred in trying to a) make supply a function of the market price, not ask price, and b) assume that the seller's willingness to sell is only a matter of price, and c) ignore the fact that only a seller is in a position to create a supply curve in the first place!  I tried accommodate your misapprehension in all of this by ignoring a and c, and saying that this could be true so long as you make the ask price range somewhere from ZERO to INFINITY. Then it could technically include all possibilities.  

Infinity could be used to technically account for anything that that a seller is NOT willing to make available at any price (NO ASK EXISTS, NO BID WOULD BE ACCEPTED).  You could plot that as INFINITY on the supply curve, because whatever a seller is NOT WILLING TO MAKE AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE is, by definition, "priceless", and not available to the market, and therefore not normally counted as "supply".  By referring to it as infinity, it's only a question of time, theoretically, before the possibility of that number coming down to some lower point on the supply curve.  But that doesn't mean it's "available to the market", or that this could become the actual market price for that particular quantity, because it is impossible for anyone on the demand side to Bid infinity. But at least you could sneak it onto the supply curve.




> How much land trades at its price? Is that amount altered by how much the price is?


You're talking "market price", and therefore history - not actual supply, as defined as the quantity now made available at a given ask price, for which a future market price has yet to be established. 




> Show me one who thinks the supply of original works by dead artists is not fixed.


Pretty much most economists, including those cited in this post, given that they understand the difference between a quantity in existence and actual supply as it relates to a willingness to sell a portion of that quantity in existence at a given price at a given time.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy, you don't know what price is as it relates to supply, because you confuse two different uses of the word (the ASK price vs. actual market price).
> 
> You also don't understand supply, or "available to the market" is it relates to a seller's *willingness* to make a given quantity available to the market at a given price. You argue that "price" is only established after a trade has been made, and I tried to go along with that in order to make a point, but it's actually wrong.  That's the market price only, which does NOT control the ASK price, which is _the only thing_  used to to determine supply on a supply curve.


You don't know any economics, Steven.  None.  



> Here's a chart, a simplified version of a more general figure representing a comprehensive ABM market model described elsewhere (Filatova, Parker et al. 2007; Filatova , van der Veen et al. 2007; Parker and Filatova 2008))   that illustrates this, including the supply/price relationship in economics:
> 
> 
> 
> Note how the actual market price of land is differentiated from the Ask price in the Ask formation. The "actual land price" or "market price" is to the right of SUPPLY SIDE. This is determined by actual transactions (i.e., when Bid=Ask ---> MARKET TRANSACTION). This market price (established, and always in the past) is no longer part of the supply, but only serves as informational feedback  that helps both sellers and buyers in their future "Ask price formation" and  "Bid price formation", respectively.  But in a free market neither are bound by it, which is why market price (past) does not control supply or demand (present) which, when consummated as future transactions, determine future market price.  
> 
> The *DEMAND SIDE* and *SUPPLY SIDE* (Bid/Ask formation) occur BEFORE market price is established, and as separate entities, which come together during the *PRICE NEGOTIATION PROCESS*.  Because the market price is determined by supply and demand, and not the other way around, there is lineage that leads back to an original transaction - for which a market price had yet to be established. Thus, no chicken/egg paradox exists for supply, because the FIRST SUPPLY of a thing does not require a market price. Only an Ask price. 
> 
> The market price (as historical information) is often used by buyers and sellers in their respective Bid/Ask formation, but as decision making feedbacks only. It DOES NOT determine or control them, and is NOT, therefore, a controlling factor on supply or demand. Only buyers control the demand side (willingness to buy a specific quantity at a specific bid price), just as only sellers control the supply side (willingness to sell a specific quantity at a specific ask price).  
> ...


I refute your stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage, and you just post more garbage that is even more stupid, dishonest, and irrelevant.  There is no point to it, and I think I had better stop before you create a singularity of stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage that swallows the earth.



> Pretty much most economists, including those cited in this post, given that they understand the difference between a quantity in existence and actual supply as it relates to a willingness to sell a portion of that quantity in existence at a given price at a given time.


You're lying.  None of them has said the supply of dead artists' original works is not fixed, and you know it.

It gives me no pleasure to make apologists for landowner privilege resort to lies and absurdities.  It is a loathsome reminder of how far humanity has fallen, and how Sisyphean is my task to raise it up to liberty, justice and prosperity against its will.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You don't know any economics, Steven.  None.


Well forget what I said, then. Are you claiming that Virgil L. Hurlburt and the other economists I quoted and cited don't "know any economics"?  You could at least respond to what they wrote, which I thought contradicted your own assertions, or tell me why it is that they "don't know any economics". 




> I refute your stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage, and you just post more garbage that is even more stupid, dishonest, and irrelevant.  There is no point to it, and I think I had better stop before you create a singularity of stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage that swallows the earth.


That's it? Those non-specific blanket moral denouncements are your refutation? No argument, no citations, no sources that actually refute what I quoted, cited and argued, to prove that I'm wrong? 




> You're lying.  None of them has said the supply of dead artists' original works is not fixed, and you know it.


How about I throw you a bone, then, and show you where someone specifically claims that it is fixed. He gets part of it partially right...then goes terribly wrong, as he agrees with my premise, but also yours in a way that is contradictory (as will be logically refuted and proved with actual arguments and reason, without resorting to moralizing screed):




> Excerpted from: http://www.pitt.edu/~mgahagan/Defini...yandDemand.pdf
> 
> What does the supply curve show? It shows the lowest price at which producers are willing to sell.


Note how the author omits a vitally important criterion of supply as defined and commonly understood in economics.

_"...the lowest price at which producers are willing to sell..."_ *is incomplete*. It should read: _"...the lowest price at which producers are willing to sell_ [*a given quantity of a thing*]._"_

How is it that he could fail to mention such a critical factor as specific or given quantity in determining supply?

Note also how the author prefers to use the narrower, more constrained "producers" rather than "sellers". Why constrain it to producers, who are nothing but a subset of all-encompassing "sellers" to which that statement equally applies, and has always applied? Either he is referring to all sellers as producers, or else he is  deliberately narrowing the statement as one that happens to apply to producers. Whatever the case, it  doesn't matter. We can substitute sellers in place of producers and the  statement will be just as true as it has always been, and has always  been understood by most economists:

What does the supply curve show?  It shows the lowest price at which [*sellers*] are willing to sell [a given quantity of a thing].

Which, of course, is nothing but a tautology for "the quantity of a thing a seller is willing to make available to the market at a given price" (ask price, not market price).  

Now, here's where the author agrees with your assertion completely...while getting it completely wrong:




> You may also see vertical supply curves: the supply of Rembrandt paintings is fixed, so an increase in price will
> not increase the quantity of Rembrandt paintings supplied.


This can only be true if you accept his prior (incomplete) sentence about the supply curve, which omitted the all-important "a given quantity" requirement, while also ignoring the explicit "willingness to sell" requirement. The author forgets that supply is not defined as a total quantity in itself, but is already well defined in economics as *"the quantity of a thing a seller is willing to make available to the market at a given price"*.

Remember again what Hurlburt wrote, which is an indisputable fact of objective reality:

*The quantity of land, in terms of geographic area, are fixed. But that does not necessarily mean that the number of tracts or acres to be offered for sale on the market will not vary with price of land...*  - Virgil L. Hurlburt

There is also the issue of the producer/seller question that was begged. Is the owner/seller of a rare work from a dead artist also considered a "producer"? Again, it makes absolutely no difference. Yes or no, such a distinction is not a requirement for how supply is determined. If the seller is not a producer, he is definitely a seller, for which the economic definition of supply applies equally, and at all times.

Take the case of art originally produced by a now-dead artist, the only three works in existence of which are owned by a single individual.  The "supply" is not the total quantity of those works - the supply is *the quantity [of those works] a seller is willing to make available to the market at a given price*.  That particular quantity (as defined as economic supply) is neither fixed nor is it dependent on whether any trade occurs.  So let's stipulate the following about this particular supply, as determined at all times in a free market by the seller:

*Work #1 OR #2:* *$2,000* each (ASK)
*Works #1 AND #2:* *$3,800* (ASK)
*Work #3:* *PRICELESS* (NO ASK - off the market, while expressly stating that no ask will be issued, no bid accepted)

In this case only two of the three works can be counted as "supply" available (made available by the seller's willingness to sell those particular quantities at those specific prices).  Whatever they actually might (or do) trade for later is IRRELEVANT to supply, because supply isn't based on past trades or successful transactions, but only the quantity made available for sale now by a seller at a specific price.  The supply, and the supply curve, therefore, is completely within the owner/seller's control, and *anything but fixed* (unless the seller chooses to fix it).

Now you could come back and say, as you have in the past, "That's just not its price." - referring to "market price" of course.  Big deal. We're talking about supply, which doesn't require and isn't controlled by market price. 

You can always come back with a different offer (YOUR BID) to see if you can INFLUENCE SUPPLY, which is a possibility.  You decide you want all three works, and you're willing to pay $10,000 for the entire lot.  He rejects your bid, and so far the third work is not available at your BID price.  You plead with the buyer to give you an ASK price to work with.  That would certainly make _that particular quantity available at that particular price_, which you could then plot on the supply curve.  But he refuses. He's not negotiating.   Until the buyer actually indicates or agrees to a minimum price at which he will make THAT PARTICULAR QUANTITY available, it is NOT COUNTED AS SUPPLY - or "AVAILABLE TO THE MARKET". 

And that is thanks entirely to property rights, which empowers and benefits both the supply and demand sides, both of which have ultimate power over the specific quantity of a thing they are willing to exchange for a specific quantity of another thing.




> It gives me no pleasure to make apologists for landowner privilege resort to lies and absurdities.  It is a loathsome reminder of how far humanity has fallen, and how Sisyphean is my task to raise it up to liberty, justice and prosperity against its will.


Well, your last post went completely away from all reason, logic and actual arguments as refutations.  

I take that on face value, Roy.


EDIT: ROFL! Wow, it just now occurred to me what you wrote:

_"...my task [is] to raise [humanity] up to liberty, justice and prosperity_ *against its will.*_"_

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> _"...my task [is] to raise [humanity] up to liberty, justice and prosperity_ *against its will.*_"_


 He shall save the world from itself and usher in the Millennium.  There was the Age of the Father, that was the Old Testament, there was the Age of the Son, that was the New Testament, but now we are living in the third age, the Age of the Holy Spirit, and the Incarnation of this age is Mr. L.  If only we would listen to its mechanical voice in the wilderness, forever tracing out its infinite loop in the desert sands, ever-faithful, just as it was programmed to do.

----------


## MattintheCrown

So, Steven, are you basically now arguing that nothing can be fixed in supply?  You could have saved a lot of words and just said that.  


But, then the manifest absurdity of your position would be kinda unavoidable.  So maybe the filibuster approach was the right tack.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> EDIT: ROFL! Wow, it just now occurred to me what you wrote:
> 
> _"...my task [is] to raise [humanity] up to liberty, justice and prosperity_ *against its will.*_"_





> Show me a wrong, no matter how monstrous, that ever yet, among any people, became ingrafted in the social system, and I will prove to you the truth of what I say.
> 
> The majority of men do not think; the majority of men have to expend so much energy in the struggle to make a living that they do not have time to think. The majority of men accept, as a matter of course, whatever is. This is what makes the task of the social reformer so difficult, his path so hard. This is what brings upon those who first raise their voices in behalf of a great truth the sneers of the powerful and the curses of the rabble, ostracism and martyrdom, the robe of derision and the crown of thorns.
> 
> Am I not right? Have there not been states of society in which piracy has been considered the most respectable and honorable of pursuits? Did the Roman populace see anything more reprehensible in a gladiatorial show than we do in a horse-race? Does public opinion in Dahomey see anything reprehensible in the custom of sacrificing a thousand or two human beings by way of signalizing grand occasions? Are there not states of society in which, in spite of the natural proportions of the sexes, polygamy is considered a matter of course? Are there not states of society in which it would be considered the most ridiculous thing in the world to say that a man's son was more closely related to him than his nephew? Are there not states of society in which it would be considered disreputable for a man to carry a burden while a woman who could stagger under it was around?  states of society in which the husband who did not occasionally beat his wife would be deemed by both sexes a weak-minded, low-spirited fellow? What would Chinese fashionable society consider more outrageous than to be told that mothers should not be permitted to squeeze their daughters' feet, or Flathead women than being restrained from tying a board on their infants' skulls? How long has it been since the monstrous doctrine of the divine right of kings was taught through all Christendom?
> 
> What is the slave-trade but piracy of the worst kind? Yet it is not long since the slave-trade was looked upon as a perfectly respectable business, affording as legitimate an opening for the investment of capital and the display of enterprise as any other. The proposition to prohibit it was first looked upon as ridiculous, then as fanatical, then as wicked. It was only slowly and by hard fighting that the truth in regard to it gained ground. Does not our very Constitution bear witness to what I say? Does not the fundamental law of the nation, adopted twelve years after the enunciation of the Declaration of Independence, declare that for twenty years the slave-trade shall not be prohibited nor restricted? Such dominion had the idea of vested interests over the minds of those who had already proclaimed the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!


The sad fact is, even potential beneficiaries of social reforms will generally fight them, kicking and screaming all the way.  People fear change, and they tend to think within the confines of what they're familiar with.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So, Steven, are you basically now arguing that nothing can be fixed in supply?


In a free market a seller (which has control over the "supply" -- *as defined in economics*) can certainly fix [his own] supply, such that the total quantity at his disposal is equal to the total quantity he makes available for a given price.  That is true even if the total quantity supplied (an ASK exists) or withheld from supply (NO ASK EXISTS, NO BID IS ACCEPTED) is ONE. 

Whenever you use the word supply as it relates to economics, make damned sure at all times that you stick to the economic definition of supply, the whole economic definition of supply, and nothing but the economic definition of supply, as it has specific meaning.  Stray from that and it's Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> So, Steven, are you basically now arguing that nothing can be fixed in supply?
> 			
> 		
> 
> In a free market a seller (which has control over the "supply" -- *as defined in economics*) can certainly fix [his own] supply, such that the total quantity at his disposal is equal to the total quantity he makes available for a given price.  That is true even if the total quantity supplied (an ASK exists) or withheld from supply (NO ASK EXISTS, NO BID IS ACCEPTED) is ONE. 
> 
> Whenever you use the word supply as it relates to economics, make damned sure at all times that you stick to the economic definition of supply, the whole economic definition of supply, and nothing but the economic definition of supply, as it has specific meaning.  Stray from that and it's Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.


So, that's a "yes," then?

----------


## Steven Douglas

It just dawned on me, reading Henry George's polemic, how much his writing style reads like the Quran, and how much so many of his followers speak with tones reminiscent of fanatic militant members of a religious sect on a holy crusade.  Circular logic and all. 




> Show me a wrong, no matter how monstrous ... and I will prove to you the truth of what I say.
> 
> This is what brings upon those who first raise their voices in behalf of a great truth the sneers of the powerful and the curses of the rabble, ostracism and martyrdom, the robe of derision and the crown of thorns.
> 
> Am I not right? Does not our very Constitution bear witness to what I say?






> And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a chapter like it (min mithlihi) and call on your witnesses besides Allah* if you are truthful*. But if you do (it) not and never shall you do (it), then be on your guard against the fire of which men and stones are the fuel; it is prepared for the unbelievers. S. 2:23-24
> 
> Or do they say: He has forged it? Say: Then bring a chapter like this (mithlihi) and invite whom you can besides Allah,* if you are truthful*. S. 10:38
> 
> Or, do they say: He has forged it. Say: Then bring ten forged chapters like it (mithlihi) and call upon whom you can besides Allah, *if you are truthful*. S. 11:13
> 
> Say: If men and jinn should combine together to bring the like of this Quran (bimithlihi hatha al-Qurani), they could not bring the like of it, though some of them were aiders of others. S. 17:88
> 
> Or do they say: He has forged it. Nay! they do not believe. Then let them bring an announcement like it (mithlihi) *if they are truthful*. S. 52:33-34






> I refute your stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage, and you just post more garbage that is even more stupid, dishonest, and irrelevant. There is no point to it, and I think I had better stop before you create a singularity of stupid, dishonest, irrelevant garbage that swallows the earth.
> 
> It gives me no pleasure to make apologists for landowner privilege resort to lies and absurdities. It is a loathsome reminder of how far humanity has fallen, and how Sisyphean is my task to raise it up to liberty, justice and prosperity against its will.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So, that's a "yes," then?


Can't you read?  

You asked, "So, Steven, are you basically now arguing that nothing can be fixed in supply?"

I answered that no, on the contrary, anything could be fixed in supply IF the seller decided to fix it - given that supply, by definition, is based on a seller's willingness to make a given quantity of a thing available to the market at a given price.  

Wasn't that answer simple or clear enough?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> It just dawned on me, reading Henry George's polemic, how much his writing style reads like the Quran, and how much so many of his followers speak with tones reminiscent of fanatic militant members of a religious sect on a holy crusade.  Circular logic and all.


It's difficult to comprehend the magnitude of dishonesty sufficient to construct such rot.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Can't you read?  
> 
> You asked, "So, Steven, are you basically now arguing that nothing can be fixed in supply?"
> 
> I answered that no, on the contrary, anything could be fixed in supply IF the seller decided to fix it - given that supply, by definition, is based on a seller's willingness to make a given quantity of a thing available to the market at a given price.  
> 
> Wasn't that answer simple or clear enough?


So nothing and everything is fixed in supply.  Very clear indeed.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So nothing and everything is fixed in supply.  Very clear indeed.


Aren't the unknown, quasi-predictable, inescapable-but-required variables in a variable dependent relationship a bitch? 

Welcome to economics. Or the study of human behavior. Or whatever you want to call it.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Aren't the unknown, quasi-predictable, inescapable-but-required variables in a variable dependent relationship a bitch? 
> 
> Welcome to economics. Or the study of human behavior. Or whatever you want to call it.


Roy's right: you don't know any economics.  Supply and demand curves are created with reference to perfect competition.  You're just making crap up as you go along.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Roy's right: you don't know any economics.  Supply and demand curves are created with reference to perfect competition.


Source? Argument?

You aren't getting away with that generalized waive-of-the-hand dismiss-and-assert crap and passing it off as economics.  Refute the arguments and sources already provided, and argue your own points coherently, while quoting/citing/providing your own sources, whatever they are.

----------


## Steven Douglas

Here you go, Matt.  Roy had nothing but moralizing screed denouncements as his response. Here's your chance at bat. Show me and my quoted/cited sources the error of our ways.  And by all means, be specific, and cite your sources as well.  




> Any other NATURAL resource, which is fixed in supply and therefore has a vertical supply curve.


Roy, you don't know what price is as it relates to supply, because you confuse two different uses of the word (the ASK price vs. actual market price).

You also don't understand supply, or "available to the market" is it relates to a seller's *willingness* to make a given quantity available to the market at a given price. You argue that "price" is only established after a trade has been made, and I tried to go along with that in order to make a point, but it's actually wrong.  That's the market price only, which does NOT control the ASK price, which is _the only thing_  used to to determine supply on a supply curve.  

Here's a chart, a simplified version of a more general figure representing a comprehensive ABM market model described elsewhere (Filatova, Parker et al. 2007; Filatova , van der Veen et al. 2007; Parker and Filatova 2008))   that illustrates this, including the supply/price relationship in economics:



Note how the actual market price of land is differentiated from the Ask price in the Ask formation. The "actual land price" or "market price" is to the right of SUPPLY SIDE. This is determined by actual transactions (i.e., when Bid=Ask ---> MARKET TRANSACTION). This market price (established, and always in the past) is no longer part of the supply, but only serves as informational feedback  that helps both sellers and buyers in their future "Ask price formation" and  "Bid price formation", respectively.  But in a free market neither are bound by it, which is why market price (past) does not control supply or demand (present) which, when consummated as future transactions, determine future market price.  

The *DEMAND SIDE* and *SUPPLY SIDE* (Bid/Ask formation) occur BEFORE market price is established, and as separate entities, which come together during the *PRICE NEGOTIATION PROCESS*.  Because the market price is determined by supply and demand, and not the other way around, there is lineage that leads back to an original transaction - for which a market price had yet to be established. Thus, no chicken/egg paradox exists for supply, because the FIRST SUPPLY of a thing does not require a market price. Only an Ask price. 

The market price (as historical information) is often used by buyers and sellers in their respective Bid/Ask formation, but as decision making feedbacks only. It DOES NOT determine or control them, and is NOT, therefore, a controlling factor on supply or demand. Only buyers control the demand side (willingness to buy a specific quantity at a specific bid price), just as only sellers control the supply side (willingness to sell a specific quantity at a specific ask price).  

Again, from that same source: (which shows the word "prices" in "ask" and "bid" context)





Supply is neither defined as nor controlled by what HAS BEEN made available for purchase in the past. It is constrained to the quantity that is NOW made available by sellers for FUTURE purchase at a given minimum *ask price*. 

Ask Price determines supply, not Market Price.

Thus, if a seller has 10 acres of land divided into ten 1 acre parcels, that seller can decide which of these parcels he is willing to make available to the market at a given price. The seller may even FIX that supply as a function of quantity (area) made available for a given price over a specified time (the seller's supply schedule).  That's the supply of that land made available to the market, which has nothing to do with market price, the total quantity, or even whether any of it actually trades. 

A little more reading for you, to help you understand: (emphasis mine)




> The quantity of land, in terms of geographic area, are fixed. But *that does not necessarily mean that the number of tracts or acres to be offered for sale on the market will not vary with price of land* or that changes in relative product prices will not encourage changes in products. 
> 
> _In the market-schedule sense the definition of supply of land follows that of other economic goods_; the supply schedule refers to the relation between prices and the quantities (area) that owners are willing to sell.  *The supply price is the seller's minimum asking price.*


I can see why it's important for you to remove the seller's decision making power and its role in supply as it relates to land, and why you would attempt to change well-established economics theory to make "market price" rather than "ask  price" the determinant for supply. After all, if "supply" indeed equals the  total quantity in existence, you can then claim that the supply itself  fixed.   But that is not reality, not the truth, and certainly not established economic theory as it relates to supply and demand.

You want to think of supply in terms of production only, such that anything rare, already in existence and non-reproducible as a factor of production as somehow ALL "available to the  market" and therefore "fixed supply", on the basis that it exists in the aggregate in fixed quantity, which can then be placed somewhere on a supply curve. You erred in trying to a) make supply a function of the market price, not ask price, and b) assume that the seller's willingness to sell is only a matter of price, and c) ignore the fact that only a seller is in a position to create a supply curve in the first place!  I tried accommodate your misapprehension in all of this by ignoring a and c, and saying that this could be true so long as you make the ask price range somewhere from ZERO to INFINITY. Then it could technically include all possibilities.  

Infinity could be used to technically account for anything that that a seller is NOT willing to make available at any price (NO ASK EXISTS, NO BID WOULD BE ACCEPTED).  You could plot that as INFINITY on the supply curve, because whatever a seller is NOT WILLING TO MAKE AVAILABLE AT ANY PRICE is, by definition, "priceless", and not available to the market, and therefore not normally counted as "supply".  By referring to it as infinity, it's only a question of time, theoretically, before the possibility of that number coming down to some lower point on the supply curve.  But that doesn't mean it's "available to the market", or that this could become the actual market price for that particular quantity, because it is impossible for anyone on the demand side to Bid infinity. But at least you could sneak it onto the supply curve.




> How much land trades at its price? Is that amount altered by how much the price is?


You're talking "market price", and therefore history - not actual supply, as defined as the quantity now made available at a given ask price, for which a future market price has yet to be established. 




> Show me one who thinks the supply of original works by dead artists is not fixed.


Pretty much most economists, including those cited in this post, given that they understand the difference between a quantity in existence and actual supply as it relates to a willingness to sell a portion of that quantity in existence at a given price at a given time.

----------


## MattintheCrown

No need.  Your source doesn't say what you claim it says.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No need.  Your source doesn't say what you claim it says.


I take it the source(s) themselves aren't the problem, then - just my interpretations, which you believe are incorrect but have yet to present any arguments or give any specifics as to why.  

Those sources were provided so that they could speak for themselves. Both the sources and my understanding of what they said are all there for your rebuttal and correction. You can expound logically and rationally on what it is you think they meant - or even where they might have erred (as I did with one source).  Not only that, you could provide other scholarly sources of your own in support of your premises and arguments. 

You and Roy are long on rhetoric and dogmatic hyperbole about Georgism, geoism, geolibertarianism, etc., as well as what you believe to be the evils of landownership and the virtues of perpetual land rent recovery to the State as a panacea. You are also long on assertive claims about economics in general, which serve as foundational underpinnings to your ideology and agenda.  However, when scholarly sources are provided that appear *on their face* to refute the very basis for these underpinnings, there's absolutely no scholarly rebuttal from either of you; just ad hominem rhetoric and irrational attacks.  Looks like a fragile house of cards to me.

----------


## Roy L

> In a free market a seller (which has control over the "supply" -- *as defined in economics*) can certainly fix [his own] supply, such that the total quantity at his disposal is equal to the total quantity he makes available for a given price.


Gibberish.  He doesn't "make supply available."  The supply he has IS available, by virtue of the fact that he has it: it's available TO HIM.



> That is true even if the total quantity supplied (an ASK exists) or withheld from supply (NO ASK EXISTS, NO BID IS ACCEPTED) is ONE.


There is no such thing as items being "withheld from supply."  If they exist, they are part of the supply, as they are available to the market.  If they do not happen to trade in any given period, that is irrelevant: they are nevertheless available to at least one actor in the market, namely their owner, at whatever price he considers fair.  Your stipulation of "no ask exists, no bid accepted" is therefore irrelevant.



> Whenever you use the word supply as it relates to economics, make damned sure at all times that you stick to the economic definition of supply, the whole economic definition of supply, and nothing but the economic definition of supply, as it has specific meaning.  Stray from that and it's Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.


Hehe.  No $#!+, Sherlock.  As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I take it the source(s) themselves aren't the problem, then - just my interpretations, which you believe are incorrect but have yet to present any arguments or give any specifics as to why.


"By its very nature, conceptualizing a supply curve requires that the firm be a perfect competitor—that is, that the firm has no influence over the market price. This is because each point on the supply curve is the answer to the question "If this firm is _faced with_ this potential price, how much output will it be able to and willing to sell?" If a firm has market power, so its decision of how much output to provide to the market influences the market price, then the firm is not "faced with" any price, and the question is meaningless."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand




> Those sources were provided so that they could speak for themselves. Both the sources and my understanding of what they said are all there for your rebuttal and correction. You can expound logically and rationally on what it is you think they meant - or even where they might have erred (as I did with one source).  Not only that, you could provide other scholarly sources of your own in support of your premises and arguments.


Problem is, those sources weren't discussing economics generally.  As you well know.




> You and Roy are long on rhetoric and dogmatic hyperbole about Georgism, geoism, geolibertarianism, etc., as well as what you believe to be the evils of landownership and the virtues of perpetual land rent recovery to the State as a panacea. You are also long on assertive claims about economics in general, which serve as foundational underpinnings to your ideology and agenda.  However, when scholarly sources are provided that appear *on their face* to refute the very basis for these underpinnings, there's absolutely no scholarly rebuttal from either of you; just ad hominem rhetoric and irrational attacks.  Looks like a fragile house of cards to me.


Disgraceful dishonesty.  A fragile house of cards?  That aptly describes the "arguments" of you, who relies heavily on nonsensical filibuster to make his position seem to be respectable.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Gibberish.  He doesn't "make supply available."  The supply he has IS available, by virtue of the fact that he has it: it's available TO HIM.


Yes, even as the money in your right pocket is "available" to your left pocket. No person or market participant alone is "the market" - to which the economic concept of "supply" applies. In economics the "market" is defined as a "Means by which buyers and sellers are brought into contact with each other and goods and services are exchanged."  

Buying from yourself (willingness to make a given quantity of a thing available at a given price - to yourself?!) is absolute gibberish, and meaningless in economic terms, completely ignored for good reason.  If there's no buyer, there's no market. If there's no seller, there's no market. A single person on an island is neither buyer nor seller, nor is there anything that could be called a market without the addition of at least one other party with which there can be an actual exchange. 




> There is no such thing as items being "withheld from supply."  If they exist, they are part of the supply, as they are available to the market.


Tell that to Robert R. Gottfried, as I guess he failed to get that memo. He's so ignorant of supply as it relates to raw land that he actually goofed up and made it a variable: 



He's not the only one who 'refused to know' that total quantity equals the supply, or quantity supplied. For your reading pleasure, here's a snippet from nice Georgist site [LINK] , one that talks about the virtues of LVT in relation to the current practice of tracts of land that are :::: gasp :::: "*withheld from supply*": 




> The speculative component of land prices would be removed as the increased supply of property (*huge tracts are withheld from supply by speculators*) leads prospective buyers to pay only what the property is worth in terms of location, infrastructure and amenities.


Did they trip over their supply book larnin' too? You might want to educate them, because evidently they don't know any economics either.  

As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"

----------


## Roy L

> Buying from yourself (willingness to make a given quantity of a thing available at a given price - to yourself?!) is absolute gibberish, and meaningless in economic terms, completely ignored for good reason.


What's really gibberish is pretending that thousands of new, unsold cars are not part of the supply.



> If there's no buyer, there's no market. If there's no seller, there's no market.


There are both.  They just haven't agreed on a price.



> A single person on an island is neither buyer nor seller, nor is there anything that could be called a market without the addition of at least one other party with which there can be an actual exchange.


That doesn't mean he has nothing.



> Tell that to Robert R. Gottfried, as I guess he failed to get that memo. He's so ignorant of supply as it relates to raw land that he actually goofed up and made it a variable:


Wrong.  Raw land is merely a subclass of land, and the subclasses are not fixed in quantity, only the total.  Land can be moved from class to class (zoning also does this), affecting its potential uses and the amounts in the classes without affecting the total supply.



> He's not the only one who 'refused to know' that total quantity equals the supply, or quantity supplied. For your reading pleasure, here's a snippet from nice Georgist site [LINK] , one that talks about the virtues of LVT in relation to the current practice of tracts of land that are :::: gasp :::: "*withheld from supply*":


<yawn>  That's a clear error.  Whoever wrote it probably meant, "withheld from use."  It's certainly part of the supply, as the speculator is by definition just waiting for the right price.

And BTW, that seems like a generally good site.  You could read it to advantage.



> Did they trip over their supply book larnin' too? You might want to educate them, because evidently they don't know any economics either.


I neither call nor consider myself a Georgist, so I don't feel I have to defend everything soi-disant Georgists say; and it's true that unfortunately, some people who do call themselves Georgists say some silly (but more often, as in this case, just careless) things.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> What's really gibberish is pretending that thousands of new, unsold cars are not part of the supply.


What kind of nonsensical non sequitur strawman combo was that?  I wrote, "Buying from yourself is absolute gibberish, and meaningless in economic terms...", which was in response to you stating that what an owner possesses is consider "supply" (to the market) because it is available TO HIMSELF.  That's absolute rubbish to begin with, but then you come out with a reference to new, unsold cars (which actually are available -- *to the market*) while claiming that I'm pretending they are not?  

Onto more of your nonsensical gibberish:




> If there's no buyer, there's no market. If there's no seller, there's no market.
> 			
> 		
> 
> There are both. They just haven't agreed on a price.


Again with more quarter-baked nonsense out of left field.  My statement was in reference to your claim that 100% of the total quantity in an owner's possession counts as "available to the market" or "supply", and by virtue of the fact, according to you, that it's available to HIMSELF.  You came back with the point that he hasn't agreed on a price...with himself?  




> A single person on an island is neither buyer nor seller, nor is there anything that could be called a market without the addition of at least one other party with which there can be an actual exchange.
> 			
> 		
> 
> That doesn't mean he has nothing.


Why, that's true! That doesn't mean he has nothing! I don't know why you wrote that, or how you thought it was relevant in any way, but that is correct.  He likely "_has something_". 




> Raw land is merely a subclass of land, and the subclasses are not fixed in quantity, only the total.


Which total? The grand aggregate total, the total area within a given subclass, or the total parcels within a divisible area within that subclass?  Because as you just freely admitted, the total _of a subclass_ is not fixed.  Likewise with parcels of land within a given subclass under the current landownership regime. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about a subclass or parcels within a subclass -- land is DIVISIBLE.  And because it is divisible, and because landowners have FULL control over which quantity of those divisible units are offered for sale (supplied) at a given price, the total quantity available to the market is NEVER fixed.  Which brings us to your next nonsense:  




> Whoever wrote it probably meant, "withheld from use."  It's certainly part of the supply, as the speculator is by definition just waiting for the right price.


This is going to kill you, I know, but this is the way it works, Roy:  

*Not all owners are sellers, just as not everything that is owned is for sale.* (part of the supply available to the market) 

An owner has full power at all times decide what quantity of his own possessions to make available to the market. It is only the quantity he has made available to the market for which he is considered a "seller".  Selling is a subclass of Owning.  Everything that is for sale is assumed to be owned, but not everything that is owned is presumed to be for sale.  I know that may well be a source of ulcers for you, Roy, even to the point where you can't accept it at all, but not everything is counted as supply available to the market simple because it exists and is in someone else's possession. Owners have full rights, full powers, to choose what is or is not available to the market.  Some things really are "priceless". 

Again, stop spouting your own words and trying to pass it off as economics. You are no authority on economics here.  If you have something authoritative that show otherwise, produce your source.  Your gibberish alone won't cut it, regardless how much conviction of belief you convey. 




> I neither call nor consider myself a Georgist, so I don't feel I have to defend everything soi-disant Georgists say; and it's true that unfortunately, some people who do call themselves Georgists say some silly (but more often, as in this case, just careless) things.


I got that. Even though you quote Henry George a lot, your particular brand of Georgism is a splinter "protestant" faction.


*TO SUM UP:* 

In order for there to be a "supply" available of any thing that is already owned there must first be a "seller".  Not just an owner. An actual seller. Not everything that is owned has a seller, because not everything owned has been made available for sale by the RIGHTFUL OWNER, who cannot therefore be accurately referred to as the "seller" of that thing. You can test the opposite proposition (i.e., that everything is for sale, it's only a matter of price) by making offers.  The moment you find a single thing that is truly priceless - not for sale AT ANY PRICE, the entire proposition is FALSIFIED. Not axiomatic, not universal, and not necessarily true of all things. 

Your presumption, therefore, that everything in existence that is owned is necessarily part of the supply available to the market -- is absolute economics gibberish. A disputable opinion of subjective fiction. 

On the other hand, here is an indisputable fact of objective reality - Since you never responded:

*BONUS:*




> The quantity of land, in terms of geographic area, are fixed. But *that does not necessarily mean that the number of tracts or acres to be offered for sale on the market will not vary with price of land* or that changes in relative product prices will not encourage changes in products. 
> 
> _In the market-schedule sense the definition of supply of land follows that of other economic goods_; the supply schedule refers to the relation between prices and the quantities (area) that owners are willing to sell.  *The supply price is the seller's minimum asking price.*


That's happening today, Roy. The number of tracts or acres which are offered for sale (actual supply, or quantity made available at a given price) do in fact vary with the price of land. That's not a vertical supply curve, Roy.  That particular QUANTITY SUPPLIED at any given time, which supply does indeed vary according to price, is NOT FIXED.  Vary the price, vary the quantity supplied.  Out there. In the real world.  

Refute that - and not with your own geogibberish. Show me your sources.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Originally Posted by Roy L
> 
> Raw land is merely a subclass of land, and the subclasses are not fixed in quantity, only the total.
> 
> 
> Which total? The grand aggregate total, the total area within a given subclass, or the total parcels within a divisible area within that subclass?


Land is fixed in supply.  Artificial subdivisions can vary in supply to the extent one gains at the expense of another. 




> Because as you just freely admitted, the total _of a subclass_ is not fixed.  Likewise with parcels of land within a given subclass under the current landownership regime. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about a subclass or parcels within a subclass -- land is DIVISIBLE.  And because it is divisible, and because landowners have FULL control over which quantity of those divisible units are offered for sale (supplied) at a given price, the total quantity available to the market is NEVER fixed.


Non sequitur.  The supply of land is fixed.

ETA:



> I got that. Even though you quote Henry George a lot, your particular brand of Georgism is a splinter "protestant" faction.


By the way, where has Roy quoted George a lot?  I don't recall any such quotes.  You're not simply lying in a lame attempt to claim Roy subscribes to a Georgist "religion," are you?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Land is fixed in total area, not market supply.  Artificial subdivisions can vary in supply to the extent one gains at the expense of another.


I have your back. I fixed it for you so that it reads more accurately.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I have your back. I fixed it for you so that it reads more accurately.


Those changes are irrelevant to the point of the argument.  This whole pointless bunch of nonsense resulted from your response to Roy's claim:



> A single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply.


The claim remains true, and none of this digression changes that.

----------


## Roy L

> What kind of nonsensical non sequitur strawman combo was that?  I wrote, "Buying from yourself is absolute gibberish, and meaningless in economic terms...", which was in response to you stating that what an owner possesses is consider "supply" (to the market) because it is available TO HIMSELF.  That's absolute rubbish to begin with, but then you come out with a reference to new, unsold cars (which actually are available -- *to the market*) while claiming that I'm pretending they are not?


Your "argument" is that because until land is sold, it has no price (which is true), and supply is only defined at a price, therefore land that has not been sold recently is not part of supply.  That is fallacious nonsense, because supply is *defined* as the amount that would be available at a given price _IF THAT WERE THE PRICE_, i.e., *IF* the item were selling for that amount.  The example of unsold new cars is exactly parallel.



> My statement was in reference to your claim that 100% of the total quantity in an owner's possession counts as "available to the market" or "supply", and by virtue of the fact, according to you, that it's available to HIMSELF.  You came back with the point that he hasn't agreed on a price...with himself?


<sigh>  You claim that absence of a price implies absence of supply.  That is nonsense, because supply is defined as the amount available at a given price IF IT WERE TO TRADE AT THAT PRICE.



> Why, that's true! That doesn't mean he has nothing! I don't know why you wrote that, or how you thought it was relevant in any way, but that is correct.  He likely "_has something_".


And that is the available supply, even though there is not going to be any transaction or price, because supply is defined for a given price IF THAT *WERE* THE PRICE.



> Which total? The grand aggregate total, the total area within a given subclass, or the total parcels within a divisible area within that subclass?


The total amount.  Artificial subclasses are just arbitrary divisions, as are parcels.  What is set apart in one class or parcel simply ceases to be part of another class or parcel.  The total supply is unchanged.



> Because as you just freely admitted, the total _of a subclass_ is not fixed.  Likewise with parcels of land within a given subclass under the current landownership regime. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about a subclass or parcels within a subclass -- land is DIVISIBLE.


So is gold.  So?  Does that mean cutting all the bars in half doubles the supply?  Wheee!  We can have an infinite supply of gold just by continuing to subdivide it!

Fallacious, absurd and dishonest nonsense.



> And because it is divisible, and because landowners have FULL control over which quantity of those divisible units are offered for sale (supplied) at a given price, the total quantity available to the market is NEVER fixed.


As explained above, it couldn't matter less whether they have "FULL control" (they don't) or not.



> This is going to kill you, I know, but this is the way it works, Roy:  
> 
> *Not all owners are sellers, just as not everything that is owned is for sale.* (part of the supply available to the market)


This is going to kill you, I know, but this is the way it works, Steven:

Supply is not the amount for sale.  It is the amount that would be available to the market at a given price IF THAT WERE THE PRICE.  That is why anything that exists and will continue to exist at any price is automatically part of supply.



> An owner has full power at all times decide what quantity of his own possessions to make available to the market. It is only the quantity he has made available to the market for which he is considered a "seller".  Selling is a subclass of Owning.  Everything that is for sale is assumed to be owned, but not everything that is owned is presumed to be for sale.


_It is if it is presumed to have a price._



> I know that may well be a source of ulcers for you, Roy, even to the point where you can't accept it at all, but not everything is counted as supply available to the market simple because it exists and is in someone else's possession.


Yes, it is, because that is how supply is DEFINED.



> Owners have full rights, full powers, to choose what is or is not available to the market.  Some things really are "priceless".


Especially you...



> Again, stop spouting your own words and trying to pass it off as economics. You are no authority on economics here.  If you have something authoritative that show otherwise, produce your source.  Your gibberish alone won't cut it, regardless how much conviction of belief you convey.


Steven, the definition of supply has already been posted.  You just ignore it and give every evidence of not understanding it.



> Even though you quote Henry George a lot,


Lie.  What I quote a lot is a letter written by someone else, which George merely reprinted in one of his books.  Other than that letter, I think you will search in vain for quotations from Henry George's works in my posts.



> your particular brand of Georgism is a splinter "protestant" faction.


No.  Christianity has splinter factions based on different *interpretations* of the Bible and Christ's life, but they all accept the Biblical account of Christ's life and teachings, His divinity, etc.  My differences with Georgism are explicitly intended as fundamental amendments to and improvements on George's ideas, not mere matters of interpretation.  I am not a splinter faction Georgist any more than Christians are splinter faction Jews, or Muslims splinter faction Christians.



> In order for there to be a "supply" available of any thing that is already owned there must first be a "seller".  Not just an owner. An actual seller.


Wrong.  See the definition of supply.  You are Not Clear on the Concept.



> Not everything that is owned has a seller, because not everything owned has been made available for sale by the RIGHTFUL OWNER, who cannot therefore be accurately referred to as the "seller" of that thing. You can test the opposite proposition (i.e., that everything is for sale, it's only a matter of price) by making offers.  The moment you find a single thing that is truly priceless - not for sale AT ANY PRICE, the entire proposition is FALSIFIED. Not axiomatic, not universal, and not necessarily true of all things.


Even if that were true (it isn't) it is irrelevant to supply.



> Your presumption, therefore, that everything in existence that is owned is necessarily part of the supply available to the market -- is absolute economics gibberish. A disputable opinion of subjective fiction.


It follows logically from the definition of supply.



> On the other hand, here is an indisputable fact of objective reality - Since you never responded:


<sigh>  Hurlburt's key statement:

"The supply price is the seller's minimum asking price."

SUPPLY DOES NOT VARY WITH SELLER'S MINIMUM ASKING PRICE.



> The number of tracts or acres which are offered for sale (actual supply, or quantity made available at a given price) do in fact vary with the price of land.


No, they don't.  Certainly a higher price for land may stimulate subdivision, but that does not increase area (see the gold example, above, and try to understand it).  Land prices have risen 1000-fold over the last century, and the number of acres available to the market is just the same.



> That's not a vertical supply curve, Roy.


Yes, it is.



> That particular QUANTITY SUPPLIED at any given time, which supply does indeed vary according to price, is NOT FIXED.  Vary the price, vary the quantity supplied.  Out there. In the real world.


Please present your evidence that the 1000-fold increase in land prices over the last century has resulted in more land being offered for sale.  Please present your evidence that the 50% or even greater decline in land prices over the last five years in some US markets has been accompanied by a decline in amount of land offered for sale.

Thought not.



> Refute that - and not with your own geogibberish. Show me your sources.


Show me where your sources provide EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that amount of land offered for sale is directly related to price.

Thought not.

Steven, this is not as complicated as you are trying to make it.  If an acre of land sells for $1K, no more of that land will come on the market if it sells for $10K (or $100K or $1M), because the rising price just reflects how much people want it, SELLERS AS WELL AS BUYERS.  If an ounce of gold sells for $10K, by contrast, gold producers will produce a lot more of it than if it sells for $1K, because they are PRODUCING gold, not just swapping all the same gold around at higher and higher prices as landowners are doing with land.

You just need to find a willingness to know that fact.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Those changes are irrelevant to the point of the argument.  This whole pointless bunch of nonsense resulted from your response to Roy's claim:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by Roy L
> 
> A single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply.
> ...


I guess you weren't paying attention at all then, which is why you missed the entire point of the exercise, and the proof provided for why that assertion is completely untrue, based on both reality and the economic definitions of supply and quantity supplied.  

Here, hopefully this will make it easier for you to get your head around:



Note (and this is crucial) how the seller is always the owner, but the owner is not always a seller.  

EACH owner has sole discretion, sole control over the quantities he is willing to make available to the market at a given price (the very definition of supply).  Furthermore, the owner is under absolutely no requirement whatsoever to make ANY of the quantities in his possession available to the market AT ANY PRICE.  If he has not made a thing available to the market for a price, then he is not consider the SELLER of that thing.  That is what full control over both the supply and the quantity supplied means, and why that quantity is anything but fixed.

The sources of your common misapprehension:

The total quantity owned in existence is not, nor has it ever been, the economic definition of "supply", nor does that have anything to do with the economic definition of supply or quantity supplied. No assertion or insistence on either of your parts will change that. The more common definitions or meanings of supply *are not interchangeable* with the economic definitions. In economics, ONLY the owners control supply (which is concisely defined), just as ONLY the potential buyers control demand (also well defined).Not every good or service is considered supplied simply because it exists. Again, that is not the definition of supply, nor is it simply a matter of price. It is first a matter of whether or not a good or service is even made available for exchange _at any price_.
This goes to the core of why a million profit-maximizing owners do indeed (TODAY - IN REALITY) behave _very differently_, as each one has full control over his units (quantity, area) of supply, whether or not to make ANY of available to the market at all, and if so, at what price they are each willing to make a given quantity available.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You claim that absence of a price implies absence of supply. That is nonsense, because supply is defined as the amount available at a given price IF IT WERE TO TRADE AT THAT PRICE.


Bogus nonsense. That's your ad hoc addition in an attempt to change an established definition.  Only the owner decides what to place, as a seller (even as a what-if), onto a supply curve.  There is no requirement that everything (or anything at all for that matter) be placed on that curve.  That quantity is fully controlled by the owners. 

The supply curve deals with all prices possible for GIVEN QUANTITIES, not all quantities (let alone all quantities in existence). Only those quantities an owner chooses to place on the chart as a seller of those specific quantities can count as supply, and ONLY those quantities at a specific price.




> Your "argument" is that because until land is sold, it has no price (which is true), and supply is only defined at a price, therefore land that has not been sold recently is not part of supply.


No, that is not my argument at all. That is your premises morphed into a strawman argument. My argument is that unless and until an owner indicates a willingness to sell a thing at all (not "sold", just made available - no sale required) price is irrelevant and that particular quantity cannot be counted as part of the supply. 

There are three requirements for supply: 

1) Willingness to sell 
2) A given quantity at
3) A specific price 

Take any one of these away, and you are no longer talking about market supply. Once these three requirements are satisfied and a given quantity of supply exists for a specific price, that supply can sit forever without a sale. It will still be counted as supply so long as there remains a 1) willingness to sell 2) a given quantity at 3) a specific price.  However, the owner can change any one or more of these variables: A given quantity can change for the same specific price; an entire quantity at one price can shift upward or downward to a new price; the willingness to sell a given quantity can be removed entirely from ALL PRICES (i.e., a given quantity is taken off the market).  

Once a thing is sold (Bid=Ask-->TRANSACTION) that thing is INSTANTLY no longer counted as part of the supply UNLESS AND UNTIL the new owner, which now has FULL CONTROL over that thing, satisfies all three requirements, beginning with a willingness to sell, followed by a given quantity at a specific price, thus making it once again a part of the market supply.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> I guess you weren't paying attention at all then, which is why you missed the entire point of the exercise, and the proof provided for why that assertion is completely untrue, based on both reality and the economic definitions of supply and quantity supplied.  
> 
> Here, hopefully this will make it easier for you to get your head around:
> 
> 
> 
> Note (and this is crucial) how the seller is always the owner, but the owner is not always a seller.  
> 
> EACH owner has sole discretion, sole control over the quantities he is willing to make available to the market at a given price (the very definition of supply).  Furthermore, the owner is under absolutely no requirement whatsoever to make ANY of the quantities in his possession available to the market AT ANY PRICE.  If he has not made a thing available to the market for a price, then he is not consider the SELLER of that thing.  That is what full control over both the supply and the quantity supplied means, and why that quantity is anything but fixed.
> ...


Nope.  It remains true that "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."

----------


## Icymudpuppy

LVT would cripple farmers.

The best crop land typically develops cities around it.  As the cities develop, they encroach on the farms.  The farmer who refuses to see his back 40 to the urban developer because it is the best productive soil around is taxed out of it via LVT.  Thus, the Kent valley SW of Seattle, the best farmland in WA state was paved over.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> LVT would cripple farmers.
> 
> The best crop land typically develops cities around it.  As the cities develop, they encroach on the farms.  The farmer who refuses to see his back 40 to the urban developer because it is the best productive soil around is taxed out of it via LVT.  Thus, the Kent valley SW of Seattle, the best farmland in WA state was paved over.


Actually, it's the current situation, where land is not taxed at a high rate, that results in sprawl: as current city owners refuse to sell, anticipating higher prices in the future, people have to seek land elsewhere: at the edge of town.  Not taxing land at a high rates causes sprawl, LVT prevents it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Nope.  It remains true that "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."


And once again you substituted your own completely irrelevant and meaningless definition of supply - as you think of "supply" as the total quantity in existence rather than its actual well-established concise meaning -- knee-jerk, like a bad habit, and without a moment of second thought.   

OK, OK, I'll clean up after your mess. Again. 

It remains true that a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because while the landowner cannot affect the aggregate total fixed land area in existence, each landowner has full and complete control over his supply, otherwise defined as the quantity of area (tracts, acres, etc.,) he is willing to make available or not to the market at a given price."

----------


## MattintheCrown

> And once again you substituted your own completely irrelevant and meaningless definition of supply - as you think of "supply" as the total quantity in existence rather than its actual well-established concise meaning -- knee-jerk, like a bad habit, and without a moment of second thought.   
> 
> OK, OK, I'll clean up after your mess. Again. 
> 
> It remains true that a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because while the landowner cannot affect the aggregate total fixed land area in existence, each landowner has full and complete control over his supply, otherwise defined as the quantity of area (tracts, acres, etc.,) he is willing to make available or not to the market at a given price."


Even if your definition of supply were correct, which it is not, your additions make no difference to the point.  All you've done is wasted everyone's time for several pages/days.

Edit: which was, of course, your goal, as you can't make any meaningful argument against LVT.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Even if your definition of supply were correct, which it is not...


Well, I'm the only one that provided actual authoritative sources and arguments, which you denied, dismissed and poo-poo'ed, but didn't actually refute or provide any sources or authoritative definitions of your own. 




> All you've done is wasted everyone's time for several pages/days.
> 
> Edit: which was, of course, your goal, as you can't make any meaningful argument against LVT.


Pretty much thoroughly destroyed a major part of its pseudo-economics underpinnings, actually.  Time well spent, I thought.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Well, I'm the only one that provided actual authoritative sources and arguments, which you denied, dismissed and poo-poo'ed, but didn't actually refute or provide any sources or authoritative definitions of your own.


No you didn't.  You googled until you found a discussion of something specific and irrelevant.




> Pretty much thoroughly destroyed a major part of its pseudo-economics underpinnings, actually.  Time well spent, I thought.


Except it obviously didn't, because the fact remains.  Which is kinda the point.  Duh.

----------


## Roy L

> LVT would cripple farmers.


Do you know that there is a difference between "value" and "area"?  Just sayin'.



> The best crop land typically develops cities around it.  As the cities develop, they encroach on the farms.  The farmer who refuses to see his back 40 to the urban developer because it is the best productive soil around is taxed out of it via LVT.


Yes, and if that happens, it is called, "the free market not being prevented from allocating resources to more productive uses."



> Thus, the Kent valley SW of Seattle, the best farmland in WA state was paved over.


??  Huh?  That happened in the *absence* of LVT, which would at least have ensured that nearby urban sites were fully utilized before good farmland was paved over.

In fact, LVT leads to more compact urban development and preservation of good farmland for a number of reasons:

1. Urban sites are fully utilized.
2. Speculators can't grab any unearned wealth by buying up farmland and getting it rezoned for higher density use.
3. There is no longer a tax-funded subsidy to put as much land under your dwelling as you can afford.
4. Speculators can't grab unearned wealth by getting urban infrastructure extended to service their land holdings.
5. Urban development moves to low-value non-agricultural land in preference to higher-value agricultural land.

So, your "argument" again was....?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Except it obviously didn't, because the fact remains.  Which is kinda the point.  Duh.


Which fact remains? The opinion you asserted as fact, but was shown to be false when actual economics definitions (which you never provided) were substituted for the words you misused? 

Your entire ideology is founded on deliberately shifting sand, Matt.  Nothing but the most tenuous house of cards propped up by little more than illusions and delusions.

----------


## Icymudpuppy

> Do you know that there is a difference between "value" and "area"?  Just sayin'.
> 
> Yes, and if that happens, it is called, "the free market not being prevented from allocating resources to more productive uses."
> 
> ??  Huh?  That happened in the *absence* of LVT, which would at least have ensured that nearby urban sites were fully utilized before good farmland was paved over.
> 
> 
> 
> In fact, LVT leads to more compact urban development and preservation of good farmland for a number of reasons:
> ...


In WA state, the counties get their income by LVT.  King county taxed all the best farmland out of the hands of farmers using a land value tax property tax.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Which fact remains?


"A single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."




> The opinion you asserted as fact, but was shown to be false when actual economics definitions (which you never provided) were substituted for the words you misused?


Yawn: http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ/byrns_.../econrent.html:

*One unique characteristic of land is its absolutely fixed supply.*  The land available to society cannot grow even if payments to landowners rise to infinity; the supply is perfectly inelastic at Qs in Figure 1.

...

*In summary, all payments received for the fixed supply of land are pure rents determined solely by demand.*
(Emphasis mine)


All of your preceding nonsense has been nothing but a stupid waste of time.  Again, I'll point out the obvious fact that stupidly wasting time is your only real strategy, as you can't really make a meaningful argument against LVT.




> Your entire ideology is founded on deliberately shifting sand, Matt.  Nothing but the most tenuous house of cards propped up by little more than illusions and delusions.


Your entire 'ideology' such as it is (read: strategy of wasting as much time as stupidly as possible) is based on lies and nonsense.

----------


## Roy L

> In WA state, the counties get their income by LVT.


No, you're lying.  WA counties use *property* taxes, not LVT, and also get sales tax revenue.  You're just flat-out lying.



> King county taxed all the best farmland out of the hands of farmers using a land value tax property tax.


No, you are lying.  The farmers ignored King County's *property* (NOT land value) tax because it was far less than the opportunity cost of not selling to developers.  If a developer offers you $1M for your farm, and you are only making $10K/yr farming it, property taxes don't even show up on your radar screen.  You just take the cash -- a gift from the community, remember -- and retire.  It was LACK of LVT that caused the sprawl that paved over the farms, as I explained to you in my previous post.

Every competent urban land economist knows that LVT causes urban development to be more compact, preserving farmland.  Your claim is, predictably, the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.

----------


## Roy L

> Well, I'm the only one that provided actual authoritative sources and arguments, which you denied, dismissed and poo-poo'ed, but didn't actually refute or provide any sources or authoritative definitions of your own.


Steven, you have *ignored* the actual economic concept of supply as given in the definition, and substituted your own cretinous notion that it is determined by owners' whims, and need not bear any relation to price or anything else.  You are totally confused, your "sources" do not say what you claim they say, and I don't know any way to fix your ignorance.



> Pretty much thoroughly destroyed a major part of its pseudo-economics underpinnings, actually.  Time well spent, I thought.


LOL!  Yeah, right, you have "destroyed a major part of its pseudo-economic underpinnings" with googled material that somehow escaped the attention of all the Nobel laureates in economics who have endorsed land value taxation.

Give me a freakin' break.

----------


## S.Shorland

Arabs,Dutch and Germans made land.David Beckham bought some.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Yawn: http://www.unc.edu/depts/econ/byrns_.../econrent.html:
> 
> [INDENT]*One unique characteristic of land is its absolutely fixed supply.*  The land available to society cannot grow even if payments to landowners rise to infinity; the supply is perfectly inelastic at Qs in Figure 1.


That's it? That's your source?! A lone economics professor's pro-Economic Rents and Pure Land Rents propaganda page, trying to pass itself off as an "illustrated encyclopedia" of economics?? Too funny. You couldn't find a non-pro-LVT mainstream economics site for a source? 

Why not just cite Prof. Byrn's paper:  




> *The Revenue Adequacy of Site Value Taxation in a Ricardian System of Economic Growth*
> 
> *Excerpt from the abstract:
> *Land taxes are considered as a source of revenue because of their efficiency aspects. Unfortunately this idea is all too often dismissed because of alleged revenue inadequacy. Thus an analysis is called for of the revenue adequacy of site value taxation in a Ricardian model of economic growth.


That's pathetic. Like quoting "Nobel Prize winning" Krugman on RPF, and expecting anyone to take anything he said with more than a shaker of salt.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Steven, you have *ignored* the actual economic concept of supply as given in the definition...


"as given in the definition"?  Which "given" definition, the one I gave?  Because I don't remember you providing one, except out of your own mind, or altered by you such that it was a Roy L "concept" rather than an actual definition.  Would you mind providing an authoritative, concise mainstream definition of supply, as well as a source?

----------


## Roy L

> Arabs,Dutch and Germans made land.


No, they did not.  They only built up or diked and drained land that was wet.

----------


## Roy L

duplicate

----------


## Roy L

> That's it? That's your source?! A lone economics professor's pro-Economic Rents and Pure Land Rents propaganda page, trying to pass itself off as an "illustrated encyclopedia" of economics??


It is accepted mainstream economics.  You just do not know any economics.



> That's pathetic. Like quoting "Nobel Prize winning" Krugman on RPF, and expecting anyone to take anything he said with more than a shaker of salt.


At least the source Matt gave says what he said it says.

Krugman is actually a fairly standard mainstream neoclassical economist.  You can say he's wrong about his political ideas, but you can't say he doesn't know basic economics.

----------


## Roy L

> "as given in the definition"?  Which "given" definition, the one I gave?  Because I don't remember you providing one, except out of your own mind, or altered by you such that it was a Roy L "concept" rather than an actual definition.  Would you mind providing an authoritative, concise mainstream definition of supply, as well as a source?


See the definitions from YOUR OWN SOURCE given in post #734 of this thread, including the following:

"supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."

