Zippy Juan's Problem: Equal rights of all to use the same resource results in its damage and/or depletion. (Tragedy of the Commons)
Roy's Solution: Government must secure and reconcile equal rights to use of all to use it.
The Tragedy of the Commons is caused by everyone already having an equal, free right of common access to use of the same parcel of land, or common resource.
No, it is caused by those who DEPLETE a self-renewing common resource not being required to make just compensation to those whom they are depriving of equal access. If the resource is not depleted, like the earth's atmosphere, or would not have renewed itself anyway, like a mineral deposit, there is no tragedy. But there still IS a tragedy even if access is not equal or free, or the resouce is not common, as long as the exploitation rate exceeds the self-renewal rate, leading to reduced resource availability. This can happen any time we follow the "grabbers get" principle of propertarian resource appropriation (preposterously called, "homesteading"). The Dust Bowl of the 1930s is a good example. The land was all privately owned, but the private landowners over-exploited and ruined it just as surely as the users of the unmanaged common because they did not have to compensate the community for depleting the soil.
You clearly have not understood "The Tragedy of the Commons."
Thus, on the surface, Roy's solution might appear to be a logical absurdity, as he seems to be advocating the very cause of the problem as a solution.
I just proved equal access
isn't the cause of the problem.
But that is not what Roy means when he says "securing and reconciling the equal rights of all to use it".
The net effect of Roy's solution (as government's "legitimate function") is to forcibly remove equal access to all for use of Common Land.
False. It
secures equal access to limited exclusive use by removing unlimited private grabbing.
What was once equal access to all becomes exclusive access granted to one (whomever is willing to pay the highest fee to the taxing jurisdiction that administers the land appropriated to it).
You know that exclusive access is necessary to secure valid property rights in fixed improvements, and you also certainly advocate "exclusive access granted to one," so that is not an argument.
This can be somewhat misleading, because Roy's argument is for the privatization of exclusive access to those same "public resources". That wouldn't change. The only difference in either case (leasehold under LVT or freehold under landownership) is who is entitled to the economic rents - NOT the fact that exclusive access to the resource itself is granted and secured by the state to some paying entity, to the physical exclusion of all others.
You know that under private land appropriation, the entity the "paying entity" is paying for the exclusive access security service he gets from government is a previous private land appropriator, not government. The previous private appropriator is therefore getting a welfare subsidy giveaway from government at the expense of the productive.
Granting exclusive access to land to a single paying entity eliminates the problem of the Tragedy of the Commons,
Well, by definition it may no longer be a tragedy of "commons," but the tragedy of reduced total resource availability resulting from over-exploitation can still occur after privatization, as proved above.
but creates a new problem, as everyone else is now physically, forcibly excluded or prevented from access to use of that same land. Under Roy's paradigm, that is a "right" that is unalienable, and therefore infringed. This infringement is then reconciled (economically) by Roy's solution in two parts:
In parsing what Roy wrote, note that he stated that government has a "legitimate function of securing and reconciling the equal rights of all to use it." (three operative words). So government must:
1) secure the equal rights of all to use "it", and it must also
2) reconcile the rights of all to use "it".
In the context of securing the equal rights of all to use "it", Roy could not have meant securing actual physical access (to everyone) to that particular parcel of land. Exclusive access is already granted to a single entity, which necessarily precludes access/use of that parcel of land to everyone else, who are necessarily excluded. Thus, that parcel of land is no longer available for their use during the term of the leasehold (which can be a lifetime for many if the leasehold remains in force for a long enough term). What cannot be physically "secured" as physical access must then be "reconciled" by compensation to individuals for a right that still exists but has been infringed - "reconciling" being the other operative word, through the unspoken-but-implied "just compensation".
I have stated explicitly, many times, that just compensation is required. Other than that, the above is correct.
What Roy's proposal really boils down to are the mechanics of "reconciling the rights of all to use it" whenever they are infringed upon (by agreement between the state and the landholder through which exclusive use and access is granted). The solution and rationale of this reconciliation are two-fold, involving Land Value Tax (LVT) and Roy's Universal Individual Exemption (UIE).
Right again.
Under Roy's paradigm, LVT paid to the taxing jurisdiction is the equivalent of paying everyone in that community who was deprived of any access or use of any land within that taxing jurisdiction. However, that revenue is not paid to those individuals, and cannot be called just compensation to them to the extent that they do not receive it, as this revenue goes directly to the State, ostensibly to pay for government services and infrastructure that contributed, in part, to the value of land in the first place.
Right. There are three ways LVT revenue can effectively be considered just compensation to all:
1. All have equal votes on how it is spent (though children get the UIE, they do not get to vote),
2. All gain equal, free,
exclusive access to enough land to live on, a benefit they would not otherwise have, and
3. To the extent that LVT revenue is spent on services and infrastructure people desire (which they will presumably vote for), it increases the benefit they gain through 2.
Scarce lands are allocated, from most to least valued lands, not according to equal rights of all, but rather according to the willingness and ability on the parts of certain entities (individuals or others, regardless of their legal status) to pay the most to the taxing jurisdiction. This satisfies the state's requirement for funding for services, infrastructure and other expenditures (some of which COULD, in theory, go individuals), but does not necessarily secure or reconcile any of the rights of those excluded from use or access to better lands held in common (for want of the willingness and ability to pay more to the taxing jurisdiction). That's where the UIE kicks in.*
The Universal Individual Exemption (UIE) would be granted to all individuals living within a taxing jurisdiction for the same amount to all that is said to be equal, according to Roy, for "enough good land to live on" (as defined by the state).
It would be to resident CITIZENS, and would be enough good land to live on as defined by a transparent statistical test (it doesn't matter very much exactly how that is done, you could even vote on it periodically). The key point is that if it is too large, government will get less revenue than it can spend on services and infrastructure more efficiently than the private sector, while if it is too small, society will suffer problems consequent on poverty, which will occasion both loss of LVT revenue due to local blight and additional public expenditures on emergency services, health care, police, prisons, etc. larger than the revenue that would be foregone with a more generous UIE.
That exemption could then be applied toward any land, thus making individuals exempt from paying for economic rents.
Up to the exempt amount. Right.
The UIE is the primary mechanism for direct reconciliation ("just compensation") for any losses suffered by individuals for having been excluded from use of other land parcels in that taxing jurisdiction.
* Some LVT proponents propose actual dividends paid out to individuals - the way Alaska does now with tax dividends paid on oil revenues, but that is not discussed as it is not part of Roy's version of policy proposals surrounding his version of LVT.
Right. For a number of reasons, not least the temptation to corruption and abuse that cash payments always entail, I consider Citizens' Dividends a second-best alternative to the UIE.
Aside from buyer/owner/holder expectations, actual market value is a forever transient phenomenon -- a dynamic variable that could be much more or much less than anyone's expectation - as anyone who bought in 2007 with long speculation in mind learned quickly enough as sellers made out like bandits while many buyers were turned upside down. Likewise longterm leaseholdings in Hong Kong, the real market value of which always deviates from what the leaseholder expects to take as minimum value versus what the state expected to capture in land value.
Problems of unstable land value are greatly aggravated by speculative momentum, which LVT eliminates.
Thank you for an honest and thoughtful contribution.