Let me try to make this simple enough for you to understand.  Consider two different supply curves:

1. The seller is producing a product.  If the price he sells it at is $1K he will be making and selling 5 of them, but if the price is $2K he will make and sell 20 of them.  This is supply that is _not fixed_.  It is actually quite elastic.  This is the kind of product you say you are selling: a higher price will induce you to produce and sell more of them.

2. The seller owns a parcel of land.  If the price he sells it at is $50K, he will be selling his one parcel.  If the price he sells it at is $500M, he will still just be selling his one parcel.  That is supply that is _fixed_.  The elasticity of supply is zero.   It could not matter less that he would not sell it for $40K or $20K or $1.  Whatever the price he DOES sell it for, he can't sell any more OR LESS of it than he would be selling if he was selling it for 10 times as much, or 1/10 as much.  That is what fixed supply MEANS.  The seller can't affect supply, because given that there is a price he is selling at -- which is implied by the existence of a price -- he can't choose to sell any more or less, no matter how much that price is.

Until you understand this, it is pointless to talk about all your alleged sources allegedly claiming that the supply of land is not fixed.

----------


## Icymudpuppy

> No, you're lying.  WA counties use *property* taxes, not LVT, and also get sales tax revenue.  You're just flat-out lying.
> 
> No, you are lying.  The farmers ignored King County's *property* (NOT land value) tax because it was far less than the opportunity cost of not selling to developers.  If a developer offers you $1M for your farm, and you are only making $10K/yr farming it, property taxes don't even show up on your radar screen.  You just take the cash -- a gift from the community, remember -- and retire.  It was LACK of LVT that caused the sprawl that paved over the farms, as I explained to you in my previous post.
> 
> Every competent urban land economist knows that LVT causes urban development to be more compact, preserving farmland.  Your claim is, predictably, the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.


In WA, the counties tax property based on it's development potential.  The farmer using it for farming making a $30,000 a year profit but getting taxed for $15-25,000/year because the land around it sold for 10 million, means he can't afford to keep the land no matter how much he loves farming.  I personally watched it happen to many of my dad's trading partners whom we traded grain for veggies.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> See the definitions from YOUR OWN SOURCE given in post #734 of this thread, including the following:
> 
> "supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."


*Excellent.* A perfect choice for a definition as it relates to the supply curve.  Word for word, exactly as written.  

Here is that same sentence, Roy, rewritten so that it reads the way you seem to understand it:

"supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity of all of a particular good in existence available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."

See the difference?  Anything wrong with the way I rewrote it?  Do you think the two sentences mean the same thing?

----------


## Roy L

> *Excellent.* A perfect choice for a definition as it relates to the supply curve.  Word for word, exactly as written.  
> 
> Here is that same sentence, Roy, rewritten so that it reads the way you seem to understand it:
> 
> "supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity of all of a particular good in existence available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."
> 
> See the difference?  Anything wrong with the way I rewrote it?


You mean, other than it just being some $#!+ you made up?



> Do you think the two sentences mean the same thing?


No, and you don't think I do, either.

----------


## Roy L

> In WA, the counties tax property based on it's development potential.


I.e., speculative market value, given that they give its publicly created value away to whoever owns it at the time it is rezoned (almost always a politically connected developer).



> The farmer using it for farming making a $30,000 a year profit but getting taxed for $15-25,000/year because the land around it sold for 10 million, means he can't afford to keep the land no matter how much he loves farming.


If he loves farming so much, he can farm where the land is not better suited to more productive uses.  If your "farmland uber alles" meme had any merit, Paris would still be a few mud huts on the Seine.  



> I personally watched it happen to many of my dad's trading partners whom we traded grain for veggies.


And I suppose the lure of a gift of $10M had nothing to do with it....?  I have difficulty weeping for people who are given millions of dollars for doing nothing, when so many who have done so much never even get their rightful earnings.

In any case, the result you describe was due to LACK of LVT, a policy defect that CAUSES urban sprawl, as already explained.  Were there no vacant or under-used sites in Seattle at the time that farmland was being developed?  Why do you think developers would choose to build on rural land rather than in more advantageous urban locations?

----------


## Steven Douglas

*
On The Crucial Distinction Between Supply Price and Market Price*
_(and why these two prices can be equal but are not synonymous, and cannot be conflated or interchanged)_ [SOURCES]




> No, and you don't think I do, either.


On the contrary. You already said: (emphasis mine)




> There is no such thing as items being 'withheld from supply.' *If they exist, they are part of the supply*, as they are available to the market.
> ....
> Supply is not the amount for sale. It is the quantity that and owner would be willing to make available to the market at a given price IF THAT WERE THE PRICE. That is why *anything that exists and will continue to exist at any price is automatically part of supply.*


The problem with your last sentence is that _"anything that exists and will continue to exist"_ is given qualified dependence by you with the words *"at any price"*. Well, I agree. IF it does have "any price" (big IF, which *supply price* ONLY THE OWNER can determine), then it would indeed be considered to be part of supply *AT AND ABOVE THAT SUPPLY PRICE ONLY* (not market price, which owners and sellers negotiate but neither of whom have ultimate control over in a free market) [SOURCE].

Aside from the fact that supply is not just the quantity "for sale" or "on the shelf now", but rather IS the quantity that an owner _would be willing_ to make available for sale at a given *supply price* or range of all possible *supply prices*, the problem with your penultimate sentence is that the _"amount that would be available to the market at a given price"_ *COULD BE ZERO* (AKA = NO SUPPLY at any given *supply price*).  You say, "That's just not its price." (the *supply price* at which it *could have been* made available for trade), and that could be very true _at a given price_. However, look elsewhere, at all other possible *supply prices*. If you don't find a *supply price* that particular item *could* trade for  (i.e., at which the owner is willing to make it available, which is determined exclusively by the owner) then it is *not supply -- at any supply price*.   

It is inconceivable in your mind for an item to be "withheld from supply", but ONLY because you falsely assume that every thing MUST have a *supply price* (which you falsely refer to as the amount it WOULD -- not COULD -- trade for), whatever that is.  And somehow placing emphasis on "WOULD trade for" falsely begs the circular question with the prior assumption that it DOES in fact have a *supply price* and COULD (not WOULD) therefore trade, even hypothetically. 

Thus, an aggregate supply curve which accounts for quantities of a thing that an owner is willing to make available across a range of all possible *supply prices* should, in your mind, also account for and include 100% of the quantity of a particular thing that is owned and in existence.  That is patently and indisputably false.    

*Supply Price* is not the same thing as *Market Price*, and while they do finally become equal to each other at the point at which a TRANSACTION occurs, they are not interchangeable terms.  

*IN A FREE MARKET SUPPLY PRICE ALWAYS PRECEDES, AND EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF, MARKET PRICE*.

Unless you can figure out a way to make it MANDATORY (and therefore not a free market) that everything be assigned a *supply price* (e.g., abrogate ownership rights, so that a price can be determined externally, by force, and by someone other than the owner), not everything that exists and is owned and will continue to exist does have a *supply price*. That is because *ONLY OWNERS* are in a position to determine IF a thing can even have a *supply price*, and therefore be considered available to the market. Many things owned on earth are owned by people who are _not willing to make them available to the market at any supply price_. They do not, therefore, have any possible price -- no supply price, and therefore no possible market price that could result for that particular thing.  So long as this remains true, these cannot be counted as supply, or "available to the market". 

I know that's a bitter pill for you to swallow, Roy, but that's just your refusal to know an indisputable fact of objective reality.

FINALLY - an historical look at market prices as they related to recent supply can tell us something about past supply (only the quantities that actually did trade at a range of given prices), which COULD loosely correlate with current supply.  Market price is established only when supply price (ASK) and demand price (BID) finally equal one another and a successful transaction occurs. However, even looking at the aggregate past supply will tell you *NOTHING* about the aggregate quantity that was then in existence - only those quantities that owners already proved they were willing to make available at that particular price, which actually did result in a successfully completed trade.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> That's it? That's your source?! A lone economics professor's pro-Economic Rents and Pure Land Rents propaganda page, trying to pass itself off as an "illustrated encyclopedia" of economics?? Too funny. You couldn't find a non-pro-LVT mainstream economics site for a source?


That's all you got?  Ad-hominem against Byrn?  Everything cited on that page is utterly mainstream.  No economist would disagree with it.  You're just wrong is all.




> Why not just cite Prof. Byrn's paper:  
> 
> That's pathetic. Like quoting "Nobel Prize winning" Krugman on RPF, and expecting anyone to take anything he said with more than a shaker of salt.


I take it you won't be addressing that paper either.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> *
> On The Crucial Distinction Between Supply Price and Market Price*
> _(and why these two prices can be equal but are not synonymous, and cannot be conflated or interchanged)_ [SOURCES]
> 
> 
> 
> On the contrary. You already said: (emphasis mine)
> 
> 
> ...


This is all just nonsensical garbage.  No economist would agree with this.  You are simply making up definitions of economic terms.  Period.  

Edit: Consider -if economics takes into account the potential unwillingness of some owners of items fixed in supply, what could we possibly ever hope to learn about value?  If we just acknowledge that it's fixed in supply, we can say: value is determined by demand.  Your wall of nonsense just ends in a sort of economic solipsism.  Yeah, sure, some landowners or owners of masterpieces by dead artists may choose not to sell.  But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply, so if they do sell, the prices will be determined by demand alone.

----------


## Steven Douglas

That last post (Supply Price vs. Market Price) was for you as well as Roy.  Those concepts apply equally to anything Byrn wrote, and also why Byrn was anything but "mainstream" in his usage of the word supply in the example you cited. If Byrn had written that land was fixed in area, he would have been correct, but he said fixed in "supply" instead - referring to the aggregate area extant, as if that was synonymous with "supply" in the economic sense. 

Everything I wrote in my latest post to Roy deals with exactly that, using truly mainstream definitions of both Supply Price and Market Price, and their relationship to the well-established economics definition of supply. Refute that.



EDIT:  I see you pulled a Roy - not a single refutation or argument - just an entire quote followed by a blanket assertion in dismissal.  I personally take that as backhanded agreement, and evidence of its correctness.  If you don't offer an actual argument, my argument stands. It doesn't mean it's correct - only that you haven't refuted it. 

Remember, Matt, you're not the only one reading all this, and not the only I'm writing to.  People can and will form their own opinions, and decide the veracity of any claims on their own.  You're not the lone arbiter of truth here.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Consider -if economics takes into account the potential unwillingness of some owners of items fixed in supply, what could we possibly ever hope to learn about value?  If we just acknowledge that it's fixed in supply, we can say: value is determined by demand.


No, it's not either/or and never was. Don't conflate value with demand, supply or even equilibrium price, which is where supply and demand intersect. 

Furthermore: 




> Most economists e.g., Paul Samuelson[2]:Ch.3,p.52 caution against attaching a normative meaning (value judgement) to the equilibrium price.





> Your wall of nonsense just ends in a sort of economic solipsism.  Yeah, sure, some landowners or owners of masterpieces by dead artists may choose not to sell.  But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply, so if they do sell, the prices will be determined by demand alone.


Again you blew it in the absolute, Matt, because you are failing to understand that it is the economics definition of supply at work in that sentence. Here it is as a tautology of what you wrote, replacing the word you used with its definition -- which shows your sentence to be technically accurate, while proving nothing about your entire premise (that supply is fixed because the total quantity in existence is fixed). 

*TAUTOLOGY OF YOUR PREMISE:* 

*But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply the quantity an owner chooses to make available to the market at a given price.* 

This quantity (a time-dependent dynamic variable and the only thing "supply" means) is NOT, nor is it necessarily equal to, the entire quantity in existence. 

*What about Aggregate Supply?*

Again, using your sentence:

*But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply the aggregate quantity the aggregate owners choose to make available to the market at a given price.* 

That is not the aggregate quantity in existence, nor does it include the amounts NOT made available at any supply price.

So indeed, if they do sell, the MARKET price will be determined by both the demand AND that quantity an owner chooses to make available to the market at that supply price. What does that have to do with the entire quantity in existence being counted as supply? *ZIP. NADA. NOTHING.*

*Can the total supply equal the total quantity in existence?* 

Yes. Of course. That's when the aggregate owners are willing to make all quantities in existence available at the same time at the same supply price. If even ONE owner is unwilling to make a SINGLE unit available at any price, then the total supply cannot equal the total quantity in existence.

----------


## Roy L

> *
> On The Crucial Distinction Between Supply Price and Market Price*
> _(and why these two prices can be equal but are not synonymous, and cannot be conflated or interchanged)_ [SOURCES]


ROTFL!!  Your "sources" consist of a Google page full of sources that disagree with you???!!?



> On the contrary. You already said: (emphasis mine)


Are you really trying to claim that when I said, "supply includes all that exists and will continue to exist at any price," I meant, "supply is all that currently exists"?  The whole point of a supply curve is that it describes what quantities will be PRODUCED in response to various prices.  In the case of land, no more OR LESS will be produced at any price, and that is what makes its supply fixed.



> The problem with your last sentence is that _"anything that exists and will continue to exist"_ is given qualified dependence by you with the words *"at any price"*. Well, I agree. IF it does have "any price" (big IF, which *supply price* ONLY THE OWNER can determine), then it would indeed be considered to be part of supply *AT AND ABOVE THAT SUPPLY PRICE ONLY* (not market price, which owners and sellers negotiate but neither of whom have ultimate control over in a free market) [SOURCE].


And quantity supplied cannot change no matter what that supply price is.  That is what makes the supply fixed.



> Aside from the fact that supply is not just the quantity "for sale" or "on the shelf now", but rather IS the quantity that an owner _would be willing_ to make available for sale at a given *supply price* or range of all possible *supply prices*, the problem with your penultimate sentence is that the _"amount that would be available to the market at a given price"_ *COULD BE ZERO* (AKA = NO SUPPLY at any given *supply price*).


Yes, it could, but only if none existed and it was impossible to produce any.



> You say, "That's just not its price." (the *supply price* at which it *could have been* made available for trade), and that could be very true _at a given price_.


Self-contradiction.  At a given price that IS the price.



> However, look elsewhere, at all other possible *supply prices*. If you don't find a *supply price* that particular item *could* trade for  (i.e., at which the owner is willing to make it available, which is determined exclusively by the owner) then it is *not supply -- at any supply price*.


Another self-contradiction.  It is available at any supply price *by definition*.



> It is inconceivable in your mind for an item to be "withheld from supply", but ONLY because you falsely assume that every thing MUST have a *supply price* (which you falsely refer to as the amount it WOULD -- not COULD -- trade for), whatever that is.  And somehow placing emphasis on "WOULD trade for" falsely begs the circular question with the prior assumption that it DOES in fact have a *supply price* and COULD (not WOULD) therefore trade, even hypothetically.


No, it's just that supply price does not affect quantity supplied.



> Thus, an aggregate supply curve which accounts for quantities of a thing that an owner is willing to make available across a range of all possible *supply prices* should, in your mind, also account for and include 100% of the quantity of a particular thing that is owned and in existence.  That is patently and indisputably false.


It's true by definition.



> *Supply Price* is not the same thing as *Market Price*, and while they do finally become equal to each other at the point at which a TRANSACTION occurs, they are not interchangeable terms.  
> 
> *IN A FREE MARKET SUPPLY PRICE ALWAYS PRECEDES, AND EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF, MARKET PRICE*.


Anyone else have a clue what that means?



> Unless you can figure out a way to make it MANDATORY (and therefore not a free market) that everything be assigned a *supply price* (e.g., abrogate ownership rights, so that a price can be determined externally, by force, and by someone other than the owner), not everything that exists and is owned and will continue to exist does have a *supply price*. That is because *ONLY OWNERS* are in a position to determine IF a thing can even have a *supply price*, and therefore be considered available to the market.


<sigh>  If an item has no supply price, it is equally unavailable at any price, AND ITS SUPPLY IS THEREFORE FIXED AT ZERO.



> Many things owned on earth are owned by people who are _not willing to make them available to the market at any supply price_.


Name one.



> They do not, therefore, have any possible price -- no supply price, and therefore no possible market price that could result for that particular thing.  So long as this remains true, these cannot be counted as supply, or "available to the market".


You claim it "remains" true, but have offered no evidence for your assertion.



> I know that's a bitter pill for you to swallow, Roy, but that's just your refusal to know an indisputable fact of objective reality.


It is not an indisputable fact of objective reality.  It is highly implausible $#!+ that you just made up.



> FINALLY - an historical look at market prices as they related to recent supply can tell us something about past supply (only the quantities that actually did trade at a range of given prices), which COULD loosely correlate with current supply.  Market price is established only when supply price (ASK) and demand price (BID) finally equal one another and a successful transaction occurs. However, even looking at the aggregate past supply will tell you *NOTHING* about the aggregate quantity that was then in existence - only those quantities that owners already proved they were willing to make available at that particular price, which actually did result in a successfully completed trade.


Incomprehensible.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Incomprehensible.


To you, of course, and that's fully understandable, Roy. Expected even.  Like I told Matt, I'm not just writing to you, and the veracity or correctness of whatever I write really isn't dependent on your comprehension or agreement.  




> Are you really trying to claim that when I said, "supply includes all that exists and will continue to exist at any price," I meant, "supply is all that currently exists"? The whole point of a supply curve is that it describes what quantities will be PRODUCED in response to various prices. In the case of land, no more OR LESS will be produced at any price, and that is what makes its supply fixed.


You are referring to the supply curve as it relates to production, of course.  That doesn't change the definition of supply itself, which is much broader in scope, and happens to encompass production, or the fact that supply curves are also used for land, whether developed or undeveloped lands as factors of production, to wit:

http://www.wcrer.wsu.edu/resource%20...01_execsum.pdf




Figure 1 shows how the land supply curve becomes steeper as the quantity of developed
land in a market (QD) expands toward the UGB supply constraint (QT). This means that we
expect land supply to become more and more price inelastic over time as development
occurs within a constrained geography. Greater supply price inelasticity means that land
price can be expected to grow at an accelerating rate even though the need for developed
land may only grow at a constant rate. This effect is illustrated in figure 2.



Like dead artists' works, land area is finite and cannot be produced. If supply is fixed to mean the aggregate total in existence (the maximum quantity possible), why are these Land Supply curves NOT vertical?  

In theory it is often argued that the supply curve would TEND to go vertical, but only as available land is exhausted (or artificially constrained). However, it is erroneous to suggest that the aggregate quantity of land in existence is equal to the "supply", which is PRECISELY what you are claiming - and only by virtue of the fact that it cannot be produced, while completely ignoring the fact that PRODUCTION is only a means by which something NEWLY PRODUCED can be made available as supply, and can then CIRCULATE in the case of a non-perishable, non-consumable good which can then enter an re-enter a supply curve many times.  

It does not matter whether you are talking about oranges, widgets, works of dead artists, or land.  At all times supply is still defined as "the quantity an owner is willing to make available at a given supply price (or range of all possible prices)" --  NOT THE AGGREGATE TOTAL IN EXISTENCE, given that some quantities CAN AND ARE excluded from being made available by owners _at any price_.

If a thing is withheld from the market (by any mechanism and for any reason such that the owner is unwilling to make a quantity or area available at any price), it doesn't matter whether the total quantity in existence is fixed - it is still NOT SUPPLY, which will always be some quantity less the total quantity in existence.   




> http://www.nambucca.nsw.gov.au/cp_co...s_Strategy.pdf
> 
> If all land was developed at the assumed yields this equates to approximately 60 years supply of employment *land that could be added to the existing land bank of zoned land*. Given that within the next 5 years the industrial supply within Nambucca will run out, Council will need to be proactive have market ready land in the Lower Nambucca for the short to medium term (by 2015). In addition, as the existing industrial land is used up, there may be pent up demand which will drive an initial surge once new industrial land comes on the market.
> 
> Ideally this Strategy should be reviewed every five to seven years to check whether areas were developed as expected and to assess any changes in demand or services and infrastructure. If needed, areas can be brought forward if development exceeds expectation *or other areas are withheld from supply*. If development falls short of expectation then areas can be deferred to a later time frame.


Take the case of gold, and say, hypothetically, that we had finally mined/exhausted all gold available on or in the Earth.  No more mining will produce even one more ounce of gold.   The total quantity in existence is now fixed, but *NOT* the total supply *that now circulates* - which is ONLY defined as the quantity owners are willing to make available at a given price, or range of all possible prices in the case of a supply curve, at a given period of time. The fact that they cannot affect the MAXIMUM TOTAL EXTANT (or maximum possible available for sale) does NOT mean they cannot affect the maximum total that IS available for sale at a given price at a given time.

----------


## Steven Douglas

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap2c.asp

With arrival at equilibrium, the exchanges have shifted the goods to the most capable possessors,
and there is no further motive for exchange. The market has ended, and there is no longer an active
“ruling market price” for either good because there is no longer any motive for exchange. 
_Yet in our experience the markets for almost all goods are being continually renewed._
_Man, Economy & State, by Murray N. Rothbard_ 




What you often refer to ever-so-loosely as "supply", Murray N. Rothbard referred to as "stock". 




> There is another way of treating supply and demand schedules, which, for some problems of analysis, is more useful than the schedules presented above. *At any point on the market, suppliers are engaged in offering some of their stock of the good and withholding their offer of the remainder.* 
> 
> Thus, at a price of 86, suppliers supply three horses on the market and withhold the other five in their stock. This withholding is caused by one of the factors mentioned above as possible costs of the exchange: either the direct use of the good (say the horse) has greater utility than the receipt of the fish in direct use; or else the horse could be exchanged for some other good; or, finally, the seller expects the final price to be higher, so that he can profitably delay the sale. 
> 
> *The amount that sellers will withhold on the market is termed their reservation demand.* 
> 
> This is not, like the demand studied above, a demand for a good in exchange; *this is a demand to hold stock.* Thus, the concept of a “demand to hold a stock of goods” will always include both demand-factors; it will include the demand for the good in exchange by nonpossessors, plus the demand to hold the stock by the possessors. The demand for the good in exchange is also a demand to hold, since, regardless of what the buyer intends to do with the good in the future, he must hold the good from the time it comes into his ownership and possession by means of exchange. We therefore arrive at the concept of a “total demand to hold” for a good, differing from the previous concept of exchange-demand, although including the latter in addition to the reservation demand by the sellers.


*Further down: 
*



> *A total demand-stock diagram can convey no information about the quantity exchanged, but only about the equilibrium price.* Thus, in diagram (c), the broken lines both represent a fall in demand to hold, and we could consequently be sure that the total demand to hold declined, and that therefore price declined. (The opposite would be the case for a shift from the broken to the solid lines.) In diagram (d), however, since an increase in the supply schedule represented a fall in demand to hold, and an increase in demand was a rise in the demand to hold, we could not always be sure of the net effect on the total demand to hold and hence on the equilibrium price.
> 
> *From the beginning of the supply-demand analysis up to this point
> we have been assuming the existence of a constant physical stock.* 
> 
> Thus, we have been assuming the existence of eight horses and have been *considering the principles on which this stock will go into the hands of different possessors*. The analysis above *applies to all goods*—to all cases where an existing stock is being exchanged for the stock of another good. For some goods this point is as far as analysis can be pursued. *
> 
> This appl**ies to those goods of which the stock is fixed and cannot be increased through production*. They are either once produced by man or given by nature, but the stock cannot be increased by human action. Such a good, for example, is a Rembrandt painting after the death of Rembrandt. Such a painting would rank high enough on individual value scales to command a high price in exchange for other goods. The stock can never be increased, however, and its exchange and pricing is solely in terms of the previously analyzed exchange of existing stock, determined by the relative rankings of these and other goods on numerous value scales. Or assume that a certain quantity of diamonds has been produced, and no more diamonds are available anywhere. *Again, the problem would be solely one of exchanging the existing stock. In these cases, there is no further problem of production—of deciding how much of a stock should be produced in a certain period of time.*


Tell me, was Rothbard making up a bunch of crap?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Tell, me, was Rothbard making up a bunch of crap?


Doubtlessly.  He was an Austrian, after all.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> That last post (Supply Price vs. Market Price) was for you as well as Roy.  Those concepts apply equally to anything Byrn wrote, and also why Byrn was anything but "mainstream" in his usage of the word supply in the example you cited. If Byrn had written that land was fixed in area, he would have been correct, but he said fixed in "supply" instead - referring to the aggregate area extant, as if that was synonymous with "supply" in the economic sense.


He's absolutely mainstream in his usage of supply.  You've simply opted to refuse to know what supply is.




> Everything I wrote in my latest post to Roy deals with exactly that, using truly mainstream definitions of both Supply Price and Market Price, and their relationship to the well-established economics definition of supply. Refute that.


No, it simply doesn't.




> EDIT:  I see you pulled a Roy - not a single refutation or argument - just an entire quote followed by a blanket assertion in dismissal.  I personally take that as backhanded agreement, and evidence of its correctness.  If you don't offer an actual argument, my argument stands. It doesn't mean it's correct - only that you haven't refuted it. 
> 
> Remember, Matt, you're not the only one reading all this, and not the only I'm writing to.  People can and will form their own opinions, and decide the veracity of any claims on their own.  You're not the lone arbiter of truth here.


Everyone can see that you're just copy-and-pasting irrelevant nonsense you googled.  You've made it clear, again and again, that you know nothing of economics.  Anyone with access to an Econ 101 text can verify this for himself.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> He's absolutely mainstream in his usage of supply.  You've simply opted to refuse to know what supply is.
> 
> No, it simply doesn't.
> 
> Everyone can see that you're just copy-and-pasting irrelevant nonsense you googled.  You've made it clear, again and again, that you know nothing of economics.  Anyone with access to an Econ 101 text can verify this for himself.


You do realize that there wasn't a single actual argument advanced in that last post, don't you?  Just blanket assertions, and completely meaningless dismissals.

You claim his usage of supply is mainstream, but don't say why, or back it up with any specifics. You claim I opted to "refuse to know" (what a joke of an LVT turing machine phrase that is) what supply is, but again you don't say why, or back it up with any specifics.   Not a single coherent argument. No sources, no reason, no logic or even any common sense to follow. Nothing.




> If an item has no supply price, it is equally unavailable at any price, AND ITS SUPPLY IS THEREFORE FIXED AT ZERO.


That's one way of saying it. "Withheld from supply" or "not counted" are others. My nonexistent supply of plutonium to the market is also "fixed at zero".  Likewise my supply of unicorns, as well as the one bandaid I have left in my medicine cabinet.  All fixed at zero. 




> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> Many things owned on earth are owned by people who are not willing to make them available to the market at any supply price.
> 
> 
> Name one.


My great-grandfather's wedding ring. Not part of any supply. Not at any price.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> You do realize that there wasn't a single actual argument advanced in that last post, don't you?  Just blanket assertions, and completely meaningless dismissals.
> 
> You claim his usage of supply is mainstream, but don't say why, or back it up with any specifics. You claim I opted to "refuse to know" (what a joke of an LVT turing machine phrase that is) what supply is, but again you don't say why, or back it up with any specifics.   Not a single coherent argument. No sources, no reason, no logic or even any common sense to follow. Nothing.


As you well know, I've already provided a mainstream source.  You just dismissed it via ad hominem.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> As you well know, I've already provided a mainstream source.  You just dismissed it via ad hominem.


That makes two of us.

----------


## Roy L

> You are referring to the supply curve as it relates to production, of course.


Any supply curve.



> That doesn't change the definition of supply itself, which is much broader in scope, and happens to encompass production, or the fact that supply curves are also used for land, whether developed or undeveloped lands as factors of production, to wit:
> 
> http://www.wcrer.wsu.edu/resource%20...01_execsum.pdf


Are you serious?



> Figure 1 shows how the land supply curve becomes steeper as the quantity of developed
> land in a market (QD) expands toward the UGB supply constraint (QT). This means that we
> expect land supply to become more and more price inelastic over time as development
> occurs within a constrained geography. Greater supply price inelasticity means that land
> price can be expected to grow at an accelerating rate even though the need for developed
> land may only grow at a constant rate. This effect is illustrated in figure 2.
> 
> 
> 
> Like dead artists' works, land area is finite and cannot be produced. If supply is fixed to mean the aggregate total in existence (the maximum quantity possible), why are these Land Supply curves NOT vertical?


They aren't land supply curves.  You obviously can't even be bothered reading the crap you provide as "sources," let alone understanding it.



> In theory it is often argued that the supply curve would TEND to go vertical, but only as available land is exhausted (or artificially constrained). However, it is erroneous to suggest that the aggregate quantity of land in existence is equal to the "supply", which is PRECISELY what you are claiming - and only by virtue of the fact that it cannot be produced, while completely ignoring the fact that PRODUCTION is only a means by which something NEWLY PRODUCED can be made available as supply, and can then CIRCULATE in the case of a non-perishable, non-consumable good which can then enter an re-enter a supply curve many times.


Like the works of dead artists.  Which are a canonical example of fixed supply.



> It does not matter whether you are talking about oranges, widgets, works of dead artists, or land.


Yes, it does, as oranges and presumably widgets can be produced.



> At all times supply is still defined as "the quantity an owner is willing to make available at a given supply price (or range of all possible prices)"


No, it is not.



> --  NOT THE AGGREGATE TOTAL IN EXISTENCE, given that some quantities CAN AND ARE excluded from being made available by owners _at any price_.


Evidence?  Of course not.



> If a thing is withheld from the market (by any mechanism and for any reason such that the owner is unwilling to make a quantity or area available at any price), it doesn't matter whether the total quantity in existence is fixed - it is still NOT SUPPLY, which will always be some quantity less the total quantity in existence.


Garbage.



> Take the case of gold, and say, hypothetically, that we had finally mined/exhausted all gold available on or in the Earth.  No more mining will produce even one more ounce of gold.   The total quantity in existence is now fixed, but *NOT* the total supply *that now circulates* - which is ONLY defined as the quantity owners are willing to make available at a given price, or range of all possible prices in the case of a supply curve, at a given period of time. The fact that they cannot affect the MAXIMUM TOTAL EXTANT (or maximum possible available for sale) does NOT mean they cannot affect the maximum total that IS available for sale at a given price at a given time.


Yes, it does, because whatever the price, that is what it sells for.  You still haven't really understood that.

----------


## Roy L

> http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap2c.asp
> 
> With arrival at equilibrium, the exchanges have shifted the goods to the most capable possessors,
> and there is no further motive for exchange. The market has ended, and there is no longer an active
> ruling market price for either good because there is no longer any motive for exchange. 
> _Yet in our experience the markets for almost all goods are being continually renewed._
> _Man, Economy & State, by Murray N. Rothbard_ 
> What you often refer to ever-so-loosely as "supply", Murray N. Rothbard referred to as "stock". 
> *Further down: 
> ...


Well, his embarrassingly fallacious, absurd, wrong-headed and dishonest attack on LVT was certainly a bunch of crap he made up, as I've already demonstrated.  In this case, Rothbard is actually explaining to you why I am right and you are wrong.  You just don't understand the implications of his concept of "reservation demand."  Rothbard is just telling you what I told you: the goods an owner has in his possession are available to the market because they are available TO HIM.  He is a person whose demand for the good is being satisfied.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Rothbard is just telling you what I told you: the goods an owner has in his possession are available to the market because they are available TO HIM.  He is a person whose demand for the good is being satisfied.


That's one way of spinning it.

----------


## Roy L

> No, it's not either/or and never was.


Yes, it is.



> Don't conflate value with demand, supply or even equilibrium price, which is where supply and demand intersect.


When supply is fixed, price depends exclusively on demand.



> Again you blew it in the absolute, Matt, because you are failing to understand that it is the economics definition of supply at work in that sentence.


No, you are.



> Here it is as a tautology of what you wrote, replacing the word you used with its definition -- which shows your sentence to be technically accurate, while proving nothing about your entire premise (that supply is fixed because the total quantity in existence is fixed). 
> 
> *TAUTOLOGY OF YOUR PREMISE:* 
> 
> *But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply the quantity an owner chooses to make available to the market at a given price.*


No, you're lying.  That is not the definition of supply.



> This quantity (a time-dependent dynamic variable and the only thing "supply" means) is NOT, nor is it necessarily equal to, the entire quantity in existence.


That is not the only thing supply means.  It is only the definition you are trying to substitute for the economic definition.



> *What about Aggregate Supply?*
> 
> Again, using your sentence:
> 
> *But the fact is, land and such artwork are fixed in supply the aggregate quantity the aggregate owners choose to make available to the market at a given price.* 
> 
> That is not the aggregate quantity in existence, nor does it include the amounts NOT made available at any supply price.


Same fallacious attempt to substitute your own definition for the economic definition.



> *Can the total supply equal the total quantity in existence?* 
> 
> Yes. Of course. That's when the aggregate owners are willing to make all quantities in existence available at the same time at the same supply price.


Nope.  It doesn't matter what their supply prices are, because they can't supply any more at any price.



> If even ONE owner is unwilling to make a SINGLE unit available at any price, then the total supply cannot equal the total quantity in existence.


Even if that were the case, a claim you have made but offered no evidence to support, supply would still be fixed, because that item would still have a supply of zero at all prices.

*GET IT????*

----------


## helmuth_hubener

All supply curves are vertical, short term.  There's only so many cans of soup on the shelf.  Etc.  The demand curve can move about however it likes, it cannot get more than the 5 cans that exist on the shelf.  Not until the next shipment.

Most supply curves are sloped upward (they're also not really curves, but putting that aside) in the long term.  Demand goes up, more soup will be ordered next time.  More soup will be produced.  New farms producing soup ingredients will be opened up.  Etc.

Some items cannot be produced.  The supply of Rembrandts does not respond to price (One hopes.  If it does, it's called "forgery").  These exceptions have a vertical supply curve even in the long term.

Natural resources are not one of these exceptions.  When the demand for a resource goes up, expansionary measures will tend to be taken to increase the supply of that resource.  When demand goes down, a contraction will tend to occur.

Obviously a thing or abstraction off by itself somewhere, in the absence of any owner, or indeed of any human at all, is not part of supply in any economic sense.  Oil 200 miles below the surface is not part of the supply of oil, nor is an asteroid's mineral wealth a part of the gold supply.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> That is not the only thing supply means.  It is only the definition you are trying to substitute for the economic definition.
> 
> Same fallacious attempt to substitute your own definition for the economic definition.


Which actual economic definition, specifically, would that be?  Not your opinion, not your paraphrase or explanation. The actual sourced definition.

----------


## Roy L

> Which actual economic definition, specifically, would that be?  Not your opinion, not your paraphrase or explanation. The actual sourced definition.


The one in post #734, which does not say, "Whatever amount owners decide to sell."

----------


## Steven Douglas

> The one in post #734, which does not say, "Whatever amount owners decide to sell."


I didn't ask what you thought it wasn't.  Just an actual specific definition.  You couldn't just quote it?  You know -- forthright, direct.  Verbatim? 

*"supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."* 

Is that the economic definition of supply you are referring to and accept?

----------


## Roy L

> All supply curves are vertical, short term.


Wrong again, as usual.  Financial markets, for one, sometimes have a schedule of ask prices and associated quantities of securities that have not yet been issued, but will be if prices rise above the current market price (e.g., stock options that issuers will immediately redeem in stock if the holder exercises them).



> There's only so many cans of soup on the shelf.  Etc.  The demand curve can move about however it likes, it cannot get more than the 5 cans that exist on the shelf.  Not until the next shipment.


ROTFL!!  Thank you for conceding the whole argument.  You obviously know there are people who currently have cans of soup they intend to eat, but would sell to someone else if the price were high enough.  That additional soup DOES NOT INCREASE SUPPLY, because it is simply being swapped from one owner to another.  ONLY ADDITIONAL SOUP increases the supply, not just an owner selling an existing can to someone else.  AND THE EXACT SAME IS TRUE FOR LAND.



> Most supply curves are sloped upward (they're also not really curves, but putting that aside) in the long term.  Demand goes up, more soup will be ordered next time.  More soup will be produced.  New farms producing soup ingredients will be opened up.  Etc.


More accurately, these things happen in response to price going up, not demand.



> Some items cannot be produced.  The supply of Rembrandts does not respond to price (One hopes.  If it does, it's called "forgery").  These exceptions have a vertical supply curve even in the long term.
> 
> Natural resources are not one of these exceptions.


Yes, they most certainly and indisputably are.



> When the demand for a resource goes up, expansionary measures will tend to be taken to increase the supply of that resource.


Nope.  Natural resources, by definition, cannot be produced by human labor, and there is consequently no way to increase their supply in response to increased demand or price.



> When demand goes down, a contraction will tend to occur.


LOL!  It's not only a small world, it's a _smaller_ world!



> Obviously a thing or abstraction off by itself somewhere, in the absence of any owner, or indeed of any human at all, is not part of supply in any economic sense.


Wrong.  History is full of examples of land off by itself somewhere, in the absence of any owner or human, being appropriated as property.  The Hudson's Bay Company charter is one egregious example.



> Oil 200 miles below the surface is not part of the supply of oil, nor is an asteroid's mineral wealth a part of the gold supply.


Equivocation fallacy.  The "supplies" of oil and gold refer to the relevant products of labor, not the precursor natural resources, whose supply is indeed fixed, and includes all of them in existence, owned or not, known or not.

----------


## Roy L

> I didn't ask what you thought it wasn't.  Just an actual specific definition.  You couldn't just quote it?  You know -- forthright, direct.  Verbatim? 
> 
> *"supply represents the entire relationship between the quantity available for sale and all possible prices charged for that good."* 
> 
> Is that the economic definition of supply you are referring to and accept?


I'd say, "available to the market" rather than "available for sale," and I believe I quoted a sourced definition to that effect earlier in the thread.

----------


## Steven Douglas

More specifically - since it's from a page you already accepted:





> *What Supply Is:*
> 
> Economists have a very precise definition of supply. Economists describe supply as the relationship between the quantity of a good or service consumers will offer for sale and the price charged for that good. More precisely and formally supply can be thought of as "the total quantity of a good or service that is available for purchase at a given price."
> 
> http://economics.about.com/od/supply/p/supply.htm


Anything wrong with that?  Is there some other definition that you're using that I'm not aware of, or does this one pretty much cover it?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I'd say, "available to the market" rather than "available for sale," and I believe I quoted a sourced definition to that effect earlier in the thread.


I don't care what "you'd say" or what "I'd say".  Just a specific definition. No ad hoc modifications or repairs - just existing definitions.

----------


## Roy L

> More specifically - since it's from a page you already accepted:


No, I only showed you why even if YOU accept it, it doesn't say what you claimed it says.



> Anything wrong with that?  Is there some other definition that you're using that I'm not aware of, or does this one pretty much cover it?


For one thing, consumers qua consumers don't offer things for sale, so your source is already showing that it is a bit confused and/or careless.

----------


## Roy L

> I don't care what "you'd say" or what "I'd say".  Just a specific definition. No ad hoc modifications or repairs - just existing definitions.


???  ROTFL!!  You're one to talk about ad hoc "modifications and repairs," after all the ludicrous misstatements and misapprehensions you have been trying to pass off as economics!

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, I only showed you why even if YOU accept it, it doesn't say what you claimed it says.
> 
> For one thing, consumers qua consumers don't offer things for sale, so your source is already showing that it is a bit confused and/or careless.


THEN GIVE YOUR DEFINITION OF SUPPLY.  Don't be slippery and allude to it without actually providing it, then deny it when I quote it. PROVIDE IT. 

Be specific. Quote your favorite definition of supply and cite your source.

----------


## Roy L

> You are referring to the supply curve as it relates to production, of course.  That doesn't change the definition of supply itself, which is much broader in scope, and happens to encompass production, or the fact that supply curves are also used for land, whether developed or undeveloped lands as factors of production, to wit:
> 
> http://www.wcrer.wsu.edu/resource%20...01_execsum.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> Figure 1 shows how the land supply curve becomes steeper as the quantity of developed
> land in a market (QD) expands toward the UGB supply constraint (QT). This means that we
> expect land supply to become more and more price inelastic over time as development
> ...


Have you figured out yet why (even aside from the fact that your source switched Figure 1 and Figure 2, which you did not notice because you either did not read your source or did not understand what you were reading) those are not land supply curves?

----------


## Steven Douglas

Why are evading the question?  It was simple enough. Provide an economics definition of supply!


How about this, since you're floundering - I'll throw you a bone here.  Would you say that the following is true from Harper College?

SOURCE: http://www.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/...es/s&d/s&d.htm 




> Supply is NOT the quantity available for sale. This is the way the term is often used in the popular press. Supply is the whole schedule with many prices and many quantities.
> 
> Just like with demand, there is a difference between a change in quantity supplied and a change in supply itself. So, if the price increases what happens to supply? The best WRONG answer would be "supply increases", but it doesn't. Price does not change supply, it changes quantity supplied, because supply means the whole schedule with various prices and various quantities.


Do you accept that? Because I do.

----------


## Roy L

> THEN GIVE YOUR DEFINITION OF SUPPLY.  Don't be slippery and allude to it without actually providing it, then deny it when I quote it. PROVIDE IT. 
> 
> Be specific. Quote your favorite definition of supply and cite your source.


"Definition of 'Supply'
A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers. Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph."

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1tNUuxUja

I'm sure I posted this before.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> "Definition of 'Supply'
> A fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers. Supply can relate to the amount available at a specific price or the amount available across a range of prices if displayed on a graph."
> 
> http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...#axzz1tNUuxUja
> 
> I'm sure I posted this before.


Actually, that was me that posted it, but I accept it, just as I accept this definition from Harpers (same link as before):




> *Definition*
> Supply is a schedule which shows the various quantities businesses are willing and able to offer for sale at various prices in a given time period, ceteris paribus.  
> 
> SOURCE: http://www.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/...es/s&d/s&d.htm


For me there is nothing contradictory between the definition you cited and the one I just cited above. Is there a conflict there in your mind?  Is there anything wrong with Harper's definition that you can see?

----------


## Roy L

> Why are evading the question?  It was simple enough. Provide an economics definition of supply!


I already have, and Matt has, and you have promptly rewritten them to say, "Whatever amount owners decide they want to sell."



> How about this, since you're floundering - I'll throw you a bone here.  Would you say that the following is true from Harper College?
> 
> SOURCE: http://www.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/...es/s&d/s&d.htm 
> 
> Do you accept that? Because I do.


Yes, that is correct.  But before you go off the rails again, do try to remember: EVERY PRICE, BY DEFINITION, IS AGREEABLE TO BOTH BUYER *AND SELLER*.  Lower amounts than a price are merely "bids," higher amounts are merely "hopes."

----------


## Roy L

> Actually, that was me that posted it,


No, you posted a different section from the same site that referred to supply of PRODUCTS, and I had to correct you.  Investopedia also has this to say:

"The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price."

http://www.investopedia.com/universi...#axzz1tNUuxUja

Leave aside the error of assuming only producers can supply anything, and notice the wording: "*when receiving* a certain price."  That means the "producers" ARE SELLING the good at that price.



> but I accept it, just as I accept this definition from Harpers (same link as before):
> 
> For me there is nothing contradictory between the definition you cited and the one I just cited above. Is there a conflict there in your mind?  Is there anything wrong with Harper's definition that you can see?


Of course there is no contradiction between the definitions.  The conflict is between what you claim they say and what they actually say.

FWIW, a lot of definitions of supply talk about "amount available for sale," but I reject that formulation as it defines what is available for free as not being part of supply, clearly a nonsensical notion.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Yes, that is correct.  But before you go off the rails again, do try to remember: EVERY PRICE, BY DEFINITION, IS AGREEABLE TO BOTH BUYER *AND SELLER*.  Lower amounts than a price are merely "bids," higher amounts are merely "hopes."


Here's where you have gone off the rails already.  The price referred to in supply is the Supply Price (as opposed to Demand Price).  




> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...supply%20price*
> Supply Price:* the lowest price at which a given amount of commodities will be offered under given conditions


The Supply Price referred to in Supply is NOT the amount for a given price that is agreeable to both a buyer and seller.  Sellers UNILATERALLY determine the Supply Price (quantity willing to make available at that price), just as buyers unilaterally determine Demand Price (quantity willing to purchase at that price).  They do NOT always agree with each other. In fact, Supply and Demand curves, by their natures, MOSTLY DO NOT AGREE. But wherever they do happen to agree with one another (where they intersect), that is called the Equilibrium Price, or "market-clearing price".  Market Price comes later, after buyers and sellers actually interact with their agreement and a successful transaction establishes that price.  

So far so good, or do you disagree with that?

----------


## Roy L

> Here's where you have gone off the rails already.


Nope.  You have, just as I prophesied.



> The price referred to in supply is the Supply Price (as opposed to Demand Price).


Nope.  It's PRICE: transaction amount.



> The Supply Price referred to in Supply


The definition of supply refers to *price*, not "supply price."



> is NOT the amount for a given price that is agreeable to both a buyer and seller.


YES IT IS.



> Sellers UNILATERALLY determine the Supply Price (quantity willing to make available at that price),


Which might be why the definition says, "price" and not "supply price."



> just as buyers unilaterally determine Demand Price (quantity willing to purchase at that price).


You refuse to talk about price, because you know you have been proved wrong.  Simple.



> They do NOT always agree with each other. In fact, Supply and Demand curves, by their natures, MOSTLY DO NOT AGREE. But wherever they do happen to agree with one another (where they intersect), that is called the Equilibrium Price, or "market-clearing price".  Market Price comes later, after buyers and sellers actually interact with their agreement and a successful transaction establishes that price.


Gibberish.



> So far so good, or do you disagree with that?


Nope.  It's nonsense.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> ROTFL!!  Thank you for conceding the whole argument.


 Oh, I'm not participating in any "argument."  I am just stating things as they are. Everyone may take them however they wish.

----------


## Roy L

> Oh, I'm not participating in any "argument."


True, and you also aren't _making_ any arguments.



> I am just stating things as they are.


OK, so you agree that sellers and buyers swapping around the existing supply of a good, whether the price is higher or lower, does not affect the supply of that good.  Good.  You agree that the supply of land is fixed.

----------


## Steven Douglas

Well, let's just roll with it and see if I understand your understanding of price as it relates to supply. According to you, and do correct me if I misstate your position:

You seem to be claiming that the price component of supply is market price only - the price of a commodity when sold in a given market, which by definition is only established by actual transactions -- as in "past transactions", the quantities at given prices of which buyers and sellers have already agreed upon - is that correct?

----------


## Roy L

> You seem to be claiming that the price component of supply is market price only - the price of a commodity


"Commodity" has a special meaning in economics.



> when sold in a given market, which by definition is only established by actual transactions -- as in "past transactions", the quantities at given prices of which buyers and sellers have already agreed upon - is that correct?


Like any other objective fact, price is only established by the event in question: in this case an actual transaction.

Consider a runner's performance in a track event.  His time is only ever established by actually running.  However, we can still say a lot of things about how different times will affect different other things, and other things will affect his times: if he eats too much, his time will be longer; if he posts a fast time, he'll make the varsity team, etc.  But we can also say that certain other things will *not* be related to his time: e.g., the track will not get any longer or shorter depending on his time, and so on.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> ...price is only established by the event in question: in this case an actual transaction.
> 
> Consider a runner's performance in a track event.  His time is only ever established by actually running.  However, we can still say a lot of things about how different times will affect different other things, and other things will affect his times: if he eats too much, his time will be longer; if he posts a fast time, he'll make the varsity team, etc.


It is true that a runner's _actual time_ can only be established by _actually running_.  However, you also used the word "time" in a future hypothetical context. These times are not yet known or established because the runner has yet to run.  Thus, they are only _projected times_, not actual times, and we can and do distinguish between projected and actual.  If he eats too much, his time *MIGHT* (NOT WILL) be longer.  In fact, if he eats just right, his time MIGHT still be longer, just as he MIGHT post a record time despite the fact that he ate what those making the projections might have thought was "too much". If the latter happens, an uncritically thinking idiot might be tempted to conclude in hindsight that the runner ate "just the right amount", without accounting for other variables, other reasons, including the possibility of an even better record time had he eaten less.  Either way, there is no "WILL" to any of it. It's nothing but a projection, and none of those projected times are actual times.  An hypothetical time MIGHT become equal to an actual time in the future, but that is incidental, and not the case with all hypothetical projections, many of which do not manifest as projected.

Likewise, we can plot actual historical transactions on a supply schedule, which transactions did in fact establish market price through demonstrated agreement between buyers and sellers.  On that much we agree, because those are factual historical points of Quantity Supplied and Quantity Demanded in actual transactions which established Market Price. We can even use these data to project hypothetical future supply (and demand).  However, the hypothetical Quantity Supplied at any given FUTURE HYPOTHETICAL point are only based on hypothetical, not actual, agreement between buyers and sellers.  They would only become points of Quantity Supplied and Market Price, with buyers and sellers in actual agreement, IF these transactions occur AS PROJECTED.  And not all of them will - or else everyone who makes such projections is truly a prophet, and we both know that is not the case.

Now let's look at this in the context of your claim that all goods that are possessed and in existence are automatically part of supply:  

According to you, the price component of supply is only based on actual transactions.  That necessarily means that to be counted as supply a thing must be part of a transaction that a) has occurred, and/or b) WILL occur.  That supply, those quantities owners are willing and able to make available at a range of prices over time, even if combined with future hypothetical supply, cannot and does not account for all goods that are possessed and in existence, which you claim are "automatically part of the supply".

*By definition:* Supply is a schedule which shows the various quantities owners are _able AND willing_ to offer for sale at a range of prices in a given time period, _ceteris paribus_. 

How, exactly, does that account for all goods that are owned and in existence, whether we only use historical "actual" supply, or even if we combine that with future projected supply? It cannot, because to even be counted as supply AT ANY POINT IN TIME, an owner must be both able AND willing to offer the thing in question for sale at a given price. For that to reflect the total quantity in existence, that total quantity in existence must appear and be accounted for at least somewhere on the supply schedule.  

As an hypothetical: An owner that has 100 widgets in stock shows a demonstrated willingness to make 50 of these available at a given price, which is then reflected as Quantity Supplied at a single point on a supply curve.  You would say that he has made 50 of these widgets available to the market for sale, and 50 available TO HIMSELF.  But the supply schedule DOES NOT REFLECT THIS.  It only accounts for what an owner was able and willing to make available TO OTHERS.  Thus, the supply schedule is only "aware" of the 50 widgets that actually are made available as Quantity Supplied.  The mainstream economics definition for supply does not account for what Rothbard referred to as Demand Reserve.  Otherwise, you should be able to account for 100 widgets as Quantity Supplied at least somewhere ON THE SUPPLY SCHEDULE.  If you don't, it's not counted as supply.  If 50 never make it onto the supply schedule, you will only see the 50 that are made available to others in actual market transactions. In fact, in most cases, ONLY THE OWNER even knows the total quantity of widgets that are in stock, part of which was held in reserve, which he was _able-but-not-willing_ to make available for supply.

You see this in the gold market.  Nobody knows with any certainty who owns what amount, or what quantities are held in "Demand Reserve" by anyone.   We only know something about the current amounts (to the extent we do) that are being traded. You don't know how much gold or silver I own.  Nobody but me does.  And since I am ABLE BUT NOT WILLING to make that stock available to anyone but myself at this time, that quantity of metals will not appear as any _actual transaction_, and thus will not appear as supply on any supply schedule (save the hypothetical one I _might_ make for myself). Unless and until that happens it will not be counted as "available supply".

----------


## Roy L

> Likewise, we can plot actual historical transactions on a supply schedule,


No, we can't.  Supply is not historical.



> which transactions did in fact establish market price through demonstrated agreement between buyers and sellers.  On that much we agree, because those are factual historical points of Quantity Supplied and Quantity Demanded in actual transactions which established Market Price. We can even use these data to project hypothetical future supply (and demand).


Nope.



> According to you, the price component of supply is only based on actual transactions.


Wrong.  It is the other way around: supply is based on the assumption of such prices being transaction prices.



> That necessarily means that to be counted as supply a thing must be part of a transaction that a) has occurred, and/or b) WILL occur.


No, WOULD occur.



> That supply, those quantities owners are willing and able to make available at a range of prices over time, even if combined with future hypothetical supply, cannot and does not account for all goods that are possessed and in existence, which you claim are "automatically part of the supply".


All goods trade at their price.  If the price a good trades *at* does not affect the available amount, supply is fixed.  As is the case with land.



> *By definition:* Supply is a schedule which shows the various quantities owners are _able AND willing_ to offer for sale at a range of prices in a given time period, _ceteris paribus_.


They are "able and willing" to sell all they have at any price, by definition, because its price IS by definition what the whole supply sells for.  



> How, exactly, does that account for all goods that are owned and in existence, whether we only use historical "actual" supply, or even if we combine that with future projected supply? It cannot, because to even be counted as supply AT ANY POINT IN TIME, an owner must be both able AND willing to offer the thing in question for sale at a given price.  For that to reflect the total quantity in existence, that total quantity in existence must appear and be accounted for at least somewhere on the supply schedule.


The whole amount in existence sells for its price.  In the case of produced goods, the amount in existence will increase at a higher price.  The amount of land won't.

You just refuse to know this.



> As an hypothetical: An owner that has 100 widgets in stock shows a demonstrated willingness to make 50 of these available at a given price, which is then reflected as Quantity Supplied at a single point on a supply curve.


If that's the going price, why wouldn't he sell all 100 at that price?  What you are saying is that he is effectively a buyer at a higher price, a seller at a lower price.  That is nonsense.

You are forgetting that the supply and demand curves can't be constructed unless all market participants are price takers -- i.e., they can't affect market price as individuals.  Your hypothetical assumes the owner of the 100 widgets sells only 50 at the market price.  But selling those 50 can't make the market price go up, so he is essentially losing money by not selling all 100.



> You would say that he has made 50 of these widgets available to the market for sale, and 50 available TO HIMSELF.  But the supply schedule DOES NOT REFLECT THIS.  It only accounts for what an owner was able and willing to make available TO OTHERS.  Thus, the supply schedule is only "aware" of the 50 widgets that actually are made available as Quantity Supplied.


Wrong.  The supply curve assumes people are logically consistent, and thus do not buy high and sell low, as your hypothetical widget owner effectively does.  



> The mainstream economics definition for supply does not account for what Rothbard referred to as Demand Reserve.  Otherwise, you should be able to account for 100 widgets as Quantity Supplied at least somewhere ON THE SUPPLY SCHEDULE.  If you don't, it's not counted as supply.  If 50 never make it onto the supply schedule, you will only see the 50 that are made available to others in actual market transactions.


Supply is not restricted to actual transactions; it includes all the potential transactions at different prices.



> In fact, in most cases, ONLY THE OWNER even knows the total quantity of widgets that are in stock, part of which was held in reserve, which he was _able-but-not-willing_ to make available for supply.


All that are in stock are part of supply, as they are available at some price.



> You see this in the gold market.  Nobody knows with any certainty who owns what amount, or what quantities are held in "Demand Reserve" by anyone.   We only know something about the current amounts (to the extent we do) that are being traded. You don't know how much gold or silver I own.  Nobody but me does.  And since I am ABLE BUT NOT WILLING to make that stock available to anyone but myself at this time, that quantity of metals will not appear as any _actual transaction_, and thus will not appear as supply on any supply schedule (save the hypothetical one I _might_ make for myself). Unless and until that happens it will not be counted as "available supply".


Wrong.  All gold and silver are part of the supply, just as everything else that already exists is part of supply, because it will trade at its price by definition.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, we can't.  Supply is not historical.


You really are off the deep end, Roy. Historical supply curves are created all the time.  How else can supply curve analysis models be empirically tested, except in hindsight? Here is but one of a zillion examples:



Figure 2.2 illustrates the basic model of a perfectly competitive market. The horizontal axis depicts the total quantity Q of a particular good -- in this case corn -- that is supplied and demanded in this market. The vertical axis depicts the price P at which this good is sold. A market can be characterized along three dimensions:

*commodity*––the product bought and sold (corn); 
*geography*––the location in which purchases are being made (the United States); and 
*time*––the period of time during which transactions are occurring (the year 2009, when corn prices were about $4 per bushel).

That's not available supply NOW. Only THEN. A model using historical data. Real world. 

Market supply curves as hypothetical models are not ever assumed to be prophetic or infallible by nature, nor are they created purely out of a vacuum.  Otherwise they would be even more meaningless than many of them already are. The price and quantity components on _every_ supply curve are derived using real world numbers, real world approximations, which is why you will not see a supply curve like the one above for the year 2013 showing trillions of bushels of wheat trading at thousands of dollars per bushel.  Only real world numbers need apply, and those real world numbers are derived ONLY from real world historical data. 




> "...supply is based on the assumption of such prices being transaction prices."


Which are often wrong, of course - as revealed when a supply curve analysis (projection) is later overlain with an actual historical supply curve (thus no "WOULD" to it, as seen only in hindsight).  

Are you under the impression that supply schedule assumptions are real world edicts of some kind? Prophecies? Scripture? Infallible? _As it is projected, so let it be assumed as reality_?   




> All goods trade at their price.  If the price a good trades *at* does not affect the available amount, supply is fixed.  As is the case with land.


All goods *[out of those that are traded]* trade at their price, whatever that is. But that does not mean that all goods in existence trade.   

I find it ironic that you took exception to supply not accounting for goods that are given away for free, and yet you can't even acknowledge goods that aren't traded or given away at all, at any price!  Not logical, Roy.  Not "real world" at all.   In a real world, chock full of "irrational" people, goods are traded, re-traded, given away, thrown away, stored away temporarily, and even _hoarded_. 




> They are "able and willing" to sell all they have at any price, by definition, because its price IS by definition what the whole supply sells for.


1) Gibberish - "able and willing" to sell "all they have at any price" -- is not the definition of supply, and not what happens in the real world.  There is ALWAYS a quantity component - a VARIABLE - to supply, which has NOTHING to do with the entire quantity in existence, but only the entire Quantity Supplied at all points on a schedule or curve. 

_2) "price is by definition what the whole supply sells for"_ is a semantics sleight-of-hand and question-begging game on your part.  To even refer to something as "whole supply" constrains it, _by definition_, to only those quantities that owners were actually WILLING to offer for sale at that price.  Thus, saying "price is by definition what the whole supply sells  for" is  like saying "*100% of all doctors who agreed were in agreement.*"  Yep. All of them. Every one of them -- out of those who agreed, that is. The doctors who didn't agree are not part of that 100%.  They're part of the 100% of doctors who did not agree.

If an owner sells 50 out of 100 widgets at a given price "the whole supply" (_of those 50 widgets_) indeed sold at that price, because "the whole supply" is the Quantity Supplied.  You want "the whole supply", by an impossible leap of logic, to also mean "the entire quantity in existence" - when that is NOT what it means.   




> The whole amount in existence sells for its price.


Gibberish, incorrect, and has no absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the real world. 

 As of now the spot price of silver is $30.73/oz. - that is its market price. And guess what? I and MILLIONS OF OTHERS were *able-but-not-willing* to make ANY of our quantities available at or anywhere near that price. All the silver that DID sell at that price did in fact sell at that price (100% of silver that sold at that price sold at that price). But_ only those quantities at that particular time at that particular price_ - NOT the "whole amount in existence".  It is not even possible for the "whole amount in existence" to be sold at that price.  Because that would take time, and that would only be the price on the leading edge, as the FIRST quantities sold and were absorbed at that price. LONG BEFORE the entire quantity sold, however, the price would CRASH.  Thus, that would no longer be the price at which the remaining quantities sold. Even then, you COULD fit all of that onto an historical supply curve, which showed the quantities that sold at different prices. But to say that it accounted for the total quantity in existence would require that the total quantity in existence actually be traded.  That's not real world at all. 




> In the case of produced goods, the amount in existence will increase at a higher price.  The amount of land won't.


That is true. In the case of *produced goods*, the total amount in existence will TEND to increase at a higher price. * And so will the supply*, which we don't ever erroneously conflate with the total amount in existence, since that is not now, nor has it ever been, the economics definition of supply.  

The total amount extant of land, works of dead artists, historical trading cards, minted coins from other eras, etc., will not and cannot increase, but *the SUPPLY will definitely vary* - as it does every day - according to price.  

Welcome to the world of *circulation*, Roy, as the same things are CIRCULATED - SUPPLIED AND RESUPPLIED as Quantity Supplied - over and over again, at both quantities and prices that are always variable, _never fixed_, ceteris paribus.

The quantity _of goods produced_ will tend to vary according to price. However, there are durable "things" that are neither produced nor are they consumed, which are fixed in total quantity extant, _but which are not fixed in supply_ (the economics definition ONLY). These are not produced, but they do _circulate_, and that supply (which is, at all times, _the amount that owners are willing to make available for sale across a range of prices_), is *ANYTHING BUT FIXED*. These quantities can and do vary according to price, and without regard to their defiance of the usual patterns and assumptions of Marshallian or Ricardian supply and demand or price theories as they relate to produced goods.

----------


## MattintheCrown

So, basically, you've abandoned your argument about what economics say about supply, and substituted it with a form of "economics is dumb."  LOL.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So, basically, you've abandoned your argument about what economics say about supply, and substituted it with a form of "economics is dumb."  LOL.


Hardly.  Economics is a collection of theories that attempt to describe economic reality (human market behavior) as accurately as possible.  A theory may actually be accurate to the degree it proves itself to be within its intended scope, leaving the "dumb" component to the one who misapplies it.  

But once again, you didn't really argue anything, did you? Did you actually have something substantive to offer, or are you just drive-by trolling?

----------


## Steven Douglas

Here you go, Matt - for you as well.  Refute the following, and not just with blanket ad hominem dismissals and rejections, but actually employing reason, logic, common sense, specific arguments, sources, etc.,

What say you about the following:




> No, we can't.  Supply is not historical.


You really are off the deep end, Roy. Historical supply curves are created all the time.  How else can supply curve analysis models be empirically tested, except in hindsight? Here is but one of a zillion examples:



Figure 2.2 illustrates the basic model of a perfectly competitive market. The horizontal axis depicts the total quantity Q of a particular good -- in this case corn -- that is supplied and demanded in this market. The vertical axis depicts the price P at which this good is sold. A market can be characterized along three dimensions:

*commodity*––the product bought and sold (corn); 
*geography*––the location in which purchases are being made (the United States); and 
*time*––the period of time during which transactions are occurring (the year 2009, when corn prices were about $4 per bushel).

That's not available supply NOW. Only THEN. A model using historical data. Real world. 

Market supply curves as hypothetical models are not ever assumed to be prophetic or infallible by nature, nor are they created purely out of a vacuum.  Otherwise they would be even more meaningless than many of them already are. The price and quantity components on _every_ supply curve are derived using real world numbers, real world approximations, which is why you will not see a supply curve like the one above for the year 2013 showing trillions of bushels of wheat trading at thousands of dollars per bushel.  Only real world numbers need apply, and those real world numbers are derived ONLY from real world historical data. 




> "...supply is based on the assumption of such prices being transaction prices."


Which are often wrong, of course - as revealed when a supply curve analysis (projection) is later overlain with an actual historical supply curve (thus no "WOULD" to it, as seen only in hindsight).  

Are you under the impression that supply schedule assumptions are real world edicts of some kind? Prophecies? Scripture? Infallible? _As it is projected, so let it be assumed as reality_?   




> All goods trade at their price.  If the price a good trades *at* does not affect the available amount, supply is fixed.  As is the case with land.


All goods *[out of those that are traded]* trade at their price, whatever that is. But that does not mean that all goods in existence trade.   

I find it ironic that you took exception to supply not accounting for goods that are given away for free, and yet you can't even acknowledge goods that aren't traded or given away at all, at any price!  Not logical, Roy.  Not "real world" at all.   In a real world, chock full of "irrational" people, goods are traded, re-traded, given away, thrown away, stored away temporarily, and even _hoarded_. 




> They are "able and willing" to sell all they have at any price, by definition, because its price IS by definition what the whole supply sells for.


1) Gibberish - "able and willing" to sell "all they have at any price" -- is not the definition of supply, and not what happens in the real world.  There is ALWAYS a quantity component - a VARIABLE - to supply, which has NOTHING to do with the entire quantity in existence, but only the entire Quantity Supplied at all points on a schedule or curve. 

_2) "price is by definition what the whole supply sells for"_ is a semantics sleight-of-hand and question-begging game on your part.  To even refer to something as "whole supply" constrains it, _by definition_, to only those quantities that owners were actually WILLING to offer for sale at that price.  Thus, saying "price is by definition what the whole supply sells  for" is  like saying "*100% of all doctors who agreed were in agreement.*"  Yep. All of them. Every one of them -- out of those who agreed, that is. The doctors who didn't agree are not part of that 100%.  They're part of the 100% of doctors who did not agree.

If an owner sells 50 out of 100 widgets at a given price "the whole supply" (_of those 50 widgets_) indeed sold at that price, because "the whole supply" is the Quantity Supplied.  You want "the whole supply", by an impossible leap of logic, to also mean "the entire quantity in existence" - when that is NOT what it means.   




> The whole amount in existence sells for its price.


Gibberish, incorrect, and has no absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the real world. 

 As of now the spot price of silver is $30.73/oz. - that is its market price. And guess what? I and MILLIONS OF OTHERS were *able-but-not-willing* to make ANY of our quantities available at or anywhere near that price. All the silver that DID sell at that price did in fact sell at that price (100% of silver that sold at that price sold at that price). But_ only those quantities at that particular time at that particular price_ - NOT the "whole amount in existence".  It is not even possible for the "whole amount in existence" to be sold at that price.  Because that would take time, and that would only be the price on the leading edge, as the FIRST quantities sold and were absorbed at that price. LONG BEFORE the entire quantity sold, however, the price would CRASH.  Thus, that would no longer be the price at which the remaining quantities sold. Even then, you COULD fit all of that onto an historical supply curve, which showed the quantities that sold at different prices. But to say that it accounted for the total quantity in existence would require that the total quantity in existence actually be traded.  That's not real world at all. 




> In the case of produced goods, the amount in existence will increase at a higher price.  The amount of land won't.


That is true. In the case of *produced goods*, the total amount in existence will TEND to increase at a higher price. * And so will the supply*, which we don't ever erroneously conflate with the total amount in existence, since that is not now, nor has it ever been, the economics definition of supply.  

The total amount extant of land, works of dead artists, historical trading cards, minted coins from other eras, etc., will not and cannot increase, but *the SUPPLY will definitely vary* - as it does every day - according to price.  

Welcome to the world of *circulation*, Roy, as the same things are CIRCULATED - SUPPLIED AND RESUPPLIED as Quantity Supplied - over and over again, at both quantities and prices that are always variable, _never fixed_, ceteris paribus.

The quantity _of goods produced_ will tend to vary according to price. However, there are durable "things" that are neither produced nor are they consumed, which are fixed in total quantity extant, _but which are not fixed in supply_ (the economics definition ONLY). These are not produced, but they do _circulate_, and that supply (which is, at all times, _the amount that owners are willing to make available for sale across a range of prices_), is *ANYTHING BUT FIXED*. These quantities can and do vary according to price, and without regard to their deviations from the usual patterns and assumptions of Marshallian or Ricardian supply and demand or price theories as they relate to produced goods.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Here you go, Matt - for you as well.  Refute the following, and not just with blanket ad hominem dismissals and rejections, but actually employing reason, logic, common sense, specific arguments, sources, etc.,
> 
> What say you about the following:<snip>


So, basically, you've abandoned your argument about what economics say about supply, and substituted it with a form of "economics is dumb." LOL.  

Wasted a lot of words saying it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> So, basically, you've abandoned your argument about what economics say about supply, and substituted it with a form of "economics is dumb." LOL.  
> 
> Wasted a lot of words saying it.


Well, you didn't waste any words trolling, that's for sure, once your flawed premises were decimated and you found yourself at a loss for any way to argue it any further. 

I guess trolling generalities are all that you have left?

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Well, you didn't waste any words trolling, that's for sure, once your flawed premises were decimated and you found yourself at a loss for any way to argue it any further.


What flawed premises were those?  Consenting to learn economics, maybe?




> I guess trolling generalities are all that you have left?


Better than making meandering, pointless walls of text in order to avoid knowing facts which prove your beliefs false.  Once again, I'll point out that this entire sad diversion of yours is an attempt to avoid the fact that "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."

Nothing you've said, in many thousands of words, contradicts that, so this whole sidetrack has been both pointless, and stupid.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> <trolling generalities snipped>


Again, you said NOTHING. Blanket dismissals and a reassertion of one of your dogmatic, easily-proved-false ideological tenets does not count as a rebuttal.  




> "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."


Already *CONCLUSIVELY PROVED FALSE* in the very post you are avoiding giving a response to, and have no arguments to offer in rebuttal (which argument you would lose if you did).   It's not that you "don't know any economics", Matt. It's that you don't understand it, as clearly shown by what you consistently and ignorantly misapply, as you ERRONEOUSLY conflate the total quantity in existence (which is NOT the definition of supply) with the actual economics definition of supply.  As if they were one and the same.

A million profit-maximizing landowners do not affect the aggregate total land in existence. They do, however, VERY MUCH affect "supply" and "quantity supplied" as it is defined in economics.  Every single day.


*You swallowed a BIG LIE, Matt.* Enormous. Swallowed it hard, too. A little critical thinking on your part could have saved you a lot of time and wasted energy. You could still support LVT - just not on that particular (and quite provably false) house-of-cards assumption that you were sucked into believing.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Again, you said NOTHING. Blanket dismissals and a reassertion of one of your dogmatic, easily-proved-false ideological tenets does not count as a rebuttal.


I'll take this as an admission that you've decimated no false premises.




> Already *CONCLUSIVELY PROVED FALSE* in the very post you are avoiding giving a response to, and have no arguments to offer in rebuttal (which argument you would lose if you did).


This is just a lie.




> It's not that you "don't know any economics", Matt.


Your exchange with Roy proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that you're making it up as you go along.




> It's that you don't understand it, as clearly shown by what you consistently and ignorantly misapply, as you ERRONEOUSLY conflate the total quantity in existence (which is NOT the definition of supply) with the actual economics definition of supply.  As if they were one and the same.


Economists know that the supply of land is fixed.  You refuse to know it.  It's just that simple.




> A million profit-maximizing landowners do not affect the aggregate total land in existence. They do, however, VERY MUCH affect "supply" and "quantity supplied" as it is defined in economics.  Every single day.


That's just false.  Profit-maximizing landlords will sell or let out land at the highest price they can get.  Because the supply of land is fixed, those prices will be determined by demand.




> *You swallowed a BIG LIE, Matt.* Enormous. Swallowed it hard, too. A little critical thinking on your part could have saved you a lot of time and wasted energy. You could still support LVT - just not on the false house-of-cards assumptions you were sucked into believing.


I notice that you didn't actually dispute the fact that "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."  

You don't dispute it, because you know it's true.  The fact is, the strategy for maximizing rent is simply to take the highest bid, full stop.  It doesn't matter if a million landowners do this, or a single landowner does it.

----------


## Roy L

> You really are off the deep end, Roy. Historical supply curves are created all the time.


They describe what supply WAS, not what it IS.



> That's not available supply NOW. Only THEN.


Bingo.



> Which are often wrong, of course - as revealed when a supply curve analysis (projection) is later overlain with an actual historical supply curve (thus no "WOULD" to it, as seen only in hindsight).


Supply is what it is.  The fact that an estimate of it may be inaccurate is irrelevant. 



> All goods *[out of those that are traded]* trade at their price, whatever that is. But that does not mean that all goods in existence trade.


All goods are assumed to trade at some price.  That's what makes them "goods," and not golf, goiter or girl germs.



> I find it ironic that you took exception to supply not accounting for goods that are given away for free, and yet you can't even acknowledge goods that aren't traded or given away at all, at any price!  Not logical, Roy.  Not "real world" at all.


I await your example of goods that won't trade at any price.



> In a real world, chock full of "irrational" people, goods are traded, re-traded, given away, thrown away, stored away temporarily, and even _hoarded_.


But not no matter the price.



> 1) Gibberish - "able and willing" to sell "all they have at any price" -- is not the definition of supply, and not what happens in the real world.


Yes, it is.  You just refuse to know that "price" in economics is the amount an item DOES TRADE for.



> There is ALWAYS a quantity component - a VARIABLE - to supply, which has NOTHING to do with the entire quantity in existence, but only the entire Quantity Supplied at all points on a schedule or curve.


<sigh>  At what price is land not "supplied"?



> _2) "price is by definition what the whole supply sells for"_ is a semantics sleight-of-hand and question-begging game on your part.


No, it is pointing out to you that you are denying a tautology, a fact that is true by definition.  To point out that 2+2=4 is not a question begging fallacy.



> To even refer to something as "whole supply" constrains it, _by definition_, to only those quantities that owners were actually WILLING to offer for sale at that price.


"Price" means they are willing to sell it.



> Thus, saying "price is by definition what the whole supply sells  for" is  like saying "*100% of all doctors who agreed were in agreement.*"  Yep. All of them. Every one of them -- out of those who agreed, that is. The doctors who didn't agree are not part of that 100%.  They're part of the 100% of doctors who did not agree.


Right.  Just as the land that wouldn't sell at ANY PRICE -- if any such land existed -- would not be part of the supply, and WOULD NOT AFFECT THE FIXITY OF SUPPLY.



> If an owner sells 50 out of 100 widgets at a given price "the whole supply" (_of those 50 widgets_) indeed sold at that price, because "the whole supply" is the Quantity Supplied.  You want "the whole supply", by an impossible leap of logic, to also mean "the entire quantity in existence" - when that is NOT what it means.


It means the entire quantity that would exist AT A GIVEN PRICE.



> Gibberish, incorrect, and has no absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the real world.


It is true by definition.



> As of now the spot price of silver is $30.73/oz. - that is its market price. And guess what? I and MILLIONS OF OTHERS were *able-but-not-willing* to make ANY of our quantities available at or anywhere near that price. All the silver that DID sell at that price did in fact sell at that price (100% of silver that sold at that price sold at that price). But_ only those quantities at that particular time at that particular price_ - NOT the "whole amount in existence".  It is not even possible for the "whole amount in existence" to be sold at that price.  Because that would take time, and that would only be the price on the leading edge, as the FIRST quantities sold and were absorbed at that price.


Because that is not the price of all the silver, because both demand and supply are elastic. 


> LONG BEFORE the entire quantity sold, however, the price would CRASH.  Thus, that would no longer be the price at which the remaining quantities sold.


You're not getting it.  If that's the price, then SOMEBODY IS BUYING AT THAT PRICE.



> Even then, you COULD fit all of that onto an historical supply curve, which showed the quantities that sold at different prices. But to say that it accounted for the total quantity in existence would require that the total quantity in existence actually be traded.  That's not real world at all.


Wrong.  The supply curve never requires that the entire supply actually trade.  It simply describes how supply varies with price.  The supply of land does not vary with price.



> That is true. In the case of *produced goods*, the total amount in existence will TEND to increase at a higher price. * And so will the supply*, which we don't ever erroneously conflate with the total amount in existence, since that is not now, nor has it ever been, the economics definition of supply.


It is when supply is fixed.



> The total amount extant of land, works of dead artists, historical trading cards, minted coins from other eras, etc., will not and cannot increase, but *the SUPPLY will definitely vary* - as it does every day - according to price.


Nope.  Supply of such items CAN'T vary according to price.  Whatever the price those items trade at, supply will not increase.



> Welcome to the world of *circulation*, Roy, as the same things are CIRCULATED - SUPPLIED AND RESUPPLIED as Quantity Supplied - over and over again, at both quantities and prices that are always variable, _never fixed_, ceteris paribus.


Sellers and buyers swapping the same inventory of goods around at higher and higher prices does not increase the supply of those goods, sorry.



> The quantity _of goods produced_ will tend to vary according to price. However, there are durable "things" that are neither produced nor are they consumed, which are fixed in total quantity extant, _but which are not fixed in supply_ (the economics definition ONLY).


Name one.



> These are not produced, but they do _circulate_, and that supply (which is, at all times, _the amount that owners are willing to make available for sale across a range of prices_), is *ANYTHING BUT FIXED*.


You still don't understand: whatever the price is, the owners are by definition willing to make the good available at that price, because that's what price MEANS.



> These quantities can and do vary according to price, and without regard to their defiance of the usual patterns and assumptions of Marshallian or Ricardian supply and demand or price theories as they relate to produced goods.


No, they don't.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> This is just a lie. Also a lie.  Your exchange with Roy proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that you're making it up as you go along.


None of the above counts as an argument, Matt. You have to actually present and argument. Say WHY it's a lie. 




> Economists know that the supply of land is fixed.  You refuse to know it.  It's just that simple.


Any "economist" that claims that the supply of land is fixed is NOT referring to economics definition of supply as it relates to a supply curve. 




> Little attention has been devoted to treatment of theory of supply of and in recent economic literature. From the time of Ricardo, discussion of supply theory has been mainly in connection with or incidental to discussion of theory of rent.  
> 
> The fact of fixity in land quantity and, stemming from that fixity, the idea of inelasticity for the market supply schedule seems to have been accepted as final. In addition, the general tendency for land to be defined as a natural agent -- "the original and indestructible properties"--has tended to confuse rather than enlighten discussions of land income and valuation problems.  
> 
> Land differs from other factors, and from the strict definition of capital goods mainly in that it is not reproducible.  Although this and other distinctions have clouded discussions of theory, it is not defining the factor that gives rise to difficulties concerning theory of supply.  Rather, and more important, is the fact that land, the same as other durable factors, is two-dimensional in its supply character.  By two-dimensional I mean that the quantity measurement is both areal and qualitative. Its is not only the geographic area but also the intensity of use that determines the effective supply. 
> 
> In addition to the problem of defining supply, effective supply, and market supply, and distinguishing between short and long-run schedules. Too often there is confusion between these terms.  Admittedly,* in the quantity sense, the total geographic area of land (no matter how defined) is fixed.  But this does not necessarily mean that the number of tracts or acres to be offered for sale on the market will not vary with price or land* or that changes in relative product prices will not enourage changes in products.  Furthermore, people buy or rent land for the service it can provide; and that service is part of the service-supply function, whether or not title to the property is exchanged at a price in the market. 
> 
> *In the market-schedule sense of the definition of supply of land follows that of other economic goods: the supply schedule refers to the relation between prices and the quantities (area) that owners are willing to sell.  The supply price is the minimum asking price.* 
> ...





> I notice that you didn't actually dispute the fact that "a single profit-maximizing landowner would behave no differently than a million profit-maximizing owners, because the landowner cannot affect supply."


It's self-disputing, because a single profit-maximizing landowner eliminates a Perfectly Competitive Market. A single profit-maximizing landowner can directly affect both supply and price (the amount he is willing to make available at a given price), whereas a million profit-maximizing landowners have only a minimal affect on price, with only total control over the amount they are willing to make available at the prevailing price.   So they would indeed behave very differently. 




> You don't dispute it, because you know it's true.  The fact is, the strategy for maximizing rent is simply to take the highest bid, full stop.  It doesn't matter if a million landowners do this, or a single landowner does it.


We're talking about landowners buying and selling tracts or acres of land, in much the same way art dealers buy and sell works of dead artists - the quantity of which is fixed, but not the supply.  The difference with land - works of dead artists can be destroyed. Buying and selling does not INCREASE the quantity of land in existence, but neither does it DECREASE the quantity in existence.  It remains constant, as land that IS made available by owners as the supply CIRCULATES.

----------


## Roy L

> Already *CONCLUSIVELY PROVED FALSE* in the very post you are avoiding giving a response to, and have no arguments to offer in rebuttal (which argument you would lose if you did).


Not only did you not prove it false, you didn't even say anything related to it.



> It's not that you "don't know any economics", Matt. It's that you don't understand it, as clearly shown by what you consistently and ignorantly misapply, as you ERRONEOUSLY conflate the total quantity in existence (which is NOT the definition of supply) with the actual economics definition of supply.  As if they were one and the same.


Please explain how the amount of land available increases with the price paid for it.



> A million profit-maximizing landowners do not affect the aggregate total land in existence. They do, however, VERY MUCH affect "supply" and "quantity supplied" as it is defined in economics.  Every single day.


No, they do not.  They are no different from one profit-maximizing landowner: none of them can do any better than to accept the high bid.



> *You swallowed a BIG LIE, Matt.* Enormous. Swallowed it hard, too. A little critical thinking on your part could have saved you a lot of time and wasted energy.


<yawn>  Yes, I'm sure you know better than all the Nobel laureates in economics who understand why the supply of land is fixed.



> You could still support LVT - just not on that particular (and quite provably false) house-of-cards assumption that you were sucked into believing.


You could still oppose LVT for the actual reason you oppose it, Steven -- that it would remove your privilege of taking a portion of production by forcible extortion, without making any commensurate contribution to production -- just not by pretending that it isn't provably superior to all other taxes on economic grounds.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> All goods are assumed to trade at some price.


Ah, so then we'll call those things that don't trade at some price "other-than-goods".   A rose by any other name...




> I await your example of goods that won't trade at any price.


I can go along with it, now that I know how you define "goods" (i.e., things that are assumed to trade at some price).  It's all that other "non-goods" stuff I'm referring to, whatever you want to call it. 




> Yes, it is.  You just refuse to know that "price" in economics is the amount an item DOES TRADE for.


Wonderful. And if it DOES NOT TRADE, then it has no PRICE, and is not counted as a "GOOD".  Cool beans. 




> At what price is land not "supplied"?


How about ALL THE PRICES of land around my ten acre plot over the past sixty-two years.  My land was never "supplied" at any of those prices.  Take all those prices, and the answer is "ALL OF THEM".  

Oh. I forgot something... according to you...




> "Price" means they are willing to sell it.


OK, cool beans again.  I guess since no owner in my family was willing to sell it, it didn't have a price. And was not, therefore, "supply".  




> Right.  Just as the land that wouldn't sell at ANY PRICE -- if any such land existed -- would not be part of the supply, and WOULD NOT AFFECT THE FIXITY OF SUPPLY.


There you go again, as you jump conveniently from goalpost to goalpost, with two different definitions of supply.  

My land, which for my entire life has not sold at ANY PRICE was also not part of the supply.   IT DID NOT AFFECT THE QUANTITY OR FIXITY OF LAND EXTANT. And it also did not affect "SUPPLY" in the MARKET SCHEDULE SENSE OF SUPPLY.




> Nope.  Supply of such items CAN'T vary according to price.  Whatever the price those items trade at, supply will not increase.


ONLY because you are jumping between two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT definitions of supply.  Meaningless, Roy.  Absolutely meaningless.

----------


## Steven Douglas

Roy and Matt, your arguments are DUST. _Annihilated_. Not in your minds of course, but I didn't expect that, and neither is it that important.  It was good to isolate for myself and identify the lies firsthand. You have both swallowed and are clinging to some massive lies, ones that most thinking people can see through immediately, based on semantics sleight-of-hand and the number of definition hoops you ask others to jump through -- as if they wouldn't notice.  

And I'm done for now, leaving you to your economics religion and all its fallacious sleight-of-hand tenets that you so fervently, devoutly, passionately and religiously believe in -- and all hinged on the tortured twisting of a single word! 

It is no wonder to me that most economists ignore LVT and the many Henry George-spawned theories of Land Socialism. It's utter bunk on its face, as it relies on twisted versions of misapplied and misunderstood theories, while ignoring the basic reality that LAND PARCELS CIRCULATE - behaving as any other durable good in the market-schedule sense of the word, as it is supplied and resupplied to the market like any other scarce, durable good.

----------


## Roy L

> Any "economist" that claims that the supply of land is fixed is NOT referring to economics definition of supply as it relates to a supply curve.


Yes, he most certainly is.  If you can't figure out what a bunch of weasel-word garbage Hurlburt's article is, it can only be because you don't understand it.



> It's self-disputing, because a single profit-maximizing landowner eliminates a Perfectly Competitive Market. A single profit-maximizing landowner can directly affect both supply and price (the amount he is willing to make available at a given price),


No, he can't.  He can only renounce profit maximization by making land unavailable at its market price.  Large landowners have normally done this in order to force their tenants into utter destitution, thus obtaining easier access to their wives and daughters: if a man is starving to death, you can usually have his daughter for $10.  But if he has $10, you can't get his daughter for $1000.



> whereas a million profit-maximizing landowners have only a minimal affect on price, with only total control over the amount they are willing to make available at the prevailing price.


<sigh>  Its price is the amount at which it IS available, by definition.

And btw, no landowner ever "makes land available," Steven, as it would be available if he had never existed.  The landowner's only function is to make land *UN*available unless his extortion demands are met.



> So they would indeed behave very differently.


Nope.  They can have no effect whatever on price, which is determined by the Law of Rent, nor on supply, which is fixed.  They have only one way they can affect the market: renounce profit maximization, and simply stop others from using the land by force, like a greedy, evil dog in the manger.  The thousands of vacant lots you see in every major American city demonstrate the popularity of this option.



> We're talking about landowners buying and selling tracts or acres of land, in much the same way art dealers buy and sell works of dead artists - the quantity of which is fixed, but not the supply.


Supply is fixed, as it does not vary by price.



> The difference with land - works of dead artists can be destroyed. Buying and selling does not INCREASE the quantity of land in existence, but neither does it DECREASE the quantity in existence.  It remains constant, as land that IS made available by owners as the supply CIRCULATES.


Land is already available without anyone having to "make it available," Steven.  The landowner's only economic function is to make it *un*available unless someone pays him off.  He is nothing but an extortionist and a pure parasite, and if he is willing to sell "his" land for $1M, it is no more land than if he is willing to sell it for $1.

You just don't understand that.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> None of the above counts as an argument, Matt. You have to actually present and argument. Say WHY it's a lie.


No I don't.




> Any "economist" that claims that the supply of land is fixed is NOT referring to economics definition of supply as it relates to a supply curve.


Yes, they are.




> It's self-disputing, because a single profit-maximizing landowner eliminates a Perfectly Competitive Market. A single profit-maximizing landowner can directly affect both supply and price (the amount he is willing to make available at a given price), whereas a million profit-maximizing landowners have only a minimal affect on price, with only total control over the amount they are willing to make available at the prevailing price.   So they would indeed behave very differently.


No, they wouldn't.  You've simply claimed they would, but I've already explained why they wouldn't.




> We're talking about landowners buying and selling tracts or acres of land, in much the same way art dealers buy and sell works of dead artists - the quantity of which is fixed, but not the supply.


Yes, and the supply.




> The difference with land - works of dead artists can be destroyed.


That's not really a relevant difference, but ok.




> Buying and selling does not INCREASE the quantity of land in existence, but neither does it DECREASE the quantity in existence.  It remains constant, as land that IS made available by owners as the supply CIRCULATES.


This doesn't parse.  You've worked yourself into confusion again.

----------


## MattintheCrown

> Roy and Matt, your arguments are DUST. _Annihilated_. Not in your minds of course, but I didn't expect that, and neither is it that important.  It was good to isolate for myself and identify the lies firsthand. You have both swallowed and are clinging to some massive lies, ones that most thinking people can see through immediately, based on semantics sleight-of-hand and the number of definition hoops you ask others to jump through -- as if they wouldn't notice.  
> 
> And I'm done for now, leaving you to your economics religion and all its fallacious sleight-of-hand tenets that you so fervently, devoutly, passionately and religiously believe in -- and all hinged on the tortured twisting of a single word! 
> 
> It is no wonder to me that most economists ignore LVT and the many Henry George-spawned theories of Land Socialism. It's utter bunk on its face, as it relies on twisted versions of misapplied and misunderstood theories, while ignoring the basic reality that LAND PARCELS CIRCULATE - behaving as any other durable good in the market-schedule sense of the word, as it is supplied and resupplied to the market like any other scarce, durable good.


You just idiotically claim that nothing is fixed in supply, because owners might not sell.  It's just stupid nonsense.

----------


## Roy L

> Ah, so then we'll call those things that don't trade at some price "other-than-goods".


I've given some examples of things that can't trade and aren't goods.  I'm sure you can think of some, too.  But land won't be one of them.



> I can go along with it, now that I know how you define "goods" (i.e., things that are assumed to trade at some price).  It's all that other "non-goods" stuff I'm referring to, whatever you want to call it.


Let's try land.  Name the land that won't trade at ANY price.



> And if it DOES NOT TRADE, then it has no PRICE, and is not counted as a "GOOD".


Non sequitur fallacy.  It could trade, and is therefore a good.



> How about ALL THE PRICES of land around my ten acre plot over the past sixty-two years.  My land was never "supplied" at any of those prices.


Of course not.  No more than a Rembrandt is going to be supplied at the price of a Rockwell.  Duh.



> Take all those prices, and the answer is "ALL OF THEM".


??  None of them was a price of "your" land.  Duh.



> I guess since no owner in my family was willing to sell it, it didn't have a price. And was not, therefore, "supply".


Lie.  You know that your family was willing to sell it, just not at the market.  And if the price had been $1M, you know that they would not have been able to sell any more of it for $1G.



> There you go again, as you jump conveniently from goalpost to goalpost, with two different definitions of supply.


No.  It is you who are trying to use two (or more) different definitions of "price."



> My land, which for my entire life has not sold at ANY PRICE was also not part of the supply.


Nonsense.  Of course it was, and you know it, because at any time, it would have been sold for a high enough offer.  That accepted offer would have become its price.



> IT DID NOT AFFECT THE QUANTITY OR FIXITY OF LAND EXTANT. And it also did not affect "SUPPLY" in the MARKET SCHEDULE SENSE OF SUPPLY.


Of course not, because it was part of supply whether it sold or not.



> ONLY because you are jumping between two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT definitions of supply.


No, I am not.  YOU are jumping between entirely different definitions of "price."



> Meaningless, Roy.  Absolutely meaningless.


Mirror time, Steven.  Mirror time.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy and Matt, your arguments are DUST. _Annihilated_.


LOL!



> You have both swallowed and are clinging to some massive lies, ones that most thinking people can see through immediately, based on semantics sleight-of-hand and the number of definition hoops you ask others to jump through -- as if they wouldn't notice.


All we ask is that you use the economic definitions of "supply" and "price."  But you won't.



> And I'm done for now, leaving you to your economics religion and all its fallacious sleight-of-hand tenets that you so fervently, devoutly, passionately and religiously believe in -- and all hinged on the tortured twisting of a single word!


It's the CONCEPT that you refuse to know, Steven, not the words or definitions or arguments.  You just have to refuse to know the fact that landowners won't and *can't* supply any more *OR LESS* land, no matter how much or how little we are paying them for it, and THAT'S WHAT FIXED SUPPLY *MEANS*.  



> It is no wonder to me that most economists ignore LVT and the many Henry George-spawned theories of Land Socialism. It's utter bunk on its face, as it relies on twisted versions of misapplied and misunderstood theories, while ignoring the basic reality that LAND PARCELS CIRCULATE - behaving as any other durable good in the market-schedule sense of the word, as it is supplied and resupplied to the market like any other scarce, durable good.


<sigh>  You just blankly refuse to know the fact that land parcels can ONLY circulate, while *produced* durable goods can and will be ADDED to the existing supply at higher prices, and not added at lower prices.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy and Matt, your arguments are DUST. _Annihilated_. Not in your minds of course, but I didn't expect that, and neither is it that important.  It was good to isolate for myself and identify the lies firsthand. You have both swallowed and are clinging to some massive lies, ones that most thinking people can see through immediately, based on semantics sleight-of-hand and the number of definition hoops you ask others to jump through -- as if they wouldn't notice.  
> 
> And I'm done for now, leaving you to your economics religion and all its fallacious sleight-of-hand tenets that you so fervently, devoutly, passionately and religiously believe in -- and all hinged on the tortured twisting of a single word! 
> 
> It is no wonder to me that most economists ignore LVT and the many Henry George-spawned theories of Land Socialism. It's utter bunk on its face, as it relies on twisted versions of misapplied and misunderstood theories, while ignoring the basic reality that LAND PARCELS CIRCULATE - behaving as any other durable good in the market-schedule sense of the word, as it is supplied and resupplied to the market like any other scarce, durable good.


Just out of curiosity, are any anti-LVT types who might have been reading this exchange at all embarrassed for Steven?  Or are you somehow able to persuade yourselves that refusal to know facts is the same as those facts not being true?  Helmuth?  Eduardo?

----------


## J-Lib

> Just out of curiosity, are any anti-LVT types who might have been reading this exchange at all embarrassed for Steven?  Or are you somehow able to persuade yourselves that refusal to know facts is the same as those facts not being true?  Helmuth?  Eduardo?



Roy, I'm pro-LVT but generally my position is that people are persuaded via dialogue, not via attacking and gloating.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy, I'm pro-LVT but generally my position is that people are persuaded via dialogue, not via attacking and gloating.


I persuade via dialogue until the lying starts.  Which it always does.  At that point, the anti-LVT liar has relinquished any claim to courteous or even civil treatment, and deserves to be not only attacked but crushed, brutalized, demolished and humiliated, which I then do.  The optimal outcome is that the anti-LVT liar realizes he has been lying to serve the greatest evil that has ever existed in the history of the world, wishes he had never been born, and slits his belly open while kneeling in a cesspool to atone for his monstrous crimes against liberty, justice, virtue, truth, and all humanity.

The role of vicious, evil, lying filth in rationalizing, justifying, enabling and sustaining massive, systematic, institutionalized evil is well portrayed in "Judgment at Nuremberg."  I suggest you watch it to get an idea of the appropriate role of "persuasion via dialogue" in fighting the greatest evil in the history of the world.  Those who have deliberately chosen to lie to serve evil cannot be persuaded via dialogue any more than a serial killer can be persuaded to respect others' rights to life via dialogue.

----------


## TheTexan

I'm new to this thread so I just want to clarify something




> The role of vicious, evil, lying filth in rationalizing, justifying, enabling and sustaining massive, systematic, institutionalized evil


This guy, ^^, is FOR land value tax?

----------


## Roy L

> This guy, ^^, is FOR land value tax?


Oh, yes.  For the explanation of your confusion, look at your sig block.  You've just been popping blue pills.

----------


## TheTexan

> Oh, yes.  For the explanation of your confusion, look at your sig block.  You've just been popping blue pills.


Oh, ok.  Didn't know that, thanks

----------


## EcoWarrier

A good thread.  The initial posts in the thread by JohnLVT simplified understanding of LVT somewhat with his responses to Douglas being quite good to clarify some murk. Matt clarified quite elegantly. Roy L is deep thinker for sure but far too abrasive for many.

LVT is quite simple. Land values were created by the economic activity of a community (economic fact) and hence belong to that community. What you earn you keep, no Income Tax, etc, and the state does not steal from you what is yours. The state reclaims what the community created (in the form of land values) and steals from no one. 

Why people find difficulty understanding something so simple I don't know.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Originally Posted by Icymudpuppy
> 
> 
> LVT would cripple farmers.
> 
> The best crop land typically develops cities around it.  As the cities develop, they encroach on the farms.  The farmer who refuses to see his back 40 to the urban developer because it is the best productive soil around is taxed out of it via LVT.  Thus, the Kent valley SW of Seattle, the best farmland in WA state was paved over.
> 
> 
> Actually, it's the current situation, where land is not taxed at a high rate, that results in sprawl: as current city owners refuse to sell, anticipating higher prices in the future, people have to seek land elsewhere: at the edge of town.  Not taxing land at a high rates causes sprawl, LVT prevents it.


Matt, that is a very good point. The vibrancy is taken out of town and city centres because land values are not taxed. Vibrant towns and cities (nice places to live) attract people and industry.

----------


## EcoWarrier

The real root cause reason for the crash?  Read on.......

_Martin Wolf - Chief economist of the Financial Times....._

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This applies not least to the immense financial and economic crisis into which the world has fallen. *So what lay behind it? The answer is the credit-fuelled property cycle.* The people of the US, UK, Spain and Ireland became feverish speculators in land. Today, the toxic waste poisons the entire world economy.

In 1984, I bought my London house. I estimate that the land on which it sits was worth £100,000 in today’s prices. Today, the value is perhaps ten times as great. All of that vast increment is the fruit of no effort of mine. It is the reward of owning a location that the efforts of others made valuable, reinforced by a restrictive planning regime and generous tax treatment – property taxes are low and gains tax-free.

So I am a land speculator – a mini-aristocrat in a land where private appropriation of the fruits of others’ efforts has long been a prime route to wealth. _This appropriation of the rise in the value of land is not just unfair: what have I done to deserve this increase in my wealth?  It has obviously dire consequences._

_First, it makes it necessary for the state to fund itself by taxing effort, ingenuity and foresight._ Taxation of labour and capital must lower their supply. Taxation of resources will not have the same result, because supply is given. Such taxes reduce the unearned rewards to owners.

*Second, this system creates calamitous political incentives. In a world in which people have borrowed heavily to own a location, they are desperate to enjoy land price rises and, still more, to prevent price falls.* Thus we see a bizarre spectacle: newspapers hail upward moves in the price of a place to live – the most basic of all amenities. The beneficiaries are more than land speculators. They are also enthusiastic supporters of efforts to rig the market. Particularly in the UK, they welcome the creation of artificial scarcity of land, via a ludicrously restrictive regime of planning controls. This is the most important way in which wealth is transferred from the unpropertied young to the propertied old. In his new book, David Willetts, the universities minister, emphasises the unfairness of the distribution of wealth across generations.* The rigged land market is the biggest single cause of this calamity.

*Third and most important, the opportunity for speculation in land both fuels – and is fuelled by – the credit cycle, which has, yet again destabilised the economy.* In a superb new jeremiad, the journalist Fred Harrison argues that this cycle – with a duration of 18 years – was predictable and, by him at least, predicted. In essence, he notes, buyers rent property from bankers, in return for a gamble on the upside. A host of agents gains fees from arranging, packaging and distributing the fruits of such highly speculative transactions. In the long upswing (the most recent one lasted 11 years in the UK), they all become rich together, as credit and debt explode upwards. Then, when the collapse comes, recent borrowers, the financial institutions and taxpayers suffer huge losses. This is no more than a giant pyramid selling scheme and one whose dire consequences we have seen again and again. It is ultimately, as Mr Harrison argues, a ruinous way of running our affairs.

I have long been persuaded that resource rents [the gains in the value of land] should be socialised, not accrue to individual owners. Yet, as Mr Harrison tellingly remarks, *“as a community we socialise our privately earned incomes (wages and salaries), while our social income (from land) is privatised.”* Yet, whatever one thinks of the justice of this arrangement, the practical consequences have become calamitous. Do we want to start yet another credit-fuelled property cycle as soon as the debris of the present one is cleared away, some years of misery hence? 

If “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, here is an urgent case for action. Socialising the full rental value of land would destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public. That is obviously impossible. But socialising any gain from here on would be far less so. This would eliminate the fever of land speculation. It would also allow a shift in the burden of taxation. Perhaps as important, with the prospects of effortless increases in wealth removed, the UK might re-examine its planning laws. There is panic about the dire consequences of such a liberalisation of restrictions for the countryside. It is worth noting, however, how little is needed: an increase of just three miles in the radius of London would raise the capital’s surface area by 50 per cent. Would this really be the end of England’s green and pleasant land?

I do not expect any government to dare to wean the English from their ruinous trust in land speculation as the route to wealth. But I can hope. It is bad enough that the result has been expensive houses and inefficient taxes. But it is surely far worse that such insane speculative fevers have ended up destabilising the entire global economy. Even if few know it, it is time for a change.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy L is deep thinker for sure but far too abrasive for many.


I'm a freakin' _belt sander_ on lies and the lying liars who tell them.



> LVT is quite simple. Land values were created by the economic activity of a community (economic fact) and hence belong to that community. What you earn you keep, no Income Tax, etc, and the state does not steal from you what is yours. The state reclaims what the community created (in the form of land values) and steals from no one. 
> 
> Why people find difficulty understanding something so simple I don't know.


They don't find it difficult to understand.  They understand very well that it proves their beliefs are false and evil, so they have to find a way *not* to understand it.  This whole thread (not to mention the previous LVT thread) proves that conclusively.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> They don't find it difficult to understand.  They understand very well that it proves their beliefs are false and evil, so they have to find a way *not* to understand it.  This whole thread (not to mention the previous LVT thread) proves that conclusively.


I'm not evil.  I simply reject the premises behind the claim that I owe "the community" anything as irrational (they are).  btw, I mean no disrespect because you are exactly correct about "intellectual property".

----------


## Steven Douglas

> I'm a freakin' _belt sander_ on lies and the lying liars who tell them.


A giant slayer to be sure...

----------


## Roy L

> _Martin Wolf - Chief economist of the Financial Times....._
> ...
> Socialising the full rental value of land would destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public. That is obviously impossible.


Not so, as the alternative -- leaving landowner privilege in place -- will also destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public.  It will also, unlike justice, ultimately destroy society.

The current financial system is built on debt, especially mortgage debt.  We can destroy that system (which it very much needs) without imposing any significant hardship on anyone (rich, greedy, privileged parasites will of course lose most of their assets, but then, they deserve to).  Just recover publicly created land value by taxation, eliminate the debt money system, and replace it with an independent Mint whose sole mandate is to print just enough money to keep commodity prices stable, and deliver it to the Treasury to be spent into circulation.



> But socialising any gain from here on would be far less so.


It would be fairer and much more effective to recover the land value gains obtained since the land was last traded.  Just exempt the rental value of each land parcel at the time of last purchase from taxation, and then phase out the exemption over a decade or two as the rising land rents resulting from explosive economic growth make it irrelevant.  This would prevent anyone from losing any significant value or wealth that they actually earned and deserved.



> This would eliminate the fever of land speculation. It would also allow a shift in the burden of taxation. Perhaps as important, with the prospects of effortless increases in wealth removed, the UK might re-examine its planning laws. There is panic about the dire consequences of such a liberalisation of restrictions for the countryside. It is worth noting, however, how little is needed: an increase of just three miles in the radius of London would raise the capitals surface area by 50 per cent. Would this really be the end of Englands green and pleasant land?


More to the point, requiring landowners to repay what they are being given would stimulate them to use existing vacant and under-utilized urban sites more intensively, REDUCING the pressure to expand into greenfield areas.



> I do not expect any government to dare to wean the English from their ruinous trust in land speculation as the route to wealth. But I can hope. It is bad enough that the result has been expensive houses and inefficient taxes. But it is surely far worse that such insane speculative fevers have ended up destabilising the entire global economy. Even if few know it, it is time for a change.


Well, everyone who has read this thread or the LVT thread knows it -- even if most of them refuse to know it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> ...an independent Mint whose sole mandate is to print just enough money to keep commodity prices stable, and deliver it to the Treasury to be spent into circulation.



*"Yeah, what Roy said. I want to
print and spend just enough to
keep commodity prices stable,
no more, no less. Honest Injun!" * 

And when that happy little nightmare happens, I hope they pick me as one of the lucky first recipients of that juicy new money that gets spent into circulation.  Location, location, location!

Now, if I can just figure out a way to convince the Treasury that my hotdogs are tastier than my competitors'.

----------


## Roy L

> "Yeah, what Roy said. I want to print and spend just enough to keep commodity prices stable, no more, no less. Honest Injun!"


Better than private banksters fabricating enough debt to force everyone but the banksters deeper and deeper into debt.  You seem permanently unable to know the fact that independent agencies are just that: independent.



> And when that happy little nightmare happens, I hope they pick me as one of the lucky first recipients of that juicy new money that gets spent into circulation.  Location, location, location!


Were you under an erroneous impression that you were saying something relevant?  There would be no difference between the spending of the new money and spending of tax revenue.  Only the source of the money would be different.



> Now, if I can just figure out a way to convince the Treasury that my hotdogs are tastier than my competitors'.


Yes, well, good luck with that.  Given the level of economic understanding you have displayed to date, you won't be persuading government to spend money on anything you produce any time soon.

----------


## Roy L

> I'm not evil.


You want to profit by the uncompensated violation of others' rights.  That is evil.



> I simply reject the premises behind the claim that I owe "the community" anything as irrational (they are).


There is nothing irrational about being required to pay the community for what you take *from* the community.  As a landowner, you just want to take from the community but not pay.  Simple.



> btw, I mean no disrespect because you are exactly correct about "intellectual property".


I am also exactly correct about land.  And you know it.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Better than private banksters...


I'll leave it to you to rationalize what you think is the lesser of two evils, while I pass entirely on your false choice.  I agree with our original Congress, which imposed a death penalty on anyone artificially $#@!ing with the value of the money supply.  Off with their worthless heads. 




> There would be no difference between the spending of the new money and spending of tax revenue.  Only the source of the money would be different.


Bull$#@!. Even with the disingenuous attempt to narrow the argument to the differences in "spending", as if that actually said something. 

The spending of taxed revenue is not the difficult part. The difficult part is that it requires actual taxation - an up front acknowledgement that real productivity is being siphoned for public interests.  That provokes actual and specific reactions on the parts of those being directly taxed, and at the very least implies accountability on the parts of representatives who could be answerable to those taxed. With taxed revenues, the actual source of the money and the channels by which it makes its way into the economy, are not qualified.  If it's hard specie, tied to one or more actual commodities, then the source can be both stable and non-distorting.   

Revenues that are merely printed into existence out of thin air and spent into the economy is far easier - for government at least - as this invisible and indirect tax provides them a haven -- insulation from accountability (something that naturally has strong appeal to cowardly parasites and other counter/unproductive nasties of the world).  In that case the source of the money is qualified (i.e., out of a vacuum), as is the source of its invisibly siphoned value (existing and future currency holders, the value of whose holdings are perpetually diluted).  It is also 100% inflationary by design...even if we were actually actually poop-stupid enough to buy into the stable commodity prices "mandate".

----------


## Roy L

> I'll leave it to you to rationalize what you think is the lesser of two evils, while I pass entirely on your false choice.


It's not the lesser of two evils, it's good rather than evil.



> I agree with our original Congress, which imposed a death penalty on anyone artificially $#@!ing with the value of the money supply.  Off with their worthless heads.


<yawn>  As you know, but must refuse to know because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil, the original Congress also purposed to finance the federal government entirely by a tax on the value of landed property.



> Bull$#@!


Fact.



> Even with the disingenuous attempt to narrow the argument to the differences in "spending", as if that actually said something.


Talk about disingenuous!  I said the difference is _NOT_ in spending, but in the source of the money.



> The spending of taxed revenue is not the difficult part.


Depends what you mean by "difficult."



> The difficult part is that it requires actual taxation - an up front acknowledgement that real productivity is being siphoned for public interests.


As you know, that's just another flat-out lie from you.  *LVT* does *NOT* siphon productivity, *AT ALL*.  It simply recovers the *publicly created value* that landowners are *ALREADY siphoning* from real productivity for their *PRIVATE* interests.



> That provokes actual and specific reactions on the parts of those being directly taxed,


And in the case of LVT, they are *beneficial* actions that promote liberty, justice and prosperity.  You just hate liberty and justice, and prefer to sacrifice your country's prosperity so that you can profit unjustly from the forcible removal of others' liberty without just compensation.

I.e., you prefer evil over good, and intend to serve evil by opposing good.



> and at the very least implies accountability on the parts of representatives who could be answerable to those taxed.


That would only apply to those who are being taxed out of their rightful property, not to thieves who are being required to repay what they have been stealing.



> With taxed revenues, the actual source of the money and the channels by which it makes its way into the economy, are not qualified.  If it's hard specie, tied to one or more actual commodities, then the source can be both stable and non-distorting.


No, it can't.



> Revenues that are merely printed into existence out of thin air and spent into the economy is far easier - for government at least - as this invisible and indirect tax


Stop lying.  It's not a tax if it just maintains money's purchasing power, because no one loses anything they would rightfully have.  Stop lying.  Government *EARNS* the seigniorage of such revenues *BY* maintaining the value of money and fostering the economic growth that would otherwise make that money more valuable without the holders of that money having done anything to earn the increase in purchasing power.



> provides them a haven -- insulation from accountability


Another lie.  They are accountable to the people, and the people will notice if their money is not of stable value.



> (something that naturally has strong appeal to cowardly parasites and other counter/unproductive nasties of the world).


The landowner is the most counterproductive, unproductive, vicious, greedy, evil, and cowardly of all nasty parasites.



> In that case the source of the money is qualified (i.e., out of a vacuum), as is the source of its invisibly siphoned value (existing and future currency holders, the value of whose holdings are perpetually diluted).


No, it isn't.  You are lying, Steven, *LYING*.  You just want the holders of money (and especially debt instruments) to have the value of their holdings perpetually concentrated so that they can live as parasites permanently, taking *from* production while contributing nothing whatever *to* production.

Just like the landowner-parasites you also crawl on your belly to fawn over and serve.



> It is also 100% inflationary by design...


<yawn>  Lie.  Blatantly and self-evidently.



> even if we were actually actually poop-stupid enough to buy into the stable commodity prices "mandate".


There is exactly one person here who *is* actually poop-stupid, Stupin.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> It's not the lesser of two evils, it's good rather than evil.


Yeah, if by good you mean flat-out demonic.  




> ...the original Congress also purposed to finance the federal government entirely by a tax on the value of landed property.


Non-sequitur, as you shifted awkwardly from the subject of taxation via fiat money creation (deliberate currency debasement as a means of taxation) to tax on the value of land, which has ZERO to do with the death penalty imposed by Congress for specie debasement.  




> Talk about disingenuous!  I said the difference is _NOT_ in spending, but in the source of the money.


Read what I wrote again (this time really read it).  I said that your point that there would be no difference in spending _was irrelevant_ - that's what made it disingenuous, as it was nothing more than a deflection statement on your part.  But there you go trying to make it relevant again by restating it. It's still just as irrelevant. Not to mention inaccurate. The easier it is to lay your hands on funding at will, the easier it is to spend it.   

Greenbacks made all the difference in the world as augmented funding for war -- an ENORMOUS difference between taxation revenue spending and printing revenue spending, for reasons that should be obvious to even the most casually observing idiot.  Really, a complete idiot could see that plainly, without any deep thoughts required. Come on, Roy, you're not that daft, are you? 




> *LVT* does *NOT* siphon productivity, *AT ALL*.  It simply recovers the *publicly created value* that landowners are *ALREADY siphoning* from real productivity for their *PRIVATE* interests.


Who said ANYTHING at all about LVT?  Earth to Roy...




> Blah blah LVT *beneficial*...liberty, justice and prosperity, blah blah propaganda blah blah...you prefer evil over good, and intend to serve evil by opposing good.


Shhhhh....Shh..shush-shush-shut your mouth. 




> It's not a tax if it just maintains money's purchasing power, because no one loses anything they would rightfully have.  Stop lying.  Government *EARNS* the seigniorage of such revenues *BY* maintaining the value of money and fostering the economic growth that would otherwise make that money more valuable without the holders of that money having done anything to earn the increase in purchasing power.


What goofy, logically disjointed and completely inaccurate statements.  IT DELIBERATELY ERODES its value, and screw the rationale of "purchasing power" used by all the dishonest ilk who see market manipulations and price or value targeting/fixing in any of its forms as a rationale for currency debauchery.  Government "fostering economic growth"..."EARNS" seigniorage...worse than pathetic.   




> They are accountable to the people, and the people will notice if their money is not of stable value.


You really are all but completely disconnected from reality, aren't you?  Even in the face of a currency that is not stable in value today, with all the finger pointing that happens when people _do indeed notice_ that their money is "not of stable value", most of whom have no idea what money even is, let alone who is to blame for that loss of stability.  But somehow noticing that money is not "of stable value" makes those who debauch the currency accountable. Not to mention it is a disgustingly presumptuous assumption that ANYTHING should be artificially "of stable value".  




> You just want the holders of money (and especially debt instruments) to have the value of their holdings perpetually concentrated so that they can live as parasites permanently, taking *from* production while contributing nothing whatever *to* production.


Debt instruments?  I loathe the fact that debt instruments are even considered money, but most of all the fact that debt instruments do not compete fairly with privately accumulated capital. Where did you get the ridiculous notion that I cared a whit about debt instruments? I loathe the fact that savings are invisibly taxed through inflation that is based on artificial currency value manipulations of any kind. You're the one who wants the currency deliberately debauched/debased - just through a different, more direct, mechanism - the fact that there are no debt instruments involved in your little currency debauching fantasy scenario does not detract from that simple fact.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> They don't find it difficult to understand.  They understand very well that it proves their beliefs are false and evil, so they have to find a way *not* to understand it.  This whole thread (not to mention the previous LVT thread) proves that conclusively.


I have read most of this thread, not all as some posts are just irrelevant snipes with some anti-LVT posts just plain rude and ignorant responding with silly cartoons displaying gross misunderstanding or conditioning.  When beaten they go close to insults and refer to LVT posters as trolls as they have no argument.  

What stands out is that the case put forward for LVT as the Single Tax is overwhelming with backup from leading economists and the rest.  Some of those against have some strange views. Some are grossly self-centered, not wanting to pay their way in their communities and wanting to live off what others provide, which makes them parasites. They disguise this parasitical view in some sort of personal freedom notion. Some have been conditioned over time, and have told themselves lies and believe them, that their view is the right view despite all logic demolishing their view. They say black is white and white is black.

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times as clear as day states where _the root cause of the Credit Crunch was, which is speculation in land_ and points out the devastating effects of speculation in land and its resources. Wolf also highlights those who have made money in land by doing sweet nothing. In his article in the FT, Wolf refers to Fred Harrison and Harrison's view, in video, ironically is on post No. 1 of this thread. Sir Sam Britten also of the FT has also expressed the same views as Marin Wolf and the same solution.  *All state that the cure for this financial evil for ever is LVT.*

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Martin Wolf - Chief economist of the Financial Times.....
> ...
> Socialising the full rental value of land would destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public. That is obviously impossible.
> 			
> 		
> 
> Not so, as the alternative -- leaving landowner privilege in place -- will also destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public.  It will also, unlike justice, ultimately destroy society.
> 
> 
> ...


Wolf is wrong. Socializing the full rental value of land would not would destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public. How could it?

I think what Martin Wolf is saying is start an LVT system from the point of implementation. Trying anything else will be politically difficult to drive through. Wolf has to get his ideas through and something perceived  as radical may not be viewed  too well. Say starting from 1st Jan 2013, you pay LVT on the land values. What is in the past is in the past.

Much land in the UK, US and Canada, etc, has not been traded for hundreds of years. About half of the land in the UK is not even on the land register, which is a fiddle to keep parasitic aristocratic land from prying eyes.  Of course all land in a country must be on its land register.

----------


## Roy L

> Wolf is wrong. Socializing the full rental value of land would not would destroy the financial system and the wealth of a large part of the public. How could it?


Very simply: privatized rent is currently capitalized into land value.  Remove the private appropriation of rent, and land value disappears.  Real estate will lose about 2/3 of its value.  Many mortgages will be underwater, and banks' loan portfolios will consequently all be trashed.



> I think what Martin Wolf is saying is start an LVT system from the point of implementation. Trying anything else will be politically difficult to drive through.


Not sure what you mean by "anything else."



> Wolf has to get his ideas through and something perceived  as radical may not be viewed  too well. Say starting from 1st Jan 2013, you pay LVT on the land values. What is in the past is in the past.


I don't see how that avoids the transition issues.



> Much land in the UK, US and Canada, etc, has not been traded for hundreds of years.


Then it wouldn't get much of a purchase cost exemption.



> About half of the land in the UK is not even on the land register, which is a fiddle to keep parasitic aristocratic land from prying eyes.  Of course all land in a country must be on its land register.


Yes, that can be remedied easily now using computer and satellite mapping technologies.

----------


## Roy L

> Some have been conditioned over time, and have told themselves lies and believe them, that their view is the right view despite all logic demolishing their view. They say black is white and white is black.


Bingo.  The absurdities needed to enable the atrocities.

----------


## Roy L

> Yeah, if by good you mean flat-out demonic.


ROTFL!  Funny how such a "demonic" idea has improved people's lives everywhere it has ever been tried...



> Non-sequitur, as you shifted awkwardly from the subject of taxation via fiat money creation (deliberate currency debasement as a means of taxation)


Maintaining the value of a currency is not debasement or taxation, stop lying.



> to tax on the value of land, which has ZERO to do with the death penalty imposed by Congress for specie debasement.


<yawn>  You sought to wrap yourself in the "first Congress" flag, but had no intention of being consistent about it.  If you are going to claim you must be right because the first Congress was right, then LVT is also right because the first Congress was right.



> Read what I wrote again (this time really read it).


Hmm... mmm-hmmm....

Nope.  Still stupid, dishonest garbage.



> I said that your point that there would be no difference in spending _was irrelevant_ - that's what made it disingenuous, as it was nothing more than a deflection statement on your part.


??  No, you said, 



> Even with the disingenuous attempt to narrow the argument to the differences in "spending",


I made no such attempt, and stated that there WERE no differences in spending.  You were simply lying about what I plainly wrote.  Again.



> But there you go trying to make it relevant again by restating it. It's still just as irrelevant. Not to mention inaccurate.


Stupid, dishonest garbage.



> The easier it is to lay your hands on funding at will, the easier it is to spend it.


But as you know, I explicitly described a system that *DOES NOT* allow the spending authority to lay its hands on funding at will.



> Greenbacks made all the difference in the world as augmented funding for war -- an ENORMOUS difference between taxation revenue spending and printing revenue spending, for reasons that should be obvious to even the most casually observing idiot.


Oh, really?  How, exactly, would the spending have differed if the money had been raised by borrowing or taxation, rather than fiat money issuance?



> Really, a complete idiot could see that plainly, without any deep thoughts required. Come on, Roy, you're not that daft, are you?


Sorry, Stevid, but stupid, dishonest intimidation tactics don't work on me.  You should know that by now.  I do *not* see how printing the greenbacks rather than borrowing or taxing changed how the money was going to be spent.  So you will need to answer the above question.

I'm waiting.



> Who said ANYTHING at all about LVT?  Earth to Roy...


Hehe.  "Earth" indeed...

You made a false generalization about "taxation."  I simply identified the fact that your generalization does not apply to LVT.

And you might want to check the thread title....



> Shhhhh....Shh..shush-shush-shut your mouth.


I will continue to identify the fact that your dishonest absurdities are intended to enable evil atrocities.



> What goofy, logically disjointed and completely inaccurate statements.  IT DELIBERATELY ERODES its value,


That's clearly just a bald lie.  The proposed independent Mint's *only* mandate is to *MAINTAIN* the currency's value.



> and screw the rationale of "purchasing power" used by all the dishonest ilk who see market manipulations and price or value targeting/fixing in any of its forms as a rationale for currency debauchery.  Government "fostering economic growth"..."EARNS" seigniorage...worse than pathetic.


It is the literal truth.  You have no facts, no logic, no arguments to offer, so you bloviate.  Simple.



> You really are all but completely disconnected from reality, aren't you?  Even in the face of a currency that is not stable in value today, with all the finger pointing that happens when people _do indeed notice_ that their money is "not of stable value", most of whom have no idea what money even is, let alone who is to blame for that loss of stability.


EXACTLY!  If the Mint is solely responsible for the supply and value of money, the Mint is to blame.



> But somehow noticing that money is not "of stable value" makes those who debauch the currency accountable.


It obviously doesn't under the CURRENT system, because the current system was deliberately set up to be UNaccountable -- and incomprehensible to ordinary people.  



> Not to mention it is a disgustingly presumptuous assumption that ANYTHING should be artificially "of stable value".


Wrong AGAIN.  One of the *functions* of money is to be a *measure and standard* of value.  To satisfy that function, its value has to be stable.



> Debt instruments?  I loathe the fact that debt instruments are even considered money, but most of all the fact that debt instruments do not compete fairly with privately accumulated capital. Where did you get the ridiculous notion that I cared a whit about debt instruments? I loathe the fact that savings are invisibly taxed through inflation that is based on artificial currency value manipulations of any kind.


But if the currency deflates, as it would under your preferred system, the holders of debt instruments get a windfall.  It is then *debtors* who are being "invisibly taxed" through deflation -- except that private creditors get the benefit for doing nothing, not the government to defray its spending on keeping the currency stable.



> You're the one who wants the currency deliberately debauched/debased - just through a different, more direct, mechanism - the fact that there are no debt instruments involved in your little currency debauching fantasy scenario does not detract from that simple fact.


Please explain how maintaining stable value of a currency "debauches" it.

Take your time.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> What stands out is that the case put forward for LVT as the Single Tax is overwhelming with backup from leading economists and the rest.


Appeal to authority.



> Some of those against have some strange views. Some are grossly self-centered, not wanting to pay their way in their communities and wanting to live off what others provide, which makes them parasites. They disguise this parasitical view in some sort of personal freedom notion. Some have been conditioned over time, and have told themselves lies and believe them, that their view is the right view despite all logic demolishing their view. They say black is white and white is black.


Subjective opinions which don't advance your argument.




> Martin Wolf of the Financial Times as clear as day states where _the root cause of the Credit Crunch was, which is speculation in land_ and points out the devastating effects of speculation in land and its resources. Wolf also highlights those who have made money in land by doing sweet nothing. In his article in the FT, Wolf refers to Fred Harrison and Harrison's view, in video, ironically is on post No. 1 of this thread. Sir Sam Britten also of the FT has also expressed the same views as Marin Wolf and the same solution.  *All state that the cure for this financial evil for ever is LVT.*


Another appeal to authority followed by subjective opinion.

Though the LVT is the least evil tax (as I pointed out many pages ago), this doesn't make it "good".  I know you've got various examples from around the world, but the long tradition of fascism in this country suggests strongly that the elites will wriggle their way out of it and use their bought-off politicians to more than make up for what could be extracted via an LVT.  You're going to have to make a better case that individuals owe something to "the community" for merely existing and enjoying increased overall wealth when property values go up.  The Geoist/libertarian argument against "intellectual property" is much stronger.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Maintaining the value of a currency is not debasement or taxation, stop lying.


Artificially "maintaining the value" of anything involves debasement.  When you say "maintain the value" of the currency, what you really mean is "prevent the currency from gaining in value relative to commodities".  Through its dilution, debasement, debauchery -- artificial erosion of its scarcity -- a hidden tax on currency holdings - AKA SAVINGS, AKA Privately Accumulated Capital. 




> You sought to wrap yourself in the "first Congress" flag, but had no intention of being consistent about it.  If you are going to claim you must be right because the first Congress was right, then LVT is also right because the first Congress was right.


Nice grotesque fallacy of composition you have going there, Roy. Citing one statement or opinion from one source does not equate to acceptance of all opinions from that same source.




> But as you know, I explicitly described a system that *DOES NOT* allow the spending authority to lay its hands on funding at will.


Oh really? So Treasury would not be able to use the Mint to simply print money at will?  Did you think your little commodity value-manipulating proviso/mandate was some kind of check and balance against that?  We have actual Constitutional provisos that are very clear mandates -- which are NOT FOLLOWED EVEN NOW.   




> How, exactly, would the spending have differed if the money had been raised by borrowing or taxation, rather than fiat money issuance?


Firstly, if you weren't so disingenuous as to conflate taxation with borrowing, you could ask yourself what the difference in spending HAS BEEN between those two.  Fiat money issuance is similar to deficit spending, except that it's a one-way street, as no debt instruments are issued, and no mechanism is in place for deflation. The currency is simply inflated. Perpetually.




> I do *not* see how printing the greenbacks rather than borrowing or taxing changed how the money was going to be spent.


That's because you engaged in dishonest, slippery word-shifting, Roy.  It is not so much "how the money was going to be spent", but rather _how much could be spent_ -- which in turn affected how the money was spent (on WAR).  Lincoln was limited by how much he could raise and spend through direct taxation. That limit was enlarged by Greenbacks, as it gave Lincoln a way to borrow and spend value from the currency itself in the aggregate.  And you know that, Roy, so you do see. 




> You made a false generalization about "taxation."  I simply identified the fact that your generalization does not apply to LVT.


Who gives a crap how anything applied to your irrelevant, off-point non-sequitur? This part of the thread, which you engaged in, had absolutely nothing to do with LVT. 




> That's clearly just a bald lie.  The proposed independent Mint's *only* mandate is to *MAINTAIN* the currency's value.


Hmm...would that be a Super-Duper Mandate, like, say, a Constitutional Amendment?  Or would it be just a piece of legislation?  Because as long as we're in mandate worshiping mode as a magic panacea, how about mandates like "No State shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."?  How did that and other "proposed mandates" work out for us? 

You really do function in a vacuum, Roy.  You think "_so let it be written, so let it be done_" is all there is to it.  And if the real world was all contained within Roy L.'s narcissistic mind, and Roy L. had sole despotic dominion that might be true.  

Your "proposed mandate" is no check or balance Roy.  




> EXACTLY!  If the Mint is solely responsible for the supply and value of money, the Mint is to blame.


Ah, well, as long as we have a nebulous collectivized entity to blame...  And who controls the Mint? Anything political involved there, or would it be a magic insulated oracle like the "independent" Fed?  




> ...the current system was deliberately set up to be UNaccountable -- and incomprehensible to ordinary people.


Well, if you're in charge of drafting anything, I would expect that to continue...on crack.  




> One of the *functions* of money is to be a *measure and standard* of value.  To satisfy that function, its value has to be stable.


WRONG. In the absolute.  There is no such thing as a "standard of value" (ALL economic value is transient), and all "measure of value" originates with individuals.




> But if the currency deflates, as it would under your preferred system, the holders of debt instruments get a windfall.  It is then *debtors* who are being "invisibly taxed" through deflation -- except that private creditors get the benefit for doing nothing, not the government to defray its spending on keeping the currency stable.


The value of money (hard specie, NOT debt instruments), like any other commodity, becomes more valuable with deflation of that commodity, less valuable with inflation of that same commodity. It's not complicated, but only a function of its scarcity relative to other commodities.  There is absolutely nothing special about money in that respect, and most certainly not a rationale that one commodity should be *artificially* inflated or deflated in an attempt to manipulate, control or distort an entire market. 

In a normal free market with a sound currency (one that is not artificially manipulated), both inflation and deflation are healthy and normal - like inhaling and exhaling. Neither inflation nor deflation are perpetual conditions - a Keynesian-on-crack-rotted brain is required to believe otherwise.

----------


## Lishy

I know nothing of economics, so I better shut up. But from my impressions, I do support the Land Value Tax as a single tax because it allows us to choose our tax while still funding the government. It's a LOT more free than the income tax, in my opinion.

----------


## Roy L

> Appeal to authority.


I call bull$#!+!  The dishonesty of LVT opponents is so deep, so thorough, so relentless, that they accuse LVT advocates of being crackpots, claiming, "No economist agrees with your crackpot idea."  Then when LVT advocates identify the* Nobel laureates in economics* who *DO* agree with our idea, and *QUOTE THEIR ARGUMENTS*, this is dismissed as an "appeal to authority."

Such dishonesty is disgraceful, despicable, and disgusting.

You need to learn what an appeal to authority fallacy actually is.  It is not when you cite arguments by known experts.  It is not even when you identify the fact that known experts have made arguments similar to yours.  It is only when you claim that an authority is SUFFICIENT to justify your conclusion WITHOUT any supporting argument.  And I have never seen an LVT advocate do that.



> Subjective opinions which don't advance your argument.


Wrong.  Eco simply identified the absurdity and dishonesty that are the invariable characteristics of all opposition to LVT.



> Another appeal to authority followed by subjective opinion.


LOL!  Citing credible sources is not an appeal to authority fallacy, sorry.  And you're one to complain about others stating "subjective opinions":



> Though the LVT is the least evil tax (as I pointed out many pages ago), this doesn't make it "good".


Subjective opinion.



> I know you've got various examples from around the world, but the long tradition of fascism in this country suggests strongly that the elites will wriggle their way out of it and use their bought-off politicians to more than make up for what could be extracted via an LVT.


Subjective opinion.  OTC: the elite's vicious, relentless, monomaniacal campaign to stop LVT -- which included introducing income tax and union monopoly privileges to co-opt socialists and organized labor into betraying the Single Tax movement -- strongly suggests that they know very well they can't wriggle out of it, and will therefore do anything whatever -- including destroy the economy and the country -- in order to stop it.



> You're going to have to make a better case that individuals owe something to "the community" for merely existing and enjoying increased overall wealth when property values go up.


Now you are just -- inevitably -- lying.  It is their right to liberty -- which LVT with a universal individual exemption *restores* -- that people have for "merely existing," not LVT liabilities.  You know this.  And you only owe something to the community of those whose rights you violate when you take *more than your share* of the opportunities nature provided, and thus forcibly deprive others of their liberty to access those opportunities.  It is for FORCIBLY VIOLATING OTHERS' RIGHTS that you owe the community just compensation, not for "merely existing" or "enjoying increased overall wealth when property [actually land, as you know very well] values go up."

STOP LYING about what we have plainly said.



> The Geoist/libertarian argument against "intellectual property" is much stronger.


If you understand how intellectual property violates the right to liberty, you also understand how property in land violates the right to liberty.  The difference lies only in *your* refusal to know the latter fact.

----------


## Roy L

> I know nothing of economics, so I better shut up.


Not knowing anything is a good reason to ask questions, not to shut up.



> But from my impressions, I do support the Land Value Tax as a single tax because it allows us to choose our tax while still funding the government. It's a LOT more free than the income tax, in my opinion.


Your opinion is objectively correct.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Though the LVT is the least evil tax (as I pointed out many pages ago), this doesn't make it "good". 
> 			
> 		
> 
> Subjective opinion.


Nah, remember the Roy L. Pretzel Logic Rule on Subjective vs. Objective?  As soon as you quoted his opinion it became objective.  Why, I'll even help and second his opinion, that way there's more than one.  There, now there are two votes, which makes the two opinions objective. Dib hocks dice, tick a locket, no take backs. 

Interesting fantasy land you live in, Roy.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

You really didn't need to attack me, Roy.  I was simply pointing out weaknesses in your argument.  Below is a good explanation of the appeal to authority fallacy:

The appeal to authority may take several forms. As a statistical syllogism, it will have the following basic structure:[1]
Most of what authority _a_ has to say on subject matter _S_ is correct._a_ says _p_ about _S_.Therefore, _p_ is correct.The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:[1][2]The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.These conditions may also simply be incorporated into the structure of the argument itself, in which case the form may look like this:[2]
X holds that A is trueX is a legitimate expert on the subject.The consensus of experts agrees with X.Therefore, there's a presumption that A is true.*[edit]Fallacious appeals to authority*Fallacious arguments from authority often are the result of failing to meet at least one of the two conditions from the previous section.[1][2] Specifically, when the inference fails to meet the first condition, this is sometimes called an "appeal to inappropriate authority".[3] This occurs when an inference relies on individuals or groups without relevant expertise or knowledge.[3]
Secondly, because the argument is inductive (which in this sense implies that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises), it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion _must_ be true.[2] Such an assertion is a _non sequitur_; the inductive argument might have probabilistic or statistical merit, but the conclusion does not follow unconditionally in the sense of being logically necessary.[4][5]

Now you see why I pointed out that you committed this fallacy.  Quoting a source to buttress your argument, however, is not fallacious-and is not what you did.





> Now you are just -- inevitably -- lying. It is their right to liberty -- which LVT with a universal individual exemption *restores* -- that people have for "merely existing," not LVT liabilities. You know this. And you only owe something to the community of those whose rights you violate when you take *more than your share* of the opportunities nature provided, and thus forcibly deprive others of their liberty to access those opportunities. It is for FORCIBLY VIOLATING OTHERS' RIGHTS that you owe the community just compensation, not for "merely existing" or "enjoying increased overall wealth when property [actually land, as you know very well] values go up."
> 
> STOP LYING about what we have plainly said.


"Fair share" is subjective.  My idea of "fair" may be entirely different from yours.  "Just compensation" is also subjective.  Your arguments are so full of these vagueries and subjective terms that they are left full of holes in the end.  No one will know, even if they agree with you, exactly how to put what you describe into practice because they will have to either keep asking you or make it up as they go along.  

I didn't lie about what you said.  You simply left it up to my interpretation because of the ambiguous, subjective nature of it.  I hope you'll continue to refine and clarify your arguments so these discussions will be more productive.  We may even find more common ground if you do that.

----------


## Roy L

> Artificially "maintaining the value" of anything involves debasement.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.



> When you say "maintain the value" of the currency, what you really mean is "prevent the currency from gaining in value relative to commodities".


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  What I really mean is "prevent the currency from gaining OR LOSING value relative to commodities."



> Through its dilution, debasement, debauchery -- artificial erosion of its scarcity -- a hidden tax on currency holdings - AKA SAVINGS, AKA Privately Accumulated Capital.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  Fiat money's supply -- scarcity *or* abundance -- and its value are *ALREADY INHERENTLY* artificial, so it is a lie to claim printing more of it is any more "artificial" than printing less, or prosecuting counterfeiters.  Your claim that maintaining money's value at a stable level constitutes a "hidden tax on currency holdings" is self-evidently idiotic and dishonest, as the currency holder loses nothing. 

Furthermore, fiat currency holdings ARE NOT "Privately Accumulated Capital."  They are *hoarded purchasing power*, that's all.  CAPITAL is a product of labor that aids production.  Fiat money is a product of government that aids exchange.



> Nice grotesque fallacy of composition you have going there, Roy.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  Identifying your dishonesty and logical inconsistency is not a fallacy of composition (which you really need to look up, along with everything else about logic).



> Citing one statement or opinion from one source does not equate to acceptance of all opinions from that same source.


It does when you are citing that source as the authority for your statement.



> Oh really? So Treasury would not be able to use the Mint to simply print money at will?


Correct.  Much less than it is able at present to use the Fed for that purpose.



> Did you think your little commodity value-manipulating proviso/mandate was some kind of check and balance against that?


I am willing to know the fact that it is, yes.



> We have actual Constitutional provisos that are very clear mandates -- which are NOT FOLLOWED EVEN NOW.


And in what you are no doubt pleased to call your "mind," that probably constitutes an argument.  But in reality, it doesn't, because the same "argument" can be made equally on all sides of the issue.  If you claim everything in the Constitution will simply be ignored, on what basis could you advocate constitutional constraints on money issuance?



> Firstly, if you weren't so disingenuous as to conflate taxation with borrowing,


That's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  I did no such thing, so stop lying about what I have plainly written.



> you could ask yourself what the difference in spending HAS BEEN between those two.


I don't have to, as I am willing to know facts.  There are many jurisdictions that CAN'T borrow, and their spending has not been that different from the spending of jurisdictions that can.



> Fiat money issuance is similar to deficit spending, except that it's a one-way street, as no debt instruments are issued, and no mechanism is in place for deflation. The currency is simply inflated. Perpetually.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  There are *two* deflation mechanisms in place: the natural attrition of the currency (bills wear out, or are lost in fires, accidentally thrown away, etc.) and growth of economic exchange.



> That's because you engaged in dishonest, slippery word-shifting, Roy.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.



> It is not so much "how the money was going to be spent", but rather _how much could be spent_ -- which in turn affected how the money was spent (on WAR).


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.  It is indisputable that the greenbacks were printed as an alternative to additional borrowing -- and as a way to keep interest rates on government debt down.  The war required more money, and it was not going to be abandoned for lack of funds.



> Lincoln was limited by how much he could raise and spend through direct taxation.


Not really, as he could have apportioned any direct tax by population.



> That limit was enlarged by Greenbacks, as it gave Lincoln a way to borrow and spend value from the currency itself in the aggregate.


Gibberish.



> And you know that, Roy, so you do see.


No, I know it's gibberish.



> Who gives a crap how anything applied to your irrelevant, off-point non-sequitur?


It wasn't irrelevant, off-point or a non sequitur.  You simply made a false generalization, and I schooled you.



> This part of the thread, which you engaged in, had absolutely nothing to do with LVT.


Wrong again.  You made a general claim about taxes.  That claim was false wrt LVT.  I schooled you.



> Hmm...would that be a Super-Duper Mandate, like, say, a Constitutional Amendment?  Or would it be just a piece of legislation?


Whatever works.



> Because as long as we're in mandate worshiping mode as a magic panacea, how about mandates like "No State shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts."?  How did that and other "proposed mandates" work out for us?


I don't recall any state having done that, so it seems to have worked pretty well.



> You really do function in a vacuum, Roy.  You think "_so let it be written, so let it be done_" is all there is to it.


You're either discussing the proposal or you're trying to change the subject.  You are trying to change the subject.  Simple.



> And if the real world was all contained within Roy L.'s narcissistic mind, and Roy L. had sole despotic dominion that might be true.


You have no facts or logic to offer, so you have to change the subject.  Simple.  "What you propose wouldn't be implemented, a different system would be implemented instead," is not an argument against a proposed system unless you can show how the proposal is *uniquely* susceptible to such corruption, amendment or replacement -- and you can't.  Your "argument" is nothing but an all-purpose howl that applies equally to all proposals -- and is therefore not only not an argument against any of them, but is monumentally uninteresting.



> Your "proposed mandate" is no check or balance Roy.


No, that's nothing but another stupid lie from you.



> Ah, well, as long as we have a nebulous collectivized entity to blame...


There's nothing nebulous or collectivized about it, stop lying.



> And who controls the Mint?


Its operation could be administered by an appointed or elected official, but in any case it would operate with complete transparency, according to its mandate.  If it was printing too much (or too little) money, that fact would immediately be known to both the staff and the public.



> Anything political involved there, or would it be a magic insulated oracle like the "independent" Fed?


As (unlike the Fed) its printing operations would be completely open, anyone could check to see that it was hewing to its mandated function.



> Well, if you're in charge of drafting anything, I would expect that to continue...on crack.


Stupid garbage unrelated to anything.



> WRONG. In the absolute.


Nope.  I am correct.  By definition.  Which means absolutely and indisputably.



> There is no such thing as a "standard of value" (ALL economic value is transient),


Objectively false.  Many people have standards of value even aside from money: the price of gold, of oil, of labor, etc.



> and all "measure of value" originates with individuals.


People are individuals, and nothing in economics happens without people.  So what?



> The value of money (hard specie, NOT debt instruments), like any other commodity, becomes more valuable with deflation of that commodity, less valuable with inflation of that same commodity. It's not complicated, but only a function of its scarcity relative to other commodities.  There is absolutely nothing special about money in that respect, and most certainly not a rationale that one commodity should be *artificially* inflated or deflated in an attempt to manipulate, control or distort an entire market.


Fiat money is not a commodity, and neither is debt money, so your observation is irrelevant.



> In a normal free market with a sound currency (one that is not artificially manipulated), both inflation and deflation are healthy and normal - like inhaling and exhaling. Neither inflation nor deflation are perpetual conditions - a Keynesian-on-crack-rotted brain is required to believe otherwise.


Garbage.  What happens to the value of commodity money over time depends on what the commodity is, and changes in conditions for its production.  See "cowrie shell money."

----------


## Roy L

> Nah, remember the Roy L. Pretzel Logic Rule on Subjective vs. Objective?  As soon as you quoted his opinion it became objective.  Why, I'll even help and second his opinion, that way there's more than one.  There, now there are two votes, which makes the two opinions objective.


Stupid and dishonest garbage that -- inevitably -- misstates what I said.

----------


## Steven Douglas

It's good to dream. Go back to sleep Roy.

----------


## Roy L

> You really didn't need to attack me, Roy.


I know.  Attacking lies and absurdities that rationalize privilege and justify injustice is just a habit with me.



> I was simply pointing out weaknesses in your argument.


No, you were fabricating weaknesses that did not exist.



> Below is a good explanation of the appeal to authority fallacy:
> 
> The appeal to authority may take several forms. As a statistical syllogism, it will have the following basic structure:[1]
> Most of what authority _a_ has to say on subject matter _S_ is correct._a_ says _p_ about _S_.Therefore, _p_ is correct.


Readers will note that neither Eco nor I proposed any such statistical syllogism -- which in any case isn't even fallacious (learn to read, HB).



> The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:[1][2]The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.These conditions may also simply be incorporated into the structure of the argument itself, in which case the form may look like this:[2]
> X holds that A is trueX is a legitimate expert on the subject.The consensus of experts agrees with X.Therefore, there's a presumption that A is true.[edit]


Note that the above describes the STRENGTH of legitimate appeals to authority, not the fallacious appeal to authority, which is described as follows:



> Fallacious appeals to authority
> Fallacious arguments from authority often are the result of failing to meet at least one of the two conditions from the previous section.[1][2] Specifically, when the inference fails to meet the first condition, this is sometimes called an "appeal to inappropriate authority".[3] This occurs when an inference relies on individuals or groups without relevant expertise or knowledge.[3]
> Secondly, because the argument is inductive (which in this sense implies that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises), it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion _must_ be true.[2] Such an assertion is a _non sequitur_; the inductive argument might have probabilistic or statistical merit, but the conclusion does not follow unconditionally in the sense of being logically necessary.[4][SUP][5]


Readers will note that neither Eco nor I made any such argument (learn to read, HB).



> Now you see why I pointed out that you committed this fallacy.


<yawn>  I see three possibilities for why you falsely claimed Eco committed this fallacy:

1. You had no idea what it actually consisted in;
2. You did not read or understand his statements accurately;
3. You were lying.



> Quoting a source to buttress your argument, however, is not fallacious-and is not what you did.


Actually, it IS what Eco did.  He quoted a whole column by Martin Wolf, who is definitely an authority, and contrary to your FALSE CLAIM, that was not an appeal to authority fallacy (which you give every appearance of still not understanding).



> "Fair share" is subjective.


I didn't mention "fair share," just, "share," so putting quotes around "fair share" is just you makin' $#!+ up about what I wrote.  Again.



> My idea of "fair" may be entirely different from yours.


Not really.  We both know what's fair: equal human rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor.  You just want things that you know very well are UNfair.



> "Just compensation" is also subjective.


No, it isn't.  The market value of what is taken is just compensation for it.



> Your arguments are so full of these vagueries and subjective terms that they are left full of holes in the end.


No, that is merely a false claim by you about the contents of my arguments.  I am very clear, and my terms are objectively defined in good dictionaries.



> No one will know, even if they agree with you, exactly how to put what you describe into practice because they will have to either keep asking you or make it up as they go along.


Garbage.  There is nothing particularly difficult or complex about implementing it.  You just have to understand the underlying principles.  



> I didn't lie about what you said.


See above.



> You simply left it up to my interpretation because of the ambiguous, subjective nature of it.


There is nothing ambiguous or subjective about it.  That's just you makin' $#!+ up.



> I hope you'll continue to refine and clarify your arguments so these discussions will be more productive.  We may even find more common ground if you do that.


Yes, well, you wouldn't be the first LVT opponent who tried to exhaust me with a tsunami of fallacious, dishonest garbage.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Attacking lies and absurdities...
> ...you were fabricating...
> ...learn to read, HB...
> ...learn to read, HB...
> ...you falsely claimed...
> ...You had no idea...
> ...You did not read or understand...
> ...You were lying...
> ...contrary to your FALSE CLAIM...
> ...


And this is a soft, furry, cuddly bunny rabbit.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> I know nothing of economics, so I better shut up. But from my impressions, I do support the Land Value Tax as a single tax because it allows us to choose our tax while still funding the government. It's a LOT more free than the income tax, in my opinion.


LVT is very simple. Freedom?  It does give you that for sure.  

An example, if you are say an author and it does not matter where you live to earn your income.  As the system is now, if you live in Manhattan or the remoteness of up-state NY, you still pay the same income tax.  With LVT you decide how much tax you pay by choosing the location.  LVT in Manhattan will be much more than up-state NY as the land values are higher.  If you want to live in Manhattan and take advantage of all the vibrancy, entertainment, arts, leisure and other facilities NYC has to offer then you pay more LVT for the location that provides those facilities.  In up-state NY you pay less LVT but the facilities are far less, or maybe non-existent.

In both cases you keep 100% of your income - what your effort produced.  You have the freedom to decide what you pay for.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> It's good to dream. Go back to sleep Roy.


I dream.  I dream of building castles on the top of a high hill.  However my dreams are based on real castles that exist.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> OTC: *the elite's vicious, relentless, monomaniacal campaign to stop LVT* -- which included introducing income tax and union monopoly privileges to co-opt socialists and organized labor into betraying the Single Tax movement -- strongly suggests that they know very well they can't wriggle out of it, and will therefore do anything whatever -- including destroy the economy and the country -- in order to stop it.


That is hitting the nail right on the head. In 1909 the British empire was the world's largest ever empire and Britain the world's biggest economic superpower.  The Liberal government, with Winston Churchill more than active, put LVT in its budget.  The resultant upheaval between the House of Commons and the second house, the House of Lords, which was filled with large land owners, was the biggest constitutional conflict in the British Parliament in the modern era.

The second house rejected a financial bill primarily because it contained LVT.  _"The Lords accepted the Budget on 29 April 1910 — a year to the day after its introduction — when the land tax proposal was dropped"_.  It ended in the House of Lords having its power reduced in the Parliament Act of 1911.  The act effectively removed the right of the House of Lords to veto money bills completely. But they got their way in suppressing the Land Tax. By the time the government could reintroduce LVT war clouds were gathering and WW1 came along.

People's Budget

*the elite's vicious, relentless, monomaniacal campaign to stop LVT* is constant.  These days it may come from even corporations as well as the parasitic landed people. MacDonalds are a land company. Land is their prime assets.

Then you see why the top 1% of the USA population own more wealth than the bottom 90%.  Which proves the current economic systems used in the western world do not work.

----------


## redbluepill

I find the only real resistance to the LVT is from Mises/anarchocapitalist-types who refuse to acknowledge any form of taxation (or in this case rent).         When talking to 98% of people they open up to the idea of the LVT especially when it eliminates or at least reduces other taxes. What Republican shouldn't embrace the LVT (unless they are absentee landowners who do nothing productive with the land)? What Democrat wouldn't like the idea of a tax that is truly fair and ensures the elites cant hide through tax loopholes? The real challenge is getting the word out. Fortunately, thanks in part to the internet and a terrible economy, the idea is gaining support again.

----------


## Roy L

> I find the only real resistance to the LVT is from Mises/anarchocapitalist-types who refuse to acknowledge any form of taxation (or in this case rent).


I.e., "libertarians" whose actual goal is feudalism.  Some even openly admire and praise the feudal Dark Ages of Western Europe.



> When talking to 98% of people they open up to the idea of the LVT especially when it eliminates or at least reduces other taxes.


Do you have any numbers to back this up?  IME it is an exaggeration.  A great many homeowners are absolutely terrified of losing much of the value of their principal asset, which they may have gone deep into debt to acquire (this is another reason to include both a UIE and a "purchase value exemption" in any LVT proposal).  They are completely unable to understand that this loss is illusory because unlike LVT, their future tax liabilities under the current system are not reflected in the value of any asset.  If there was an asset called, "my future life," that contained the market value of all one's future economic activity net of taxes, as land value contains the market value of all the future welfare subsidy giveaways to the landowner net of taxes, it would be obvious that the gain in their future lives' value under LVT would in most cases far exceed the loss of their land's value.



> What Republican shouldn't embrace the LVT (unless they are absentee landowners who do nothing productive with the land)?


Pretty much all of them: the Republicans are the party of privilege, property, and the power they confer on their owners.  Litmus test: a Republican who supports the War on Drugs is nothing but a fascist.



> What Democrat wouldn't like the idea of a tax that is truly fair and ensures the elites cant hide through tax loopholes?


All the Democrats -- like Obama -- who have been bought and paid for by the privileged elite, or who rely on countervailing privileges for their livelihoods (e.g., unions, especially their executives).



> The real challenge is getting the word out. Fortunately, thanks in part to the internet and a terrible economy, the idea is gaining support again.


True.  So it won't be long till the privileged are paying liars for hire to slag, dismiss, deride and lie about LVT on Internet forums -- if they aren't already.

----------


## Travlyr

> I find the only real resistance to the LVT is from Mises/anarchocapitalist-types who refuse to acknowledge any form of taxation (or in this case rent).         When talking to 98% of people they open up to the idea of the LVT especially when it eliminates or at least reduces other taxes. What Republican shouldn't embrace the LVT (unless they are absentee landowners who do nothing productive with the land)? What Democrat wouldn't like the idea of a tax that is truly fair and ensures the elites cant hide through tax loopholes? The real challenge is getting the word out. Fortunately, thanks in part to the internet and a terrible economy, the idea is gaining support again.


I resist LVT because as I get older I may not be able to earn enough to pay my taxes and will get kicked off my land and home before I die.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> True.  So it won't be long till the privileged are paying liars for hire to slag, dismiss, deride and lie about LVT on Internet forums -- if they aren't already.


The oil companies clearly do that.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> I resist LVT because as I get older I may not be able to earn enough to pay my taxes and will get kicked off my land and home before I die.


Winston Churchill called that the "Poor Widow bogey". That has been dunbunked for over 100 years. The poor widow livinga very large house on valuabel land. 

Allusion is typically made to the "poor widow"

1.  Who, on a fixed income of a pension and/or social security is compelled 
to sell her home in which she lived for years and where she hoped to spend 
her remaining days.

2.  Although pundits and politicians are often hard put to provide an 
instance in which this has happened, it makes for excellent copy, for what 
greater case of heartlessness can be offered for relief of property taxes!

Priceless logic. The more that people want something, the less they should have to pay for it? Isn't one of the basic rules of free markets that people are prepared to pay more for things which are of value to them; and isn't there a behavioural rule that people value things more if they have to pay for them?

A childless Poor Widow could be exempted anyway (her estate reverts to the state) and if she has, er, family, couldn't they step up the oche? Or is the idea that 'everybody else' chips in a bit more tax to keep these "families" in the style to which they have become accustomed?

What happens now? If you can't afford to live somwhere you move to somwhere you can afford.  LVT has exemptions for various reasons.  Under LVT, an old widow in a massive valuable house can defer payment until death or sale of property.

As regards the poor widow neighbour.  It certainly is her fault if she has "little cash", it's called "not saving up while you are working". And if she wanted, she could be sitting on a huge great pile of cash locked up in the land under her feet, so this sort of poverty is entirely self-inflicted.

What LVT would do is encourage Poor Widows in large houses to do the economically rational thing and down size a bit to somewhere costing "only" far less, freeing up huge great piles of cash for them to really enjoy their last few years.

And, if we are that worried presumably we could have an old lady exemption that might be slowly phased out? The older generation cannot go on holding the younger generation hostage and demanding that the younger generation pay for them because it was not cool to save in the 60s!

Why shouldn't the Poor Widow, who has struck property gold and won the lottery of life and who can bank her winnings any time and still afford somewhere nice with enough money left over to pay the tax for the rest of her life, pay more than a genuinely Poor Widow (whose husband was a coal 
miner and died of lung disease twenty years ago etc) who still lives in a small house that's barely beaten inflation since the 1940s? You can save a lot of money by trading down from a swanky home into a suitable place.

A more sophisticated Poll Tax would be:

a) set in proportion to benefits received by owner/occupier(s) of any 
particular house

b) be able to raise huge amounts of revenue to replace lots of other taxes 
and pay for a Citizen's Income (which acts like a personal allowance against 
your tax bill)

The good news is, LVT retains the two big advantages above of Poll Tax - it's not directly related to incomes (any more than the value of your car is related to your income) and it's nice and simple to assess and collect.

----------


## Travlyr

> Winston Churchill called that the "Poor Widow bogey". That has been dunbunked for over 100 years. The poor widow livinga very large house on valuabel land. 
> 
> Allusion is typically made to the "poor widow"
> 
> 1.  Who, on a fixed income of a pension and/or social security is compelled 
> to sell her home in which she lived for years and where she hoped to spend 
> her remaining days.
> 
> 2.  Although pundits and politicians are often hard put to provide an 
> ...


This is not freedom. This is the State taxing an owner out of their possessions. I'm a sound money allodial title to land and all other property too, guy. The State should be able to function on fees for service. To hell with taxing land. Once one buys property, it should be theirs to do whatever the owner sees fit.

----------


## redbluepill

> Do you have any numbers to back this up?  IME it is an exaggeration.  A great many homeowners are absolutely terrified of losing much of the value of their principal asset, which they may have gone deep into debt to acquire (this is another reason to include both a UIE and a "purchase value exemption" in any LVT proposal).  They are completely unable to understand that this loss is illusory because unlike LVT, their future tax liabilities under the current system are not reflected in the value of any asset.  If there was an asset called, "my future life," that contained the market value of all one's future economic activity net of taxes, as land value contains the market value of all the future welfare subsidy giveaways to the landowner net of taxes, it would be obvious that the gain in their future lives' value under LVT would in most cases far exceed the loss of their land's value.


I'm talking about the people I have spoken to about the LVT. Many resisted the idea at first, or at least had concerns. But when you talk about the advantages they warm up to it. 







> Pretty much all of them: the Republicans are the party of privilege, property, and the power they confer on their owners.  Litmus test: a Republican who supports the War on Drugs is nothing but a fascist.





> All the Democrats -- like Obama -- who have been bought and paid for by the privileged elite, or who rely on countervailing privileges for their livelihoods (e.g., unions, especially their executives).


It seems you're talking about the average politician/elitist. I'm talking about the average voter.

I'm sure you've heard of the Democratic Freedom Caucus
http://www.democraticfreedomcaucus.org/





> True.  So it won't be long till the privileged are paying liars for hire to slag, dismiss, deride and lie about LVT on Internet forums -- if they aren't already.


They certainly accomplished oppressing the idea for over a century. The internet has made that job more difficult. Decentralizing government would make it even more difficult imo.

----------


## redbluepill

> I resist LVT because as I get older I may not be able to earn enough to pay my taxes and will get kicked off my land and home before I die.


The tax burden with the Single Tax wouldn't even compare to what we have now. Unless you're Ted Turner.

----------


## redbluepill

> This is not freedom.


What you grow, create, catch, raise, make, etc clearly belongs to you. Georgists agree with every other libertarian on that. But the land does not apply. You did not make the land. You only acquired it by buying it from someone else who, by force, kept others off of it.





> This is the State taxing an owner out of their possessions.


A possession that was never theirs to begin with.

Keep in mind, I do not oppose private possession of land. Private possession is necessary to reap the rewards of labor. But we also have to balance that with the equal rights of all to access what nature has provided. Why do you think poverty was always worse in the South, or in many of the developing countries like Central/South America, Africa, etc? The best land was gobbled up by a select few. Corporations and landlords were granted many acres, cutting indigenous people off from access to the land they worked on for centuries.





> I'm a sound money allodial title to land and all other property too, guy. The State should be able to function on fees for service. To hell with taxing land. Once one buys property, it should be theirs to do whatever the owner sees fit.



Tell me. How much work is required to declare the land as yours? How much of it can you say is yours? This has never been explained by your side in over 87 pages of this thread.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I'm talking about the people I have spoken to  about the LVT. Many resisted the idea at first, or at least had  concerns. But when you talk about the advantages they warm up to it.


Most people who really research it already like it better than the prevailing system (Rothbard certainly did).  The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that it's remarkably naive to trust the government with this sort of thing-especially the American government.  The tax revenues would have to be administered by a truly accountable and reliable entity.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> What you grow, create, catch, raise, make, etc clearly belongs to you. Georgists agree with every other libertarian on that. But the land does not apply. You did not make the land. You only acquired it by buying it from someone else who, by force, kept others off of it.


Not necessarily.  There are in fact people who have settled and passed down land through the generations.  Another thing-I got the impression from Roy L that the Georgist view allows for ownership/stewardship of the land-only landowners owe a certain amount of money to "the community" for holding this land.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> This is not freedom. This is the State taxing an owner out of their possessions. I'm a sound money allodial title to land and all other property too, guy. The State should be able to function on fees for service. To hell with taxing land. Once one buys property, it should be theirs to do whatever the owner sees fit.


Aren't you one of the members who argues in favor of "commonly held" land like roads, etc?  This conflicts with the point you make here.

----------


## Travlyr

> Aren't you one of the members who argues in favor of "commonly held" land like roads, etc?  This conflicts with the point you make here.


Where is the conflict? I claim that land should be owned by individuals and each landowner should have access to community held property (roads) in order to avoid trespassing on another individual's land.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Yes, well, you wouldn't be the first LVT opponent who tried to exhaust me with a tsunami of fallacious, dishonest garbage.


Fallacious is not the same as false, as you noted earlier in the post. (this is the fallacy fallacy)  I was just trying to help you refine your argument.  Your tone is really going to turn people off.  It's a problem that many libertarians of all stripes have.  It's a trait that you have to recognize you have and strive to improve.  You are selling ideas, after all.  No salesman has ever won over a client by insulting or talking down to them.

----------


## Travlyr

> What you grow, create, catch, raise, make, etc clearly belongs to you. Georgists agree with every other libertarian on that. But the land does not apply. You did not make the land. You only acquired it by buying it from someone else who, by force, kept others off of it.


I don't hold that view. Land can be owned.




> A possession that was never theirs to begin with.


I disagree. Once a deed to land is established, then whoever holds that deed is the owner. Land is plentiful.




> Keep in mind, I do not oppose private possession of land. Private possession is necessary to reap the rewards of labor. But we also have to balance that with the equal rights of all to access what nature has provided. Why do you think poverty was always worse in the South, or in many of the developing countries like Central/South America, Africa, etc? The best land was gobbled up by a select few. Corporations and landlords were granted many acres, cutting indigenous people off from access to the land they worked on for centuries.


There are still 650 million acres of land in the United States that is held by the federal government. It could be homesteaded to individuals in a color blind lottery. What happened in the past was not equitable. The future could be. I am not in favor of taxing the land.




> Tell me. How much work is required to declare the land as yours? How much of it can you say is yours? This has never been explained by your side in over 87 pages of this thread.


I don't understand the relevance of these questions. Why should it be based on how much work is required? Why should there be a limit?

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Where is the conflict? I claim that land should be owned by individuals and each landowner should have access to community held property (roads) in order to avoid trespassing on another individual's land.


At the same time you believe in inviolate private property and inviolate "public" (socialized) property.  As Mises and most every critic of socialism has noted, this internal contradiction (believing that "everyone" owns certain land and "someone" owns other land) causes the argument to collapse on itself.  Block has elaborated on this in great detail.  See "Privatization Of Roads And Highways: Human And Economic Factors".  See also the famous "Tragedy Of The Commons".

----------


## Travlyr

> At the same time you believe in inviolate private property and inviolate "public" (socialized) property.  As Mises and most every critic of socialism has noted, this internal contradiction (believing that "everyone" owns certain land and "someone" owns other land) causes the argument to collapse on itself.  Block has elaborated on this in great detail.  See "Privatization Of Roads And Highways: Human And Economic Factors".  See also the famous "Tragedy Of The Commons".


There is no contradiction. Land locked land by private owners are inaccessible without trespassing. Private ownership of roads make no sense. Private management, yes, but not private ownership. Everyone should be able to travel on common property without trespassing on private property.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Allusion is typically made to the "poor widow"
> 
> 1.  Who, on a fixed income of a pension and/or social security is compelled 
> to sell her home...
> 2.  Although pundits and politicians are often hard put to provide an 
> instance in which this has happened...


The surprise isn't that pundits and politicians are hard put to provide an instance in which this has happened. The surprise is in the utter gall on the parts of those who would suggest that it doesn't happen.  Nobody collects that kind of data. There is no check box anywhere during a sale that says, "I'm selling my home because I can no longer afford to pay ridiculous rent payments to the government." It's just recorded as a sale.  

That's like the native in Dances With Wolves who, upon finding the Lieutenant's hat on the prairie and keeping it as his own, says to everyone with a straight face, "He didn't want it any more." 




> Priceless logic. The more that people want something, the less they should have to pay for it? Isn't one of the basic rules of free markets that people are prepared to pay more for things which are of value to them; and isn't there a behavioural rule that people value things more if they have to pay for them?


The priceless logic employed here is your conflation of rentals and ownership; rental prices with sale prices, with the assumption that the word "want" refers to "wants to forever rent".  Compare with anything else that is actually owned, so that it's free of obfuscation:

The shovel that I own I paid for ONCE, even though I use it over and over again (and COULD rent it out to others). I may "want" that shovel just as badly as the first time I bought it every time I use it, but the original price, having already been paid, is amortized over the life of the shovel.  That expectation isn't "priceless logic". It's absolutely and perfectly NORMAL for anything that is paid for ONCE and truly owned.  




> What happens now? If you can't afford to live somwhere you move to somwhere you can afford.


Extend that logic out to a personal property tax, and ridiculousness of that logic becomes apparent in your paradigm wherein ownership is not even an option.  You already DID afford whatever it is you *bought* and _own_, like any other thing considered your property.  With landownership, you already ARE living somewhere you can afford, if that land is paid for.  Under LVT, the land becomes priceless -- not for sale -- FOR RENT ONLY, as the state assumes the role of those people geolibertarians hate and revile the most.  




> LVT has exemptions for various reasons.  Under LVT, an old widow in a massive valuable house can defer payment until death or sale of property.


Wrong. "LVT" in and of itself doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have exemptions, and it doesn't have provisions for deferring payments. Your version might - Roy's versions would, but that's not "LVT" - those are your arbitrary PROPOSED exceptions to the LVT _rule_ you want established. 




> As regards the poor widow neighbour.  It certainly is her fault if she has "little cash", it's called "not saving up while you are working". And if she wanted, she could be sitting on a huge great pile of cash locked up in the land under her feet, so this sort of poverty is entirely self-inflicted.


That's where geolibs earn and deserve my complete and utter contempt as the callous soulless collectivist thieves that they are.  Carry that forward to a personal property tax.  If someone doesn't have the cash to pay it, they can always liquidate their property.  It's their "_choice_", right? They are "_free_" to not own, or to "own" (read=rent from the ultimate owner state) something cheaper. Silly Billies, with all that unnecessarily self-inflicted poverty.  




> What LVT would do is encourage Poor Widows in large houses to do the economically rational thing and down size a bit to somewhere costing "only" far less, freeing up huge great piles of cash for them to really enjoy their last few years.


I have a better idea - how about we just keep the propertarian framework, and the widow can just own what was already paid for and is already hers by right? And that obnoxiously vague thing called "community" that geolibs like to invoke for entitlements can go stuff itself, while the government remains nothing but a servant with a decidedly limited role.




> And, if we are that worried presumably we could have an old lady exemption that might be slowly phased out? The older generation cannot go on holding the younger generation hostage...


The younger generation isn't held hostage. That's the geolib fantasy delusion. The thieves in that generation can go and do likewise, or draw back really bloody stumps when they try to lay collectivist claim to what truly isn't theirs at all.  Really. All thieves must hang.  Not the pretend thieves that geolibs make landowners out to be, but the real thieves, who rationalize theft by recognizing no individual ownership rights where land is concerned. Those thieves. The real would-be thieves, who share in a collectivist balm for their thievery -- their sociopathic complicity for a guilt they should, but will never, feel.  




> Why shouldn't the Poor Widow, who has struck property gold and won the lottery of life and who can bank her winnings any time and still afford somewhere nice with enough money left over to pay the tax for the rest of her life, pay more than a genuinely Poor Widow (whose husband was a coal miner and died of lung disease twenty years ago etc) who still lives in a small house that's barely beaten inflation since the 1940s?


Nice class warfare rhetoric, but that one's easy.  Whomever it is that strikes gold (even "property gold"), whether they earned it or just found it, is entitled to that gold - without regard to all the "genuinely poor" who were not as fortunate.   




> You can save a lot of money by trading down from a swanky home into a suitable place.


Thanks for the unsolicited savings advice for those who don't care about your ideas on how to "save money" through liquidating, and certainly wouldn't, and shouldn't, care about whatever you thought was "a suitable place" for them.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> There is no contradiction.


There is, and I spelled it out in black and white for you.




> Land locked land by private owners are inaccessible without trespassing. Private ownership of roads make no sense. Private management, yes, but not private ownership. Everyone should be able to travel on common property without trespassing on private property.


It makes perfect sense.  It already exists in several places.  Had you read Block's book-available free here (and the other criticisms of government roads and territory), you would know this and have a good counter-argument.

----------


## Travlyr

> There is, and I spelled it out in black and white for you.


You didn't spell anything out. That is how it is done now in the United States. The lone exception is that the State currently maintains the public property and I advocate for private management of it.




> It makes perfect sense.  It already exists in several places.  Had you read Block's book (and the other criticisms of government roads and territory), you would know this and have a good counter-argument.


I read Block and he didn't even know that property ownership extends from the center of the Earth to the outer edges of the atmosphere. 

It makes no sense. Private property owners have the legal right to prevent trespassers. Public property does not. Giving private owners the right to keep certain people, at their discretion, off the road is a failed policy.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You didn't spell anything out. That is how it is done now in the United States. The lone exception is that the State currently maintains the public property and I advocate for private management of it.


Yes, it's the American way, so it MUST be correct.   Please tell me you're joking.  And I did spell it out.  You simply don't agree.  That's a fine opinion, but it's incorrect.






> You I read Block and he didn't even know that property ownership extends from the center of the Earth to the outer edges of the atmosphere.


Red herring and false but glad you got in a snide, irrelevant comment just because you could.




> It makes no sense. Private property owners have the legal right to prevent trespassers. Public property does not. Giving private owners the right to keep certain people, at their discretion, off the road is a failed policy.


Failed where?  You claim to understand the subject, but don't know of the Dulles Greenway toll road and various other effective private roads.  Public property has also been tried everywhere, and it fails.  Not only is the government run infrastructure crumbling drastically, the incentive is toward lax upkeep and destruction rather than good maintenance and quality. (this the essentially the Tragedy Of The Commons)

And you're right that public property does not provide the legal right to preven trespassers.  That's one reason it fails.  

Come, now, amigo.  You're the one making the positive claim.  You should have a LOT better argument than what you've laid out.

----------


## Travlyr

> Yes, it's the American way, so it MUST be correct.   Please tell me you're joking.  And I did spell it out.  You simply don't agree.  That's a fine opinion, but it's incorrect.


It works great. It was designed by our founding fathers. Road commissioners are elected officials. When I leave my home I leave my private property and it joins public property. I can travel virtually anywhere on public property without trespassing on anyone's private property. Several thousand miles of traveling and when I reach my destination, I can visit my friends and family on their private property. When I leave, then I can get right back on public property without trespassing on anyone's property. I truly don't see the problem with that.




> Failed where?  You claim to understand the subject, but don't know of the Dulles Greenway toll road and various other effective private roads.  Public property has also been tried everywhere, and it fails.  Not only is the government run infrastructure crumbling drastically, the incentive is toward lax upkeep and destruction rather than good maintenance and quality. (this the essentially the Tragedy Of The Commons)
> 
> Red herring and false but glad you got in a snide, irrelevant comment just because you could.
> 
> And you're right that public property does not provide the legal right to preven trespassers.  That's one reason it fails.  
> 
> Come, now, amigo.  You're the one making the positive claim.  You should have a LOT better argument than what you've laid out.


False? It is not a snide comment .. it is very relevant. Block is a professor writing a book. He should KNOW about property rights. Land rights extend from the center of the Earth to the outer edges of the atmosphere. People don't enforce their rights against airplanes because it is no big deal, but before the airplane it was virtually no issue at all.

Where do you think property rights begin and end?

Toll roads suck and I avoid them when I can. I do advocate for private competitive maintenance for roads. The infrastructure problem could be cured by the free market. I just don't want private ownership of the land under the road.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Toll roads suck and I avoid them when I can. I do advocate for private competitive maintenance for roads. The infrastructure problem could be cured by the free market. I just don't want private ownership of the land under the road.


What you are advocating here is a "mixed economy" (a type of fascism) in land.  This system of quasi-private/public ownership is a big part of the reason we're in the mess we're in today.  Regardless of your subjective opinion of toll roads, you're paying an "invisible"/hidden toll all the time.  NOTHING in this world is free, my friend.  The question is "in whose hands are roads better handled?" and the preponderance of the evidence tells us it is not "the public" (IOW, the government).





> Where do you think property rights begin and end?


It is self-evident that property rights are determined by borders (either literal or by ownership claim).  For example, the edges of a given parcel.  It also extends upwards to an distance that is determined by market actors (not arbitrary state diktat).

----------


## Roy L

> I resist LVT because as I get older I may not be able to earn enough to pay my taxes and will get kicked off my land and home before I die.


Yes, many people prefer to condemn their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to lives of inescapable indentured servitude to idle landowners and mortgage lenders rather than suffer any inconvenience or discomfort to themselves that might result from living in a more free and just society.

But your fears are of course not very well founded.  Most importantly, you won't be paying other taxes, the productive will not be carrying a large, greedy, parasitic landowning class on their backs, and costs of goods and services will therefore be much lower.  So unless you are reliant on rent income, your actual disposable income will probably be double or triple what it is now once you stop paying for government twice.  If you _still_ find your UIE and your pension are not enough to pay your LVT, you have a number of reasonable alternatives:

1. You can sell your house and seek accommodation better suited to your needs and means (most rational people do this to "downsize" as they get older anyway).
2. You may be able to defer your LVT and have it come out of your estate, if you are going to leave one.
3. You can use the land productively enough to pay the LVT by, e.g., taking in boarders, allowing someone who lacks space to run a daycare in your home, renting out garden or parking space in your yard, etc.
4. You can ask for help from your kids (who will be grateful you don't want to move in with them).
5. Etc.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Yes, many people prefer to condemn their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to lives of inescapable indentured servitude to idle landowners and mortgage lenders rather than suffer any inconvenience or discomfort to themselves that might result from living in a more free and just society.
> 
> But your fears are of course not very well founded.  Most importantly, you won't be paying other taxes, the productive will not be carrying a large, greedy, parasitic landowning class on their backs, and costs of goods and services will therefore be much lower. * So unless you are reliant on rent income, your actual disposable income will probably be double or triple what it is now once you stop paying for government twice. * If you _still_ find your UIE and your pension are not enough to pay your LVT, you have a number of reasonable alternatives:
> 
> 1. You can sell your house and seek accommodation better suited to your needs and means (most rational people do this to "downsize" as they get older anyway).
> 2. You may be able to defer your LVT and have it come out of your estate, if you are going to leave one.
> 3. You can use the land productively enough to pay the LVT by, e.g., taking in boarders, allowing someone who lacks space to run a daycare in your home, renting out garden or parking space in your yard, etc.
> 4. You can ask for help from your kids (who will be grateful you don't want to move in with them).
> 5. Etc.


This is a really problematic part of your argument.  I don't see what would prevent the government from jacking the LVT up over and over, just as they do with everything else.  I concede as before that LVT is the least evil of possible taxes, but I don't see it not becoming onerous as some point simply because of the nature of government (especially in this country).

----------


## redbluepill

> Most people who really research it already like it better than the prevailing system (Rothbard certainly did).  The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that it's remarkably naive to trust the government with this sort of thing-especially the American government.  The tax revenues would have to be administered by a truly accountable and reliable entity.


It really has nothing to do with trust in the government. Georgists know as well as anyone that government can be a corrupted institution. And if an LVT was ever implemented nationally/locally we know it can also be abused. But are we to throw the baby out with the bathwater? If reforming our tax system this way has the potential to correct many of society's problems then why should we turn it down because a few politicians may change it or abuse it until it can no longer be recognizable as the LVT? On top of that, Georgists are also just as passionate about ridding almost every other tax (save user fees and pollution taxes). This would cut down the potential for abuse of power even more. Most Paulites aren't looking to eliminate government altogether. They are looking to decentralize it and simplify it. No better way to do that than to support LVT. :-)

----------


## Roy L

> I claim that land should be owned by individuals


I.e., you want certain individuals -- i.e., in fact, yourself -- to be privileged to violate others' rights without making just compensation in order to rob and enslave them.  OK.  Thought so.



> and each landowner should have access to community held property (roads) in order to avoid trespassing on another individual's land.


And the landowners should be privileged to charge others for access to the roads the community provides.  Check.

You are simply greedy for unearned wealth, and you want to live as a parasite on others' productive contributions.  Simple.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> It really has nothing to do with trust in the government. Georgists know as well as anyone that government can be a corrupted institution. *And if an LVT was ever implemented nationally/locally we know it can also be abused. But are we to throw the baby out with the bathwater?* If reforming our tax system this way has the potential to correct many of society's problems then why should we turn it down because a few politicians may change it or abuse it until it can no longer be recognizable as the LVT? On top of that, Georgists are also just as passionate about ridding almost every other tax (save user fees and pollution taxes). This would cut down the potential for abuse of power even more. Most Paulites aren't looking to eliminate government altogether. They are looking to decentralize it and simplify it. No better way to do that than to support LVT. :-)


I think of it more like a cancer or parasite.  It needs to be eliminated or driven into remission because of the massive damage it causes to the host.  I understand that Georgists tend to desire getting rid of all other taxes-which you are to be lauded for.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> And the landowners should be privileged to charge others for access to the roads the community provides.  Check.
> 
> You are simply greedy for unearned wealth, and you want to live as a parasite on others' productive contributions.  Simple.


I wouldn't go that far.  An LVT could apply to roads just as easily as any other type of land.

----------


## redbluepill

> Not necessarily.  There are in fact people who have settled and passed down land through the generations.


Sure. That happens. But it doesn't change the fact that land is unique in that there was no original creator of land like there is for a house, car, garden, etc.





> Another thing-I got the impression from Roy L that the Georgist view allows for ownership/stewardship of the land-only landowners owe a certain amount of money to "the community" for holding this land.


As I mentioned above, private possession of land cannot be avoided. It is necessary to reap the rewards of labor. Paying LVT to the community would help ensure there is enough good land for the rest of us, not just for the privileged and politically-connected.

----------


## Travlyr

> I.e., you want certain individuals -- i.e., in fact, yourself -- to be privileged to violate others' rights without making just compensation in order to rob and enslave them.  OK.  Thought so.
> 
> And the landowners should be privileged to charge others for access to the roads the community provides.  Check.
> 
> You are simply greedy for unearned wealth, and you want to live as a parasite on others' productive contributions.  Simple.


Not just for myself. I wish everyone who wants to own land could own some land without paying taxes on it. That is an impossible task, but just like air and water, land is a necessity for survival. I don't want to pay taxes on air or water either.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Sure. That happens. But it doesn't change the fact that land is unique in that there was no original creator of land like there is for a house, car, garden, etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I mentioned above, private possession of land cannot be avoided. It is necessary to reap the rewards of labor. *Paying LVT to the community would help ensure there is enough good land for the rest of us, not just for the privileged and politically-connected.*


That really depends on the mechanism for LVT collection, yes?  How do we find someone so virtuous and incorruptible that it would work?  Also, how is "good" land defined?  You and I may consider a piece of the empty sonoran desert undesirable, but a thoughtful person can probably find a way to make use of it.  Down in Tuscon they have tourist traps and horse/cattle ranches, for example.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Not just for myself. I wish everyone who wants to own land could own some land without paying taxes on it. That is an impossible task, but just like air and water, land is a necessity for survival. I don't want to pay taxes on air or water either.


You already pay taxes on the water (a utility-though in your state it may be indirect) and in a way you pay for the air because of the taxation necessary to enforce air pollution laws.

----------


## Roy L

> This is a really problematic part of your argument.


No, it's only a problem you have with facts that you would prefer not to be true, or at least not to know.



> I don't see what would prevent the government from jacking the LVT up over and over, just as they do with everything else.


Financial as well as political self-interest.  _A tax on land rent is not like all the other taxes you are used to._  They are subject to the Laffer Curve because their bases are elastic.  LVT is not because its base is fixed.  LVT makes the economy more and more free, more and more just, right up to the point of full rent recovery, at which point the ad valorem tax rate is effectively infinite while the land's *exchange* value is zero.  *ANY ATTEMPT TO INCREASE LVT AMOUNTS BEYOND THAT POINT WILL ONLY REDUCE REVENUE* by provoking people to use less land.  The land market is always a monopoly market, so government can't get more than the rent any more than private landowners can.



> I concede as before that LVT is the least evil of possible taxes, but I don't see it not becoming onerous as some point simply because of the nature of government (especially in this country).


It is true that on a few occasions in history, governments that did not understand land taxation have tried to get more than the land rent.  It immediately resulted in economic disaster as people abandoned land and production as well as revenue fell.  The Late Roman Empire is probably the best-known example: the land tax exemption for the nobles drove all the good land into their hands, and the government tried to make up for the lost revenue by increasing taxes on the small amount of land the nobles didn't own.  When people just abandoned the land, the government took the extraordinary measure of legally prohibiting people from leaving their land -- which became the legal basis of medieval serfdom.  Certainly it is possible that a government could be too stupid, greedy and evil to learn from this example.  Governments to date have certainly not learned from the disaster inflicted by the tax exemption for Rome's noble families.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Financial as well as political self-interest.  _A tax on land rent is not like all the other taxes you are used to._  They are subject to the Laffer Curve because their bases are elastic.  LVT is not because its base is fixed.  LVT makes the economy more and more free, more and more just, right up to the point of full rent recovery, at which point the ad valorem tax rate is effectively infinite while the land's *exchange* value is zero.  *ANY ATTEMPT TO INCREASE LVT AMOUNTS BEYOND THAT POINT WILL ONLY REDUCE REVENUE* by provoking people to use less land.  The land market is always a monopoly market, so government can't get more than the rent any more than private landowners can.
> 
> It is true that on a few occasions in history, governments that did not understand land taxation have tried to get more than the land rent.  It immediately resulted in economic disaster as people abandoned land and production as well as revenue fell.  The Late Roman Empire is probably the best-known example: the land tax exemption for the nobles drove all the good land into their hands, and the government tried to make up for the lost revenue by increasing taxes on the small amount of land the nobles didn't own.  When people just abandoned the land, the government took the extraordinary measure of legally prohibiting people from leaving their land -- which became the legal basis of medieval serfdom.  Certainly it is possible that a government could be too stupid, greedy and evil to learn from this example.  Governments to date have certainly not learned from the disaster inflicted by the tax exemption for Rome's noble families.


Exactly right.  But as you pointed out, this conundrum would force those not politically well-connected into literal serfdom.  This process seems to be so enmeshed in Western culture (especially accepted theories of government) that it's inescapable.  How do you go about escaping the inescapable?

Thank you for the polite reply.

----------


## Roy L

> This is not freedom.


Yes, actually, it *is* freedom, and indeed the only possible way freedom can be achieved.



> This is the State taxing an owner out of their possessions.


No, it is the state requiring those who forcibly dispossess others of their rights to liberty to make just compensation.  It is possession of land on any other basis that is not freedom. 



> I'm a sound money allodial title to land and all other property too, guy.


Allodial title to land simply means enslavement of the landless by forcible removal of their rights to liberty.  THAT is not freedom.



> The State should be able to function on fees for service.


<yawn>  Who do you think keeps other people off your land, hmmmmmmmmmmm?



> To hell with taxing land.


To hell with greedy, evil, parasitic filth who want to rob, enslave and murder others for their own profit... and demand that government help them do it.



> Once one buys property, it should be theirs to do whatever the owner sees fit.


ROTFL!!  Don't look now, dumpling, but you just admitted that you believe chattel slavery should never have been abolished, and that you want government to help you enslave other people.

----------


## Roy L

> Exactly right.  But as you pointed out, this conundrum would force those not politically well-connected into literal serfdom.


??  How?  LVT doesn't legally bind anyone to their land.  It has exactly the opposite effect: it makes the land market more liquid, stimulating people to move as soon as more efficient allocation becomes possible.



> This process seems to be so enmeshed in Western culture (especially accepted theories of government) that it's inescapable.  How do you go about escaping the inescapable?


What process are you referring to?  AFAIK, no Western government has tried to overtax land since Gibbon detailed the Romans' disaster in 1776 -- in fact, they've rarely come close to taxing it enough.  Moreover, the very implementation of LVT would seem to imply a government and voting public far too sophisticated ever to make such a blunder again.



> Thank you for the polite reply.


Refrain from lying (it won't be easy), and we'll get along fine.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Refrain from lying (it won't be easy), and we'll get along fine.


I don't "lie".  (I thoroughly dislike liars) I make mistakes, certainly-this is why we have debate and questioning back-and-forth to ferret out errors and attempt to find truth.  G'night, sir.

----------


## Roy L

> The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that it's remarkably naive to trust the government with this sort of thing-especially the American government.  The tax revenues would have to be administered by a truly accountable and reliable entity.


I don't think anyone is advocating that we _trust_ government.  Just fund it differently.  As Washington observed, government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master -- but it is also an indispensable tool.

----------


## Roy L

> Not necessarily.


Yes, necessarily.



> There are in fact people who have settled and passed down land through the generations.


How could that alter the fact that they are forcibly depriving others of access to what government, the community and nature provide?



> Another thing-I got the impression from Roy L that the Georgist view allows for ownership/stewardship of the land-only landowners owe a certain amount of money to "the community" for holding this land.


They owe the value of what they are taking from others.  Right.

----------


## Roy L

> I don't hold that view. Land can be owned.


Just as slave owners held the view that people could be owned.  And on exactly the same basis: might makes right.



> I disagree.


But are objectively and provably wrong.



> Once a deed to land is established, then whoever holds that deed is the owner.


By that brain-dead "logic," we would still have slavery.



> Land is plentiful.


<yawn>  That's the sort of stupid, absurd garbage anti-LVT ninnies always try.  Land's price proves, repeat, PROVES that it is not plentiful but scarce.



> There are still 650 million acres of land in the United States that is held by the federal government. It could be homesteaded to individuals in a color blind lottery.


What good on earth would that do?  That land is uninhabited for a reason.  You might as well suggest that the landless homestead the sea bed, or the moon.  Lots of land up there.

Geez.



> What happened in the past was not equitable.


What's happening right now isn't, either.



> The future could be.


But only with LVT.



> I am not in favor of taxing the land.


Then you aren't in favor of liberty, justice, or smaller, more accountable government.



> I don't understand the relevance of these questions.


That's OK.  Anyone who has devoted even a nanosecond's honest thought to the matter does.



> Why should it be based on how much work is required?


How does one gain rightful ownership of anything but by contributing to its production?  Any other method is the method of thieves.



> Why should there be a limit?


Because you are removing others' rights to liberty.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> I don't think anyone is advocating that we _trust_ government.  Just fund it differently.  As Washington observed, government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master -- but it is also an indispensable tool.


I find the anarcho-geoist position more rational and realistic.


*Anarchist                geoism*

In                a libertarian or anarchist world, some people might be unaffiliated                anarcho-capitalists, contracting with various firms for services.                But if we look at markets today, we see instead contractual                communities. We see condominiums,                homeowner associations, cooperatives, and neighborhood associations.                For temporary lodging, folks stay in hotels, and stores get                lumped into shopping centers. Historically,                human beings have preferred to live and work in communities.                Competition induces efficiency, and private communities tend                to be financed from the rentals of sites and facilities, since this                is the most efficient source of funding.                Henry George recognized that site rents are the most efficient                way to finance community goods because it is a fee paid for benefits,                paying back that value added by those benefits.                Private communities today such as hotels and condominiums                use geoist financing. Unfortunately, governments do not.

Geoist                communities would join together in leagues and associations to provide                services that are more efficient on a large scale, such as defense,                if needed. The voting and                financing would be bottom up. The                local communities would elect representatives, and provide finances,                and would be able to secede when they felt association was no longer                in their interest.

----------


## Roy L

> Your tone is really going to turn people off.


IME people love to watch someone else getting beaten up, especially when that someone is dishonest, unjust, and evil.  The victim doesn't care for it so much, of course, but I am aware that the evil, lying scum I demolish in these discussions are not potential converts anyway.  They are too deeply dishonest.



> It's a problem that many libertarians of all stripes have.  It's a trait that you have to recognize you have and strive to improve.  You are selling ideas, after all.  No salesman has ever won over a client by insulting or talking down to them.


But I'm trying to show people how they can defeat the tyranny they suffer under, and martial arts teachers have definitely won over students by demonstrating how to defeat the minions of tyrants.

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## heavenlyboy34

> How does one gain rightful ownership of anything but by contributing to its production?  Any other method is the method of thieves.


You should qualify that a bit.  The IP proponent could say "I contributed to the production of this IP, therefore I own it and every possible use of it and unauthorized use is theft punishable by the State."

----------


## Roy L

> I wouldn't go that far.  An LVT could apply to roads just as easily as any other type of land.


And it should.  Land devoted to public purposes should be accounted for like any other, and if the market finds a more efficient allocation, so be it.

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## Roy L

> You should qualify that a bit.  The IP proponent could say "I contributed to the production of this IP, therefore I own it and every possible use of it and unauthorized use is theft punishable by the State."


The IP argument is equivocal: copying and use is not theft, because it does not deprive the owner of anything he would otherwise have.  Claims of ownership rightly apply only to what can be owned.  Consider the parallel argument that having produced them, parents rightly own, and can sell, their children.

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## EcoWarrier

> I don't hold that view. Land can be owned.


Ownership?  mmmmm

Sovereighty is that a "state" owns that territory. The territory is split up into parcels of land. These parcels are issued "title" which is a "set of rights" not ownership.

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## redbluepill

> I don't hold that view. Land can be owned.


Of course it can be owned. Just like how slaves were once owned.





> I disagree. Once a deed to land is established, then whoever holds that deed is the owner.


Kinda like the woman who got a deed to own the Sun?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...woman-owns-sun




> Land is plentiful.


And billions of people are in poverty because they like the lifestyle. Land is limited. Especially good land.







> There are still 650 million acres of land in the United States that is held by the federal government. It could be homesteaded to individuals in a color blind lottery. What happened in the past was not equitable. The future could be. I am not in favor of taxing the land.


Do future generations get to put their tickets in too?





> I don't understand the relevance of these questions. Why should it be based on how much work is required? Why should there be a limit?


Rothbard and Locke believed there should be at least some work on a piece of land for it to become private property (I don't agree with this propertarian view of land btw). So there should be no limit? A man can stand on top of a mountain and declare all the virgin land to the horizon his private property because he saw it first?

----------


## Roy L

> I find the anarcho-geoist position more rational and realistic.
> 
> *Anarchist                geoism*
> In                a libertarian or anarchist world, some people might be unaffiliated                anarcho-capitalists, contracting with various firms for services.                But if we look at markets today, we see instead contractual                communities. We see condominiums,                homeowner associations, cooperatives, and neighborhood associations.                For temporary lodging, folks stay in hotels, and stores get                lumped into shopping centers. Historically,                human beings have preferred to live and work in communities.                Competition induces efficiency, and private communities tend                to be financed from the rentals of sites and facilities, since this                is the most efficient source of funding.                Henry George recognized that site rents are the most efficient                way to finance community goods because it is a fee paid for benefits,                paying back that value added by those benefits.                Private communities today such as hotels and condominiums                use geoist financing. Unfortunately, governments do not.
> Geoist                communities would join together in leagues and associations to provide                services that are more efficient on a large scale, such as defense,                if needed. The voting and                financing would be bottom up. The                local communities would elect representatives, and provide finances,                and would be able to secede when they felt association was no longer                in their interest.


I'm aware of this school of thought.  IMO, such a society would ultimately evolve into something that greatly resembled what I advocate to start with.

----------


## redbluepill

> I think of it more like a cancer or parasite.  It needs to be eliminated or driven into remission because of the massive damage it causes to the host.  I understand that Georgists tend to desire getting rid of all other taxes-which you are to be lauded for.


I would agree taxes on productivity (sales, income, improvements, etc.) are like parasites. I don't see a tax on privilege in the same light however.

----------


## Roy L

> I think of it more like a cancer or parasite.  It needs to be eliminated or driven into remission because of the massive damage it causes to the host.


Problem is, the available evidence is massively on the other side.  The richest, most advanced and happiest countries all have big governments, and countries with small governments are almost always $#!+-holes.

----------


## Roy L

> Not just for myself.


But you certainly intend to be among the privileged who take wealth from others and contribute nothing in return.



> I wish everyone who wants to own land could own some land without paying taxes on it. That is an impossible task,


ROTFL!!  No, dumpling, it ain't.  *LVT with a UIE makes it possible*, and it is the only thing that ever can.



> but just like air and water, land is a necessity for survival. I don't want to pay taxes on air or water either.


You want to be able to take the water others need, and would otherwise be at liberty to use, and not pay for it.

Thought so.

----------


## redbluepill

> That really depends on the mechanism for LVT collection, yes?  How do we find someone so virtuous and incorruptible that it would work?


Towns and cities can implement it. Those that are successful will prosper. People will see its effectiveness in communities that do it correctly and adopt their strategies.




> Also, how is "good" land defined?  You and I may consider a piece of the empty sonoran desert undesirable, but a thoughtful person can probably find a way to make use of it.  Down in Tuscon they have tourist traps and horse/cattle ranches, for example.


"Good" land is defined by the market. For example, land with gold deposits beneath it is going to be more valuable than a wasteland. Sure, even a wasteland can be used. And the possessor of that wasteland will pay a smaller LVT than the owner of the land with gold deposits. If, lets say, he built a water park in that wasteland it would not affect the amount he pays in taxes.

----------


## Roy L

> That really depends on the mechanism for LVT collection, yes?


Well, sure, just like running a viable retail operation depends on a mechanism for collecting money from customers.  This is not some kind of big mystery.



> How do we find someone so virtuous and incorruptible that it would work?


If everything's in the open, which it can and should be, the secrecy needed to enable corruption is absent.  



> Also, how is "good" land defined?


Above average value per area.



> You and I may consider a piece of the empty sonoran desert undesirable, but a thoughtful person can probably find a way to make use of it.  Down in Tuscon they have tourist traps and horse/cattle ranches, for example.


Yes, but they use a lot of land, and wouldn't be willing or able to pay much rent for it.

----------


## Roy L

> See "Privatization Of Roads And Highways: Human And Economic Factors".


Historically, privately built roads have had two consistent results: their builders went broke, and the owners of the land along their routes got rich.



> See also the famous "Tragedy Of The Commons".


Which the author, Garrett Hardin, has said he should have called, "The Tragedy of the UNMANAGED Commons," as the actual historical commons, being managed, suffered no such tragedy.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Most people who really research it already like it better than the prevailing system (Rothbard certainly did).  The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that it's remarkably naive to trust the government with this sort of thing-especially the American government.  The tax revenues would have to be administered by a truly accountable and reliable entity.




It is easy to monitor as it is only one tax. 

The problem is referring to LVT as a tax.  It is not a tax as it reclaims community created wealth.  In Denmark the population thought LVT just another tax. The word *Geonomics* has to be used.  Then a snide government influenced by vested-interest groups cannot backslide.

*Geonomics Proven To Work*

Denmark prospered under the Geoist system for 3 years until right-wing vested interest of landowners scupperred it. Geonomics were imposed for three years but the diminishing after-effects were seen for approximately another four years.

The Danes, by old tradition, have been accustomed to the concept that the land belongs to the people. The rapid industrialisation and land enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries, begun in England and made impact in Denmark challenging this tradition. More land was seized as industrialisation grew in Denmark.

*Liberals Adopt LVT*

Farmers were pressed in the later half of the 19th century; many of them found support in the ideas contained in a newly released book "Progress and Poverty", by Henry George. As the economic situation became even tougher for small farmers, a so called "Georgist" movement began and the Danish Henry George Union was founded in 1902. Some of its more active members wanted a better platform for their political ambitions, and these members cooperated with other philosophic groups and public leaders in forming the Radical Left Wing Party (Liberals), declaring that:
*Land value taxation, LVT, (site revenue) should collect all the publicly created rent of land for government expenses,Income Tax to be abolished accelerating the free market*
Around this time of course, Karl Marx was advocating that the workers unite to fight the desperate conditions of the working man as a grinding poverty level was created in the fall-out of the Industrial Revolution. The Danes took the line of American Henry George who was also concerned at seeing that such a level of poverty existed in an age of rapid technological and mass production advancements.  George's solution was different to Marx. Social Democrats were inspired by George advocating in its political program the taxation of land value, know as Site Revenue.

*Parties join to create the Economic Justice Party* 

Over the next fifty years, not only in Denmark but around the world, there was long and intense debate about liberty and freedom; amongst free traders, pacifists, humanists, philosophers and religious institutions alike. Many of these people went to each other's meetings and contributed articles to each other's publications. Finally, they knew each other so well, that many of them decided to establish a union with the object of appealing to voters for seats in Parliament. The Justice Party was formed. 

The economic policy of the Justice Party was simple; to collect tax only from the _value_ of land and abolish all taxes on labour and capital. For a new political party, their effect was astonishing. Progress was quick and in 1952, they won 12 seats of a possible 179. They effected the appointment of a Government commission for ground rent in Denmark, who wrote its report clearly advocating the benefits of site revenue. In 1957 the Justice Party, together with the Social Democrats (Labour) and the Radical Left Wing Party (Liberals) formed what was to become the most prosperous ever Danish Government - later termed the Ground Rent Government.

Three political parties made an agreement based upon the following:
Collection taxes from the values of land only (LVT)Liberalisation of tradeA tax freeze
It was therefore generally expected that after formation of the government, some kind of LVT would be introduced. Land speculation ceased immediately in anticipation of LVT. Legislation on taxation of increased land value was prepared, presented to parliament and passed.

The economic effects of the cessation of land speculation were astounding and aroused much attention. On the 2nd October, 1960, the New York Times headlined, "_Big Lesson from a Small Nation_."

Prior to the election of 1957, Denmark had a sizable deficit on her balance of payments, was considerably in debt abroad, and burdened with a relatively high interest rate, big unemployment figures and an annual rate of inflation of approximately 5%.

From 1957 to 1960, the following improvements took place:
The big deficit on her balance of payments was turned into a surplus.Denmark's total debts abroad amounting to 1,600 million kr. were reduced to one quarter of this, about 400 million kr.The rate of interest, and hence mortgage levels dropped.Unemployment was soon replaced by almost full employment, together with considerable increases in production and wages.Inflation was brought to a standstill. All wage increases were real wage increases, the highest ever in Denmark.No other taxes were levied during this period. (except one, referred to later.)The time was free of strikes. Industrial production went up 32%,investment rose 135%Savings increased immensely, as once again it became profitable to accumulate savings.

After three years in power, Denmark had no foreign debt, no inflation and an unemployment level of 1%, considered full employment. So why is this not continuing?
Until 1960, the Social Democrats were advocating the LVT for the purposes of government social responsibilities, the Radicals and Justice Party advocated LVT for the purposes of income tax reduction. Minor conflict developed.Prior to 1960, "Georgist" beliefs dictated that when a heavy "tax" is levied upon land value, land price will decrease. The consequences of full employment, no inflation, no foreign debt, increasing production and rising real wages however, brought about a prodigious demand for homes, enterprises and of course land. Land prices did not initially fall, as was predicted. In fact land prices rose. The Justice Party was unprepared for this.In the late fifties, the Danish foreign debt was seen to be at crisis level. To assist with this, the Ground Rent Government did levy one new income tax. In addition to this of course, rising real incomes were eroded in part with the progressive nature of income tax on higher incomes. The self interested wealthy land owners had a field day confusing the fact that overall, taxes did go down by 10%. The general public found little reason to doubt the anti-Georgist literature stating that LVT was simply another tax on top of all the other taxes. The land owners had no problem in fanning the now growing belief that the "socialists", (read communists, given the Cold War era), wanted to get hold of your property.

At the general election of 1960, the opposition used, for the time, the largest sum ever in any Danish election campaign, financed by the Conservatives and Landowner associations. Such is the power of self-interested groups. With its limited financial resources and lacking support from the daily press, the Justice Party was unable to withstand the attacks. Agitation against the LVT legislation continued after the election and the new, weakened government gave in. Further strong pressure from land-owner associations had the LVT laws repealed in 1964.

After 1964:
The currency surplus became a currency deficit.The annual deficit on the balance of payments in 1972 was 3 billion kr.Debts abroad amount today to 20,000 million kr.The effective rate of interest has been doubled.Land prices jumped sky-high. Denmark's overall land value rose from 17 billion kr. at the assessment of 1960 to 67 billion in 1969, and reached 100 billion at the next assessment in 1973.Rents in new housing are six fold those of 1964.The rate of inflation rose from barely 1 per cent to 5-7 per cent and was 8.6 per cent in 1965, the year after repeal of the land tax law in 1964.Taxes have risen again and again and are today five times higher.

A comparison between the three periods, before, during and after the so-called "Ground Rent Government," gives a clear picture of the importance of eliminating land speculation. LVT can do that painlessly.

The failure of the Justice Party was a naïve underestimation of the facts that: 
*Population were not educated to what LVT was -* Only few Danes knew what LVT was all about, most people did not know the good effects they already enjoyed because of LVT and that the possibilities of citizens in general would improve further when more LVT would be levied; people in general did not understand that the revenue of LVT belonged to them all in common.*Landowners & Self-Interest Groups Oppose -* The extremely powerful opposing powers dominating the public media - electronic and printed, which imposed on people in general the understanding that LVT was a tax like all other taxes, that it would be unjust if only landowners should pay all taxes, etc. Further they emphasized that poor citizens having no income or only small income would not take advantage of reduction of income taxes, which was crucial because many LVT proponents promised reduced income tax when LVT was publicly collected.

----------


## Roy L

> Land rights extend from the center of the Earth to the outer edges of the atmosphere.


Only according to some arbitrary law book.



> People don't enforce their rights against airplanes because it is no big deal, but before the airplane it was virtually no issue at all.


People don't enforce their property "rights" in land at all: government does it for them.



> Where do you think property rights begin and end?


As land is not a product of labor, it can never rightly have become property in the first place.



> The infrastructure problem could be cured by the free market.


Only by the truly free market of LVT.  There is no other way to finance efficient amounts of infrastructure.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> As land is not a product of labor, it can never rightly have become property in the first place.


Normative gibberish.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Originally Posted by Roy L:  
> As land is not a product of labor, it can never rightly have become property in the first place.
> 			
> 		
> 
> Normative gibberish.


Roy is 100% correct. Steven, you fail to understand basic economics. 

The great thing about LVT is that you do not need to go beyond the most basic of the basics of economics to grasp it. It is very simple.

----------


## Travlyr

> Roy is 100% correct. Steven, you fail to understand basic economics. 
> 
> The great thing about LVT is that you do not need to go beyond the most basic of the basics of economics to grasp it. It is very simple.


Under LVT, when a person rents land, what are the vertical boundaries? Can the renter mine the land? How deep? Can a renter build on the land? How high?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Under LVT, when a person rents land, what are the vertical boundaries? Can the renter mine the land? How deep? Can a renter build on the land? How high?


That depends on the laws of the land. Buy the title of land near an airport and attempt to put the tallest building in the world in front of the runway and see what happens 

Drill down and find oil and see if you own the oil. You may find you do not.  Drill down and affect the stability of the land and see what happens.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Originally Posted by Roy L.
> 
> As land is not a product of labor, it can never rightly have become property in the first place.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> ...


More gibberish, and a non-sequitur. Basic economics deals with positives, not normatives (shoulds/oughts).  Did you mean to say _normative economics_? Because Roy's statement does not follow from "basic economics" (whatever you think that is - you didn't bother clarifying what you meant, nor did you argue any point). If you think it does, stow your wet blanket assertions, provide your sources, and make an actual argument. 

Roy's assertion that "[land] can never rightly have become property" was normative, crossing directly into the realm of _politics_ by the use of the word "rightly".  However, even without the word "rightly", the statement that property is somehow constrained to products of labor is erroneous and easily falsified, as land that is not useful to a desired purpose in its raw form does indeed become a "product of labor" once it is drilled, filled, graded, shaped or otherwise transformed to a desired purpose.  That's without paving, plumbing, buildings or any other improvements that are added to the land that did not come directly therefrom.  

As an analogue, it's the difference between raw sand and a polished silicon substrate without any other circuitry applied to its surface. That is a product of labor that is ready for use as a _factor of production_, but physically it is nothing more than refined sand. The only real differences between such "finished" land and other products of labor are its scale and the fixity of its location.

----------


## Roy L

> Normative gibberish.


You cannot alter facts by calling them names.

----------


## Roy L

> Under LVT, when a person rents land, what are the vertical boundaries? Can the renter mine the land? How deep? Can a renter build on the land? How high?


In general, he can use the land as he wishes subject to nuisance and public safety laws, zoning, etc.  If he degrades the value of the land by, e.g., extracting a non-renewable resource, contaminating the soil, etc., he will also have to pay a "severance" tax.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> Problem is, the available evidence is massively on the other side.  The richest, most advanced and happiest countries all have big governments, and countries with small governments are almost always $#!+-holes.


Those countries with massive governments provide the illusion of prosperity along with bread and circuses.  For quite a long time the EU states tried to live happily with a big government, but now they're facing the consequences.  ("Happy" is also a subjective term.  Living in simple poverty and/or squalor makes some people happy, like Thoreau)  Germans are traditionally a very advanced and rich people.  At the same time, they suffered great misery and tyranny from the regimes.  The US government is massive, yet the average person struggles a great deal from the tyranny of the regime.  Although happiness often comes with wealth, the correlation is not that strong.  The EU is a massive government, but the happiest folks are those on the receiving end of the welfare system.  The more productive people in that supra-state tend to be quite unhappy.

The reason people in countries with small governments tend to be $#@!s is that they are screwed over by the elites.  This forces them into a lower standard of living, working more and getting less for it.

In summary, correlation is not causation.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You cannot alter facts by calling them names.


Pearls, Roy. If you took that to heart, the vast majority of what you've written here would crumble - vanish into thin air.

----------


## Roy L

> Basic economics deals with positives, not normatives (shoulds/oughts).


The insistence on a dichotomy between positive and normative merely expresses a desire to ignore facts that prove your beliefs are not only false but evil.



> Roy's assertion that "[land] can never rightly have become property" was normative, crossing directly into the realm of _politics_ by the use of the word "rightly".


Garbage.  I was responding to a post that ALREADY USED the term, "property _right_."



> However, even without the word "rightly", the statement that property is somehow constrained to products of labor is erroneous and easily falsified,


False.



> as land that is not useful to a desired purpose in its raw form does indeed become a "product of labor" once it is drilled, filled, graded, shaped or otherwise transformed to a desired purpose.


Nope.  Such transformations are only superficial additions to the natural resources of the location and substrata.  No matter how much you change the surface, it is resting on layers you *haven't* changed, which are therefore not products of labor, and therefore not rightly your property.

You stand refuted.



> That's without paving, plumbing, buildings or any other improvements that are added to the land that did not come directly therefrom.


*Any* surface improvement is only *added* to land (what nature provided); it is not itself land.



> As an analogue, it's the difference between raw sand and a polished silicon substrate without any other circuitry applied to its surface.


The latter is a product of labor.  The former, in situ, is not.  You stand refuted.



> That is a product of labor that is ready for use as a _factor of production_, but physically it is nothing more than refined sand.


It is capital, not land.  You stand refuted.



> The only real differences between such "finished" land


There is no such thing as "finished" land.  That is nothing but an oxymoron.  You stand refuted.



> and other products of labor are its scale and the fixity of its location.


Land is *not* a product of labor, *ever*, by *definition*, full stop.

----------


## Roy L

> Those countries with massive governments provide the illusion of prosperity along with bread and circuses.


Garbage.  There is nothing illusory about the difference in prosperity between Slovenia and Somalia, or Swaziland and Switzerland.



> For quite a long time the EU states tried to live happily with a big government, but now they're facing the consequences.


No, they are facing the consequences of trying to use a common currency without a common monetary policy.



> ("Happy" is also a subjective term.  Living in simple poverty and/or squalor makes some people happy, like Thoreau)


Very few.



> Germans are traditionally a very advanced and rich people.  At the same time, they suffered great misery and tyranny from the regimes.  The US government is massive, yet the average person struggles a great deal from the tyranny of the regime.


Not compared to Somalis or Swazis, they don't.



> Although happiness often comes with wealth, the correlation is not that strong.


It's quite strong up to the point of comfort and security.



> The EU is a massive government, but the happiest folks are those on the receiving end of the welfare system.  The more productive people in that supra-state tend to be quite unhappy.


Evidence?  Thought not.



> The reason people in countries with small governments tend to be $#@!s is that they are screwed over by the elites.  This forces them into a lower standard of living, working more and getting less for it.


Bingo.



> In summary, correlation is not causation.


But it's closer to causation than an *inverse* relation.

----------


## Roy L

> Pearls, Roy. If you took that to heart, the vast majority of what you've written here would crumble - vanish into thin air.


No, I have identified the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove my views are objectively correct, and you know it.  That is why you have to resort to absurdities.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> The insistence on a dichotomy between positive and normative merely expresses a desire to ignore facts that prove your beliefs are not only false but evil.


That's not an argument, Roy, that's ad hominem, calling my motives for saying something into question without actually advancing any argument whatsoever.  In other words, you said _nothing_.




> Garbage.  I was responding to a post that ALREADY USED the term, "property _right_."


I don't care what you were responding to, your false statement was complete and could be examined in its own context, and on its own merits. 




> False.


Again, you argued nothing, said _nothing_.




> Nope.  Such transformations are only superficial additions to the natural resources of the location and substrata.  No matter how much you change the surface, it is resting on layers you *haven't* changed, which are therefore not products of labor, and therefore not rightly your property.


Likewise, those underlying "unfinished raw layers" -- those always existed, and are not increased in value or affected in any way by community, government, infrastructure or anything else.  You also don't have "natural liberty" with regard to the lithosphere beneath the Earth's crust.  Just mass, inertia and gravity, with nothing to take credit for, nothing deprived, nothing to charge for. Its value is not a product of humanity at all, public or private. 

And you still piped in with your circular, normative "therefore not rightly your property" assertion, as if you had actually established some kind of law (physical? moral? economic? philosophical? political?) that constrained property as exclusive of anything that is not a product of labor.  AKA = gibberish. 

You stand refuted.




> *Any* surface improvement is only *added* to land (what nature provided); it is not itself land.


It's difference between "raw" and "finished".  Nature provides trees which are cut down, sliced, planed and sanded into finished lumber. The improvements are products of labor, but it's all wood.  By your logic such lumber is not a product of labor, because the nature provided the lumber, and all of the underlying "raw" parts of the wood still exist.  

But that can't be what you meant, as you later state:




> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> As an analogue, it's the difference between raw sand and a polished silicon substrate without any other circuitry applied to its surface.
> 
> 
> The latter is a product of labor.  The former, in situ, is not.


In point of fact, "in situ" is your only real argument - fixity being the only real qualifier upon which your entire philosophy hinges - even to the point of defining (in your mind) whether a thing can be considered (by you, Roy) a product of labor.

You admit that the silicon substrate is a product of labor, even though nature provided the sand that was refined.  You could argue that it's a product of labor only because the entire mass of sand was removed (no longer "in situ"), molten, grown into ingots and completely reshaped. That, in your mind, is what makes that substrate, or lumber, or a wood carving, a product of labor.  But that logic falls apart, completely falsified by this example:



That's a tree, Roy. It is both provided by nature _and in situ_. And it is also both a product of labor and a finished good, even though NOTHING external was added to it and its location remains fixed.  In that respect it is fundamentally no different than this (sans external materials):



Make the "carving" large enough so that it is impossible to be physically moved makes it no less a product of labor. 

Checkmate.  See the difference between knowing the name of something and actually knowing something? 




> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> That is a product of labor that is ready for use as a factor of production, but physically it is nothing more than refined sand.
> 
> 
> It is capital, not land.  You stand refuted.


Said as if that was relevant, since the argument was not that the substrate _is_ land, but is rather analogous to land (both of which are forms of capital). I guess you really do believe that you can alter facts by name calling, and you really don't know the difference between giving a name to something and actually knowing something.




> There is no such thing as "finished" land.  That is nothing but an oxymoron.  You stand refuted.


Well, then there is no such thing as a "finished" tree carving either, like the one posted above. Because beneath the surface of that carving there is nothing but "raw tree", in situ.  You would stand refuted, Roy, if you were actually standing.  




> Land is *not* a product of labor, *ever*, by *definition*, full stop.


Full stop? Wow, I guess that settled it. Thoroughly refuted above, your personal definition notwithstanding. If your preferred economics theory does not want to "call" land a product of labor, as a matter of convenience or by _its definition_ (which you did not cite, source or provide), for whatever reason, that's fine. But calling it something (or excluding it from being called something) for the sake of that theory won't change the facts, or alter the nature of what it actually is - in reality and outside of that particular naming convention vacuum.

----------


## Roy L

> The surprise isn't that pundits and politicians are hard put to provide an instance in which this has happened. The surprise is in the utter gall on the parts of those who would suggest that it doesn't happen.


???   It must be happening, because no one can name a case where it has happened???

ROTFL!!



> Nobody collects that kind of data.


Because there aren't any.



> There is no check box anywhere during a sale that says, "I'm selling my home because I can no longer afford to pay ridiculous rent payments to the government."


What is ridiculous about paying market value for what you take?



> It's just recorded as a sale.


What stops you or anyone else from checking the circumstances of tax-sale owners?



> The priceless logic employed here is your conflation of rentals and ownership; rental prices with sale prices, with the assumption that the word "want" refers to "wants to forever rent".


Those are all just fabrications on your part.



> Compare with anything else that is actually owned, so that it's free of obfuscation:


You will now obfuscate:



> The shovel that I own I paid for ONCE, even though I use it over and over again (and COULD rent it out to others). I may "want" that shovel just as badly as the first time I bought it every time I use it, but the original price, having already been paid, is amortized over the life of the shovel.  That expectation isn't "priceless logic". It's absolutely and perfectly NORMAL for anything that is paid for ONCE and truly owned.


The shovel is a product of labor, not a privilege of violating others' rights without making just compensation.



> Extend that logic out to a personal property tax, and ridiculousness of that logic becomes apparent in your paradigm wherein ownership is not even an option.


The logic can't be extended to a personal property tax, because personal property is a product of labor; it does not violate others' rights; and it does not get its value from government and the community.  Ownership is not an option because land can't rightly be owned any more than people, the earth's atmosphere, or the sun can rightly be owned.



> You already DID afford whatever it is you *bought* and _own_, like any other thing considered your property.


If you buy a car on time, it is your property, and "you already DID afford it" -- but you still have to make the payments, or it will be repossessed.  Similarly, when you bought the land, you knew -- and agreed -- that the title depended on keeping the taxes current.



> With landownership, you already ARE living somewhere you can afford, if that land is paid for.


But it is only "paid for" as long as you keep the taxes current.



> Under LVT, the land becomes priceless -- not for sale -- FOR RENT ONLY, as the state assumes the role of those people geolibertarians hate and revile the most.


Lie.  The greedy, evil *private* landowner is not the *source* of the rent he appropriates.  Government and the community, by contrast, *ARE* the source of the rent that LVT enables them to recover to fund the spending that creates it.  You know this.  All your "arguments" are merely designed to ignore, conceal and obfuscate that simple, stubborn, crucial fact.



> Wrong. "LVT" in and of itself doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have exemptions, and it doesn't have provisions for deferring payments. Your version might - Roy's versions would, but that's not "LVT" - those are your arbitrary PROPOSED exceptions to the LVT _rule_ you want established.


No.  The "exceptions" are not arbitrary in the least (you know you are just lying about that) and LVT is only a mechanism -- though the only possible mechanism -- for achieving the goals of liberty, justice and prosperity.  It is not itself the goal, so its implementation must be designed with the true goals in mind, and not just pure LVT for LVT's sake.



> That's where geolibs earn and deserve my complete and utter contempt as the callous soulless collectivist thieves that they are.


Normative gibberish.



> Carry that forward to a personal property tax.


You can't, as the basic reasoning is not similar.



> If someone doesn't have the cash to pay it, they can always liquidate their property.  It's their "_choice_", right? They are "_free_" to not own, or to "own" (read=rent from the ultimate owner state) something cheaper. Silly Billies, with all that unnecessarily self-inflicted poverty.


If you can't afford to make just compensation to those whose rights you violate, don't violate their rights.



> I have a better idea - how about we just keep the propertarian framework, and the widow can just own what was already paid for and is already hers by right?


Normative gibberish.  It wasn't already paid for, and it's not hers by right.



> And that obnoxiously vague thing called "community" that geolibs like to invoke for entitlements can go stuff itself,


Normative gibberish.

Greedy, evil, parasitic filth can go stuff themselves.



> while the government remains nothing but a servant with a decidedly limited role.


I.e., nothing but a servant of greedy, evil landowning parasites, with a decidedly limited role of stealing from the productive and giving the money to greedy, idle landowning parasites in return for nothing.



> The younger generation isn't held hostage.


Flat-out lie, as the current trend of adult children moving back in with their parents proves so very conclusively.



> That's the geolib fantasy delusion.


It is self-evident and indisputable fact.



> The thieves in that generation can go and do likewise, or draw back really bloody stumps when they try to lay collectivist claim to what truly isn't theirs at all.


The claim to an individual right to liberty *IS* truly theirs, and *isn't* collectivist, stop lying.



> Really. All thieves must hang.


Landowners first.



> Not the pretend thieves that geolibs make landowners out to be,


<yawn>  Already proved a lie by the example of the bandit in the pass, which PROVED there is no substantive difference between a landowner and a literal thief.



> but the real thieves, who rationalize theft by recognizing no individual ownership rights where land is concerned.


That is exactly the same evil "logic" by which slave owners accused the abolitionists of being "the real thieves."

Thank you for proving your position is baldly evil.



> The real would-be thieves, who share in a collectivist balm for their thievery -- their sociopathic complicity for a guilt they should, but will never, feel.


Normative gibberish.



> Whomever it is that strikes gold (even "property gold"), whether they earned it or just found it, is entitled to that gold - without regard to all the "genuinely poor" who were not as fortunate.


Normative gibberish.  "Entitled"?  *Why?*

----------


## Steven Douglas

I'll ignore your disingenuous deflection blather and all its preachy circular nonsense, and wait instead for your more timely response to my latest post - one that was directed specifically at you.

----------


## Roy L

> That's not an argument, Roy, that's ad hominem, calling my motives for saying something into question without actually advancing any argument whatsoever.  In other words, you said _nothing_.


Lie.  I identified the fact that your retreat into claims of "normative" merely enables you to dodge facts you don't like.



> I don't care what you were responding to,


Or what I said.



> your false statement


Assumption without supportive argumentation.



> was complete and could be examined in its own context, and on its own merits.


Nope.  You just want to ignore the context in order to lie about what I plainly wrote.



> Again, you argued nothing, said _nothing_.


Lie.



> Likewise, those underlying "unfinished raw layers" -- those always existed, and are not increased in value or affected in any way by community, government, infrastructure or anything else.


Again, that is just a bald lie on your part.  The value of the underlying layers nature provided is indisputably increased by the services and infrastructure government provides and the opportunities and amenities the community provides.  That is why people are willing to pay more for them than for the natural layers in less advantageous locations.



> You also don't have "natural liberty" with regard to the lithosphere beneath the Earth's crust.


Yes, you do, stop lying.



> Just mass, inertia and gravity, with nothing to take credit for, nothing deprived, nothing to charge for.


Gibberish.



> Its value is not a product of humanity at all, public or private.


Its value is indisputably a product of humanity.  You are just spewing absurdities again.



> And you still piped in with your circular, normative "therefore not rightly your property" assertion, as if you had actually established some kind of law (physical? moral? economic? philosophical? political?) that constrained property as exclusive of anything that is not a product of labor.


I have already provided the logical and moral basis for that principle: it is the only way private property doesn't violate others' rights by forcibly depriving them of what they would otherwise have.



> AKA = gibberish.


Lie.



> You stand refuted.


LOL!  You have been destroyed.



> It's difference between "raw" and "finished".  Nature provides trees which are cut down, sliced, planed and sanded into finished lumber. The improvements are products of labor, but it's all wood.  By your logic such lumber is not a product of labor, because the nature provided the lumber, and all of the underlying "raw" parts of the wood still exist.


Lie.  Lumber IS a product of labor, nature did NOT provide it, and the underlying "raw" parts of the wood ceased to exist the moment the natural tree was cut down.

All these facts are self-evident and indisputable.  You just have to spew absurdities in order to justify your desired atrocities.



> But that can't be what you meant, as you later state:


It can't be what I meant because you just made it up and attributed it to me.



> In point of fact, "in situ" is your only real argument


Lie.



> - fixity being the only real qualifier upon which your entire philosophy hinges


Lie.



> - even to the point of defining (in your mind) whether a thing can be considered (by you, Roy) a product of labor.


<sigh>  Something that is unaltered by labor is indisputably not a product of labor.  Something that has been removed from its natural place by labor has indisputably been altered by labor.  I'm not sure what part of that you are having trouble understanding.



> You admit that the silicon substrate is a product of labor, even though nature provided the sand that was refined.  You could argue that it's a product of labor only because the entire mass of sand was removed (no longer "in situ"), molten, grown into ingots and completely reshaped. That, in your mind, is what makes that substrate, or lumber, or a wood carving, a product of labor.


Right: it's a product of labor because it was produced by labor.  Sorry if that is too hard for you.



> But that logic falls apart, completely falsified by this example:


Nope.  It's not falsified at all.  That's merely a product of labor that happens to be a fixed improvement, like the furrows in a plowed field.



> That's a tree, Roy.


It's a stump, Steven.



> It is both provided by nature


Lie.  The pictured item was not provided by nature, and you know it.  You are just deliberately lying.



> _and in situ_. And it is also both a product of labor and a finished good, even though NOTHING external was added to it and its location remains fixed.  In that respect it is fundamentally no different than this (sans external materials):
> 
> 
> 
> Make the "carving" large enough so that it is impossible to be physically moved makes it no less a product of labor.


Fixed improvements are products of labor.  So?  How do you imagine that argues against the fact that physical removal of resources is labor, or that the stump *under* the carving is still a natural resource (land) just as much as the untouched layers under the construction site?  



> Checkmate.


ROTFL!  You just blundered into Fool's Mate, patzer.



> See the difference between knowing the name of something and actually knowing something?


Indeed.  You've made it crystal clear.



> Said as if that was relevant, since the argument was not that the substrate _is_ land, but is rather analogous to land (both of which are forms of capital).


No.  Land is not capital; and as a product of labor, the substrate is not analogous to land.



> I guess you really do believe that you can alter facts by name calling, and you really don't know the difference between giving a name to something and actually knowing something.


Content = 0.  It is you who imagine you can make something untouched by labor into a product of labor just by calling it, "capital."



> Well, then there is no such thing as a "finished" tree carving either, like the one posted above.


Non sequitur.  The carving is not land.



> Because beneath the surface of that carving there is nothing but "raw tree", in situ.


And...?  What do you erroneously imagine that *fact* implies?



> You would stand refuted, Roy, if you were actually standing.


No, I would stand refuted if you had ever actually offered any kind of factual or logical argument that refuted anything I had actually said.

But you haven't.



> Thoroughly refuted above,


ROTFL!!



> your personal definition notwithstanding.


It's the economic definition.



> If your preferred economics theory does not want to "call" land a product of labor, as a matter of convenience or by _its definition_ (which you did not cite, source or provide),


You know that the definition has been provided before:

"*land*, In economics, the resource that encompasses the natural resources used in production. In classical economics, the three factors of production are land, labour, and capital. Land was considered to be the original and inexhaustible gift of nature.* In modern economics, it is broadly defined to include all that nature provides*, including minerals, forest products, and water and land resources."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/329078/land




> for whatever reason, that's fine. But calling it something (or excluding it from being called something) for the sake of that theory won't change the facts, or alter the nature of what it actually is - in reality and outside of that particular naming convention vacuum.


It doesn't matter what you call it.  The crucial point is to distinguish between what is provided by nature and what is produced by human labor, and not call them the same thing.

----------


## Roy L

> I'll ignore your disingenuous deflection blather and all its preachy circular nonsense, and wait instead for your more timely response to my latest post - one that was directed specifically at you.


I have overexposed myself to your dishonesty and evil again, and have become ill.  So I won't be able to demolish any more of your dishonest garbage today, and maybe not tomorrow, either.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> I have overexposed myself to your dishonesty and evil again, and have become ill.  So I won't be able to demolish any more of your dishonest garbage today, and maybe not tomorrow, either.


Roy, get well soon.

----------


## EcoWarrier

Professor Michael Hudson....

Economic Rent:
"Income earned without any enterprise, without any cost of production."
"Over and above the actual cots of providing housing and office buildings"
"Over and above what was provided by nature"

"if the Income Tax system had fallen on this economic rent, the FIRE sector, Finance, Insurance and Real Estate, you wouldn't have to tax labor at all. Then we would have the lowest priced labor in the world".

----------


## Steven Douglas



----------


## EcoWarrier

Confused political propaganda. 

No one owns land. You are only a custodian. 
How can you own something nature gave us?  Answer. You cannot.

Well someone officially owns Mars.

You do not want to pay your way in society and sponge of it - a parasite.

George was anti socialism. His support was mainly from the right.  If he aligned himself with socialists your standard of living now would be greatly higher.

Geoism is apolitical. Fits into any ism.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> How can you own something nature gave us?  Answer. You cannot.


Easy.  People own all sort of things nature gave us: wood, stone, metals, etc.  Every fabricated thing around you was once part of nature in some way. &nbsp;The biggest problem of all (in statist societies especially) is when someone tries to claim something truly un-ownable: ideas. &nbsp;

----------


## Roy L

> 


Showing himself to be the *king* of muddleheads...

Marx refused to know the fact that physical capital -- equipment, buildings, vehicles, etc. -- is provided to producers by capitalists.  He also refused to know that "capitalist exploitation" is only made possible by the forcible, uncompensated removal of people's rights to liberty by private landowning.

Steven refuses to know the fact that land is not provided to producers by landowners, and that the latter's sole function is to extort wealth from the productive by threatening to *withdraw* from production land that would otherwise be available.  This has been proven to him many times.  He he just blankly refuses to know the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.  That is the only "argument" anti-geoist clowns have ever had, or ever will have.

----------


## Roy L

> Easy.  People own all sort of things nature gave us: wood, stone, metals, etc.


No, they don't rightly own any of those things until they have removed them from nature, making them something nature DID NOT give us.



> Every fabricated thing around you was once part of nature in some way.


But as you know, that is irrelevant, because it in fact *is not* something nature gave us.



> The biggest problem of all (in statist societies especially) is when someone tries to claim something truly un-ownable: ideas.


Ideas can be owned the exact same way land or slaves can be owned: only by government saying they can be owned.

----------


## Roy L

> Roy, get well soon.


Thank you, I'm fine now.  I just can't take prolonged, intensive exposure to evil.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> No, they don't rightly own any of those things until they have removed them from nature, making them something nature DID NOT give us.


Not necessarily.  Firewood is never "transformed", even though it is sometimes removed from nature (other times used "in nature"-like campfires in the forest).  And people own firewood routinely.  If you've ever been to someplace where the weather gets really cold, you'll notice that it's common for people to collect large piles of firewood and store them year-round.




> But as you know, that is irrelevant, because it in fact *is not* something nature gave us.


Except it's not irrelevant.  Nature gave us the raw materials, which producers/laborers transformed into useful things.




> Ideas can be owned the exact same way land or slaves can be owned: *only by government saying they can be owned*.


Exactly correct.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Marx refused to know the fact that physical capital -- equipment, buildings, vehicles, etc. -- is provided to producers by capitalists.


He didn't "refuse to know" it - he just refused to give it the significance and importance you and Henry George ascribe to it (as a setup for your notion that the "provider" is key). 




> He also refused to know that "capitalist exploitation" is only made possible by the forcible, uncompensated removal of people's rights to liberty by private landowning.


Circular gibberish.  You didn't like my little creation?  Would you feel better if I added your head to the Hydra? You essentially agreed with the Marxist statement ("capitalist exploitation", which you, George and Marx all see as a problem in need of a solution), while spinning its cause, and therefore implied solution, into a purely Georgist framework.  




> Steven refuses to know the fact that land is not provided to producers by landowners...,


No, I don't refuse to know that fact - I just don't ascribe significance or relevance to it the way you do. Unlike you, Henry George and Karl Marx, I have no fixation on "producers" (as you see them).  I have no use for Champions of the Collective. By and large they disgust me. For me, producers/production is but one pathway to ownership - the real key - and I don't see economic rents as "unearned", regardless of their source. And I don't care who "provided" the means, nor do I accept that the State (whether in the name of the *Commune*-ity, or the collective "peephole") is entitled to any of it as a fundamental matter. 




> ...and that the latter's sole function is to extort wealth from the productive by threatening to *withdraw* from production land that would otherwise be available.


I don't buy into the Marxist/Georgist question-begging pretzel logic of "_extort wealth from the productive_" with regard to ownership (capital or land, respectively).  To me that's bat-looney silliness.  However, I do believe that land speculation, and withholding land from production, is a problem.  But only generally speaking.  I just don't see LVT as the solution -- at least not the way ANY LVT proponent I have seen has presented it.  

All of my solutions would be diametrically opposed to yours because I alone recognize and draw a strong distinction between individuals, whom I believe act as a matter of right, and entities that I believe should operate at all times as a matter of conditional privilege only -- entities like collectives (public and private), and especially fictitious entities with limited liability and accountability that otherwise behave as people, and are recognized by the law as people.  You, George, Marx and other muddle-headed collectivists make what I see as the fatal mistake of lumping them all together without distinction.  That lack of distinction on your part is what puts us forever at odds. My conscience couldn't bear that kind of unconscionable life-meddling idiocy. It would make me physically ill to even think that way. 

What you propose as "an exemption" to the LVT rule, I see as an Absolute Immunity (read = NOT APPLICABLE) where individuals are concerned.  That rule must come first, before I would entertain anything else you would bind and lay at your altar.

----------


## Roy L

> Not necessarily.


Yes, necessarily.



> Firewood is never "transformed",


Yes, of course it is, and you know it.



> even though it is sometimes removed from nature (other times used "in nature"-like campfires in the forest).


It is *always* removed from nature, and thus not what nature provided, and you know it.



> And people own firewood routinely.


Because it is not what nature provided.  You know this, but you refuse to know it.



> If you've ever been to someplace where the weather gets really cold, you'll notice that it's common for people to collect large piles of firewood and store them year-round.


If you weren't committed to rationalizing evil, you would be willing to know the fact that collecting large piles of firewood and storing them year-round involves removing it from nature.



> Except it's not irrelevant.


It is absolutely and indisputably irrelevant, as it ignores the central fact that production IS transformation.



> Nature gave us the raw materials, which producers/laborers transformed into useful things.


Which are *not* what nature provided.  You know this.  Of course you do.  You just have to refuse to know it.

All opponents of land rent recovery lie.  That is a natural law of the universe.  There has never been an exception to that law, and there never will be.

----------


## Roy L

> He didn't "refuse to know" it


Yes, of course he did.  It is impossible that he would not know it.  So in order not to know it, he had to refuse to know it.



> - he just refused to give it the significance and importance you and Henry George ascribe to it (as a setup for your notion that the "provider" is key).


No, he literally refused to know it.  That is why he had to contrive his ludicrous composition-equivocation fallacy that because "the workers" had made the capital, "the workers" were its rightful owners.



> Circular gibberish.


Stupid lie.  There is nothing circular about it.



> You didn't like my little creation?


Let's just say it was worthy of you.



> Would you feel better if I added your head to the Hydra?


More stupid lies wouldn't improve it.



> You essentially agreed with the Marxist statement


Lie.



> ("capitalist exploitation", which you, George and Marx all see as a problem in need of a solution),


Like anyone else with a functioning conscience.



> while spinning its cause, and therefore implied solution, into a purely Georgist framework.


Identifying the relevant facts and their inescapable logical implications is not "spinning."



> No, I don't refuse to know that fact


Yes, in fact, you do.



> - I just don't ascribe significance or relevance to it the way you do.


You cannot know it without knowing its relevance.  As you deny its relevance, you refuse to know it.



> Unlike you, Henry George and Karl Marx, I have no fixation on "producers" (as you see them).


As they in fact are.  Noting that production relies on the contributions of producers and not on the non-contributions of non-producers is not a "fixation."  It is a simple fact of objective physical reality.



> I have no use for Champions of the Collective.


More accurately, you have no use for liberty, justice, truth, or individual human rights, the things of which I am a champion.



> By and large they disgust me.


Well, think of how you feel about them, and then square it, and you will get some idea of how I feel about people who lie to rationalize evil.



> For me, producers/production is but one pathway to ownership - the real key -


Right.  Producers and production are the real key to your _preferred_ pathway to ownership: _taking_ production *from* the producers.



> and I don't see economic rents as "unearned", regardless of their source.


Right.  I have stated that fact numerous times: you believe that the bandit in the pass is earning his loot.  You believe that Crusoe earns the food he extorts from Friday by waving his musket in his face and threatening to put him back in the water.  You believe that the owner of a slave earns the fruits of the slave's labor, not the slave.



> And I don't care who "provided" the means,


Bravo!  At last!  How admirably honest of you.  That is exactly correct, and what I have been telling you for hundreds of messages: you DO NOT CARE about liberty, justice, rights, earning, deserving, contributing, or merit.  Your only concern is to rationalize and justify taking by greedy, privileged parasites.  We agree.



> nor do I accept that the State (whether in the name of the *Commune*-ity, or the collective "peephole") is entitled to any of it as a fundamental matter.


Right.  You believe that private landowners, who do not create or contribute to their land's value, are entitled to *take* that value (which the community creates) *from* the community that creates it, forcibly depriving others of their rights to liberty, and that the community that creates the value has no right to what it creates.



> I don't buy into the Marxist/Georgist question-begging pretzel logic


None of which you can refute, or even state accurately...



> of "_extort wealth from the productive_" with regard to ownership (capital or land, respectively).


Right.  You refuse to know the fact that you cannot answer The Question:

_"How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay HIM for what government, the community and nature provide?"_

Or what that fact implies.  If the landowner is not contributing to production -- and you know that he isn't -- then the share of production he obtains cannot be obtained by any means OTHER than extortion.  Why would the producer give it to him, if not under duress?



> To me that's bat-looney silliness.


You just refuse to know the relevant facts.



> However, I do believe that land speculation, and withholding land from production, is a problem.  But only generally speaking.  I just don't see LVT as the solution -- at least not the way ANY LVT proponent I have seen has presented it.


Right, because any solution that involves liberty or justice is automatically disqualified from your consideration.



> All of my solutions would be diametrically opposed to yours


And would therefore make the problem worse.



> because I alone recognize and draw a strong distinction between individuals, whom I believe act as a matter of right, and entities that I believe should operate at all times as a matter of conditional privilege only -- entities like collectives (public and private), and especially fictitious entities with limited liability and accountability that otherwise behave as people, and are recognized by the law as people.


States, governments and communities are not fictitious.



> You, George, Marx and other muddle-headed collectivists make what I see as the fatal mistake of lumping them all together without distinction.


That claim bears no relation to what George or I have written.



> That lack of distinction on your part is what puts us forever at odds.


It's something you made up.



> My conscience couldn't bear that kind of unconscionable life-meddling idiocy.


You refuse to know the fact that "life-meddling" society is necessary for human life to exist in the first place.



> It would make me physically ill to even think that way.


No, you are merely neither honest nor intelligent enough to think that way.



> What you propose as "an exemption" to the LVT rule, I see as an Absolute Immunity (read = NOT APPLICABLE) where individuals are concerned.


But that is self-contradictory, as you know: it simply entitles some individuals to enslave others.



> That rule must come first, before I would entertain anything else you would bind and lay at your altar.


I am not the one offering up millions of human sacrifices on the altar of Greed every year, Steven.  You are.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> _"How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay HIM for what government, the community and nature provide?"_


Told you you were fixated on production. How, exactly, is that circular, question-begging question relevant to anyone but you?  Aside from your usual fact-muddling religious tenet about the Government/Community/Nature Collectivist Triad that you want to speak for (do you cross yourself whenever you refer to it?), do you really see yourself as on some kind of leftist gubmint committee that sits around and tries to figure out how to "aid production"?  

"...millions of human sacrifices on the altar of Greed..." indeed.  ::: snicker snicker :::

Say, that reminds me - what do you think of the nifty image I made for you?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Easy.  People own all sort of things nature gave us: wood, stone, metals, etc. *


You are on about the resources extracted from land. You will find you do not own land, only have title.  We cannot live without land.  Do you want individuals to own the air as well?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Steven refuses to know the fact that land is not provided to producers by landowners, and that the latter's sole function is to extort wealth from the productive by threatening to *withdraw* from production land that would otherwise be available.  This has been proven to him many times.  He he just blankly refuses to know the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.  That is the only "argument" anti-geoist clowns have ever had, or ever will have.


Reading the thread i get the clear impression Steven, and co, clearly can't figure out something so simple. Geoism is so elegant a solution. Elegance always accompanies simplicity.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Not necessarily.  Firewood is never "transformed",


It took LABOR to cut the firewood down. It took LABOR to carry the firewood. It took CAPITAL (saw or axe) to cut the wood.  *This is all basic economics done at school*.  Look up the Three factors of production: LAND, LABOR, CAPITAL.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> I don't buy into the Marxist/Georgist question-begging pretzel logic of "_extort wealth from the productive_" with regard to ownership (capital or land, respectively).  To me that's bat-looney silliness.


You are attempting to discredit George by aligning him with Marx, when it is known that they opposed each other on many points. 

Michael Hudson, an LVT advocate, criticizing the critics of George. 
http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content...gesCritics.pdf


'Upon being sent copies of Progress and Poverty in 1881, Marx wrote to John Swinton that it was _"a last attempt to save the capitalist regime._"  He dismissed the book as saying precisely what his 1847 critique of Proudhon had forecast that industrial capital would advocate in its conflict with the landlord class: "We understand such economists as Mill, Cherbuliez, Hilditch and others demanding that rent should be handed over to the state to serve in place of taxes. That is a frank expression of _the hatred the industrial capitalist bears towards the landed proprietor, who seems to him a useless thing, an excrescence upon the general body of bourgeois production_.'

*You are dishonest in attempting to put Geoism as state control*. Henry George, Ricardo, Adam Smith, Mills, etc, never advocated state ownership of land and were keen land taxers.  Although state ownershipof land works brilliantly in Hong Kong using a form of LVT, giving the most financially free state in the world and the world's most dynamic economy - set up by the British, who could not do it in their own land because of the vested-interest of landed people in the House of Lords. I notice the brainwahsed parasites, hiding behind a false shield of "freedom", ignore HK, Singapore, etc. Selective amnesia sets in.  I wonder why?

Geoism is not state ownership of land, *YOU KNOW THAT*. Although a moot point, the state owns the land anyhow as you only have title.  LVT says, yes own land, fine, but we *reclaim* community created wealth that accumulates in the land and use that for community purposes. LVT leaves the individual and his income/wealth alone and ensures he is genuinely *FREE*.  LVT cures many things like harmful land speculation, boom & bust, etc. LVT promotes positive production - enterprise.  It rolls back the state. *LV gives people genuine freedom.*



> However, I do believe that land speculation, and withholding land from production, is a problem.


Of course it is. it brought down the world's economy.  It wasn't just the USA that was overspeculating in land. The UK, Spain(what a mess), Ireland, etc, did so. The UK rigged planning to create an artificially land shortage to ramp up land prices. The governmnet is complicit in this rape.  How do you solve the speculation?  No one has come out with an answer except Geoists. LVT and no income & Sales taxes stops land speculation dead in its tracks. Look at the post of mine about Denmark who used LVT 50 years ago - speculation stopped before the party got in power who were to implement it. Money was put into enterprise and unemployemnet was zero.  Look at the post of mine of Martin Wolf, he clearly states land speculation was the problem and the cure is LVT. You don't get much bigger than Wolf. Do a youtube search on him and piles come up. The US networks can'tr get enough of him. 

All others talked about tighter control of banks. But the likes of Thatcher and Reagan can come along in the future to a population who never knew crashes and deregulate to create a mini boom to win the next election.  Then kaboom again.  LVT solves it at the root.  LVT is self regulating with minimal government interference.

*If the land question isn't dealt with nothing else will work.*

Geoism should be ingrained into the pysche of the people to the point it would not be tolerated being reversed, like votes for women.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> You are attempting to discredit George by aligning him with Marx, when it is known that they opposed each other on many points.


I don't care about disagreement between two cannibals fighting over what parts of me are the safest, most proper and humane to eat.  Off with both their cannibalistic heads.



Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opposed each other on many points as well.  Likewise Democrats and Republicans -- but it's not what the Dems and the GOP disagree about that is causing the greatest destruction in the world in my estimation, but rather what they agree on fully, albeit for different reasons.  




> Geoism is not state ownership of land...
> ...the state owns the land anyhow...


That's your default premise, and you can argue from it until you're blue in the geolib face.  Whatever a state is, and however it is defined, regardless of its political form, is entirely subjective, based solely on human determination. That includes whatever it is that a state is said to "own", be it good or bad, right or wrong - land, property or even people.  

No two states are exactly alike, nor is it a requirement that the state "own" anything whatsoever, including land within its political boundaries, to be considered a state. Geoism/Georgism/Geolibertarianism/LVT is nothing more than human-determined state-ownership of land.

----------


## EcoWarrier

Silly incorrect cartoons do not impress me.




> No two states are exactly alike, nor is it a requirement that the state "own" anything whatsoever, including land within its political boundaries, to be considered a state.


Look up the meaning of "sovereignty".  The state own the land. How they apportion the land within is another matter. 




> Geoism/Georgism/Geolibertarianism/LVT is nothing more than human-determined state-ownership of land.


Let us say "title" and not ownership to clarify and simplify matters for you. Geoism *DOES NOT* ADVOCATE state title holding of land. Anyone with half a brain can see that. 

One of the prime points is that Geoism reclaims community created wealth that soaks into the land crystallizing as land values, using this wealth for community purposes - the land value *was NOT* created by the landowner. *Socially created wealth is socialized for social purposes*.  Very simple. Whether that is via state title holding of land (as in Hong Kong) or private title holding is irrelevant, as LVT can fit into any ism.  The Single Tax has a brilliant side-effect of keeping private wealth private by eliminating Income & Sale taxes. *Privately created wealth is privatized.* 

Currently we do exactly the opposite as above and are in the bizarre position of the state stealing from individuals and individuals stealing from the state. This is clearly harmful to the economy and morally wrong.  We *privatize socially created wealth (land values are appropriated)* and *socialize privately created wealth (take the income from people via Income & Sales Tax)*- and create financial catastrophes on a regular basis.  

LVT, as the Single Tax can be implemented tomorrow with ease.  It does not change the business system or business behavior. LVT seamlessly was introduced into Denmark.

I see you ignored Hong Kong again. Not what your mind wants to know is it?  Factual. Works. The world's best.

Reading your posts I can only conclude that you thought you had solved matters in your head many years ago.  Someone came along and demolished those constructs in your head - they are just plain wrong.  As they have been there for so long you refuse to admit to yourself you were wrong for so long.  Open your mind. See the light.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Look up the meaning of "sovereignty".  The state own the land. How they apportion the land within is another matter. Let us say "title" and not ownership to clarify and simplify matters for you. Geoism *DOES NOT* ADVOCATE state title holding of land. Anyone with half a brain can see that.


Yes, why don't you look up the _various meanings_ of sovereignty. Invoking the generic, unqualified "title" might clarify and simplify matters _for you_, as you might feel that it fits best with your anti-private-landownership paradigm. But while you're busy looking up meanings, look up the various meanings of title, among them "allodial title".  Anyone with half a brain (assuming it is actually engaged) can see clearly that LVT proponents advocate _the abolition_ of allodial titles to individuals -- individual sovereignty with respect to land -- and the absorption of all these titles by the State (AKA the taxing jurisdiction).  These titles wouldn't then be a stack of titles, but would become a single title, manifested only as a piece of legislation.  

The philosophical claim that LVT "reclaims community created wealth" (a collectivist delusion) is the rationale for a state monopoly on landownership -- allodial titles to land that is forever conditionally rented, but never sold.  Your attempt to torture generic definitions or to presume that the state is the de facto owner of land in all cases are all belied by both the exceptions to the rule that are now reality, as well as the underlying fundamentals of what constitutes both sovereignty and ownership by whatever degree.  




> One of the prime points is that Geoism reclaims community created wealth that soaks into the land crystallizing as land values, using this wealth for community purposes - the land value *was NOT* created by the landowner.


Irrelevant geo-gibberish, the koolaid you drank and would like for the rest of the world to drink. The tractor I inherited from my father was not created by me or my father; not the materials that comprise it nor the capital or labor required to shape it into its current form and function.  Likewise, its _market value_ was not created by either of us, even though my father helped to shape its TRANSIENT _market price_ once upon a time when he bought it.  I am now the owner of that tractor, and can dispose of it as I please. I can destroy it, use it, store it away, or even charge economic rent for it.  I did not "earn" that tractor, nor is it a product of my labor, and the fact that it is not for sale does not mean that it does not have market value _which "the community", not me, created_.  And yet I am the owner of that tractor, and "the community" is entitled to NOTHING.  The same principles apply to land, regardless of the owner, public or private.  The fact that the "market value" was not created by the owner is IRRELEVANT, just as the fact that individual contributions to value by others, public or private, are wholly incidental, and CREATES NO ENTITLEMENT to any of them, collectively or individually.   There is, as such, nothing to "reclaim", as there was no valid "claim" to begin with. 

Further delving into the word-machinations of LVT-la-la-land, even saying that land value is not created by the landowner is false, even in an LVT framework.  Raw land itself is not created by anyone, but your focus is on "community created value".  Anyone who demonstrates a willingness to sell or pay for a thing, including the owner, or whatever entity has the power to place a thing on the market in the first place, plays a decisive role in shaping/creating its market value. That includes the owner (even if that owner is the State) which may not have paid or produced anything in the process of acquisition.  However, the fact that multiple parties were involved does not create an entitlement for any participants outside the actual buyer and seller, as market value is not the collectivist phenomenon you would like it to be.   

As for government's role, government is a SERVANT -- not a "provider" of anything.  There is NO SUCH THING as "public funding".  All infrastructure is PRIVATELY funded, not for profit, and not necessarily paid for by those who benefit therefrom. For example, if infrastructure was funded exclusively from tariffs on foreign imports, those who paid a higher price for those imports would fund all infrastructure.  However, the direct benefit enjoyed by those purchasing foreign goods would be in the goods purchased ALONE. The fact that the tariffs they paid went to fund infrastructure is incidental, and would not entitle the source of that funding (purchasers of foreign goods) to any special privileges or benefits.  Likewise the "not-for-profit" government SERVANT, charged with task of levying and collecting such taxes, as delegated to it BY ITS MASTERS (the actual people), are not on a Board of Land Directors, trying to "reclaim" something for which I argue no valid claim exists in a free market. 

Economists slice and dice factors of production for their convenience, but just as e=mc2 means that mass and energy are different manifestations of the same thing, so land, capital and labor are all different manifestations of the same thing, as one can be converted into another.  I don't care how LVT proponents rationalize the treatment of land as something special and apart from other forms of capital, any more than I give two $#@!s about those who see money as being something mystical and special, apart from all other commodities, which makes it somehow immune from laws of economics as dictated by reality, and not some theory that fails to adequately describe it.  

As a matter of function, everything of value that can be exchanged is a form of capital. That includes both labor and land.  A dynamic variable applies to value as a function of the scarcity of a given type of land, capital or labor, but that is not a rationale for collective ownership.  Likewise, there is no "liberty deprivation" on anyone's part that justifies a claim for anything that ought to be "reclaimed" on their behalf.  

IF government outlawed usury of any kind for lands, outlawing the charging of economic rents _by anyone_ of others, public or private, and also outlawed speculation (withholding of lands from use for any "unreasonable" period of time), two planks of the "Geoist Dilemma" they pretend to be solving would vanish.  The enjoyment of economic rents would belong (and properly and rightly so in my mind) to those who enjoyed and benefited from them directly -- and the collectivist socialistic parasites who want to "reclaim value" that is not theirs can go stuff themselves. The only issue remaining would be the most proper source of government funding.  

Henry George argued, with his little theorem, that under ideal conditions, aggregate spending by government will be equal to aggregate rent based on land value.  Not once, however, is the necessity or requirement of such spending on the part of government questioned or challenged for its validity.  The unspoken axiom is, "Governments spend, therefore they must."  

As to the "funding" problem, the only taxes I recognize as morally valid - and they would only work in a free, perfectly competive market with sound competing currencies - are tariffs and other taxes on foreigners and other entities acting as a matter of privilege, and not right.  _"Then are the children free_."  No tax on sovereign individuals - the "children of the kingdom", who are free to trade with one another without interference.  Only "privileged outsiders" (regardless of location) pay -- and yet have ZERO CLAIM on anything they funded for the privilege of their existence.  Congress can have its way with privileged entities (right down to LVT or anything else), and the free market would serve to keep its revenues in check.  This is because the more Congress abuses the only "privileged" entities it may tax, the more advantages automatically inure to the benefit of those acting (COMPETING) as a matter of unfettered, untrammeled right - which congress may not ever tax (my normative, of course).




> *Socially created wealth is...*


...a myth? ...a misnomer? ...evidence of socialist theft?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> The philosophical claim that LVT "reclaims community created wealth" (a collectivist delusion) is the rationale for a state monopoly on landownership


_LVT "reclaims community created wealth"._ Get used to it. It does.
Again, if it is repeated often enough it might sink in...Geoism DOES NOT advocate state owership of land. Title can be privately exchanged as before with no change to the system.
One of the prime points is that Geoism reclaims community created wealth that soaks into the land crystallizing as land values, using this wealth for community purposes - *the land value was NOT created by the landowner*. This is economic FACT!! Any economist with half a brain will tell you that. *The land values did not miraculously drop in from the sky*. Get used to it. Accept it as if you do not you are deluding yourself and going around in ever confused circles.
Your muddled brain keeps barking on about Marxism and socialism and other strange things. Geoism is none of those, but can fit into any ism you like. Name your ism and it will fit -maybe not North Korea.
There is socially created wealth and privately created wealth. FACT!! You do not understand this. Just accept it.
*Geoism sets an individual free. No one steals his income, his savings, his inheritance.* 
I still see selective amnesia set in again when it comes to Hong Kong.
Geoism is pragmatic. It works with working examples all over the world. It works because it is backed up by sound economic theory. You have difficulty with the latter and put your head in the sand over the former.

_"Solving the land question means the solving of all social questions… 
Possession of land by people who do not use it is immoral - just 
like the possession of slaves."
- Leo Tolstoy_

----------


## Steven Douglas

> _LVT "reclaims community created wealth"._  Get used to it. It does.


Get used to a lot of people never getting used to it.  It's a mindless reassertion of a religious tenet. 




> Again, if it is repeated often enough it might sink in...Geoism DOES NOT advocate state owership of land. Title can be privately exchanged as before with no change to the system.


Constant repetition might serve as self-reinforcement and affirmation for you, but it won't make it true. Conflate conditional "rental" title with actual ownership all you want.  The imposition of a regressive ad valorem tax (no deterministic relationship to income or ability to pay, but only on others' willingness to pay more) as a condition of "holding", not ownership makes the state the ultimate owner, and the land a rental only. 




> One of the prime points is that Geoism reclaims community created wealth that soaks into the land crystallizing as land values, using this wealth for community purposes - *the land value was NOT created by the landowner*. This is economic FACT!! Any economist with half a brain will tell you that. Get used to it. Accept it as if you do not you are deluding yourself and going around in ever confused circles.


Again, mindless repetition.  




> Your muddled brain keeps barking on about Marxism and socialism and other strange things. Geoism is none of those, but can fit into any ism you like. Name your ism and it will fit -maybe not North Korea. There is socially created wealth and privately created wealth. FACT!! You do not understand this. Just accept it.


Geoism is just another form of socialism.  Making it a foundational underpinning to any other ism won't alter that fact.   And you can stuff your notions of 'socially created wealth'.  I'm not One with the Geoist Borg. Go assimilate someone else.    




> *Geoism sets an individual free.*


No, it binds everyone to perpetually renting something fundamental to life itself from the State, and with a straight face declares you "free" to pay as little or much as you would like, based on the governing assumption that so long as someone else covets your location, you are "free" to pay more and stay or just as "free" to move the on and make way to a higher bidder.    




> *No one steals his income, his savings, his inheritance.*


Of course they do. Pretty much all three are stolen -- siphoned away under the rationale of Socially Created Wealth Reclamation.    




> I still see selective amnesia set in again when it comes to Hong Kong.


Not amnesia so much as not giving a $#@! about Hong Kong and its concrete jungles I have lived in.  I never claimed that economies could not function or that people would not survive in spite of LVT.  Hell, we're quasi-surviving with a Fed, a deliberately debased currency, and all kinds of nasty human-enslaving $#@! that is in place now.  One more mechanism for slavery-in-the-name-of-liberty won't destroy us either.  You can stuff Hong Kong - just as Roy can stuff Somalia as his second-favorite non-sequitur.   




> Geoism is pragmatic. It works with working examples all over the world. It works because it is backed up by sound economic theory. You have difficulty with the latter and put your head in the sand over the former.


Thanks for the Geoist propaganda brochure. ::: tosses into waste bin with all the other SPAM, gibberish and nonsense :::

----------


## EcoWarrier

Mr Douglas,

You are a very confused person, knowing little about  basic economics.  Many quotes from top, respected, economic top experts have demolished your quarter-baking theories.  You constantly tell yourself lies and believe them being clearly detached from reality. Your idea of freedom is clearly one of greed and perceived self-interest. 

It is like communicating with a stubborn child. 

It is best for just accept the Geoist line, even though you can't understand something so simple.

----------


## Travlyr

> Mr Douglas,
> 
> You are a very confused person, knowing little about  basic economics.  Many quotes from top, respected, economic top experts have demolished your quarter-baking theories.  You constantly tell yourself lies and believe them being clearly detached from reality. Your idea of freedom is clearly one of greed and perceived self-interest. 
> 
> It is like communicating with a stubborn child. 
> 
> It is best for just accept the Geoist line, even though you can't understand something so simple.


Not really. Not at all. Steven makes the most sense and is the most honest in this debate.

Your claim that taxing land away from an individual sets them free is just stupid. People are not nearly as stupid as you think they are.  

Allodial title to property, all property, is what sets us free.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Not amnesia so much as not giving a $#@! about Hong Kong and its concrete jungles I have lived in.


Hong Kong: 
426 sq mi 
Popn: 7 million.
40% of the land area is reserved as country parks and nature reserves.

NYC:
468 sq mi
Popn: 8.2 million

HK is better off.

I see you care not of Hong Kong's highly success LVT system as selective amnesia is still a condition you have not yet overcome.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Not really. Not at all. Steven makes the most sense and is the most honest in this debate.


Mr Douglas suffers from compulsive lying and selective amnesia.  Roy L was right.



> Your claim that taxing land away from an individual sets them free is just stupid.


A strange, confused, statement.  No one is taking land away from anyone or proposing that.  It was very clear what was put across. Geoism works in the real world. Unlike your confused notions of what freedom is, it works in reality.  The theory is sound and practical implementations a success.

Your idea of freedom is being a parasite on the rest of the community.  Keeping community created wealth for yourself - in short, stealing.

----------


## Travlyr

> Mr Douglas suffers from compulsive lying and selective amnesia.  Roy L was right.
> 
> A strange, confused, statement.  No one is taking land away from anyone or proposing that.  It was very clear what was put across. Geoism works in the real world. Unlike your confused notions of what freedom is, it works in reality.  The theory is sound and practical implementations a success.
> 
> Your idea of freedom is being a parasite on the rest of the community.  Keeping community created wealth for yourself - in short, stealing.


No, your idea of big government socialism sucks. Move to Hong Kong if you think it is so great.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> No, your idea of big government socialism sucks. Move to Hong Kong if you think it is so great.


Once again you have not comprehended a thing.  You are very confused. No one mentioned socialism, only the confused like you. Geoism fits into any extreme right-wing warped ism you like. Which one do you want? Geoism rolls back state interference as it is largely self controlling.  Geoism gives FREEDOM.

Another dismissive comment on Hong Kong as it uses a form of LVT giving it the freest economic system in the world, and one of the most dynamic economies to boot. Either selective amnesia or dismissive comments on Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan is evident.

You do not know what freedom is. Your greed and self-interest gets the better of you.  You use freedom as a false shield to hide your greed and wanting to steal commonly created wealth, and contempt for your fellow man.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> HK is better off.
> 
> I see you care not of Hong Kong's highly success LVT system...


Well, since you insist, let's address your extremely naive Post Hoc fallacy, wherein you want correlation to imply causation.  Not surprising, as it's usually socialist leaning leftists who want to credit government with everything good under the sun, and especially as an actual "cause" of economic prosperity. LVT proponents are generally wont to think of government as a "provider", rather than simply a facilitator, protector of rights of individuals (regardless of their prosperity or "productivity" - nasty LVT bastards passing judgments on "contributions"), with government little more than a market-neutral catalyst - not a provider of anything beyond that.   

Part of your fallacy comes from the fact that you are disregarding what actually caused HK to be prosperous in the first place, long before LVT was implemented.  You also don't have a separate but identical Hong Kong without LVT in place with which to even do an empirical comparison, to see if HK would indeed be better or worse off without LVT.  Furthermore, Hong Kong is far from the "average community", and did not get where it is today by virtue of LVT. 
*
Location, location, location.* As a major port of call, Hong Kong, like Singapore, London, Tokyo and New York, also happens to be a *major international financial hub* (certainly China's largest) with enormous financial activity based on what is happening in OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD, including the 6th largest stock exchange in the world, making Hong Kong _entirely insulated_ from most of the "real world", an exception to the real world rule, as it operates in a relative vacuum. 

In 2009, Hong Kong raised 22 percent of worldwide initial public offering (IPO) capital, becoming the largest center of IPOs in the world.  What happens to Hong Kong if its stock market crashes?  Would you be honest enough to blame LVT in the same way you're crediting it now for all of Hong Kong's _apparent_ success? 

Your invocation of HK's LVT as a model for every "community" to follow is silliness at best, unless you're also suggesting that all communities in the world do the logically and physically impossible


Become a major financial hub.Become a major shipping port with a major international airport.Restrict available land leases so that it affects the artificial scarcity and therefore value, leaving _fully 95% of the available land undeveloped_.Be so compact in area, large in population, and vertical in property development that public infrastructure required for such a small per capita area is relatively inexpensive.
 Also, consider the following:




> Despite being one of the world's richest economies, the Gini Coefficient indicates that *the wealth gap continues to widen in Hong Kong*. As of 2006 Hong Kong's measurement is at 53.3, which means _the difference between the rich and poor is far greater than that of the mainland China_.


And consider this as well:




> *By restricting the sale of land leases, the Hong Kong government keeps the price of land at what some would say are artificially high prices and this allows the government to support public spending with a low tax rate.*
> 
> Prior to 1997, the history was Hong Kong Island was ceded in perpetuity to the UK in recompense for losses endured in the Opium War, a token grant of a watering hole.  It wasn’t until about 50 years later that the UK got  a 99 year lease on Kowloon and the new territories, which is what we call Hong Kong today.  So we are talking about an Island that the UK owned, and the mass of land that the UK leased from China.  Yes, there was no ability really to “own” private real estate, although some did, because the UK auctioned off property and subleases, which in any event never amounted to more than 5% of modern Hong Kong.  
> 
> *Or in other words, 95% of Hong Kong is still undeveloped.* 
> 
> And the highest concentration of people in the world.  Which makes you wander about “overpopulation” talk, but that is another discussion.  (Singapore is free and independent, and there too only about 5% of the land is developed and the govt owns the land.  Maybe it's a Chinese thing.)
> 
> So there was never really any need or point in private ownership of land in Hong Kong, and in any case with the communist takeover it is out of the question, although China is letting Hong Kong continue its gig until 2047, when Hong Kong will take over China and Taiwan.
> ...


So much for HK as a shining example of LVT success - consider it thoroughly destroyed.  N/A -- NOT APPLICABLE.

----------


## Travlyr

> Once again you have not comprehended a thing.  You are very confused. No one mentioned socialism, only the confused like you. Geoism fits into any extreme right-wing warped ism you like. Which one do you want? Geoism rolls back state interference as it is largely self controlling.  Geoism gives FREEDOM.
> 
> Another dismissive comment on Hong Kong as it uses a form of LVT giving it the freest economic system in the world, and one of the most dynamic economies to boot. Either selective amnesia or dismissive comments on Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan is evident.
> 
> You do not know what freedom is. Your greed and self-interest gets the better of you.  You use freedom as a false shield to hide your greed and wanting to steal commonly created wealth, and contempt for your fellow man.


Baloney. I understand what you are saying, I'm just not buying into your bull$#@!. "_40% of the land area is reserved as country parks and nature reserves._" <- Socialism. Pack the people in the cities, tax them on their land, hoard the rest of it for the common good determined by rulers. That is socialism to me. Commonly created wealth ... LOL ... what a joke of a concept. Of course I am self-interested and of course I am greedy. The entire world is made up of greedy self-interested people. That is why individuals create wealth from the resources of the Earth. That is why they should be allowed to own as much land as they can manage. Geo philosophy is just dumb socialist collectivism that you are trying to paint with the gibberish freedom brush.

War is not really Peace. Tyranny is not really Liberty. Collectivism is not really Individualism. Geoism does not deliver freedom for Individuals.

Allodial title to land and all other possessions delivers freedom.

----------


## EcoWarrier

Sir, David Pilling is critical of Hong Kongs land leasing system (Hong Kongs land system that time forgot, FT Comment, March 10). While there may be room for greater transparency and other improvement, I submit that the fundamental idea is sound. Government should be financed from land rents.

Mr Pilling writes, for example: By this means, Hong Kong has conjured a cheap and gleaming transport system seemingly out of nothing. Precisely. A transport system makes land more valuable so, if it is worth building, it can and should be paid for out of the increased land rents it creates.

If Hemlock compares Hong Kongs property tycoons to feudal lords granted the right to gather tax from the peasants, their equivalents in New York and London can be called feudal lords collecting tax from the peasants without even having to forward much of their revenue to the sovereign, who must therefore levy other taxes on the peasants.

A classic statement of the case for land value taxation is  instead of paying rent to a landlord and tax to the state, why not pay rent to the state, and no taxes? Hong Kong comes closer to this ideal than most places.

Nicholas D. Rosen,
Arlington, VA, US
------------------

Hong Kong; An exemplar for Land Value Taxation

Good article in Metropolis.com on effect of Hong Kongs tax system, a de facto Land Value Tax on its retail trade and city and architecture design. The city state owns all land directly so leaseholders must pay an annual rent  but few other taxes  

I see Hong Kong as a model of smart growth management and land use planning. Its a city were policy dictates that development must concentrate on only 25% of the land area, with the remaining 75% preserved as open space. This policy ensures that the regions lush green spaces remain intact. It also maintains scarcity and high land values in developable areas. This is crucial to the local government because its primary source of income is land leasing.
------------------

By Neville Bennett

We need a more efficient and equitable tax system compatible with economic growth and productivity.

In our mobile society it seems reasonable, a priori, to move taxation from relatively mobile bases like income and profits to relatively immobile bases like land, rent and consumption.

Such a switch rewards the enterprising.

A land tax could be a necessary part of a better system. My space limitation means that the argument will lack convincing data, and I have had to excise counter-arguments.

I also recognize that its implementation would be fraught with difficulty.

My purpose is to sketch an idea at a time when Government is reviewing tax.

I saw the merits of the tax while working in Hong Kong and seeing the benefit of free-trade, a small state and low taxation. I taught Japanese economic history and became convinced that Japan's modern economic growth was founded on a vibrant agriculture and a land tax. Ideologically I respected increasingly the nineteenth century liberal ideology of Mill, Ricardo, Bentham, Cobden, Bright, Smith, and Macaulay. They seem timeless.

I give a typical quote from Macaulay about "pests to society" ....a prying, meddlesome government which intrudes itself into every part of human life, and which thinks it can do everything better than anyone can do for himself"
or J. S. Mill warning against "the great evil of adding unnecessarily to the power of the state."

Mill insisted on a land tax because "the land of every country belongs to the people of that country."

Ideally the state would own all land and lease it out, getting the unearned component of price rises. Hong Kong adopted Mill's recommendation.

Henry George also advocated a land tax in "Progress and Poverty"(1879). George noticed in California that poverty increased as land prices increased. He advocated a tax on land value but not on improvements, as that would destroy the natural right to the fruit of labour, and, "act as the spoliation of industry and thrift."

The tax suggested is a land value tax (LVT). It taxes all land, urban and rural (except parks and reserves). It does not tax improvements.

Revenue

LVT is excellent source of government revenue. It can raise substantial sums without damaging the economy.

Hong Kong raises about 38% of its revenue from a land tax. It is usually in surplus, and imposes very low taxes in other areas. W

hen I lived there, the threshold on income tax was very high and the maximum was about 12% (by memory). Singapore and Taiwan also operate land taxes. It broadens the tax base and produces very predictable returns in contrast to more volatile taxes made on profits.

The supply of land is very inelastic, and its value does not fluctuate so much if the speculative element is removed. It is also easy to collect. The authorities need only registers of owners and a valuation of the land. It is hard to evade, because land cannot be hidden, nor transferred into tax havens abroad. The cost of collecting some taxes is very high, but a land tax is a low cost tax.

Because LVT is cheap to impose and a reliable revenue raiser, it can reduce the need for other taxes. A LVT mitigates the case for a capital gains tax.

A land tax ...

" ... reduces speculation because it imposes a holding cost. This should have the effect of returning land to productive use.

Wikipedia suggests it reduces urban sprawl because it reduces the number of vacant lots in a city. An example is Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has used a land tax since 1975. " Deters bubbles.

The existing structure in New Zealand encourages speculation. Land gets bid up to levels which predicate very low yields. The boom and bust scenario is very damaging to the economy. A land tax is a factor for stability. 

... is easy to collect. The authorities need only registers of owners and a valuation of the land. It is hard to evade, because land cannot be hidden , nor transferred into tax havens abroad. The costs of collecting some taxes is very high, but a land tax is a low cost tax. 

... is so cheap to impose, so reliable in producing the goods, that it can reduce the need for other taxes.

... diverts investment from unproductive property activities. These are directed in large part to making capital gains or rent.

"Rent seeking" is disapproved of by economists because it extracts uncompensated value from others without making contributions to productivity. Rent is not payment for a lease, in this example, but derives from Adam Smith's division of income into wages, profit and rent.

... would lower the price of land. An ideal rate forces land to be used productively, and profitably. This will lead to a lower value because the speculative component of the land's value is removed. The speculators would reduce their land holdings and land would be used only for economic activities. Cheaper land would allow more able farmers to enter the industry. (more later)

... lower land values should exert downward pressure on urban rents. If tenants are already paying a high proportion of their disposable income on rent, a low rent would, others things being equal, have the effect of increasing their net wages. Higher wages could stimulate both higher saving and consumption.

...  improves the equity in a taxation system. Some people, like children, students and beneficiaries, generally have little wealth and land. A land tax would affect only the better off in those categories.

... encourages investment and productivity. At present a land owner is taxed only on income (less expenses) arising from land. There is no particular incentive to use land productively. Land- owners, including life-stylers, can merely lightly stock their land and wait for capital gains. Capital gains in the South Island, 1990-2007 averaged 17% a year (NBR May1).

... induces efficient sized units. New Zealand's farmers often hold more land than they need for production. A surplus is attractive because increased size increases capital gain. A land tax encourages greater intensity of farming, with more labour and capital per unit. It frees up land for new entrants.

... encourages improvements in order to maximize returns.

Conclusion

It is inefficient and inequitable to avoid taxing land. Land taxes are avoided, however, by political systems which have a large landed interest.

In the UK it was sought by the Liberal party, with powerful advocates like Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, but would never have passed through the self-interested House of Lords.  

---------------------

The idea that LVT is the least-worst tax is not idle economic theory, Hong Kong for example has a feudal land system and the government derives the bulk of its income from leases, which is why they can keep their rate of income/corporation tax to a flat 20%. Stephen Reed, the Mayor of Harrisburg, who introduced LVT in 1982, has been continually re-elected ever since.

---------------------

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Baloney. I understand what you are saying, I'm just not buying into your bull$#@!. "_40% of the land area is reserved as country parks and nature reserves._" <- Socialism. Pack the people in the cities, tax them on their land, hoard the rest of it for the common good determined by rulers. That is socialism to me.


You have strange idea of socialism.




> Commonly created wealth ... LOL ... what a joke of a concept.


Land values never came for the sky. Economic activity by the community created them. You have been told this. If you can't understand this just accept it. 




> War is not really Peace. Tyranny is not really Liberty. Collectivism is not really Individualism. Geoism does not deliver freedom for Individuals.


Your confusion is abundantly clear.




> Allodial title to land and all other possessions delivers freedom.


But the values soaked into the land created by the community gets reclaimed. Otherwise you are freeloading.

----------


## redbluepill

For those who believe Rothbard "dismantled" Georgism I suggest reading this:

http://www.nolanchart.com/article692...-argument.html

----------


## Roy L

> Told you you were fixated on production.


You can call being willing to know the fact that a rightful claim to a share of production only arises from a commensurate contribution to production being "fixated," if you like.



> How, exactly, is that circular, question-begging question relevant to anyone but you?


It is neither circular nor question begging, and far from being irrelevant, it identifies the central issue: the non-contributory nature of the landowner's participation in economic activity.  It is simply a question that you cannot answer; and as you are aware of the fact that your inability to answer it proves that your beliefs are false and evil, you have to find some way to erase it from your consciousness.



> Aside from your usual fact-muddling religious tenet about the Government/Community/Nature Collectivist Triad that you want to speak for (do you cross yourself whenever you refer to it?),


I have identified the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.  You have already realized that those facts prove your beliefs are false and evil, so you have to refuse to know them.



> do you really see yourself as on some kind of leftist gubmint committee that sits around and tries to figure out how to "aid production"?


No, I am the individual who sits around identifying the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications that prove your beliefs are false and evil.



> "...millions of human sacrifices on the altar of Greed..." indeed.  ::: snicker snicker :::


You are laughing at the annual slaughter of many millions of innocent human beings.  That is normal, routine and expected for servants of the greatest evil that has ever existed.



> Say, that reminds me - what do you think of the nifty image I made for you?


Did you imagine it could persuade me that you are more than maximally dishonest and evil?

----------


## rpwi

Question for Roy...

I personally acknowledge that there is a land question...that there can be and most likely is a mal-distribution of land which leads to economic privilege or servitude.  To what extent this scales and effects the general economy, I don't know.  What are the best solutions?  I don't know.

But what would stop a land-tax from being inflationary?  eg...  Say there is a primitive economy which is dominated by agriculture.  The vast majority of land is held by a few landowners and they are able to charge excess rent for their control.   If say the landlord is charged x more per acre in taxes...what is to prevent the landowner from raising his rent (which could be indirect as a form of product markup) by that same amount?  So landbaron x gets charged 50k a year in taxes...what is to prevent them from merely raising their prices to recapture this 50k?  

If this was the case...then the landbaron could care less about property taxes because he can just pass it on to the consumer/renter.  In fact those hurt most might those who acquire land for personal property (like homes) and can not pass on the cost.  Granted you do advocate an exemption, but it still seems to me that big business would game a land tax and the public could end up paying the bill.

----------


## Roy L

> But what would stop a land-tax from being inflationary?


The fact that inflation is a monetary phenomenon on which LVT would have absolutely no effect.  In fact, the risk would be DEflation, as LVT eliminated land value and reduced production costs across the board.



> eg...  Say there is a primitive economy which is dominated by agriculture.  The vast majority of land is held by a few landowners and they are able to charge excess rent for their control.


This has sometimes happened when people are not free to pursue alternatives, like the medieval serfs who were legally required to stay on the land.  But it is not normal.



> If say the landlord is charged x more per acre in taxes...what is to prevent the landowner from raising his rent (which could be indirect as a form of product markup) by that same amount?


The fixity of land's supply.  As the landowner can't affect either supply or demand, he can't affect price.  If he tries to charge more than the market rent, he just ends up getting nothing.  This is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years.  LVT cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to tenants, producers, employees, consumers, or anyone else.  It is borne entirely by the landowner.  The actual effect of LVT is therefore to eliminate speculative withholding of land, LOWERING rents.



> So landbaron x gets charged 50k a year in taxes...what is to prevent them from merely raising their prices to recapture this 50k?


People won't pay it.  If they would, what's to stop him from charging it now?



> If this was the case...then the landbaron could care less about property taxes because he can just pass it on to the consumer/renter.  In fact those hurt most might those who acquire land for personal property (like homes) and can not pass on the cost.  Granted you do advocate an exemption, but it still seems to me that big business would game a land tax and the public could end up paying the bill.


One can never know for sure what a government will do in the event.  That is a political problem peculiar to each jurisdiction, and irrelevant to what kind of policy government *should* pursue as a matter of principle.  Implementation is an issue no matter what policy you advocate, even if it is no policy at all.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> But what would stop a land-tax from being inflationary?  eg...  Say there is a primitive economy which is dominated by agriculture.  The vast majority of land is held by a few landowners and they are able to charge excess rent for their control.   If say the landlord is charged x more per acre in taxes...what is to prevent the landowner from raising his rent (which could be indirect as a form of product markup) by that same amount?  So land baron x gets charged 50k a year in taxes...what is to prevent them from merely raising their prices to recapture this 50k?


Firstly, in your example, there is a monopoly in land. In any society, of any ism or economic system,  this is not good as gross inequalities occur.
Secondly, the market does come into effect. The land-baron can only charge what the market will bare.

Ideally monopolies commissions should intervene in land ownership. It appears they ignore land, particularly in Britain where few own most of the land.  But the land-baron cannot hoard land for speculation purposes, as the tax is due whether used or not, so monopolies will be reduced. He will sell off land he cannot use productively. A smallholder paying no rent to a land-baron may make the land economically productive.

----------


## Travlyr

> You have strange idea of socialism.


Socialism is government control over the production of goods and services, and that is accomplished through taxation. You keep arguing for it and I keep arguing against it.




> Land values never came for the sky. Economic activity by the community created them. You have been told this. If you can't understand this just accept it.


Land values are subjectively valued by individuals. Collective economic activity by individuals is the economic activity of the community.




> Your confusion is abundantly clear.


I'm confused? You claim freedom comes from taxation. How? Exactly how does taxing a landowner make him/her more free?




> But the values soaked into the land created by the community gets reclaimed. Otherwise you are freeloading.


How does community increase the value of land? An individual can increase the value of land by clearing it, preparing it to produce good crops, and/or fencing it for livestock, and/or building a dwelling in which to protect against the elements, etc. Individuals can increase the value of land. Exactly how does community increase the value of land?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Socialism is government control over the production of goods and services, and that is accomplished through taxation. You keep arguing for it and I keep arguing against it.


So non-socialist countries that have taxation are now socialist?  Is it worth communicating with the likes of you?  Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh




> Land values are subjectively valued by individuals.


But are set by community demand.  




> Collective economic activity by individuals is the economic activity of the community.


Encouraging. You are getting there.



> I'm confused? You claim freedom comes from taxation. How? Exactly how does taxing a landowner make him/her more free?


LVT is NOT a tax. It reclaims community created wealth. You have repeatedly been told this, but of course it does not sink in.   Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh



> How does community increase the value of land?


You have repeatedly been told how. Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

----------


## Travlyr

> So non-socialist countries that have taxation are now socialist?  Is it worth communicating with the likes of you?  Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
> 
> 
> 
> But are set by community demand.  
> 
> 
> Encouraging. You are getting there.
> 
> ...


*Land Value Tax* is not a tax? Where did you go to school? Or did you go to school?

----------


## Roy L

> *Land Value Tax* is not a tax? Where did you go to school? Or did you go to school?


It is a tax only in the same sense that a user fee like a toll on a public road is a tax: it raises revenue for public purposes.  But like a road toll, LVT is VOLUNTARY: it simply requires repayment of what the landholder has taken.  If you don't want to pay it, just stop depriving everyone else of the benefits government and the community provide at that location.

----------


## Roy L

> Socialism is government control over the production of goods and services,


Wrong.  It is *collective* *ownership* of the means of production (land and capital).  As LVT has no effect on ownership of capital, and government administers possession and use of land in any case, LVT is by definition not socialism.  Stop lying.



> and that is accomplished through taxation.


Another stupid lie.  Any country that has an income tax is socialist?  Stop telling such stupid lies.



> You keep arguing for it and I keep arguing against it.


No.  You do not argue.  You simply deny self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.



> Land values are subjectively valued by individuals.


Lie refuted many times.  Individuals' subjective opinions are of land's UTILITY, not its VALUE.  *Value* is what an item can be traded for in the market, and is therefore by definition *not* anyone's subjective opinion.



> Collective economic activity by individuals is the economic activity of the community.


You might want to reconsider that statement: it's true.



> You claim freedom comes from taxation. How?


By removing the landowner's privilege of enslaving the landless and taking the fruits of others' labor without contributing anything in return.



> Exactly how does taxing a landowner make him/her more free?


ROTFL!  "How does abolishing slavery make a slave owner more free?"

Abolishing absolute monarchy did not make men free by making the *king* more free, dumpling.

Duuuhhhhhhhhhhh.



> How does community increase the value of land?


<yawn>  Now you are just denying and refusing to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality again.  Go to a place where there is no nearby community, and see how much the land is worth.  Now compare it with land in the middle of a community.

Land value is just capitalized after-tax rent, and rent is economic advantage.  The economic advantage obtainable by using a land parcel comes from the services and infrastructure *government* provides, the opportunities and amenities the _community_ provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location.



> An individual can increase the value of land by clearing it, preparing it to produce good crops, and/or fencing it for livestock, and/or building a dwelling in which to protect against the elements, etc.


No, that adds to *improvement* value, not *land* value.  Land value is by definition the value the land would have if all improvements were removed.



> Individuals can increase the value of land. Exactly how does community increase the value of land?


See above.  How much is land worth where it is more than half an hour's drive to the nearest public school?

You just have to refuse to know all facts.

----------


## rpwi

> Ideally monopolies commissions should intervene in land ownership. It appears they ignore land, particularly in Britain where few own most of the land.  But the land-baron cannot hoard land for speculation purposes, as the tax is due whether used or not, so monopolies will be reduced. He will sell off land he cannot use productively. A smallholder paying no rent to a land-baron may make the land economically productive.


Where do you draw the line over what is and isn't considered a land monopoly?

If 10% of the population owns 80% of the land, is that a monopoly?  If so, why not 10% owning 79.9%?  What economic determinant determines when land has been concentrated to monopolistic conditions?

----------


## rpwi

> The fact that inflation is a monetary phenomenon on which LVT would have absolutely no effect.


Are you sure that inflation is exclusively a monetary phenomenon? I disagree.

Say a blight wipes 90% of all crops in the US.  Would not that cause inflation?

Plus currently with fed funds targetting the market has all the money they want.

In fact when you consider bank deposits, near money and other assets that are easy to switch into and out of cash...I don't see a fixed supply of money being a strong constraint on inflation.




> In fact, the risk would be DEflation, as LVT eliminated land value and reduced production costs across the board.


I'm not sure I follow that logic.  Most of the time when companies face rising costs...they merely pass on these costs to the consumers.  They can do so, because their competition is in most likelyhood facing the same rising costs.  In fact, many corporations in uncompetitive industries actually like to see regulations/taxes...because they know their competition faces the same, its creates barriers to entry for new companies and they can just pass on the costs to consumers.  




> The fixity of land's supply.  As the landowner can't affect either supply or demand, he can't affect price.  If he tries to charge more than the market rent, he just ends up getting nothing.  This is a fact of economics that has been known for 200 years.  LVT cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to tenants, producers, employees, consumers, or anyone else.  It is borne entirely by the landowner.  The actual effect of LVT is therefore to eliminate speculative withholding of land, LOWERING rents.


Normally, yes...a business can't merely raise prices all things being equal because competition will steal their business.  But what happens is that land creates a natural barrier to entry to the market place.  I can't create more of it.  So say I tax coal mines 1 million dollars a year.  Normally each mine charges 1 million dollars.  Will the mines go out of business?  No.  They will simply raise their rates.  They can do so because their competition also is facing higher costs and if they don't raise rates apportionately they will run out of supply.




> People won't pay it.  If they would, what's to stop him from charging it now?


For starters....with a land tax...the government/people would have that extra money that they didn't have before.  With more money this would create inflation.




> One can never know for sure what a government will do in the event.  That is a political problem peculiar to each jurisdiction, and irrelevant to what kind of policy government *should* pursue as a matter of principle.  Implementation is an issue no matter what policy you advocate, even if it is no policy at all.


It is a tricky issue...I don't know what the best answer is.

----------


## Roy L

> Where do you draw the line over what is and isn't considered a land monopoly?
> 
> If 10% of the population owns 80% of the land, is that a monopoly?  If so, why not 10% owning 79.9%?  What economic determinant determines when land has been concentrated to monopolistic conditions?


Land is a canonical example of monopoly.  As the supply of land is fixed, the land market is always inherently a monopoly market.  Given the assumption of rationality or profit maximization, it doesn't matter if one person owns all the land or it is divided up among everyone: no one can do any better than to charge the full rent of each parcel.

----------


## Roy L

> Are you sure that inflation is exclusively a monetary phenomenon? I disagree.
> 
> Say a blight wipes 90% of all crops in the US.  Would not that cause inflation?


No.



> Plus currently with fed funds targetting the market has all the money they want.


Hehe.  I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have all the money *I* want.



> In fact when you consider bank deposits, near money and other assets that are easy to switch into and out of cash...I don't see a fixed supply of money being a strong constraint on inflation.


When has inflation ever occurred without increased money supply?



> Most of the time when companies face rising costs...they merely pass on these costs to the consumers.  They can do so, because their competition is in most likelyhood facing the same rising costs.


Bingo.  It is only the landowner who faces rising costs with LVT, not the producer, because the tax does not alter the land rent.  Google "Law of Rent."



> Normally, yes...a business can't merely raise prices all things being equal because competition will steal their business.  But what happens is that land creates a natural barrier to entry to the market place.


Yes but that barrier is already in place.



> I can't create more of it.


No one can.



> So say I tax coal mines 1 million dollars a year.  Normally each mine charges 1 million dollars.  Will the mines go out of business?  No.  They will simply raise their rates.  They can do so because their competition also is facing higher costs and if they don't raise rates apportionately they will run out of supply.


That tax will reduce the number of coal mines.  LVT _WILL NOT_ reduce the amount of land.  Any landowner who tries to pass on the tax will just find he loses his tenants.



> For starters....with a land tax...the government/people would have that extra money that they didn't have before.  With more money this would create inflation.


No, the proposal is to reduce and abolish other taxes commensurately.  And even if it weren't, it would not be inflationary because more taxes means less money for taxpayers to spend.

----------


## rpwi

> Say a blight wipes 90% of all crops in the US. Would not that cause inflation?
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				No.


Why would increasing the ratio of money to that which money can buy (through counterfeiting) cause inflation...  Yet when you keep money static and destroy wealth, that doesn't create inflation?  If a blight wipes out 90% of our crops...wouldn't it be logical to assume say lettuce would be more expensive than normal?  Wouldn't this contribute to inflation?




> Plus currently with fed funds targeting the market has all the money they want.
> 			
> 		
> 
> Hehe.  I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have all the money *I* want.


But you could borrow from those you can create money directly or indirectly.  This makes it very easy for LVT to be inflationary.




> When has inflation ever occurred without increased money supply?


Not the fairest question as most central banks constantly expand the monetary base and the banks almost always expand the monetary aggregates.  




> So say I tax coal mines 1 million dollars a year. Normally each mine charges 1 million dollars. Will the mines go out of business? No. They will simply raise their rates. They can do so because their competition also is facing higher costs and if they don't raise rates apportionately they will run out of supply.
> 			
> 		
> 
> That tax will reduce the number of coal mines.  LVT _WILL NOT_ reduce the amount of land.


Perhaps I chose incorrect terms...let's just say that privately owned coal deposits (not mines) would be taxed.




> Any landowner who tries to pass on the tax will just find he loses his tenants.


There are many ways in which privilege can be extracted from land.  If I have an unjust apportionment of land and simply mine/harvest the fruits of the land and sell them directly onto the market...there is no rent per say.  But there is an indirect rent in the markup of what I sell.  I could buy labor and sell land + stored labor and my privileged status would enable me to collect unjust rewards without applying any literal rent.

But assuming you were referring to a more abstract definition of a tenant...I do believe the land baron could raise prices with LVT.  I mean forget the LVT for a moment...why don't landowners raise the prices now?  The answer is that the competition it too strong at that point.  Why don't they lower prices to increase volume?  Because they lack the capacity to fulfill demand at the price.  Beating your competition is no good if you run out of what you sell.

Granted apartments are not land, but they will make a useful analogy here.  Say the average apartment collections 800 dollars in rent per month and 600 goes to pay the debt financing cost of the apartment and 200 goes to profit.  The government enacts a 300 dollar tax per month (on average).  Will the apartments go out of business?  It looks like a -100 dollar a month loss!  No.  Everybody needs somewhere to sleep...so the apartments will be able to raise the the amount they charge to 1100 per month.  I mean a couple of apartments might believe they can only raise rent by 100, so they don't get any profit but they at least pay the bills.  But then they would fill up fast and they would not have the capacity to utilize their minimally marked up apartments.

This raises another question though.

Why does LVT discriminate against equity finance over debt finance.  Farmland is the dominant use of land in my area and most are financed heavily by banks.  Isn't it fair to say that loan assets can be culpable in extracting privileged profits just as personal/company profits can be?  I mean say a Macadamia Farm will generated 200k in revenue a year.  The cost of the farm is 1 million.  If I buy the farm with 20% equity and 80% debt...is that significantly different (from the standpoint of privilege) of buying the farm with 80% equity and 20% debt)?  We (equity) and the banks will enjoy the revenue of the farm either way...it just will be split differently.  It could be dividends or it could be interest payments.  Why would LVT pick on me the owner and not the banker?   Isn't the banker guilty of fleecing the public? 




> No, the proposal is to reduce and abolish other taxes commensurately.  And even if it weren't, it would not be inflationary because more taxes means less money for taxpayers to spend.


But if he were to be able to raise prices as I suggest, then he wouldn't have less money.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Originally Posted by Roy L
> 
> One can never know for sure what a government will do in the event. That is a political problem peculiar to each jurisdiction, and irrelevant to what kind of policy government should pursue as a matter of principle. Implementation is an issue no matter what policy you advocate, even if it is no policy at all.
> 
> 
> It is a tricky issue...I don't know what the best answer is.


This is a problem faced with our government when interpreting corporate charters. In American jurisprudence, it is not the _stated intent_ of a corporation or the philosophies held by founding members that are considered by the legislature or the courts when granting or interpreting a corporate charter, but rather the maximum extent of corporate powers _that could be employed_ by a corporate body once a charter is granted. In reality, governments are absolutely no different. The world has learned from sad experience that what a dictator promises is often meaningless.  Once firmly empowered and in control, s/he can be benevolent or malevolent.  Despite all political assurances, there is nothing in his/her "charter" that guarantees otherwise, and that goes back to the question of the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of men.    

This parallels one of the biggest (political) problems facing LVT proponents, and that is how they deal with valid objections regarding what abuses COULD happen at the hands of the State (the taxing jurisdictions) once these bodies assume de facto ownership of all land, and ultimate control of all land titles, including a) how land is valued and ad valorem taxes are levied for land rents, b) what other taxes might still exist and to what extent after implementation, and c) how wealth is spent or otherwise redistributed once collected. 

Objections, even in this thread, are dealt with as implementation proposals as they are imagined and devised by individuals -- everything from formulas for land valuation to exemptions (and/or dividends) for individuals.  But the devil in their details are in the fact that none of these proposals are presented as first principles, but are interpreted by many as only the spoonful of political or philosophical promise sugar to help the LVT medicine go down.  

The fact that there are no guarantees (even offered) is usually dismissed, as most of the LVT proponents I have interacted with consider all such objections to be secondary issues (out of those forthright enough to admit the objections are valid), while holding up LVT as a matter of first principle. As such, LVT proponents tend to be far more trusting of the state, and instead push hard, with moral polemics and economic arguments, that LVT should be agreed upon in principle and implemented first, with problems or potential abuses dealt with and corrected after the fact.  That approach creates a political brick wall that is predictably stained with the blood from the smashed foreheads of many LVT proponents, including Henry George.  

LVT proponents are definitely fighting an uphill battle with regard to trust in government, especially in light of governments they already see as evil for the policies they've enacted to date.  The only reason a government would be trusted with LVT: the fact of LVT would be evidence that the government is finally "doing the right thing" - headed in the "right direction".  And who doesn't love and trust a government that does according to their will, their philosophies? 

As a matter of first principals, I look to the protection of individuals - NOT "the community" and not "the state".  

Many opponents, like myself, look to a much broader context in terms of the issue of individual (minority by definition) trust in the state. One of those trust issues stems from the state's proven "revenue expansion" tendencies - including levels of obfuscating complexity - for any revenue stream once the power to collect is established as a matter of principle. Few argued against the arguably "simple" Income Tax when it was ratified in 1913, and primarily because it had NO discernible affect on most individuals.  _"First they came for the wealthy, and I did not speak out..."_ In 1913, the top tax bracket was 7 percent on all income over $500,000 (orders of magnitude more today’s dollars), and the lowest tax bracket was 1 percent.  Most individuals paid no income tax, so it wasn't an issue for most. The rate of expansion that finally encompassed the vast majority of the population with confiscatory abuses were exponential, but blossomed later into a monster, AFTER the camel's nose was squarely in the tent, with income tax established as a first principle. The seed of another head for the hydra.

I have yet to hear an LVT proponent deal with this except to dismiss it as something that just "goes with the [political] territory".  It does not seem to be a problem for them, or a valid objection for LVT, first and foremost because they honestly believe in earnest that landownership is the biggest evil ever contrived, and the root cause of most of the poverty and oppression in the world, and that LVT is a panacea - the only moral, sensible, economically feasible and sustainable regime possible.  They also observe that LVT is already implemented, tried to whatever degree and form it is tried in other parts of the world, which they are quick to point to as model successes, which cause them to hold out hope.  Comes the continued cry: *LVT first, corrections after.*  Get that camel's nose squarely in the tent.  Potential abuses are incidental, and up to the people themselves to correct. 

Anyone forced to change their opinion is still of that same opinion, so the objection that is constantly dismissed still remains. What is to prevent LVT from being just another revenue stream - one more ADDITIONAL power, a system of abuses to stack on top of the rest? Why is there no push to abolish other taxes FIRST, *as a matter of first principles*?  Obviously, if the dream of so-called "single taxers" is to be realized, _to get from here to there_ requires at least the acknowledgment that a sow's ear is in already in place of the LVT silk purse.  The state has already become addicted to current revenue streams, and has created REAL ADDICTIONS to real people (MOST of the population is addicted and dependent in one form or another) who rely on these revenue streams for their lives and livelihoods. So a compromise in the form of a transition proposal has to made.  And how is that treated by LVT proponents?




> "...the proposal is to reduce and abolish other taxes commensurately.


And by "the proposal", Roy means, of course, "his proposal". Even as a transition, or shift from many tax mechanisms into one, the absolute abolishment of other taxes (by a given date) could be proposed as a "LVT sink or swim" rule.  But it isn't. As a matter of first principles LVT implementation could be CONDITIONED upon the abolishment (NOT just promises of reduction) of other taxes.  But you won't hear that proposal from very many, because the elimination of other taxes is only presented in the context of a _theoretical possibility_, and not a guarantee of any kind.  Never a condition.  The cry is for LVT, first and foremost - fix and deal with everything else after. Why, it will be so liberating, and work so swimmingly well, that _governments would be fools not to get rid of the other, now unnecessary, taxes_! Now sell that to people living in the real world, who have their eye on the reputation of the state, and not some imagined state that would finally be sated, and that would magically transform into a Good Witch once the LVT panacea is applied.  

Likewise comes the objection: What is to prevent the tax or taxing rules or formulas from morphing or expanding to swallow up and encompass individuals in their homes, _even on the worst lands_? What is to prevent a floor from being established - a minimum LVT tax from being levied on everyone? What is to prevent land valuations from being inflated, just as property taxes so often are -- whether by assessing values higher, or by increasing the mill rates, so that a higher bill results from even the lowest valuations?   

LVT proponents from Henry George on have proposed only that "the full value" of unearned land rents be recovered. That's LAND RENT TIMES ONE (although some propose that 85-90% be levied, acknowledging the role that landholders would play in collection and administration).  However, what if that turned out not to be sufficient for government's stated needs? What is to prevent that rule from being changed to LAND RENT TIMES 1.5, or even 2, or 3, or 7?  You can still value land the same way, but revenue could increase by rationalize that 1X land rent is not sufficient, and raise the multiplier accordingly (AS IS DONE WITH REGULARITY WITH PROPERTY TAXES). A war is all it takes for that to happen, along with the straight-faced assurance that it would be temporary only, due to extraordinary circumstances.

Roy-the-benevolent-dictator says that this could not happen, but that's because _that is not in his proposal_ -- that's a different LVT, and something different than what he proposes.  Some argue that it would be impossible for the state to increase land rents, or that it would "not be in the state's interest", based on their reasoning, their preferred rules, and their preferred formulas.  But that's no different than saying how things would work if you were the dictator.  It's the same reasoning that benevolence COULD be found in any dictator. It is completely within the realm of possibility that a supreme dictator COULD BE benevolent.  It's NOT probable given the history of the world, but it is certainly possible. But what does that have to do with trust?  

LVT could be _conditioned_ upon absolute guarantees (not political promises or incidental, secondary, or initial assurances) that individuals would be Constitutionally secure in their homes, truly free and unaffected by the tax -- not just as a matter of personal exemptions for some formulated amount. Not "exempt", but rather IMMUNE to the degree everyone would be.  In other words, landownership and allodial title not abolished at all _for primary residences_, even if an area limit was placed that applied equally to all.  That would stop the vast majority of all land speculation in its tracks, and allow LVT to function outside the realm of personal living conditions.  Landowners of primary residences could speculate and trade up or down all they wanted, but only to an area limit -- the remainder of the land could be allocated as a matter of taxable privilege only, according to the dictates of LVT, but the people themselves would be free.   

But no. Private landownership (allodial title) _in any form_ is already condemned as the evil of evils - abusive in all cases, and which must be stamped out entirely.  

For LVT proponents their uphill battle is well deserved, I think, with proposals I hope continue to be ignored, and continue to go down in flames.  LVT is nothing more than an ad valorem tax on land -- a mechanism for revenue to the taxing jurisdiction.  All arguments of the incidental effects and wonders of LVT notwithstanding, LVT in itself is not a first principle, and can be abused like any other mechanism.  Until geolibs get their actual first principles straight, and until they focus on all individuals and their rights, as NON-COLLECTIVIZED, NON-SOCIALIZED rights, I'll continue to see the majority of them as little more than misguided socialist religious zealots on a mission to make perpetual renters out of everyone -- not just the "evil landowners" they fantasize about turning the tables on.

----------


## rpwi

> ...


Oh, I definitely see the LVT as a cure that could be worse than than the disease.  I however acknowledge that there is a disease.  How significant it is...I don't know.  

Out of curiosity, do you yourself believe that private land ownership can create unjust privilege?  To me it clearly can.  A government could award the entire continent of North America to a settler and mainstream economics would accept that as being just peachy.  Is that an unfair extreme example?  So what if say colonial Britain awarded the region of New England to just one person?  Too extreme?  What about just Maine?  What about an entire county in Maine?  Using the a limit, you can quickly establish that any sort of private land could lead to tyranny.  

Would equal land delegation from government to citizens lead to privilege?  IMO no and would be a good solution....(assuming no population growth and equal access to inheritance).  But even then the probability that government could PERFECTLY sub-allocate land is too remote IMO.  We have mis-allocation...it's just a matter of degree and whether it is significant or not.

To me that there is a land problem is completely separate from any apparent fixes.  I could have a blood infection...but just because leaches didn't cure me, doesn't mean I don't have a blood infection.  In the same manner, there can be a land issue, but just because LVT is not the right answer...doesn't mean there still isn't a land question.

There are many qualms with the LVT...but IMO the biggest is that in our modern economy productive assets are somewhat fungible.  Say the government in the early 20th century gave the entire island chain of Hawaii to one individual.  He could use he property to say grow lots of fruit trees...and profit in excess of his proportionate contributions to the economy.  Or he could sell he land to United Fruit...and use that money to buy t-bills.  This individual still enjoys a life of privilege...yet owns no land.  Along comes the LVT to 'right the wrongs'.  And yet the land seller suffers no taxes (despite his enrichment from land) and United Fruit bears full responsibility for the LVT tax (until the population grows then they too enjoy privilege).  This is what IMO chiefly makes LVT so complex and unwieldy in a modern economy as a proper answer to the land question.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Out of curiosity, do you yourself believe that private land ownership can create unjust privilege?  To me it clearly can.


Yes.  LVT throws the baby out with the bathwater, as it shifts even the possibility of abuse and unjust privilege entirely to the state.  And this is on the naive assumption that _at least the state has to "give something back"_.   

Originally, one of Henry George's little known proposals along with LVT, which he later abandoned, was limiting the area of apportioned land parcels.  




> A government could award the entire continent of North America to a settler and mainstream economics would accept that as being just peachy.


Yes, and it doesn't matter whether the award of a massive area of land is granted privately to one or held entirely in reserve by the state (as in the case of hundreds of millions of acres of BLM lands). In both cases the effect is the same, as it affects and can be oppressive to individuals.  If LVT proponents argued that these lands be made available FIRST (as a matter of first principles) is there any question about what would happen to the support they enjoy by all the Greens who are among some of the staunchest supporters of LVT?  Roy has stated that he believes that NO lands should be withheld from the market. And I agree. You see Roy and I go the rounds - the Greens, many of whom already view humans as an aberration and blight on nature, who believe that humans should be separated "from nature", confined as much as possible to small vertical concrete jungles, would be all over him like white on rice.  

I'm all about individual rights, which are NOT collective or socialized in any way, as I see that as a sure-fire recipe for tyranny and abuse.  I believe that ALL individuals are entitled to the opportunity for the very privileges LVT proponents argue as belonging to "the community" as a matter of right (not conditional privilege).  I do not, however, believe that this power should unlimited for anyone, _public or private_.  But that's not a problem for me as a matter of principle. We already have limitations on all rights, especially as their impinges on the rights of others.  The right to free speech precludes yelling fire in a crowded theater, just as it precludes yelling into someone's ear through an amplifier at 130 decibels.   

Thus, hypothetically, if individuals already had the absolute untrammeled RIGHT to allodial title of purchased lands, I would not consider it unreasonable that this was limited per individual (and excluded from foreigners, corporations and others acting as a matter of privilege only).  Not the limited ownership of land. That can still be unlimited. Just the right to purchase and own land (based on land area, NOT some variable amount of an exemption that applied against value) as a sovereign, duty-free, the area limit of which would apply equally to every individual.  Under that implementation so-called "unearned" rents would be enjoyed by individuals, but limited only to a given area, and therefore not prone to monopolistic abuse.   If that was in place - not as a possibility or a political promise or legislative footnote, but rather an express Constitutional guarantee that I felt I could trust, then I really would not care about how the rest of LVT was formulated for those acting outside of the realm of individual right, and into the realm of commercial privilege, with two market classes coexist: one with rights, and one with conditional privileges, as the class with actual rights (individuals) naturally serves to keep the privileged class, and the entire market by extension, in check. 

Also note that I am not proposing "free" land to anyone, or an ownership entitlement as a grant.  The state could auction unallocated lands and take in revenues as these are introduced into the market.  All of those lands could be subject to LVT -- with the exception of individuals who are *absolutely immune* based on a given per-individual area.  Then are the children free.  They could even compete with the state for land rents (keeping the state in check), as they rent their allocated lands to privileged entities for a fee.  One less person for the state to be concerned about "reclaiming" rents for.  Nobody is deprived in the process.   

Meanwhile, you have an individual who is willing to rent their land CHEAP. They have a right to own duty-free land, but no means to acquire it.  Think the market wouldn't provide for that?  "We'll buy your land for you and help you pay for it in as rent paid to you for a given time."?  The value of the immunity is inherent to the individual, and non-transferable.  Suddenly individuals who are not exercising their immunity become valued by those acting as a matter of privilege only, and not right.   

I could be wrong, but for me, that protects individual rights, leaves the market free, and ends all possible tyranny, *public or private*.  The state could experiment with anything it wanted outside that realm without affecting the individuals who would be forever immune, as a matter of existence as a real person, and their citizenship immunity.  And since this _immunity-by-area_ would have to apply equally to all - without respect of persons, and applicable ONLY to real, free and natural persons under the law, what do you think the very wealthy landowners are going to want that area amount to be -- given you have to multiply that area by the entire population? It won't be small, of that much I'm fairly certain.  And if the population grew to the point where more population existed than immunities per area could be granted - that's when the area of immunity could shrink accordingly. 

_The People_ should not have actual unalienable rights to landownership. Only _The Persons_.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Yes.  LVT throws the baby out with the bathwater, as it shifts even the possibility of abuse and unjust privilege entirely to the state.


Gobbledygook!  



> Originally, one of Henry George's little known proposals along with LVT, which he later abandoned, was limiting the area of apportioned land parcels.


Henry George DID NOT invent taxation of land values. He originally wanted state ownership of land and leased back as in highly successful Hong Kong. But saw that taxation of land by its value is the perfect answer. He proposed many things, so did many others, when refining his thoughts.

This has been extedned to Geonomics. This takes into account all land and its resources, electromagnetic spectrum, seas, seabed, etc.  All common resources given by nature.




> The People should not have actual unalienable rights to landownership. Only The Persons.


The people "own" the land. Title (a set of rights) is granted for occupation. But the people reclaim the wealth they created from inelastic and unique land.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Henry George DID NOT invent taxation of land values.


I never claimed that he invented it, not that it's the slightest bit relevant to anything we're discussing. The genesis of the idea came to George from John Stuart Mill, who got it from his father, James Mill. 




> Mr. George...stumbled across Mill's pamphlets, published in 1870, on the reform of land tenure. In those pamphlets Mill for the first time put forward the famous proposal for the appropriation of the unearned increment. But the proposal was not a new one. It is to be found in the first edition of Mill's book, published in 1848, and it is to be found still further back than that in his father's book on political economy, published in 1821.
> 
> Arnold Toynbee, "Progress and poverty" a criticism of Mr. Henry George, 1883





> He originally wanted state ownership of land and leased back as in highly successful Hong Kong. But saw that taxation of land by its value is the perfect answer. He proposed many things, so did many others, when refining his thoughts.


Are you implying that Hong Kong was in Henry George's thoughts at the time, or were you just throwing that in for good measure because you think it's a good model and selling point for LVT?  I answered your Hong Kong question several posts back and you never responded.  Go read it - the history of Hong Kong, the fact that it has more than just an LVT for revenue, and especially the point about 95% of Hong Kong undeveloped, and withheld from leasing, development, occupation or other use.  

And George didn't just see taxation of land by its value as the perfect answer; he saw it as a panacea, given his myopic belief that private landownership was ultimately responsible for all of the poverty, misery, suffering and economic oppression in the world. 




> This has been extedned to Geonomics. This takes into account all land and its resources, electromagnetic spectrum, seas, seabed, etc.  All common resources given by nature.


And that extension is the "dirty little secret" that creates yet another strong objection to LVT as a camel's nose in the tent, and another reason it appeals to Leftist Greens and eco-fascists everywhere, because for them the "single tax" solution is not just about common ownership and ad valorem taxes levied on *land* alone, but could extend, by that same theory to all resources (READ=factors of production) provided by nature.  A "single tax *mechanism*" from myriad resources.  Land, for this ilk, is just the foot in the door. 




> The people "own" the land. Title (a set of rights) is granted for occupation. But the people reclaim the wealth they created from inelastic and unique land.


That's certainly one way of framing it.  Do you know what the word 'normative' means -- the difference between a positive 'is', and a normative 'should', or 'ought'?

----------


## redbluepill

> Baloney. I understand what you are saying, I'm just not buying into your bull$#@!. "_40% of the land area is reserved as country parks and nature reserves._" <- Socialism. Pack the people in the cities, tax them on their land, hoard the rest of it for the common good determined by rulers. That is socialism to me. Commonly created wealth ... LOL ... what a joke of a concept. Of course I am self-interested and of course I am greedy. The entire world is made up of greedy self-interested people. That is why individuals create wealth from the resources of the Earth. That is why they should be allowed to own as much land as they can manage. Geo philosophy is just dumb socialist collectivism that you are trying to paint with the gibberish freedom brush.
> 
> War is not really Peace. Tyranny is not really Liberty. Collectivism is not really Individualism. Geoism does not deliver freedom for Individuals.
> 
> Allodial title to land and all other possessions delivers freedom.


One of the great libertarian thinkers of the 20th century, Albert Jay Nock, would disagree 

"The only reformer abroad in the world in my time who interested me in the least was Henry George, because his project did not contemplate prescription, but, on the contrary, would reduce it to almost zero. He was the only one of the lot who believed in freedom, or (as far as I could see) had any approximation to an intelligent idea of what freedom is, and of the economic prerequisites to attaining it....One is immensely tickled to see how things are coming out nowadays with reference to his doctrine, for George was in fact the best friend the capitalist ever had. He built up the most complete and most impregnable defense of the rights of capital that was ever constructed, and if the capitalists of his day had had sense enough to dig in behind it, their successors would not now be squirming under the merciless exactions which collectivism is laying on them, and which George would have no scruples whatever about describing as sheer highwaymanry."

--Albert J. Nock "Thoughts on Utopia"
http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

----------


## EcoWarrier

> One of the great libertarian thinkers of the 20th century, Albert Jay Nock, would disagree 
> 
> "The only reformer abroad in the world in my time who interested me in the least was Henry George, because his project *did not contemplate prescription [direction]*, but, on the contrary, would reduce it to almost zero. He was the only one of the lot who believed in freedom, or (as far as I could see) had any approximation to an intelligent idea of what freedom is, and of the economic prerequisites to attaining it....One is immensely tickled to see how things are coming out nowadays with reference to his doctrine, for George was in fact the best friend the capitalist ever had. *He built up the most complete and most impregnable defense of the rights of capital that was ever constructed*, and if the capitalists of his day had had sense enough to dig in behind it, their successors would not now be squirming under the merciless exactions which collectivism is laying on them, and which George would have no scruples whatever about describing as sheer highwaymanry."
> 
> --Albert J. Nock "Thoughts on Utopia"
> http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html


_"George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes."
- Professor Mason Gaffney (US economist)_

Geoism, an economic movement, can fit into any political ism, that confuses many as can be seen by responses on this thread. Marxism, Socialism, Libertarianism, have all been directed towards Geoism. Quite amusing.

----------


## EcoWarrier

In the wake of the industrial revolution a sub-underclass emerged of grinding poverty.  How could this happen with all these technological advances and mass-production bringing down prices?  This baffled many.  This should not be so.  Many analyzed the situation.  Karl Marx analyzed and wrote mainly on the failures of Capitalism - and got most right.  He came up with his solutions to rectify this imbalance in society where an army of poor was created - an army of poor that should never have materialized.

The likes of Henry George was also baffled why we had an army of poor in an age of technological advancement. He concluded differently in his solution.

Many concluded that the problem that created this layer of grinding poverty was the free-market.  To them it enabled wealth to quickly rise to the top and stay there.  They viewed the free-market had to be strictly controlled or eliminated.  Many kept the free-market and introduced socialist constructs, which worked in alleviating the grinding poverty level.  But it was not the complete answer as a massive imbalance in wealth distribution continued. And the root of the problem did not lay with a true free-market. 

Many just were apologists for the system that created this grinding poverty pointing to laziness of the working people, etc, etc, and wanted it to remain. They tended to be people who gained a lot out of the far from perfect system - self-interest and greed. This is largely the case today. 

George saw that the free-market was a success and created all this wealth and advancement, so must be kept and be the core.  George based his theories on the free-market. An unrigged and unmonopolized free-market. A economic system that was very free and largely self controlling with minimal interference from the state.  That is fine but by itself it would not completely solve the problem. 

George saw that the root of the problem that created the massive imbalance was that commonwealth was being appropriated by private individuals and organizations - *socialized wealth was being privatized* aiding in creating the grinding poverty layer.  He  also saw that private wealth was being socialized by taking income from individuals - *private wealth was being socialized*.  By reversing this injustice the wrongs will be righted.  George sought to keep socially created wealth in the social domain and privately created wealth in the private domain.  So simple. Bingo!  It works.

*
1. Keep socially created wealth socialized.
2. Keep privately created wealth privatized.*

So elegant, so simple.

----------


## EcoWarrier

I love these made up empty rhetorical, words, statements and phrases that the defeated always come up with:

*1. Leftist Greens 
2. eco-fascists*

----------


## Steven Douglas

It's funny - all along I've never really been against LVT, but more in strong defense of what I consider a much higher principle that I believe transcends LVT completely. This principle is one that is either disregarded or only poorly considered at best by most LVT proponents, who believe that the taxing mechanism will magically protect individual rights on its own.   

Note that in this post I am deliberately begging the propertarian question by referring to land in terms of ownership, and not a mere "holding" or other term. That is because what I am proposing is ownership. Just not absolute, and not applicable to just any old entity that comes along.  Also for the sake of this post, when I say "own" or "ownership", I mean as a matter of allodial title, but not the classical definition or usage, as the status would be inherent in the OWNER, NOT THE TITLE, NOT THE LAND ITSELF. 

So I'm jumping on the LVT bandwagon, albeit as a complete rogue who rejects ALL FORMER VERSIONS on principle, while embracing all of the parts I know for a fact are well-founded. 

So here's my Proviso, qualified addendum to Locke's, and my thoughts in a nutshell for a mechanism, in the form of an inalienable right, which would function extremely well alongside LVT as a single tax in what I would consider a truly free market -- to those who are truly free as a matter of right.  

*THEORETICAL PER CAPITA LIMITS*

Locke talked about what happens once a population grows. However, with _any population_ there is ALREADY a limit to the amount of land everyone could, in theory, own. Because land is a requirement for life, and because I view the opportunity for duty-free sovereign ownership of land (along with the power to dispose of it) in that light, I also acknowledge the fact that land could be withheld from access by any number of entities or mechanisms, including rent-seeking monopolies (public or private), acting as barriers to entry _for individuals_.  

My thought is that LVT could, and should, apply to those entities acting as barriers, without that mechanism providing a barrier to the individuals LVT is ostensibly purported to protect in the first place.

As an example, the population of the US as of the latest census is currently around 313,735,000.  The total land area privately owned is approximately 1,378,000,000 acres.  http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB14/eib14j.pdf

That area divided by the total population comes out to 4.39 acres that are theoretically possible per individual to own. Federal lands included, the total area is roughly 2,264,000,000 acres, or 7.21 acres that are theoretically possible at this time for each person in the population to own. 

Land is not fungible. While neighboring lands may have similar values, no two land parcels are exactly alike, and the value determinations for individuals will always vary for any number of reasons. Thus, where primary personal residential land is concerned, I disregard the idea that anyone has a right to access to land that is "just as much and as good" as what someone else already owns.  It doesn't matter. Area, not value, is the opportunity floor anyone can attain and work with, duty free, and trade up or down from. 

No matter how you slice it, land area is fixed, while population is not.  A ratio of land area to population could be used to determine an area amount (always transient) for which INDIVIDUALS (_to the absolute exclusion_ of foreigners, corporations, collectives, or anyone acting as a matter of privilege) could be IMMUNE to LVT. Completely and absolutely. NOT "exempt", as a matter of market value, but immune, as a matter of area per individual.  If you're fortunate enough to have primary residential land in a city that grows up around you, in an area where the land increases in value, the land rents upon sale are your private windfall, which does not belong to neighbors, the community or anyone else. 

Meanwhile, the majority of the now privately owned and controlled 1,378,000,000 acres are titles held by entities acting as a matter of privilege, and not right, and would thus subject to an artificial cost of ownership known as LVT, and the source of funding for government.  Meanwhile, the people themselves are FREE - to pursue life, liberty, property and duty-free property in land, right up to their theoretical opportunity allotment limits.

----------


## Roy L

> It's funny - all along I've never really been against LVT,


Lie.  As you hate liberty (for everyone but yourself), justice and truth, you have no choice but to hate LVT.  That is why you will tell any lie, no matter how preposterous, about what LVT proponents plainly say, and about the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality, in order to deceive people into opposing the LVT that would make them free and prosperous.

It's just pure evil.



> but more in strong defense of what I consider a much higher principle that I believe transcends LVT completely.


Religious belief is not an argument.



> This principle is one that is either disregarded or only poorly considered at best by most LVT proponents,


Because it is provably objectively false.



> who believe that the taxing mechanism will magically protect individual rights on its own.


Lie.  The taxing mechanism is only one indisputably necessary aspect.



> Note that in this post I am deliberately begging the propertarian question by referring to land in terms of ownership, and not a mere "holding" or other term.


Right, because fallacy is your only argument, and question-begging is at least so easy that even you can figure out how to do it.



> That is because what I am proposing is ownership. Just not absolute, and not applicable to just any old entity that comes along.  Also for the sake of this post, when I say "own" or "ownership", I mean as a matter of allodial title, but not the classical definition or usage, as the status would be inherent in the OWNER, NOT THE TITLE, NOT THE LAND ITSELF.


Gibberish.



> So I'm jumping on the LVT bandwagon, albeit as a complete rogue who rejects ALL FORMER VERSIONS on principle, while embracing all of the parts I know for a fact are well-founded.


You know for a fact that all of it is well founded, as that has been proved to you many times.



> So here's my Proviso, qualified addendum to Locke's, and my thoughts in a nutshell for a mechanism, in the form of an inalienable right, which would function extremely well alongside LVT as a single tax in what I would consider a truly free market -- to those who are truly free as a matter of right.


No, you're just going to tell some more stupid lies to rationalize landowner privilege.



> *THEORETICAL PER CAPITA LIMITS*
> 
> Locke talked about what happens once a population grows. However, with _any population_ there is ALREADY a limit to the amount of land everyone could, in theory, own. Because land is a requirement for life, and because I view the opportunity for duty-free sovereign ownership of land (along with the power to dispose of it) in that light,


See?  You already told a stupid lie.  It is indisputable that ownership of land and the power to dispose of it are NOT requirements for life, as they were inconceivable to our hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding ancestors, who lived just fine without owning or disposing of land.

I'm identifying your stupid lies again, Steven.  That's what I do.  It's not fun, but it's a habit by now.



> I also acknowledge the fact that land could be withheld from access by any number of entities or mechanisms, including rent-seeking monopolies (public or private), acting as barriers to entry _for individuals_.  
> 
> My thought is that LVT could, and should, apply to those entities acting as barriers, without that mechanism providing a barrier to the individuals LVT is ostensibly purported to protect in the first place.


There is always going to be a barrier, because land is scarce and its supply is fixed.



> As an example, the population of the US as of the latest census is currently around 313,735,000.  The total land area privately owned is approximately 1,378,000,000 acres.  http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB14/eib14j.pdf
> 
> That area divided by the total population comes out to 4.39 acres that are theoretically possible per individual to own. Federal lands included, the total area is roughly 2,264,000,000 acres, or 7.21 acres that are theoretically possible at this time for each person in the population to own. 
> 
> Land is not fungible. While neighboring lands may have similar values, no two land parcels are exactly alike, and the value determinations for individuals will always vary for any number of reasons. Thus, where primary personal residential land is concerned, I disregard the idea that anyone has a right to access to land that is "just as much and as good" as what someone else already owns.


IOW, having realized that you intend to advocate wholesale, uncompensated violation of people's rights, you simply decide that you will not be thinking about other people's rights.



> It doesn't matter.


So liberty, justice and truth do not matter... to you, that is.



> Area, not value, is the opportunity floor anyone can attain and work with, duty free, and trade up or down from.


A preposterous lie.  The opportunity represented by seven acres of mountainside in Alaska is the same as the opportunity presented by seven acres of prime retail space in NYC??  You again remind us of Voltaire's penetrating observation that those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.



> No matter how you slice it, land area is fixed, while population is not.  A ratio of land area to population could be used to determine an area amount (always transient) for which INDIVIDUALS (_to the absolute exclusion_ of foreigners, corporations, collectives, or anyone acting as a matter of privilege) could be IMMUNE to LVT. Completely and absolutely. NOT "exempt", as a matter of market value, but immune, as a matter of area per individual.


Yakking brainlessly about area is the infallible indicator of the anti-LVT liar's cornered desperation.



> If you're fortunate enough to have primary residential land in a city that grows up around you, in an area where the land increases in value, the land rents upon sale are your private windfall, which does not belong to neighbors, the community or anyone else.


So the landowner is privileged to take the value others have created.  Check.  I knew from the outset that that was the only real goal of your stupid lies.



> Meanwhile, the majority of the now privately owned and controlled 1,378,000,000 acres are titles held by entities acting as a matter of privilege, and not right, and would thus subject to an artificial cost of ownership known as LVT, and the source of funding for government.  Meanwhile, the people themselves are FREE - to pursue life, liberty, property and duty-free property in land, right up to their theoretical opportunity allotment limits.


Let me guess: you own seven acres of valuable land that you are not using for anything remotely close to its productive potential.

----------


## Travlyr

RoyL. -  "_Liar liar pants on fire_."

----------


## Steven Douglas

> ...you will tell any lie, no matter how preposterous, about what LVT proponents plainly say, and about the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality, in order to deceive people into opposing the LVT that would make them free and prosperous.
> 
> It's just pure evil.


No, my fine feathered People Repellent, your version enslaves.  I think that deep down inside that's what appeals to you most about it.  




> It is indisputable that ownership of land and the power to dispose of it are NOT requirements for life...


No, it's a requirement for security in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.  Away from your nasty, people enslaving hell of an artificial treadmill that makes swim-or-die sharks out of everyone.    




> There is always going to be a barrier, because land is scarce and its supply is fixed.


Go away with your artificial barriers to the ordinary people you are pretending to protect, but in reality pigeon-holing, and sweeping aside.  It's really, really creepy.  




> IOW, having realized that you intend to advocate wholesale, uncompensated violation of people's rights, you simply decide that you will not be thinking about other people's rights.


Again with the creepy assumptions, and no respect for real rights for real individuals. 

If everyone but those acting in privilege have the right to own and dispose of an area of duty-free land, NOBODY'S rights are violated.   Your fake human enslaving paradox sees everybody as violating everybody else's rights, even while privileged entities who really are prone to this behavior, and are responsible for the problem, are thrown into the mix and _treated as equals_.  And "$#@! Granny", remember?  She can get the hell out of _her house_ and make way for "more productive hands", as we ignore the fact that "production" and "productivity" *is not the purpose of a house*.  I don't buy into your slippery, wet, cold people-hating nastiness for a moment. Never did. Real people have something that Walmart, foreigners, speculators and others can never have, and that is worth far more than your pathetic empty promise of an exemption.   




> The opportunity represented by seven acres of mountainside in Alaska is the same as the opportunity presented by seven acres of prime retail space in NYC??


No, Mr. Coveter and worshiper of prime space in major metropolitan cities, who thinks of land only in terms of its commercial economic value.  I'm not even promoting seven acres as a number each individual could have duty-free as a matter of right.  Only that a fixed area, not "market value" apply equally to all who actually have human, inalienable rights.  

Even so, seven acres of prime *retail* space in NYC isn't a primary residence, is it.  Not to mention it's usually owned by someone acting as a matter of privilege, not right - which means that LVT would apply.  Seven acres of prime RESIDENTIAL space in NYC might be an option for the super-wealthy - but that's true under your nightmare of an all-enslaving plan, where the super-wealth (EVEN FOREIGNERS) can cause someone to be priced out of their home, simply because they were willing to give YOUR ALL-ENCOMPASSING DEVIL version of LVT more due.  Under mine the super-wealthy would have to actually have rights, own that land as matter of right, and live on that land, declaring it as their primary residence. Otherwise, LVT applies, so they would have to pony up.  Those acting as a matter of right, on the other hand, would be safe and secure - under no pressure or obligation to move or sell to anyone for any price -- a thought so unthinkable to the likes of you that it makes you physically ill to even contemplate it.  Dems da breaks. 

As for "opportunity presented" to any individual in an area where they choose to purchase land, that may be a criteria for you personally, but that isn't my business or yours where others are concerned.  As long as foreigners, corporations, speculators and others acting as a matter of privilege are paying the tax, speculation is a costly enterprise, and land values naturally go down. How real people with real rights behave with regard to the land they acquire duty-free is part of the free market, with nobody deprived of any right, and therefore none of your concern.  They have a floor based on area, not value. You can trade up from there, but at the very least you'll be safe and secure from ravenous people-hating likes of Roy L, who wants all entities foreign and domestic, real and fictitious persons alike, treated as equals.

As for Alaska - funny you should say that, as I see seven acres of mountainside there as worth more than anything in any metropolitan city. Pure heaven, with all the "opportunity" I need.  But that's me.  I don't give a $#@! about the concrete metropolises you see as models worth artificially compressing and encouraging.  




> So the landowner is privileged to take the value others have created.


No, the *private primary residential landowning homeowner* is truly free, is exercising rights that deprive nobody of any rights or value.  She is not automatically presumed to have bought land as a commercial investment, nor presumed to be a "producer for all that the community provides".  She IS presumed (as an individual with actual rights) to be part of that community that actually PROVIDES the value -- *including her conditional permission, as a fellow sovereign in the community, for privileged entities to conduct themselves in her community, provided they pay the price*.     




> Let me guess: you own seven acres of valuable land that you are not using for anything remotely close to its productive potential.


Wrong on two counts. I don't own seven acres of land, and I'm not so simplistic in my thoughts as to think of all land (EVEN RESIDENTIAL LAND FOR $#@!S SAKE!) in term of its "productive potential".  Aside from the dwellings themselves, which are built and ultimately occupied as a matter of CONSUMPTION, NOT PRODUCTION, what exactly is "produced" on residential land? What is it about HOME LAND that keeps you looking at it only in terms of its "productive potential"? 

PRODUCTIVE TO WHOM?

----------


## Roy L

> RoyL. -  "_Liar liar pants on fire_."


There is no other way to rationalize evil, so you lie.  Simple.

----------


## Roy L

> No, my fine feathered People Repellent, your version enslaves.


No, that is a lie, as proved by the slave-like condition of the landless in all countries where land is private property, but government does not intervene massively to rescue them from the invariable economic effects of private landowning.  It is also proved a lie, as you know, by the conspicuously non-slave-like condition of the people of Hong Kong, where no land is privately owned.



> I think that deep down inside that's what appeals to you most about it.


I know that deep down inside, you know that you are serving evil.  I have recommended several times that you watch "Judgment at Nuremberg" to see a very astute portrayal of what you are doing and why.  It has a very important lesson for you: you knew.



> No, it's a requirement for security in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.


No, Steven, you are lying again, because you know that the contrasting examples of Hong Kong and Bangladesh prove your claim is not only objectively false, but the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.



> Away from your nasty, people enslaving hell of an artificial treadmill that makes swim-or-die sharks out of everyone.


That is an outrageous, despicable lie.  It is the system of landowner privilege that forces the landless onto an enslaving, soul-destroying, artificial hell of a treadmill to power the escalator landowners ride up on at their leisure.



> Go away with your artificial barriers to the ordinary people you are pretending to protect, but in reality pigeon-holing, and sweeping aside.  It's really, really creepy.


No, it is your eagerness to lay millions of human sacrifices on the altar of your Great God Property and your personal greed for unearned wealth EVERY YEAR that is really, *really*, *REALLY* creepy.



> Again with the creepy assumptions, and no respect for real rights for real individuals.


Again a filthy, stupid, stinking lie to rationalize privilege, justify injustice and excuse evil.  Liberty is a real right of real individuals.  Landowning indisputably removes it.  There is no way for you to alter that fact, sorry.



> If everyone but those acting in privilege have the right to own and dispose of an area of duty-free land, NOBODY'S rights are violated.


Again, that is plainly a lie, as the rights of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land are indisputably violated.



> Your fake human enslaving paradox sees everybody as violating everybody else's rights,


No, that is another lie.  Only those who remove others' rights to liberty by excluding them from land they would otherwise be at liberty to use are violating others' rights.  You know this, as I have proved it to you many times.



> even while privileged entities who really are prone to this behavior, and are responsible for the problem, are thrown into the mix and _treated as equals_.


That is another lie, as you know.  Only human persons have rights to liberty, and therefore only human persons get the universal individual exemption.



> And "$#@! Granny", remember?


Only if she is stupid, greedy, evil filth, as you claim she is.



> She can get the hell out of _her house_


I.e., respond to market price signals and the invisible hand by obtaining accommodation better suited to her needs and means, to the benefit of all.

Funny how lying anti-LVT sacks of $#!+ are so enamored of the free market, except when it means they don't get to pocket unearned wealth...



> and make way for "more productive hands", as we ignore the fact that "production" and "productivity" *is not the purpose of a house*.


Yes, of course it is.  The purpose of a house is to produce accommodation for its occupants.  You know this.  You are just lying about it.



> I don't buy into your slippery, wet, cold people-hating nastiness for a moment. Never did.


I am trying to end the *two Holocausts PER YEAR* that your evil belief system causes.  You have to lie to serve the evil that inflicts those Holocausts on innocent people.

And you accuse ME of people-hating nastiness...?

Watch "Judgment at Nuremberg."  It is about you, Steven.



> No, Mr. Coveter and worshiper of prime space in major metropolitan cities, who thinks of land only in terms of its commercial economic value.


You are lying.  I am merely willing to know the relevant facts.



> I'm not even promoting seven acres as a number each individual could have duty-free as a matter of right.  Only that a fixed area, not "market value" apply equally to all who actually have human, inalienable rights.


Which is stupid, dishonest garbage, and nothing but a confession of ignorance and people-hating malice.  How could owning the wildly different values of different land parcels of equal area possibly translate to any kind of equality of rights or opportunity?  You are just talking stupid, dishonest garbage, and you know it.



> Even so, seven acres of prime *retail* space in NYC isn't a primary residence, is it.


It could be, under your satanically evil scheme.



> Not to mention it's usually owned by someone acting as a matter of privilege, not right - which means that LVT would apply.


All landowning is a matter or privilege, not right.  LVT simply makes just compensation for the privilege.



> Seven acres of prime RESIDENTIAL space in NYC might be an option for the super-wealthy - but that's true under your nightmare of an all-enslaving plan, where the super-wealth (EVEN FOREIGNERS) can cause someone to be priced out of their home, simply because they were willing to give YOUR ALL-ENCOMPASSING DEVIL version of LVT more due.


Right.  Under my plan, the super-wealthy must make just compensation to the community for monopolizing the most advantageous land.  Under your plan, the wealthy and privileged are empowered to push others out onto land that is of equal area, but so disadvantageous they can't survive there without laboring on the treadmill for the unearned profit of the privileged and greedy.

Evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.



> Under mine the super-wealthy would have to actually have rights, own that land as matter of right, and live on that land, declaring it as their primary residence.


Forcing others out onto land where they can't survive.  Right.



> Otherwise, LVT applies, so they would have to pony up.  Those acting as a matter of right, on the other hand, would be safe and secure - under no pressure or obligation to move or sell to anyone for any price --


Pocketing all the land's publicly created value, and forcing the productive to pay for government twice.  Right.



> a thought so unthinkable to the likes of you that it makes you physically ill to even contemplate it.


It is the relentless dishonesty and evil required to rationalize such hellish ideas that make me physically ill.



> As for "opportunity presented" to any individual in an area where they choose to purchase land, that may be a criteria for you personally, but that isn't my business or yours where others are concerned.


Lie.  It is my business and everyone's that the landowner removes our rights to liberty.



> As long as foreigners, corporations, speculators and others acting as a matter of privilege are paying the tax, speculation is a costly enterprise, and land values naturally go down.


All landowning is privilege.



> How real people with real rights behave with regard to the land they acquire duty-free is part of the free market, with nobody deprived of any right, and therefore none of your concern.


No, I already proved you are lying, as you know.  Landowning inherently and indisputably deprives people of their rights to liberty.  There can be no free-market landowning.  It is a logical impossibility.



> They have a floor based on area, not value. You can trade up from there, but at the very least you'll be safe and secure from ravenous people-hating likes of Roy L, who wants all entities foreign and domestic, real and fictitious persons alike, treated as equals.


Already proved a stupid, sick, vicious, evil lie.  Only human persons -- in fact, only resident citizens -- would get the universal individual exemption, which, contrary to your LIES, gives them secure, free access to enough good land to live on.



> I don't give a $#@! about the concrete metropolises you see as models worth artificially compressing and encouraging.


It is sprawl that is artificial.



> No, the *private primary residential landowning homeowner* is truly free, is exercising rights that deprive nobody of any rights or value.


Already proved a stupid, sick, vicious, evil lie, as you know.



> She is not automatically presumed to have bought land as a commercial investment,


Strawman lie.



> nor presumed to be a "producer for all that the community provides".  She IS presumed (as an individual with actual rights) to be part of that community that actually PROVIDES the value -- *including her conditional permission, as a fellow sovereign in the community, for privileged entities to conduct themselves in her community, provided they pay the price*.


And therefore gets her equal individual exemption.



> Wrong on two counts. I don't own seven acres of land,


Ah, so it's more, and you foresee yourself dividing it up into equal untaxed parcels for your family.  Check.



> and I'm not so simplistic in my thoughts as to think of all land (EVEN RESIDENTIAL LAND FOR $#@!S SAKE!) in term of its "productive potential".


That's not simplistic, as it's part of reality.  You just have to erase that part of reality to avoid dealing with it.



> Aside from the dwellings themselves, which are built and ultimately occupied as a matter of CONSUMPTION, NOT PRODUCTION, what exactly is "produced" on residential land?


That is exactly it: accommodation, which is both produced and consumed in situ, and often by the same person.  Do you think the residential landlord who provides the improvements, maintenance, etc. isn't producing anything?  How is he producing any less if he lives there himself than if someone else lives there?  Are you really deceiving yourself by assuming production only happens if there is an exchange??



> What is it about HOME LAND that keeps you looking at it only in terms of its "productive potential"? 
> 
> PRODUCTIVE TO WHOM?


The most productive prospective user.  Who might well be someone who intends to produce and consume accommodation there himself.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> No, that is a lie, proved a lie, serving evil, lying again, objectively false, the exact, diametric opposite of the truth, an outrageous, despicable lie, privilege, enslaving, soul-destroying, artificial hell, millions of human sacrifices, personal greed for unearned wealth, a filthy, stupid, stinking lie, evil, plainly a lie, rights violated, another lie, violating others' rights, another lie, stupid, greedy, evil filth, to the benefit of all, pocket unearned wealth, lying about it, *two Holocausts PER YEAR*, evil belief system, you have to lie to serve the evil, inflicts Holocausts, You are lying.  I am merely willing to know, stupid, dishonest garbage, confession of ignorance, people-hating malice, stupid, dishonest garbage, satanically evil scheme... 
> 
> Evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.
> 
> publicly created value, relentless dishonesty and evil, hellish ideas that make me physically ill. Lie, you are lying, no free-market landowning, a stupid, sick, vicious, evil lie, contrary to your LIES, a stupid, sick, vicious, evil lie, Strawman lie...


So much guile, so much regurgitated bile, so little substance. A dystopian nightmare that should be a no-brainer to avoid for anyone with even modicum of critical thinking skills. 

You don't give a $#@! about individuals or their rights, Roy.  You claim that individual rights are violated with regard to land, and yet you also claim that everything related to land is a privilege -- not a right.  So actual rights are really non-existent except as collectivized under your version of a regime where LVT, not individual rights, is paramount, with everything else incidental, completely secondary.  Nasty stuff - right down to your "exemption privilege". 

I'll stick with my version, thanks, with focus on individuals and their rights *first*, and which are above all else and NEVER collectivized.

----------


## Roy L

> So much guile, so much regurgitated bile, so little substance.


Lie.  I demolished and humiliated you for your lies and absurdities again, using indisputable fact and irrefutable logic.



> A dystopian nightmare that should be a no-brainer to avoid for anyone with even modicum of critical thinking skills.


Which must be why it has always had profoundly beneficial effects every time it has been implemented in practice, to the extent that it has been implemented, and Nobel laureates in economics have supported it on theoretical grounds...



> You don't give a $#@! about individuals or their rights, Roy.


You always have to lie about what I have plainly written, Steven.  Observe:



> You claim that individual rights are violated with regard to land, and yet you also claim that everything related to land is a privilege -- not a right.


No, you just lied again, Steven.  I have stated many times that the *legal power to exclude others from land* is a privilege, but that the *individual liberty to use land* is a right.  That right, indeed, is what MAKES the power to exclude others a privilege.

You know this.



> So actual rights are really non-existent except as collectivized under your version of a regime where LVT, not individual rights, is paramount, with everything else incidental, completely secondary.


Lie.  LVT + UIE is merely the necessary tool to achieve the goal: to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.  It is *impossible* to do it any other way. 



> Nasty stuff - right down to your "exemption privilege".


Stupid lie.



> I'll stick with my version, thanks, with focus on individuals and their rights *first*, and which are above all else and NEVER collectivized.


Self-contradiction.  Individual rights can only exist as recognized and secured by a community ("collective").  A lone individual has no way to implement rights, which only arise through interactions in the community.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Nobel laureates in economics have supported it on theoretical grounds...


The Nobel Prize? No $#@!!  I guess I should view that with the reverence and awe it deserves. Say no more! Paul-the-leftist-nutbag-Krugman (whose emphasis on the influence of geography on economics got him the prize), so if anyone in the same league as him is for LVT, who in their right mind could be against it, right? 

Earth to Roy: Invoking the Nobel Prize is about on par, as an appeal to authority, with your self-assertion of a "philosophy degree with honors from a respected university" -- as if that should carry any weight whatsoever here.  




> I have stated many times that the *legal power to exclude others from land* is a privilege...


And you have been dead wrong every time, unless you are speaking only from the normatives of your peculiar mind.  

The legal authority to use PRIVATE FORCE to forcibly exclude you from trespassing on privately held land, is a legal RIGHT, not a privilege, regardless of ownership or the nature of the taxing regime.   And that force can originate privately, even though THAT RIGHT TO FORCIBLY EXCLUDE is ultimately enforceable by the State.  




> ...the *individual liberty to use land* is a right.


Again, a strictly geolib tenet - a normative I disagree with. But it's incorrect even under your paradigm. Anything that is *conditioned on payment* (from highest bidders -- to the state, not to those deprived), is an *ALIENABLE PRIVILEGE*, not a right.  

Furthermore, your paradigm implies that RIGHTS ARE FOR SALE. Beyond your personal proposal for a "universal individual exemption", the so-called "RIGHT" of "liberty" for land use is conditioned on payment to the state, and such "RIGHTS" are equally open - FOR SALE - to all entities (foreigners, corporations, etc.,), all of whom may COMPETE FOR RIGHTS TO LAND USE which then DRIVES LAND VALUES UP. 

Your ultimate respect is not for a "liberty right to land use", but rather the sale of such rights -- like Catholic indulgences -- as your primary and ultimate respect is for anyone's ability to pay for more for that so-called "right" to more and better lands - with the credulous naivete of an economic "trickle-down statist".

A Universal Individual VALUE exemption for "enough good land to live on" is the bone you personally want thrown equally to all individuals - as PAYOLA for having their rights SOLD to the highest bidder, regardless of their origin or status.  The individual's "right to individual liberty to use land" is infringed in exchange for payment TO THE STATE.   Thus, while every individual has an equal right TO AN EQUAL EXEMPTION VALUE (whatever that is, and whatever that means) under your proposal, when it comes to better lands, some are more equal in their "rights" than others.  




> LVT + UIE is merely the necessary tool to achieve the goal: to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.  It is *impossible* to do it any other way.


That's your Koolaid, Roy - the Big Lie that you swallowed hard and made One With Your Soul, and are now spewing out to others. It is a Big Lie because you seem to lack the capacity to acknowledge that *LVT in itself is neither a philosophy nor an economic theory*. Regardless of the rationale employed by ANY of its myriad factions of proponents, *LVT at its very core is nothing more than A TAXING MECHANISM*, which necessarily involves the power to destroy, like any other tax.  

The ONLY way to secure the rights of individuals IS TO SECURE THEM DIRECTLY. AS RIGHTS. There is no rule of law inherent in ANY taxing mechanism which provides ANY means of securing the rights of individuals, contrary to your belief that their "rights" will be incidentally secured as a magical economic side-effect of LVT.  

ALL taxing mechanisms erode or destroy rights to property in one form or another, and can be abused as such.  LVT just happens to _destroy all rights to property in land_. (and spare me your stupid-ass philosophical arguments about the evils of landownership). 

*Because Roy L IS NEVER GOING TO BE IN CHARGE OF LVT*, there is:

NOTHING to prevent land from being made artificially scarce, whether withheld from availability or through zoning lawsNOTHING to prevent the government from placing a ground rent floor that applies to everyoneNOTHING to prevent a multiplier for economic rents (X1.5, X2, etc.,) from kicking in laterNOTHING to prevent special treatment through exemptions to privileged entities (e.g., Economic Development Zones)NOTHING to prevent the state from NEVER implementing a "Universal Individual Exemption in the first place
  The fact that Roy L would say, "None of that is what I am proposing, or what I consider LVT" is MEANINGLESS. It is also incorrect, because the only requirement for a tax to be considered "LVT" is that it be ad valorem, and *based on* land value only.   Whether all lands are made available, or whether there is an exemption or dividends comes NOT by virtue of the tax itself, but by virtue ONLY of the political, economic and philosophical arguments presented by LVT proponents -- *all separate from LVT*.  LVT in itself has nothing to do with any of that, including who is exempt or might receive special treatment, or to what extent, or even what "mill rate" or percentage (80%? 100%? 150% 500% 2,000%?) is deemed "necessary for government to function properly". 

Yeah, I know, George, Georgists and all its spinoffs "advocate" only 80-100% ground rent recovery, and have myriad theories (including Henry George's Theorem) _in support of their proposals_. So $#@!ing what? Theorize and advocate in one hand, and take a crap in the other.  Pointing to your favorite "success story" for LVT is no different. That's them, this is us. All governments operate and implement differently, and ours is already proved that it is prone to major economic and political abuses.  

That's not "meeza hatesa gubmint" talk. That's respect for history and political reality that must be acknowledged and can be planned for and preempted in advance.  

There is ONLY ONE way that I can think of that would render all of the abuse possibilities irrelevant. A way that would actually secure individual rights while allowing LVT to exist and function in a positive way in a free market (free to individuals, that is). 

If free and natural Citizens were IMMUNE from LVT, being the only entities with an actual RIGHT IN PROPERTY IN LAND (limited by population/area ratio), there would be _a natural check and balance on the taxing jurisdiction_ that would not otherwise exist.  It would be IMPOSSIBLE for the State to directly abuse individuals. It could only INDIRECTLY hurt them through its abuse of privileged entities.  The more the taxing jurisdiction taxes privileged entities, the more it would result in a DECREASE IN GROUND RENTS, and an increase in competitive advantages _that would inure only to people with actual rights_.  Because of this fact alone, each taxing jurisdiction (all of which in theory would compete with one another) would be naturally forced to strike a balance, because raising tax rates, _which it could only do on the privileged entities it relies on for revenues_ could result in capital flight, or lower revenues.  Meanwhile, the people themselves - the individuals acting and existing as a matter of right, are insulated, immune -- free *to the area extent* that their _immunity rights_ allow. 




> Self-contradiction.  Individual rights can only exist as recognized and secured by a community ("collective").  A lone individual has no way to implement rights, which only arise through interactions in the community.


That's some idiotic logic at work there, as you once again play fast and loose with that nebulous, abstract bull$#@! sleaze word "community".  "through interactions with THE COMMUNITY", my ass.  There is a world of difference between the power and authority delegated to the State (GOVERNMENT ONLY -- "Our Delegated Security Guards For Hire" -- NOT "COMMUNITY") to secure individual rights, and the idiocy of individual rights that are simply collectivized by the collectivist-minded -- with bull$#@! words like "community", which rights are then made _artificially equal in value_. 

Equal rights does not mean equal value in rights. We both agree that everyone has a right to their labors, and the fruits of their labor, but that does not mean that they have rights to equal value in their labors.  The same goes for LAND _under any regime_ - propertarian landownership OR geoist.  Under EITHER regime I have the "right" to pursue and possess lands _of any value_.  But that "right" of pursuit does not translate equally to everyone, as the quality of that right - the value of that land - is conditioned in all cases on one's ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY. 

Your "UIE" (as you propose it) provides an exemption of "equal value" for everyone, which you think satisfies "just compensation" to everyone for their "equal right of liberty" NOT to be excluded from use of lands (which are NEVER of equal value).  But the fact that the exemption is based on value, and not area, means that the "equal right of liberty" is automatically narrowed when it comes to lands which are valued most (by whomever).  And that's where you screw the pooch (screw individuals, actually).

 Where you UTTERLY FAIL is in your assumption that government, nature and "community" provides, or "creates" land values.  It's a half truth at best, a bull$#@! assumption in reality, because absent entities (BUYERS) that are able and willing to pay, there is ZERO LAND VALUE.  That's fundamental economics, of course, but what does that have to do with the geolib claims that ignore this reality, and focus only on the supply side of value?  

The ultimate reality is that those responsible for creating/providing tangibles and circumstances, and which claiming the right of returns for such, are by definition THE SELLER.  It is an inescapable fact of objective reality that there is NO VALUE POSSIBLE WITHOUT A BUYER.  That's the fatal missing link in geoist thought regarding land rents. Since land is assumed to be fixed in supply (assuming it is not artificially withheld from market availability), competing entities ("buyers", who are not necessarily individuals) are ALWAYS _the ultimate cause, creators and determiners of land values_.  Increases in the value of land are ultimately "created" by MORE BUYERS DEMONSTRATING  THE ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY MORE FOR THE SAME THING. 

How does that affect individuals? _Individuals are not the only entities who are buyers. There is a population of artificial individuals with whom they are forced to compete, which entities are regarded as being on equal economic footing with real people._ The vast  majority of individuals - the average Jane and Joe Six-packs of the Earth, are NOT RESPONSIBLE for major increases in land values.   Entities acting as a matter of privilege are.  

The value of your so-called Universal Individual Exemption can be ERODED by competition from foreigners, corporations, and other entities that exist as a matter of privilege only, and have no "inalienable rights". And yet they have the power to influence the value of land itself, and therefore the power to erode the value of the Universal Individual Exemption.  That this can be "adjusted" by the taxing authority is meaningless, and represents no security as matter of principle. 

But you don't give a $#@!. You would allow foreigners, corporations and other privileged entities into the fray on EQUAL FOOTING WITH INDIVIDUALS, with *no natural checks or balances* on the State.  These entities can BUY THE RIGHT TO OTHER INDIVIDUALS' LIBERTY by simply showing "evidence of their superior productivity" (willingness to pay more to the State).  The net effect: land value increases caused by privileged entities decrease the value of the UIE, or "compensation for natural liberty rights to use of lands".  Given that you, like government, are seeking to fix "value" -- not the value of land itself, but *the monetary value of the exemption* used to acquire the use of lands that are NOT fixed in value.

----------


## Roy L

Another tsunami of stupid garbage....



> Earth to Roy: Invoking the Nobel Prize is about on par, as an appeal to authority, with your self-assertion of a "philosophy degree with honors from a respected university" -- as if that should carry any weight whatsoever here.


It demolishes your puerile claim that LVT advocates "lack critical thinking skills."  



> And you have been dead wrong every time, unless you are speaking only from the normatives of your peculiar mind.


Thank you for admitting you lied again when you claimed I said everything to do with land is a privilege.

You just lie and lie and lie, and then get all indignant when I identify that fact.

Beneath contempt.



> The legal authority to use PRIVATE FORCE to forcibly exclude you from trespassing on privately held land, is a legal RIGHT, not a privilege, regardless of ownership or the nature of the taxing regime.


<yawn>  So is the state's legal *RIGHT* to levy LVT, so you just agreed that you are totally wrong, have always been wrong, and have been lying about everything.



> And that force can originate privately, even though THAT RIGHT TO FORCIBLY EXCLUDE is ultimately enforceable by the State.


So you agree that you lied, and landowning is nothing but a state-issued privilege.  Good.



> Again, a strictly geolib tenet - a normative I disagree with.


While you clearly do not believe in the right to liberty, calling it "normative" does not alter the fact that the natural liberty to use land is a physical fact our ancestors lived by for millions of years, until the state started issuing exclusion privileges.



> But it's incorrect even under your paradigm. Anything that is *conditioned on payment* (from highest bidders -- to the state, not to those deprived), is an *ALIENABLE PRIVILEGE*, not a right.


<sigh>  It is the *privilege to exclude* that goes to the high bidder, not the *right to use*.   You know this, as it has been explained to you multiple times, and are just deliberately lying about it.



> Furthermore, your paradigm implies that RIGHTS ARE FOR SALE.


Lie.  My paradigm simply is willing to know the fact that when rights are violated, just compensation is due.  It is YOUR paradigm that explicitly states that rights are for sale: the landowner sells everyone else's liberty rights to the next landowner. 



> Your ultimate respect is not for a "liberty right to land use", but rather the sale of such rights -- like Catholic indulgences -- as your primary and ultimate respect is for anyone's ability to pay for more for that so-called "right" to more and better lands - with the credulous naivete of an economic "trickle-down statist".


Stupid, evil filth disproved above.



> A Universal Individual VALUE exemption for "enough good land to live on" is the bone you personally want thrown equally to all individuals - as PAYOLA for having their rights SOLD to the highest bidder, regardless of their origin or status.


No, you're lying again.  It's the necessary implementation of the relevant moral principle.



> The individual's "right to individual liberty to use land" is infringed in exchange for payment TO THE STATE.


Because the state is the only way to secure and reconcile people's equal rights -- and it's better than infringing that right with nothing given in exchange.



> Thus, while every individual has an equal right TO AN EQUAL EXEMPTION VALUE (whatever that is, and whatever that means) under your proposal, when it comes to better lands, some are more equal in their "rights" than others.


Stupid lie. 



> That's your Koolaid, Roy - the Big Lie that you swallowed hard and made One With Your Soul, and are now spewing out to others.


That is a contentless spew of stupid, dishonest filth.



> It is a Big Lie because you seem to lack the capacity to acknowledge that *LVT in itself is neither a philosophy nor an economic theory*.


No, that is another stupid lie from you.  I have never said it is a philosophy or economic theory.  It's a policy tool, like prohibiting slavery -- but far more important.



> Regardless of the rationale employed by ANY of its myriad factions of proponents, *LVT at its very core is nothing more than A TAXING MECHANISM*, which necessarily involves the power to destroy, like any other tax.


True.  But unlike other taxes, LVT involves the power to destroy privilege, injustice, poverty, unemployment, tyranny, oppression and despair.



> The ONLY way to secure the rights of individuals IS TO SECURE THEM DIRECTLY. AS RIGHTS.


That's clearly false, as the Tragedy of the Commons proves.  If everyone has a right to use a depletable resource like a fish stock, then it will be depleted, and the right to use it will be removed, not secured.  Tax the depletion, OTOH, and you indirectly preserve the resource and the right to use it.  That proves you are objectively wrong.  As usual.



> There is no rule of law inherent in ANY taxing mechanism which provides ANY means of securing the rights of individuals, contrary to your belief that their "rights" will be incidentally secured as a magical economic side-effect of LVT.


Proved false above.  



> ALL taxing mechanisms erode or destroy rights to property in one form or another, and can be abused as such.


No, that's just another stupid lie from you.  A tax on a privilege does not erode or destroy a right to property, because there is no right to property involved.  You are just committing another question-begging fallacy by ASSUMING that there are valid property rights in land.



> LVT just happens to _destroy all rights to property in land_.


Question-begging fallacy.  Blatantly.



> Because Roy L IS NEVER GOING TO BE IN CHARGE OF LVT[/I][/B], there is:
> NOTHING to prevent land from being made artificially scarce, whether withheld from availability or through zoning laws


No, that's just another stupid lie from you.  Government's own financial interest prevents land from being made artificially scarce.  Why even bother saying something so stupid and dishonest?



> NOTHING to prevent the government from placing a ground rent floor that applies to everyone


No, that's just another stupid lie from you.  Government's own political interest prevents it from placing a ground rent floor.  You could with equal "logic" claim there is NOTHING to prevent government from just killing everyone and taking all their stuff.  It's just stupid, "meeza hatesa gubmint" gibbering.  Why even bother saying something so stupid and dishonest?



> NOTHING to prevent a multiplier for economic rents (X1.5, X2, etc.,) from kicking in later


Another stupid lie.  Government can't get more than the rent any more than private landowners can.  Why even bother saying something so stupid and dishonest?



> NOTHING to prevent special treatment through exemptions to privileged entities (e.g., Economic Development Zones)


Already refuted dozens of times.  Government's own desire for revenue prevents it.  Why even bother saying something so stupid and dishonest?



> NOTHING to prevent the state from NEVER implementing a "Universal Individual Exemption in the first place


Other than accountability to the voters -- which would be the only thing that could ever get LVT implemented in the first place.



> The fact that Roy L would say, "None of that is what I am proposing, or what I consider LVT" is MEANINGLESS.


No, it's not, stop telling such stupid, evil lies.  You could with equal "logic" claim that anti-abortionists favor late-term abortions, and when they identify the fact that you are lying your evil, lying, $#!+-filled head off, claim that what they say they advocate is "MEANINGLESS."



> It is also incorrect, because the only requirement for a tax to be considered "LVT" is that it be ad valorem, and *based on* land value only.


That is technically correct -- you shocked me for a moment by not lying -- but "LVT" is generally considered a short form for "full land rent recovery," which could also be implemented by leasing public land, not just by taxing private landowning.



> Whether all lands are made available, or whether there is an exemption or dividends comes NOT by virtue of the tax itself, but by virtue ONLY of the political, economic and philosophical arguments presented by LVT proponents -- *all separate from LVT*.


True.  LVT is simply the necessary method of securing and reconciling the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.  It is not a principle but a way of implementing principles -- which must always have priority.



> LVT in itself has nothing to do with any of that, including who is exempt or might receive special treatment, or to what extent, or even what "mill rate" or percentage (80%? 100%? 150% 500% 2,000%?) is deemed "necessary for government to function properly".


And...?  So what?  You just don't understand the math of LVT, so you think a 500% land value tax can get more than the land rent.  It can't.



> Yeah, I know, George, Georgists and all its spinoffs "advocate" only 80-100% ground rent recovery, and have myriad theories (including Henry George's Theorem) _in support of their proposals_. So $#@!ing what?


So you have no arguments, and just refuse to address ours.



> Pointing to your favorite "success story" for LVT is no different. That's them, this is us.


You are aware of the fact that all factual evidence is on our side, so you have no choice but to dismiss it and refuse to consider it.



> All governments operate and implement differently, and ours is already proved that it is prone to major economic and political abuses.


Yep.  Basically from the time the Founding Fathers knuckled under to evil, greedy landowners and replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution.



> That's not "meeza hatesa gubmint" talk. That's respect for history and political reality that must be acknowledged and can be planned for and preempted in advance.


I've already proved that claiming some other system will be implemented instead of LVT is not an argument against LVT unless you can show specifically why the attempt to implement LVT would result in that other system being implemented.  Which you cannot.



> If free and natural Citizens were IMMUNE from LVT, being the only entities with an actual RIGHT IN PROPERTY IN LAND


You know I have proved no such right can exist.



> (limited by population/area ratio),


Blithely contradicting yourself again, I see....



> there would be _a natural check and balance on the taxing jurisdiction_ that would not otherwise exist.


Lie, as proved above.



> It would be IMPOSSIBLE for the State to directly abuse individuals.


But easy for individuals to abuse -- in fact, enslave -- other individuals.



> It could only INDIRECTLY hurt them through its abuse of privileged entities.  The more the taxing jurisdiction taxes privileged entities, the more it would result in a DECREASE IN GROUND RENTS, and an increase in competitive advantages _that would inure only to people with actual rights_.


You don't understand the Law of Rent, either.



> Because of this fact alone, each taxing jurisdiction (all of which in theory would compete with one another) would be naturally forced to strike a balance, because raising tax rates, _which it could only do on the privileged entities it relies on for revenues_ could result in capital flight, or lower revenues.


No, it would just result in all the land being held tax-free, and the big landholders enslaving everyone else, just as happened in ancient Rome.



> Meanwhile, the people themselves - the individuals acting and existing as a matter of right, are insulated, immune -- free *to the area extent* that their _immunity rights_ allow.


No.  The landowners would be free, and everyone else would be their slaves.



> That's some idiotic logic at work there, as you once again play fast and loose with that nebulous, abstract bull$#@! sleaze word "community".


It's a perfectly good word, you just refuse to know the fact it identifies.



> "through interactions with THE COMMUNITY", my ass.


I said IN the community, and yes, you're ass.



> There is a world of difference between the power and authority delegated to the State (GOVERNMENT ONLY -- "Our Delegated Security Guards For Hire" -- NOT "COMMUNITY") to secure individual rights, and the idiocy of individual rights that are simply collectivized by the collectivist-minded -- with bull$#@! words like "community", which rights are then made _artificially equal in value_.


Meaningless gibberish.



> Equal rights does not mean equal value in rights. We both agree that everyone has a right to their labors, and the fruits of their labor, but that does not mean that they have rights to equal value in their labors.  The same goes for LAND _under any regime_ - propertarian landownership OR geoist.  Under EITHER regime I have the "right" to pursue and possess lands _of any value_.  But that "right" of pursuit does not translate equally to everyone, as the quality of that right - the value of that land - is conditioned in all cases on one's ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY.


Another stupid lie.  The UIE is equal for all resident citizens, regardless of ability and willingness to pay.



> Your "UIE" (as you propose it) provides an exemption of "equal value" for everyone, which you think satisfies "just compensation" to everyone for their "equal right of liberty" NOT to be excluded from use of lands (which are NEVER of equal value).


Stupid lie.  Two plots of land that are both worth $50K are of equal value.  Why even bother saying something so stupid and dishonest?



> But the fact that the exemption is based on value, and not area, means that the "equal right of liberty" is automatically narrowed when it comes to lands which are valued most (by whomever).  And that's where you screw the pooch (screw individuals, actually).


Stupid, meaningless garbage.



> Where you UTTERLY FAIL is in your assumption that government, nature and "community" provides, or "creates" land values.


It is indisputable fact.



> It's a half truth at best, a bull$#@! assumption in reality, because absent entities (BUYERS) that are able and willing to pay, there is ZERO LAND VALUE.


No, I've already proved that stupid, dishonest garbage is stupid and dishonest.  The economic advantage conferred by government, the community and nature is what MAKES buyers willing AND ABLE to pay.



> That's fundamental economics, of course, but what does that have to do with the geolib claims that ignore this reality, and focus only on the supply side of value?


There is no supply side to land value, because supply is fixed.  Value is therefore determined exclusively by demand.



> The ultimate reality is that those responsible for creating/providing tangibles and circumstances, and which claiming the right of returns for such, are by definition THE SELLER.


No, that's just another stupid lie from you.  The seller could be comatose, and the land would be worth the same.  The land seller provides absolutely nothing but a pocket demanding to be filled.  You know this.



> It is an inescapable fact of objective reality that there is NO VALUE POSSIBLE WITHOUT A BUYER.


Nope.  Wrong again.  Value is entirely possible without a buyer, it just requires a BIDDER.  It is PRICE that requires a buyer, and a seller.



> That's the fatal missing link in geoist thought regarding land rents.


You don't even know what land rent is.



> Since land is assumed to be fixed in supply (assuming it is not artificially withheld from market availability),


It is a fact that land is fixed in suplpy, and no such assumption is required.



> competing entities ("buyers", who are not necessarily individuals) are ALWAYS _the ultimate cause, creators and determiners of land values_.


Wrong, and infinitely stupid and dishonest.  It is indisputable that the buyers would not be interested unless the land *already had* value.  You know this.



> Increases in the value of land are ultimately "created" by MORE BUYERS DEMONSTRATING  THE ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY MORE FOR THE SAME THING.


No, the buyers only become interested in the first place because government and the community have created the value.  Buyer interest only MEASURES value, it does not CREATE value.  It is the economic advantage government and the community create at that location that makes buyers willing to pay.  This is self-evident.



> The value of your so-called Universal Individual Exemption can be ERODED by competition from foreigners, corporations, and other entities that exist as a matter of privilege only, and have no "inalienable rights".


No, it can't.  If other entities bid up rents, the UIE also rises.



> And yet they have the power to influence the value of land itself, and therefore the power to erode the value of the Universal Individual Exemption.  That this can be "adjusted" by the taxing authority is meaningless, and represents no security as matter of principle.


Stupid, dishonest garbage beneath contempt.



> But you don't give a $#@!. You would allow foreigners, corporations and other privileged entities


Foreigners are not privileged entities, stop lying.



> into the fray on EQUAL FOOTING WITH INDIVIDUALS, with *no natural checks or balances* on the State.


Lie.  They would have no UIEs, and I have explained the natural checks and balances many times.  You just ignore and lie about them.



> These entities can BUY THE RIGHT TO OTHER INDIVIDUALS' LIBERTY


No, they buy a privilege of violating it -- but unlike a buyer from a private landowner, they pay the compensation to the right parties.



> by simply showing "evidence of their superior productivity" (willingness to pay more to the State).


Lie.  They have to actually make the payment, not just say they are willing to.



> The net effect: land value increases caused by privileged entities decrease the value of the UIE, or "compensation for natural liberty rights to use of lands".


Disproved above.



> Given that you, like government, are seeking to fix "value" -- not the value of land itself, but *the monetary value of the exemption* used to acquire the use of lands that are NOT fixed in value.


Cannot parse.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> While you clearly do not believe in the right to liberty...


Not your specific brand of "liberty", to be sure - the word you bandy about generically, but which is only intended within the narrowed context of your normative (the specific "otherwise liberty" you think "ought" to be recognized as both a moral and legal right of liberty).




> It is the *privilege to exclude* that goes to the high bidder, not the *right to use*.


*You have it exactly backwards.* But that's because _you don't know anything about legal definitions, the law or how it works_.  

Consider any apartment rental.  The _conditional terms of privileged use_ are specified in the rental agreement (e.g., must pay full rent, on time, may not alter the premises, paint the walls a different color, etc.,) because the use of that space is a LICENSED PRIVILEGE.  It doesn't matter whether the rental is from a private owner or from the state.  The only privilege involved in a rental agreement is the privilege to use, conditioned on performance according the terms of the contract. 

Once a contract is entered into, and consideration is exchanged, other RIGHTS, including the RIGHT to forcibly exclude others from that space, transfers from the owner to the tenant.  Fourth Amendment rights fully apply, as does the RIGHT to defend that space from intruders and trespassers. None of those types of rights are privileges -- *even for renters*.  

Likewise with a car rental.  Privileged, limited license to use.  And if you try to jack my car, and I'm strong enough, I can beat your ass into the dirt (i.e., use only that force required to repel or detain you while protecting myself and the car), as I spider you into a tiny ball, hog-tie and forcibly bind you with tie-wraps, cellophane, clothes hanger wire, or whatever else is handy, until the authorities arrive. That is because it is my *right*, not privilege, to forcibly exclude you.  




> You know this, as it has been explained to you multiple times...


Explaining the machinations of your strange and anomalous mind - once or multiple times - is not the same thing as establishing fact, truth, morality or anything else. 




> My paradigm simply is willing to know the fact that when rights are violated, just compensation is due.


Well, in the case of an apartment rental, you still think that others in the community have a "natural liberty right" (MORALLY SPEAKING) to use the land beneath that space, regardless who occupies it.  That's the "right" (MORAL, NOT LEGAL) that you feel is being violated, the "fact" which you are "willing to know", which means that you are the one who is question begging - from your own premises. 




> It is YOUR paradigm that explicitly states that rights are for sale: the landowner sells everyone else's liberty rights to the next landowner.


Again more question begging, as you don't even acknowledge landownership as a (MORAL) right, but ignore the fact that it is a legal right, even as you see everyone else in the community as having a "NATURAL LIBERTY" (MORAL) right to use of that same land. 




> [LVT is] the necessary implementation of the relevant moral principle.


Gobbletygook. It's an implementation of a taxing mechanism, nothing more, regardless of rationale or relevance to your morality. 




> I have never said it is a philosophy or economic theory.  It's a policy tool, like prohibiting slavery -- but far more important.


Semantics, gibberish, and incorrect in the absolute. 

Slavery was not ended by implementing a "policy tool" that promised to end it. Slavery was not ended by a SLAVE VALUE TAX. Slavery was ended by it EXPLICIT abolition, and a full declaration that former slaves were free. PERIOD.  NOT a proviso that the governments only could own slaves, or that people could own slaves so long as they paid the SLV, or leased them directly from the government - which would then act as the SLAVE VALUE CAPTURE AND RETURN mechanism for the benefit of slaves.  




> But unlike other taxes, LVT involves the power to destroy privilege, injustice, poverty, unemployment, tyranny, oppression and despair.


Meaningless geolib propaganda gibberish. Anyone can assert the same for *any political regime*.  And they do.  Communism, socialism, fascism, brutal despotic dictatorships, leaders of banana republics, etc., all promise to destroy privilege, injustice, poverty, unemployment, tyranny, oppression and despair. All a bunch of Gilligans who *"promise to do dis, dat, and da udda ting"*. 




> The ONLY way to secure the rights of individuals IS TO SECURE THEM DIRECTLY. AS RIGHTS.
> 			
> 		
> 
> That's clearly false, as the Tragedy of the Commons proves.


The Tragedy of the (*unmanaged*) Commons (Hardin, 1968) was an indictment of your idea that all individuals, jointly and severally (communally) have "natural liberty rights" to the same resource.  It dealt with *depletion* (read=destruction, damage, overexploitation, extinction) of a natural resource based on unrestricted, _unmanaged_ COMMUNAL usage (aka "*equal liberty rights to all*").  In fact, it was Hardin himself who recommended that the tragedy of the commons could be prevented by a) more government regulation or b) *privatizing the commons property*.




> If everyone has a right to use a depletable resource like a fish stock,  then it will be depleted, and the right to use it will be removed, not  secured.


That brings us full circle to *YOUR big "IF", not mine*. When I say "_rights of individuals_" with respect to land - it's individual rights _with respect to individual parcels of land_ -- I am NOT using your *COMMONS PARADIGM* (a collectivist notion that is completely $#@!ed up and unsustainable to begin with) concerning what _you think_ the rights of individual rights of liberty to land use morally are, or legally _ought to be_, as a many-people-to-many-parcels collectivized "Commons-rights-that-need-to-be-managed" relationship.  

I said that the only way to secure the rights of individuals is _to secure them directly_. As individual rights - not to "liberty rights of access to the same resource".  And that is clearly true, as the abolishment of slavery proves.  *Taxing slave ownership "as a policy tool" was tried in vain*.  




> A tax on a privilege *(question begging)* does not erode or destroy a right *(question begging, with no understanding of law)* to property, because there is no right *(question begging, no distinction between moral or legal)* to property involved.  You are just committing another question-begging fallacy by ASSUMING that there are valid *(flagrant question begging, with you the arbiter of what "valid" - presumably "morally valid" - means)* property rights in land.


Yes, it is a question-begging fallacy on your part.  Blatantly. Two factors that make it difficult to have any kind of reasonable discussion or debate with you: Firstly, you don't seem to know the difference between a positive and normative statement (which is strange, for someone claiming to have graduated with honors with a philosophy degree from a respected university) - this causes you to repeatedly make false statements, or to challenge statements of fact that are not controversial at all. For example, landownership rights, or property rights in land, DO exist currently as legal rights.  But you challenge this as question begging, or false, on moral or philosophical grounds, as not being "valid" or "moral" rights -- _even when only the legal definition was used and intended_, which makes it a positive statement of fact. Not truth. Not morally right. _Just fact._ 

You refer to landownership, or property rights in land, as "landowner privilege" on moral, political and philosophical grounds, and try to pass that NORMATIVE off a positive statement of fact. But it's only "fact" when viewed from your mind, and accepting your normative as if it were fact. You alternate willy-nilly, with a convenience that suits your own purposes, and without distinction or clarification, between moral, philosophical and legal definitions of the same word, as if they were all the same -- even though YOUR intent is quite obvious in every context you employ. 




> Government's own financial interest prevents land from being made artificially scarce.


Even IF that was true, there is nothing inherent about government that causes it to act - _especially long term_ - in its own financial interests.  Deficit spending, a debauched currency and the very existence of the Fed it created is proof enough of that.  The fact that it's long-term economic suicide is irrelevant (to them), as their SHORT TERM financial interests were more than taken care of.  And making lands artificially scarce is a reality in your precious Hong Kong - as *95% of the land* even now remains raw, undeveloped, and UNAVAILABLE TO THE MARKET. 




> Government's own political interest prevents it from placing a ground rent floor.


That's not naivete on your part, Roy, that's a total disconnect from reality.  

Its "own political interest"? Governments (ideologues and self-interested people in power) _test political waters_. That's what they do best. Upon finding that there are no political ramifications for a given corrupt act, it is only a matter of degree and time, as those boundaries continue to be tested.  Whatever the political market will bear - that's the price we all pay; in ANY political direction. Did political interest prevent the Fed from coming into existence? Did it prevent the right to own gold from being illegally done away with? Did political interest prevent income taxes from getting driven like a wedge into the lives of ordinary wage earners?  Did political interest prevent Japanese Citizens from being singled out and put into camps?  

What the $#@! does "political interest" mean anyway? Majorities and oligarchies, governments of all kinds, have PROVED capable of atrocities, and it is often the very ATROCITIES they commit that have proved to be in their "political interest"!  In the case of a brutal dictatorship, it may be in the "political interests" of the brutal dictator to KILL ALL DISSENTERS.  Ever heard of Mao, Stalin or Polpot?




> You could with equal "logic" claim there is NOTHING to prevent government from just killing everyone and taking all their stuff.


I don't need to claim such a thing, or use logic in some vacuous hypothetical in a philosophical context.  IT IS AN HISTORICAL FACT. Not "_killing everyone_", because it doesn't work that way and NEVER DID. They kill or otherwise dominate, drive out or marginalize, _certain politically weaker everyones_. Cowboys and Injuns. Germans and Jews. Bourgeois and Proletariat. Winners and losers. Governments have, in fact, and many times throughout human history, killed MASSES and taken (REDISTRIBUTED) "all their stuff".  

Do you actually even live on this planet?




> If other entities bid up rents, the UIE also rises.


Bull$#@!. We don't even know if a UIE would exist (UIE is not required for LVT to exist), let alone, and most importantly, how such an exemption would be formulated or determined by _those who are NOT ROY L_ (read= the vast majority of the population, and 100% of those most likely to be in charge of implementation).

Face it, Roy. It's not "gubmint" meeza hates. Meeza lubza _my gubmint_. Yousa _hatesa-hatesa-hatesa_ my gubmint, just as meeza hatesa yours.

----------


## Roy L

Steven has spewed forth another tsunami of stupid, dishonest garbage, repeating for the hundredth time fallacies, absurdities and lies he knows I already demolished 99 times before.



> Not your specific brand of "liberty", to be sure - the word you bandy about generically, but which is only intended within the narrowed context of your normative (the specific "otherwise liberty" you think "ought" to be recognized as both a moral and legal right of liberty).


Lie.  The liberty right I am talking about is simply recognition of the natural physical liberty all human beings enjoy as a matter of objective physical fact, unless others remove it by violent, aggressive, forcible physical coercion.



> *You have it exactly backwards.* But that's because _you don't know anything about legal definitions, the law or how it works_.


Stupid, dishonest garbage.



> Consider any apartment rental.


There is no right to apartments.  You just have to change the subject.



> The _conditional terms of privileged use_ are specified in the rental agreement (e.g., must pay full rent, on time, may not alter the premises, paint the walls a different color, etc.,) because the use of that space is a LICENSED PRIVILEGE.  It doesn't matter whether the rental is from a private owner or from the state.  The only privilege involved in a rental agreement is the privilege to use, conditioned on performance according the terms of the contract.


Another stupid lie.  The rental contract explicitly gives the tenant the power to exclude others, including the landlord except under specified conditions.  You know this.  You just decided deliberately to lie about it.  Everything you say is objectively false.



> Once a contract is entered into, and consideration is exchanged, other RIGHTS, including the RIGHT to forcibly exclude others from that space, transfers from the owner to the tenant.  Fourth Amendment rights fully apply, as does the RIGHT to defend that space from intruders and trespassers. None of those types of rights are privileges -- *even for renters*.


That's because "privilege" is from the Latin for "private law," and a contract is not a law.  Land titles, OTOH, *are* laws.  



> Well, in the case of an apartment rental, you still think that others in the community have a "natural liberty right" (MORALLY SPEAKING) to use the land beneath that space, regardless who occupies it.  That's the "right" (MORAL, NOT LEGAL) that you feel is being violated, the "fact" which you are "willing to know", which means that you are the one who is question begging - from your own premises.


Nope.  The premises in question are objective, physical facts, not assumptions.



> Again more question begging, as you don't even acknowledge landownership as a (MORAL) right, but ignore the fact that it is a legal right, even as you see everyone else in the community as having a "NATURAL LIBERTY" (MORAL) right to use of that same land.


You constantly beg the question, so of course you must falsely accuse me of doing so.  You have no choice.  That is the invariable pattern of the dishonest and evil.



> It's an implementation of a taxing mechanism, nothing more, regardless of rationale or relevance to your morality.


Nope, that's just another stupid lie on your part.  A taxing mechanism can't be an implementation of itself, that's a self-reference fallacy.



> Semantics, gibberish, and incorrect in the absolute.


It is objectively correct and indisputable.



> Slavery was not ended by implementing a "policy tool" that promised to end it.


Yes, actually, it was, beginning with prohibitions on importation of slaves, laws defining legal protections for slaves, etc.



> Slavery was not ended by a SLAVE VALUE TAX.


Because that was not the appropriate policy tool for that problem.  Slaves *were* often taxed, though not by value.  In any case you are just spewing stupid, dishonest filth.  



> Slavery was ended by it EXPLICIT abolition, and a full declaration that former slaves were free. PERIOD.


Lie disproved above.  We can add the history of emancipation to the subjects of which you have proved yourself comprehensively ignorant.



> NOT a proviso that the governments only could own slaves, or that people could own slaves so long as they paid the SLV, or leased them directly from the government - which would then act as the SLAVE VALUE CAPTURE AND RETURN mechanism for the benefit of slaves.


Stupid, irrelevant and dishonest garbage.  No one has claimed a slave value tax would have been an appropriate policy tool to end slavery.



> Meaningless geolib propaganda gibberish.


Fact.  You claimed that LVT "like any tax," had "the power to destroy."  I identified the evils it has the power to destroy.  If you think it is going to destroy anything else, anything desirable, the way income tax destroys production and sales tax destroys consumption (the goal and purpose of all economic activity), then you will have to identify it and risk being proved a liar.



> Anyone can assert the same for *any political regime*.  And they do.


But unlike LVT advocates, without any basis in economic fact.



> Communism, socialism, fascism, brutal despotic dictatorships, leaders of banana republics, etc., all promise to destroy privilege, injustice, poverty, unemployment, tyranny, oppression and despair. All a bunch of Gilligans who *"promise to do dis, dat, and da udda ting"*.


But unlike them, LVT actually pushes the levers of economic incentive to achieve the destruction of those evils.



> The Tragedy of the (*unmanaged*) Commons (Hardin, 1968) was an indictment of your idea that all individuals, jointly and severally (communally) have "natural liberty rights" to the same resource.


Lie.  It simply identified a conflict in the unconstrained exercise of those rights.



> It dealt with *depletion* (read=destruction, damage, overexploitation, extinction) of a natural resource based on unrestricted, _unmanaged_ COMMUNAL usage (aka "*equal liberty rights to all*".  In fact, it was Hardin himself who recommended that the tragedy of the commons could be prevented by a) more government regulation or b) *privatizing the commons property*.


No, he recommended public management and rent recovery under broadly geoist principles, and understood that privatization was, for all but the owner, no better than depletion.



> That brings us full circle to *YOUR big "IF", not mine*. When I say "_rights of individuals_" with respect to land - it's individual rights _with respect to individual parcels of land_ -- I am NOT using your *COMMONS PARADIGM* (a collectivist notion that is completely $#@!ed up and unsustainable to begin with) concerning what _you think_ the rights of individual rights of liberty to land use morally are, or legally _ought to be_, as a many-people-to-many-parcels collectivized "Commons-rights-that-need-to-be-managed" relationship.


Incomprehensible gibberish designed purely to convince yourself that you have not been proved objectively wrong.



> I said that the only way to secure the rights of individuals is _to secure them directly_.


And I proved you objectively wrong.



> As individual rights - not to "liberty rights of access to the same resource".  And that is clearly true, as the abolishment of slavery proves.


It proves no such thing.



> *Taxing slave ownership "as a policy tool" was tried in vain*.


It was actually quite effective, and would have worked if continued, but public opposition to slavery grew too intense.



> Yes, it is a question-begging fallacy on your part.


Lie.



> Two factors that make it difficult to have any kind of reasonable discussion or debate with you: Firstly, you don't seem to know the difference between a positive and normative statement


No.  It is YOU who cannot tell the difference between positive and normative statements, as you constantly protest that my statements are normative, when I am responding to normative claims of yours, which you imagine are positive.



> (which is strange, for someone claiming to have graduated with honors with a philosophy degree from a respected university) - this causes you to repeatedly make false statements, or to challenge statements of fact that are not controversial at all.


Lie.



> For example, landownership rights, or property rights in land, DO exist currently as legal rights.  But you challenge this as question begging, or false, on moral or philosophical grounds, as not being "valid" or "moral" rights -- _even when only the legal definition was used and intended_, which makes it a positive statement of fact. Not truth. Not morally right. _Just fact._


I have never denied that property "rights" in land enjoy the same legal status that property "rights" in slaves enjoyed in the antebellum South.  Indeed, I have stated it repeatedly.  I have simply identified the fact that it is question begging to assert this fact as an argument in favor of such rights.



> You refer to landownership, or property rights in land, as "landowner privilege" on moral, political and philosophical grounds, and try to pass that NORMATIVE off a positive statement of fact.


No.  It is a positive fact that a land title forcibly removes others' liberty for the benefit of the landowner and is therefore a privilege.



> But it's only "fact" when viewed from your mind, and accepting your normative as if it were fact.


Lie.



> You alternate willy-nilly, with a convenience that suits your own purposes, and without distinction or clarification, between moral, philosophical and legal definitions of the same word, as if they were all the same


Lie.



> -- even though YOUR intent is quite obvious in every context you employ.


It is indeed.



> Even IF that was true, there is nothing inherent about government that causes it to act - _especially long term_ - in its own financial interests.


Add public choice theory to the subjects about which you are comprehensively ignorant.



> Deficit spending, a debauched currency and the very existence of the Fed it created is proof enough of that.


Actually, it isn't.  The Fed was created crookedly, by a corrupt minority in Congress.



> The fact that it's long-term economic suicide is irrelevant (to them), as their SHORT TERM financial interests were more than taken care of.


It's true that privileged private interests are constantly trying to get more government power on their side.  Governments must be held to account by informed and thoughtful voters.  The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.



> And making lands artificially scarce is a reality in your precious Hong Kong - as *95% of the land* even now remains raw, undeveloped, and UNAVAILABLE TO THE MARKET.


You have made that claim repeatedly, but have never offered any evidence for it.  It is of course false.



> That's not naivete on your part, Roy, that's a total disconnect from reality.


It is fact.



> What the $#@! does "political interest" mean anyway?


Interest in keeping power.



> Majorities and oligarchies, governments of all kinds, have PROVED capable of atrocities, and it is often the very ATROCITIES they commit that have proved to be in their "political interest"!  In the case of a brutal dictatorship, it may be in the "political interests" of the brutal dictator to KILL ALL DISSENTERS.  Ever heard of Mao, Stalin or Polpot?


They weren't in power in democratic countries.



> I don't need to claim such a thing, or use logic in some vacuous hypothetical in a philosophical context.  IT IS AN HISTORICAL FACT.


Lie.



> Not "_killing everyone_", because it doesn't work that way and NEVER DID. They kill or otherwise dominate, drive out or marginalize, _certain politically weaker everyones_. Cowboys and Injuns. Germans and Jews. Bourgeois and Proletariat. Winners and losers. Governments have, in fact, and many times throughout human history, killed MASSES and taken (REDISTRIBUTED) "all their stuff".


Not democratic governments.



> Do you actually even live on this planet?


<yawn>



> Bull$#@!.


You again resort to claiming that what I advocate is different from what will be implemented.  That is not an argument against what I advocate, because I could say the same about what you advocate, *whatever* it is.  It's just stupid, dishonest garbage.



> We don't even know if a UIE would exist (UIE is not required for LVT to exist), let alone, and most importantly, how such an exemption would be formulated or determined by _those who are NOT ROY L_ (read= the vast majority of the population, and 100% of those most likely to be in charge of implementation).


So?  We don't know that anything you advocate would be implemented that way.  How on earth do you imagine such silly crap is relevant?

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
> 
> And making lands artificially scarce is a reality in your precious Hong Kong - as 95% of the land even now remains raw, undeveloped, and UNAVAILABLE TO THE MARKET.
> 
> 
> You have made that claim repeatedly, but have never offered any evidence for it. It is of course false.


I stand corrected:




> http://www.reprisk.com/downloads/par...ull_Report.pdf 
> 
> Hong Kong..has a total land area of around 1,100 square kilometres...a population of approximately seven million, with 6.8 million residents and 200,000 ‘mobile’ workers. *Less than 25% of Hong Kong’s total area is developed*...with a land population density that stands at around 6,500 persons per square kilometre on average, and Kwun Tong, with over 50,000 persons per square kilometre, was the most densely populated among the District Councils.





> http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/...s/outdoor.html
> 
> To many visitors' surprise, *almost 70% of Hong Kong's total land area is unspoilt* countryside and mountains, and an incredible 40% of the territory has been officially conserved in protected country and marine parks.


Land is artificially scarce in Hong Kong - as a minimum of 70% of the land even now remains raw, undeveloped, and unavailable to the market.

Following are excerpts from this article: 

It is quite LVT friendly, and while I don't agree with many of his premises, especially as it related to his call for land value capture of residential property (abolished in Canberra in 1970), at least the author makes the attempt to honestly address many of the things I have tried to discuss with you (about the challenges and associated problems with land-leasing systems) -- issues you have already repeatedly dismissed out of hand as non-issues, outright lies, gibberish, garbage, refusal to know facts, etc., given your belief in LVT as a magic panacea.  Here they are anyway. 




> Excerpted from: *Myths and Realities of Public Land Leasing: Canberra and Hong Kong (Land Lines Article)
> *
> *CORRUPTION*
> 
> *Hong Kong's government...provides public officials with generous remuneration and fringe benefits to reduce the temptation of corruption.* 
> 
> This demonstrates that, in designing a public leasehold system, a government must consider...
> 
> *...the need for a system of checks and balances to prevent opportunism or political maneuvering. 
> ...


You're not discussing, Roy. You're preaching, evangelizing and proselytizing like a zealot on behalf of a rigid, dogmatic fundamentalist religion, with select economics and political scripture that you've canonized in your mind, as you ignore and dismiss anything or anyone that disagrees with or runs contrary to your theories, your system, your beliefs.  If it ain't in Roy's babble, it's evil. 

I had never even heard of LVT before coming to RPF.  It has been an eye-opener to say the least, and has gotten me thinking about land in a different light than I'd ever considered before. But while you're spewing, regurgitating the same old turing machine $#@! by rote (and with all the charm of a rabid chihuahua), I'm actually learning. And adapting. 

I'm actually in favor of LVT now.  In its proper place. But your version can kiss my ass forever, as it's nothing short of a recipe for human enslavement in my mind (second only to the entire Keynesian-spawned monetary system religion). Your version would be the cure that is far worse than the disease you misdiagnosed, which would do more far more harm to the very individuals whose rights you think it would _incidentally_ secure and protect.

----------


## Roy L

> I stand corrected:
> Land is artificially scarce in Hong Kong - as a minimum of 70% of the land even now remains raw, undeveloped, and unavailable to the market.


Yes, and much of it is too steep, too low and wet, too unstable, too inaccessible, etc. for efficient development.  Anyway, I've never said HK is perfect.  Its history and current politics -- especially the massive, corrupt giveaways to rich, greedy private landholders -- preclude that.  But HK does prove that, contrary to your stupid lies, private ownership of land is entirely unnecessary to a society's attainment of world-leading liberty, justice and prosperity.



> It is quite LVT friendly, and while I don't even agree with many of his premises, at least the author makes the attempt to honestly address many of the things I have tried to discuss with you (about the challenges and associated problems with land-leasing systems)


You have never tried to discuss anything of the sort with me.  You just claim government is always wrong, and so inherently corrupt that there is no way to implement any policy I advocate.



> -- issues you have already repeatedly dismissed out of hand as non-issues, outright lies, gibberish, garbage, refusal to know facts, etc.,


Which YOUR claims are.



> given your belief in LVT as a magic panacea.


Strawman lie.



> Here they are anyway.


And they are all the results of letting lease holders pocket publicly created land value.  "Politically difficult" just means, "inconvenient to the greed of rich, greedy, privileged, parasitic filth."



> You're not discussing, Roy.


True.  That would require another person capable of engaging in discussion of issues, and not just constantly lying about the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and what I have plainly written.



> You're proselytizing like a zealot on behalf of a rigid, dogmatic fundamentalist religion,


Stupid lie.  I prove my statements with fact and logic.



> with select


I.e., relevant and accurate...



> economics and political scripture that you've canonized in your mind, and ignoring and dismissing anything that runs contrary to your beliefs.


<yawn>  You are lying, and you know it.  I do not ignore or dismiss, I *refute*, and it takes a lot of time and thought.  When you can come up with something better than stupid lies, let me know, and we can discuss it.



> I had never even heard of LVT before coming to RPF. It has been an eye-opener to say the least, and has gotten me thinking about land in a different light than I'd ever considered before.


Careful with that red pill, Steo.  Once you've seen the cat, there's no going back.



> I'm actually in favor of LVT now. In its proper place. But your version can kiss my ass forever, as it's nothing short of the penultimate recipe for human enslavement in my mind (the Keynesian-spawned monetary system being the ultimate).


I think you know that's false.



> Your version would be the cure that is far worse than the disease you misdiagnosed, which would do more far more harm to the very individuals whose rights you think it would incidentally secure and protect.


And I think you know that's false, too.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> But HK does prove that, contrary to your stupid lies, private ownership of land is entirely unnecessary to a society's attainment of world-leading liberty, justice and prosperity.


Strawman stupidity. I don't buy into panacea-thinking, and never once claimed, or even implied, that private ownership of land was necessary or a requirement of _"society's attainment"_ of ANY $#@!ING THING. You're the ONLY one claiming that "truth, justice, liberty, blah blah..." is IMPOSSIBLE without a given system (LVT, as envisioned by you).  




> You have never tried to discuss anything of the sort with me.  You just claim government is always wrong, and so inherently corrupt that there is no way to implement any policy I advocate.


That's your projection, which is contradicted by the facts.  I am also proposing *solutions to government* (not "government solutions") as they equate to individual rights (AS I SEE THEM) and revenue sources.  So it's not "government" that is always wrong, Roy, although I have good cause to believe that it must ALWAYS be presumed inherently corrupt, and certainly inherently corruptible given it is run and influenced by self-interested humans.  

The policies you advocate, on the other hand, are utterly naive in my mind, with an incredible presumption of honesty, wisdom and incorruptibility of government that is absolutely refuted by history, current reality and common sense.  The policies you advocate are also the antithesis of individual liberty and rights AS I SEE THEM, but only as they are applied to actual individuals. 




> *ROY'S ASSERTION:* I do not ignore or dismiss, I *refute*, and it takes a lot of time and thought.  
> 
> *ROY'S SELF-CONTRADICTION:*  When you can come up with something better than stupid lies, let me know, and we can discuss it.


Bwahaha...

Have a nice loop-dee-loop.

----------


## Roy L

> Strawman stupidity. I don't buy into panacea-thinking,


Sure you do.  You think privatizing everything is a panacea.



> and never once claimed, or even implied, that private ownership of land was necessary or a requirement of _"society's attainment"_ of ANY $#@!ING THING.


Lie.  In post #1021, you falsely claimed, "No, it's a requirement for security in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness."

In post #1026, you falsely claimed, "If free and natural Citizens were IMMUNE from LVT, being the only entities with an actual RIGHT IN PROPERTY IN LAND (limited by population/area ratio), there would be a natural check and balance on the taxing jurisdiction that would not otherwise exist. It would be IMPOSSIBLE for the State to directly abuse individuals."

And there are many more examples I could quote.



> You're the ONLY one claiming that "truth, justice, liberty, blah blah..." is IMPOSSIBLE without a given system (LVT, as envisioned by you).


It is certainly true that absent recovery of publicly created land rent for public puposes and benefit, for which "LVT" is a common shorthand term, liberty and justice are impossible, because anything else automatically removes people's rights (i.e., their liberty) for the unearned profit of landowners (an injustice).



> That's your projection, which is contradicted by the facts.


Nope.  In post #1026 you falsely claimed:

_"Because Roy L IS NEVER GOING TO BE IN CHARGE OF LVT, there is:

    NOTHING to prevent land from being made artificially scarce, whether withheld from availability or through zoning laws
    NOTHING to prevent the government from placing a ground rent floor that applies to everyone
    NOTHING to prevent a multiplier for economic rents (X1.5, X2, etc.,) from kicking in later
    NOTHING to prevent special treatment through exemptions to privileged entities (e.g., Economic Development Zones)
    NOTHING to prevent the state from NEVER implementing a "Universal Individual Exemption in the first place"_



> The policies you advocate, on the other hand, are utterly naive in my mind, with an incredible presumption of honesty, wisdom and incorruptibility of government that is absolutely refuted by history, current reality and common sense.


Wrong.  A government wise and honest enough to implement LVT is by definition wise and honest enough to implement LVT.  A subsequent government might be unwise and dishonest enough to dismantle or corrupt LVT, but then it wouldn't be LVT.

----------


## redbluepill

I haven't finished reading this article yet, but its an interesting take on the LVT movement from the view of someone who used to be very skeptical of it.

http://speaklibertynow.com/2012/06/2...on-refutation/

----------


## Roy L

> I haven't finished reading this article yet, but its an interesting take on the LVT movement from the view of someone who used to be very skeptical of it.
> 
> http://speaklibertynow.com/2012/06/2...on-refutation/


Whoa!  Dan Sullivan's demolition of Wendy McElroy's "arguments" is masterful, comprehensive and conclusive.

----------


## EcoWarrier

> Whoa!  Dan Sullivan's demolition of Wendy McElroy's "arguments" is masterful, comprehensive and conclusive.


That was a nice read. Long, so I took time out to read. I do not like the idea that non-Geoists think Henry George is some sort of cult figure. He is not.  I clearly do not regard George as like Reverend Moon.  He is one in a long line of people who thought the same way refining as they went along.  George's views have been refined since his death.

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## redbluepill

> Whoa!  Dan Sullivan's demolition of Wendy McElroy's "arguments" is masterful, comprehensive and conclusive.


I thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

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## Steven Douglas

Too rich to pass up. The left panel is an old Georgist comic strip panel from an Aussie Georgist/LVT site: http://www.prosper.org.au/comedy/.  

I added the right panel to complete the picture.

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## Roy L

> Too rich to pass up. The left panel is an old Georgist comic strip panel from an Aussie Georgist/LVT site: http://www.prosper.org.au/comedy/.  
> 
> I added the right panel to complete the picture.


No, of course you didn't.  You added it because you hate liberty, justice and truth.  You were trying to deceive your readers, and make them forget the fact that LVT automatically forces the state to serve the community, while private landowning without LVT automatically forces the community to serve private landowners.

It's not rocket science, Stevil.  You hate good, and love evil.  You spray in your shorts every time you think of the millions of innocent people who are murdered every year for the unearned profit of greedy, idle, parasitic landowners.  Simple.

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## Steven Douglas

I thought you'd like it. 




> LVT automatically forces the state to serve the community


The other way around. Certainly. Automatically. As usual, you have everything exactly backwards, Roy. Mandatory revenues paid to any monopolistic entity forces absolutely nothing from that entity.  People will continue to require land for life and commerce regardless whether it is under a public or private landownership regime, and without regard to whether any publicly funded infrastructure or improvements are made.   

It's no surprise to me that you think this way, Roy, as you don't even believe it's possible for a state to withhold land availability to the market as a means of increasing its value, the state's revenues, through artificial scarcity.  But that's because you don't know any real-world economics.

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## Roy L

> The other way around. Certainly. Automatically.


Nope.  That's just more stupid garbage from you with no basis in fact, logic, economics, or anything else other than your own hatred of liberty, justice, humanity, and truth.



> As usual, you have everything exactly backwards, Roy.


ROTFL!!  I am not the one who claims Hong Kong cannot possibly be free or prosperous, Steven.  You are.  I am not the one who claims the people of Bangladesh or Guatemala or the Philippines enjoy liberty while the people of Hong Kong do not, Steven.  You are.



> Mandatory revenues paid to any monopolistic entity forces absolutely nothing from that entity.


<yawn>  LVT revenues are not mandatory, Stevil, stop lying.  They are simply the market price for the economic advantage use of the land provides.  If the government does not make use of the land advantageous -- IF IT DOESN'T MAKE USING THE LAND WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION MORE DESIRABLE, WHICH IS ALMOST A DEFINITION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY -- then it won't get the revenue.  People won't pay it.  They can't be forced to pay it any more than a private landowner's tenants can be forced to pay more than the market rent.

Everything you say is the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.



> People will continue to require land for life and commerce regardless whether it is under a public or private landownership regime, and without regard to whether any publicly funded infrastructure or improvements are made.


But they WON'T PAY AS MUCH for land that does not provide the advantages that desirable and efficient government services and infrastructure provide.  



> It's no surprise to me that you think this way, Roy, as you don't even believe it's possible for a state to withhold land availability to the market as a means of increasing its value, the state's revenues, through artificial scarcity.


It's possible -- but not with LVT, because LVT recovers the full rental value of the land.  The government can't get more than that by withholding land from the market any more than a private landowner can increase his rent income by withholding his own land from the market.  



> But that's because you don't know any real-world economics.


??  ROTFL!!  I am not the one who claims the supply of land is determined by how much landowners want for it, Steven.  You are.

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## EcoWarrier

> You added it because you hate liberty, justice and truth.


His self-centeredness and greed gets the better of him. He believes in a winner takes all and exploit the rest - all fair play to his warped mind.  He will tell himself lies and believes them. He think Geoism is some sort of state collectivism - how further from the truth.  It is sad really.

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## Steven Douglas

> I am not the one who claims Hong Kong cannot possibly be free or prosperous, Steven.


Neither am I, but then again I don't have a collectivist hive mindset, and would never refer to "Hong Kong" or any other state or jurisdiction as if it was a single entity, like A PERSON.  When you say "free or prosperous", WHO in Hong Kong are you referring to, exactly?  Under any state monopoly there will be BIG winners, just as there will be BIGGER LOSERS. And for the actual winners there, the majority of the wealth in Hong Kong came from financial activity OUTSIDE of Hong Kong. 




> *Hong Kong's poorest living in 'coffin homes'*
> Hidden amid the multi-million dollar high-rise apartments and chic shopping malls of Hong Kong's urban centers are scores of tiny, unseen tenements -- some no bigger than coffins -- that many people call home.
> 
> [Mak is a] Hong Kong native, he went bankrupt after a series of unsuccessful ventures in finance and now makes barely enough to cover his rent -- around $150 a month. He is now among the 1.2 million Hong Kong residents who currently live in poverty, according to a government advisory group.
> 
> For Sze, the "coffin home" phenomenon is the result of an urban perfect storm: a combination of skyrocketing real-estate prices and *arguably the biggest wealth gap in Asia.*
> 
> A 2011 survey by Savills -- a real estate company based in the UK -- found that *the city's top end properties sell for a confounding $10,550 per square foot.*
> 
> ...


Sound like LVT heaven to you? Is that "good enough land to live on"? Sound like freedom and prosperity to you?  Are you going to credit LVT for that, or will you conveniently blame whatever doesn't make Hong a "free and prosperous" place on something else, or the lack of more LVT?  You cite Hong Kong as an example of LVT success (or "prosperity-despite-LVT" at worst) when convenient, but when equally convenient you will say that Hong Kong has other problems, and is not really LVT as it should be implemented.  

Or how about this related gem:




> *Hong Kong under pressure as poverty levels rise* 
> 
> All four of them live in a room that measures just six feet by 10 feet... Altogether, they earn just HKD9,000 a month (£740) and *immediately shell out over 40 per cent of that in rent.* 
> 
> Their large tenement building is a maze of what have become known as "coffin homes", apartments that have been subdivided by slumlords into tiny plywood boxes, some too small for anything other than a camp bed. 
> 
> "Housing is the worst issue, because they have *almost stopped building public housing*," said Eddie Tsang at the Hong Kong Council of Social Security.
> 
> Last year, *the city only built under 14,000 units, despite the island having a huge amount of land available.*
> ...


I can pretty much assure you that someone is prospering in all of that - including Hong Kong THE STATE.  But so much for a mere tax causing a state to be "automatically forced" to do anything at all.  Hong Kong has LVT and other taxes. 

So much for your ideal that:




> IF IT DOESN'T MAKE USING THE LAND WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION MORE DESIRABLE, WHICH IS ALMOST A DEFINITION OF GOOD GOVERNMENT THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY -- then it won't get the revenue.  People won't pay it.  They can't be forced to pay it any more than a private landowner's tenants can be forced to pay more than the market rent.


And now we return you back to the regularly scheduled real world....

What Hong Kong proves to me is that LVT (Socialism Lite) is FAR worse than Marxism, in that it might actually persist much longer under the cesspool of the Crony Capitalism it would engender, encourage and feed (your "_most productive hands_" doctrine, which really means "_most productive to the state_").  That's not free market capitalism, where value is discovered as a result of myriad individual preferences.  It's a state sponsored, state controlled dog fight/cockfight ring, where the winners and losers are all decided on the basis of who serves the state's interests best.    

Geoists hit the nail on the head when they talk about the effect that _monopoly ownership_ of land can do to keep the effects of slavery alive.  But that's where the Geoist sanity ends, as their solution is to make the entire state a land-controlled plantation, with the state LICENSING slave ownership by extension. At least sharecroppers and other victims of rent-seeking land monopolists could actually move away, even if to the frontier.  For Hong Kong residents, the only "frontier" available to them, besides leaving the state altogether if possible, is a COFFIN.

With LVT there is no longer a frontier.  It's no longer a question of who is a slave to which rent-seeking private monopolist. That monopoly on land rents question is finally settled. The only question that remains is which Plantation _Commune_-ity a slave "chooses" to belong, and to what extent he wants to actually serve as a slave for that community.  He is free to choose which master he serves, but he is not free to choose none.   

Your nasty Socialist Lite human enslavement experiment is ripe for corruption from the onset:

Zoning laws and land and resource preservation schemes that cause artificial scarcity (rent-seeking by the state)
Renaissance and Enterprise "partnership" Zones whereby the state can pick winners and losers, giving the wealthy and politically well-connected decided economic advantages. 
Rent-seeking crony capitalists would be the real winners, the ultimate "Licensed Plantation Renters" in all this, just like in Hong Kong, like so many mafia bosses buying up territories, so long as they give proper tribute to the ultimate mafia Don. But that's OK with you, because whomever wins the bidding war is presumed, not just to have the most money, but also to be "the most productive hands".  And $#@! Granny with her unproductive hands in her unproductive "good enough land to live on" promise while she waits in living coffin. 




> ??  ROTFL!!  I am not the one who claims the supply of land is determined by how much landowners want for it, Steven.  You are.


Go roll on the floor laughing in your Hong Kong coffin, Roy, and pray for the state to place you on a short-list that will save you from a slumlord, because LVT sure in the $#@! hasn't - and won't.

And speaking of Hong Kong, this just in:




> *Leung Faces Record Hong Kong Wealth Gap as Citys New Leader*
> 
> Leung, 57, has pledged to raise the income of the poorest and boost Hong Kongs housing supply. City officials said this month that its wealth gap, the biggest in Asia, widened to the worst since records started being kept in 1971.
> 
> Public discontent in Hong Kong may draw as many as 100,000 protesters at the start of Leungs term to push the government to address rising living costs and hold China to its promise to allow direct leadership elections in Hong Kong by 2017. Leung will need to address that pressure from below while meeting Chinas demand for stability as it goes through its own once-a- decade leadership transition later this year.
> 
> Hes going to make a number of changes in livelihood issues, said Martin Lee, the founding chairman of Hong Kongs Democratic Party, which is questioning the legitimacy of Leungs election victory. He will do it right away because he wants to endear himself to the Hong Kong people. These are the things that would make Hong Kong people less afraid of Communist rule.


Scary religion you believe in, Roy.

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## Steven Douglas

Double post from a server error.

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## EcoWarrier

> that LVT (Socialism Lite)


This clearly indicates your political conditioning.  This is sad.

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## EcoWarrier

Taiwan To Close Land Tax Loophole
The government’s proposed action is in response to those property developers who, instead of building on undeveloped land to provide much-needed residential properties, leave the real estate idle to profit from its untaxed rise in value, thereby contributing to inflationary property pressures.
http://www.tax-news.com/news/Taiwan_...____45858.html


*Taiwan’s land taxes were a major cause of its economic success. In the 1950s and 1960s, Taiwan was transformed from an impoverished agricultural backwater to a thriving industrial state with one of the world's strongest economies.* If the tax is applied to land value rather than the value of the harvest, then the land-value tax is not a burden on farmers, since it reduces the price of farmland, and does not add to the market rent of land.

A major strength of Taiwan's property tax system is its constitutionality. The implementation of the equalization of land rights is *stipulated in the Constitution, rather than merely in laws that can be more easily changed or eliminated*.

http://course.earthrights.net/node/102


*Taiwan, 1940s.* Old Formosa was mired in poverty and fast breeding. Hunger afflicted the majority of people who were landless peasants. Less than 20 families monopolized the entire island. 
..
..
A follower of Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China and an adherent of Henry George, Chiang knew of the Single Tax. Borrowing a page from George via Sun, the new Nationalist Government of Taiwan instituted its "land to the tiller program" which taxed farmland according to its value. Soon the large plantation owners found themselves paying out about as much in taxes as they were getting back as Rent. Being a middleman was no longer worth the bother, so they sold off their excess to farmers at prices the peasants could afford.
..
Working their own land with newly marketed fertilizers, new owners worked harder. They produced more, 
..
*Taiwan began to set world records with growth rates of 10% per annum in their GDP and 20% in their industry*. (Fred Harrison, Power in the Land, 1983)

http://www.progress.org/geonomy/Numbers.html



*New York City, 1920s*. After World War I, many New Yorkers suffered from lack of housing. To solve the problem, Governor Al Smith borrowed a page from Henry George (who ran for mayor of New York City in 1886, finishing second ahead of Teddy Roosevelt, and again in 1897, dying four days before the election). Smith persuaded the New York legislature to pass a law allowing New York City for the next ten years to tax land but not the buildings on it.

New construction more than tripled while in other big cities it barely doubled. Not only was there more housing, and thus lower cost apartments, there were more jobs and higher wages for construction workers, and more business for merchants who sold goods to the employed workers.

Economic good times in New York came to an end, though, when owners in 1928 began to anticipate the expiration of the tax-shift law. (“How New York Solved Its Housing Crisis”, Charles Johnson Post, 1931?, Schalkenbach Fdn, Mason Gaffney, 2001) Some say that *the drastic decline in building starts, not the stock market crash of 1929, was the real trigger of the Great Depression of the 1930s*. 
..
..
Watching land prices inflate in the 80's, followed by farm takeovers and slowed housing starts, land-focused econometricians predicted land prices to hit bottom in about 1990, then next around *2008*.

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## Roy L

> Neither am I,


Yes, you are.



> but then again I don't have a collectivist hive mindset,


<yawn>  Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.



> and would never refer to "Hong Kong" or any other state or jurisdiction as if it was a single entity, like A PERSON.


ROTFL!!  Of course you would, and do, because it is perfectly correct English to do so.  You do it as often as anyone, so stop lying.



> When you say "free or prosperous", WHO in Hong Kong are you referring to, exactly?


The people.



> Under any state monopoly there will be BIG winners, just as there will be BIGGER LOSERS.


No, you're just spewing stupid lies again.  Who are the BIG winners and BIGGER LOSERS under the US Postal Service monopoly, hmmmm?

Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.



> And for the actual winners there, the majority of the wealth in Hong Kong came from financial activity OUTSIDE of Hong Kong.


No, that's just more of your stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.



> Sound like LVT heaven to you? Is that "good enough land to live on"? Sound like freedom and prosperity to you?


No, it sounds to me like you are trying to change the subject.  You do that a lot.  HK is one of the richest places on earth, and routinely tops lists of the world's freest economies, and there has been no private landowning there for 160 years.  You just have to tell any sort of lie in order to avoid knowing that fact.



> Are you going to credit LVT for that, or will you conveniently blame whatever doesn't make Hong a "free and prosperous" place on something else, or the lack of more LVT?


HK doesn't use LVT, you know that, and I will definitely blame the poverty, inequality, and overcrowding there on lack of LVT, because that is what is causing them.



> You cite Hong Kong as an example of LVT success (or "prosperity-despite-LVT" at worst) when convenient,


That is a lie.  HK does not and cannot use LVT because the land is not privately owned.  I cite HK as proof that private landowning is entirely unnecessary to prosperity and economic freedom.



> but when equally convenient you will say that Hong Kong has other problems, and is not really LVT as it should be implemented.


HK definitely has other problems, lack of democratic accountability being the biggest, and its system is definitely not LVT as it should be implemented.  Approximately 3/4 of land rent is left in private leaseholders' hands, the government consequently tries to increase its initial lease payment revenues by restricting releases of public land for private use, and there is no universal individual exemption.



> I can pretty much assure you that someone is prospering in all of that - including Hong Kong THE STATE.


It is private leaseholders who are ripping money out of the state, as proved by the astronomical exchange value of the leases.



> But so much for a mere tax causing a state to be "automatically forced" to do anything at all.  Hong Kong has LVT and other taxes.


It does not have LVT, stop lying.



> So much for your ideal that:


So much for your lie that HK uses a system similar to full recovery of publicly created rent for public purposes and benefit under democratic accontability, with a universal individual exemption to restore the right to liberty.



> And now we return you back to the regularly scheduled real world....


The signal that you are about to tell more absurd lies.



> What Hong Kong proves to me is that LVT (Socialism Lite)


Which HK doesn't use, and isn't socialism, stop lying.



> is FAR worse than Marxism,


That is a stupid lie, as proved by every statistic, and the fact that the Chinese who actually lived under Marxism in the Maoist era were so desperate to get to HK millions of them risked their lives to do it.



> in that it might actually persist much longer under the cesspool of the Crony Capitalism it would engender, encourage and feed (your "_most productive hands_" doctrine, which really means "_most productive to the state_").


Stupid lie with no basis in reality.  The market decides what the most productive use is, and it is the most productive use to the economy.



> That's not free market capitalism, where value is discovered as a result of myriad individual preferences.


Indeed it isn't, as free market capitalism is a logical impossibility.  It is an oxymoron, as capitalism requires private landowning, and the resulting subsidy to landowners contradicts the free market.  A true free market, as under LVT (and closely approached in HK, as every credible international comparison proves), does discover value through myriad individual preferences.



> It's a state sponsored, state controlled dog fight/cockfight ring, where the winners and losers are all decided on the basis of who serves the state's interests best.


No, that's nothing but a cretinous lie from you with no basis in fact.  It is precisely because LVT's perfect justice rewards people in exact proportion as they contribute to production of goods and services that OTHER PEOPLE DESIRE that you hate it with such maniacal ferocity.



> Geoists hit the nail on the head when they talk about the effect that _monopoly ownership_ of land can do to keep the effects of slavery alive.


Thank you for agreeing that your agenda here is to serve an evil equivalent to slavery.



> But that's where the Geoist sanity ends, as their solution is to make the entire state a land-controlled plantation, with the state LICENSING slave ownership by extension.


No, that's just another stupid lie from you.  The geoist solution REMOVES the privilege of the slave owner, and restores the individual liberty to use land via the universal individual exemption.  No one is privileged, no one is disadvantaged.



> At least sharecroppers and other victims of rent-seeking land monopolists could actually move away, even if to the frontier.


Already proved a stupid lie.  The landowners kept them so poor they couldn't move away: they'd starve before they got to the frontier.  



> For Hong Kong residents, the only "frontier" available to them, besides leaving the state altogether if possible, is a COFFIN.


Another stupid lie.  The people of HK are mostly housed in very modern and comfortable, if small, accommodation.  Of course there are poor people in HK who squander their earnings on alcohol, gambling, drugs, etc. and can't afford a decent place to live, just as there are anywhere else.  And as HK doesn't have a universal individual exemption, they are deprived of their liberty without just compensation, just as homeless people in the USA are.



> With LVT there is no longer a frontier.


Lie.  All land is free up to the universal individual exemption.  Stop lying.



> It's no longer a question of who is a slave to which rent-seeking private monopolist.


Right, because no one is a slave to any rent seeker.



> That monopoly on land rents question is finally settled.


Right: rents are devoted to the purposes and benefit of the public that creates them.



> The only question that remains is which Plantation _Commune_-ity a slave "chooses" to belong, and to what extent he wants to actually serve as a slave for that community.  He is free to choose which master he serves, but he is not free to choose none.


Stupid lie.  No one is a slave, stop lying, because the UIE ensures no one can be compelled to labor for another's benefit, stop lying.  He doesn't serve any master, because no one is privileged to take the value of his labor from him, stop lying.  He has his right to liberty restored, stop lying, the right that you want to strip him of without just -- or any -- compensation.

_STOP LYING._



> Your nasty Socialist Lite human enslavement experiment


Despicable, dishonest, deceitful filth.



> is ripe for corruption from the onset:
> Zoning laws and land and resource preservation schemes that cause artificial scarcity (rent-seeking by the state)


Already proved a lie.  If ALL land rent is being recovered for public purposes and benefit, the state _can't_ get more revenue by holding land out of use any more than a private landowner could, because SUPPLY IS FIXED (cue stupid attempts not to know that fact).  You just don't know any economics.



> Renaissance and Enterprise "partnership" Zones whereby the state can pick winners and losers, giving the wealthy and politically well-connected decided economic advantages.


That is a phenomenon utterly unrelated to LVT.  You are just spewing stupid lies and claiming LVT is something else entirely.  It doesn't even matter what: socialism, fascism, communism, feudalism, Marxism, crony capitalism -- any idiotic lie will do when your whole life is devoted to hatred of liberty, justice and truth.



> Rent-seeking crony capitalists would be the real winners, the ultimate "Licensed Plantation Renters" in all this, just like in Hong Kong, like so many mafia bosses buying up territories, so long as they give proper tribute to the ultimate mafia Don.


You again have no arguments, so you again just tell lies about what LVT is.



> But that's OK with you, because whomever wins the bidding war is presumed, not just to have the most money, but also to be "the most productive hands".


It's not an assumption.  It's a clear fact of the market.



> And $#@! Granny with her unproductive hands in her unproductive "good enough land to live on" promise while she waits in living coffin.


Evil, deceitful vomitus unrelated to fact.  The UIE is sufficient to obtain secure tenure on enough good land to live on.  If Granny wants to take more than that from others, she can pay them for it.  You just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie.



> Go roll on the floor laughing in your Hong Kong coffin, Roy, and pray for the state to place you on a short-list that will save you from a slumlord, because LVT sure in the $#@! hasn't - and won't.


It has, everywhere it has been tried.  



> And speaking of Hong Kong, this just in:


Notice the salient point:



> Public discontent in Hong Kong may draw as many as 100,000 protesters at the start of Leungs term to push the government to address rising living costs and *hold China to its promise to allow direct leadership elections* in Hong Kong by 2017.


HK is not a democracy, and hasn't been for 15 years -- during which time corruption has greatly worsened its problems, including poverty, inequality, landholder privilege, and artificial land scarcity.



> Scary religion you believe in, Roy.


<yawn>  Scary amount of lying you do, Steven.  Scary hatred of liberty, justice and truth you indulge in, Steven.  Scary god you believe in, who demands millions of human sacrifices be laid on his altar EVERY YEAR, Steven.

----------


## Steven Douglas

> Stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.


Why is it that I picture you as an old nun spitting bits of morning egg out of her angry mouth when she says that.  




> No, that's just more of your stupid, dishonest, deceitful filth.


See? Did you get the visual? 




> Evil, deceitful vomitus...You just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie. Scary god you believe in, who demands millions of human sacrifices be laid on his altar EVERY YEAR, Steven.


Can we just get on with the excommunication, burning at the stake, or whatever it is you people do with blasphemers and heretics?

----------


## EcoWarrier

> That is a lie.  HK does not and cannot use LVT because the land is not privately owned.  I cite HK as proof that private landowning is entirely unnecessary to prosperity and economic freedom.


Letchworth Garden City in England has all land leased out as per HK - although some 99 year leases when expired were sold as freehold which should never have occurred.

The land in HK is owned by the HK government, the people, the state.  In Letchworth the land is owned by a charitable status "foundation" and leases the land.  Homeowners are just that, they own the home on the land - the bricks. The income from the leases funds infrastructure in the town.  There are no vacant plots as there is no speculation on "land".

If the UK had full LVT enshrined in a constitution, then land could be sold off, as it would make little difference.

----------


## Roy L

> Why is it that I picture you as an old nun spitting bits of morning egg out of her angry mouth when she says that.


Because you are looking in a mirror?



> Can we just get on with the excommunication, burning at the stake, or whatever it is you people do with blasphemers and heretics?


The worst punishment I could visit on you would be realization of the true magnitude and nature of the evil you serve.

----------

