Taxes Avoided by the Rich Could Pay Off the Deficit

[HigherVision]

But greed, somehow, is good...?

Yes.

 

[Steven Douglas]

Steven, the point of any science is to determine facts, and come up with theories to explain these facts. It's not an end unto itself either: we learn about the world in order to make our lives better. When we determine facts of economics, it's just common sense to form policies that recognize these facts, as that's the only way we have of making better policy, and thus making the world better.

And that is precisely how the Fed came into being, in an attempt to make "the world" (whatever the hell that means) better. Facts were fabricated, amplified and/or distorted "determined" (e.g., sticky wages, liquidity trap, inelasticity of money supply, etc.,), along with conclusions that strongly suggested problems that were in dire need of solutions.

The problem here is that you're simply not interested in making the world better.

Any time someone suggests that they only want to make "the world" better, ask yourself "whose world", and at whose expense. Your view of "the world" is unqualified, and your view "the problem" is arrogant, presumptuous, and wholly incorrect. I am interested in making "the world" better, by ensuring that it is not contaminated by your people-enslaving treadmill ideals, as you make everyone, intentionally or not, servants to a monopolistic landlord state.

It's easy enough to complain that economics isn't perfect, but again, you fail to supply an alternative.

Of course I did.

MY ALTERNATIVE (once again): All taxes abolished on anything by free and natural Citizens who exist and behave as a matter of unalienable right. That does not mean no taxes, nor does it mean no state. The state exists, and taxes are levied by the state, at will, on all other entities.

That is the alternative, and it's pretty simple, too, with individuals serving at all times as the check and balance on everything - including the state and those entities that exist and/or behave as a matter of conditional privilege only.

You've admitted that since, as you claim, no one can be free without having some land, and since, as you prescribe, all land would be owned by individuals, each person who didn't inherent land would have to buy his freedom from some existing landowner.

Hmm, let's put that another way, shall we? No one can be free without some currency, and since, as I prescribe, all currency would be owned by individuals, each person who didn't inherent currency would have to buy his freedom from some existing currency owner.

Gee, that sounds an awful lot like...a "free market", where unlike scarce resources are willingly exchanged. "Circulated" even. Like they are now, as ownership of scarce resources, including land, already does changes hands as "property", with a supply that is never fixed from the perspective of buyers and sellers.

It is definitely an exception, because people trading the same inventory around and around does not make more of it available to the market.

People trading the same inventory of currency around would not make more of a fixed "supply" of currency available to "the market" (the macroeconomy in aggregate terms only), but it is certainly, repeatedly and continually, would not be fixed in terms of how it is made available to individuals in the market.

When you sell your car to a neighbor, it does not increase the supply of cars.

To "the economy", no. That aggregate total "stock" of cars in existence, which you refer to macroeconomic context only as supply, does not increase. However, from the micro-economic point of view of my neighbor who is buying, it certainly does increase the supply available to him. And every car that is not available to him - especially at the price he is able and willing to pay, is not part of that "supply". And if others, upon learning that my neighbor is in the market for a car, step up competitively to make their used car available to him as well, that increases "the supply" available to that neighbor who is buying.

If no car changes hands in a given period of time, that does not mean the supply of cars has dropped to zero, and it does not matter how long that period of time is.

That's because, as an aggregate-thinking, world/human-encompassing collectivist, you don't know anything about the market supply function, supply schedules or curves, from the microeconomics point of view of the supplier. Your head is firmly and permanently up in the macroeconomic stratosphere la-la land, where the oxygen needed to reason things through is truly scarce. You are stuck on a meaningless definition that applies only to the aggregate - without regard to, and not from the perspective of, any individual (the only thing that truly matters to those individuals, and the only way to explain their behavior as it relates to supply and demand).

Furthermore, when you do manage to "fuzzy down" into a quasi-microeconomics level, which you only narrowly choose to understand, you refer to supply as it relates to "producers" only, even though producers are only one subset, one type, of seller, or "supplier". People selling used cars are also sellers/suppliers, even though they are not "producing" (manufacturing) anything at all. And yet their "supply" fluctuates as a function of their ability and willingness to sell, quantity, price and time.

So let's say that no cars change hands (in a given week), but those same cars are still offered for sale at the same asking price a week later. In that case, the supply of cars (made available to the market at those prices over that time period) remains the same. IF, however, the lack of sales causes some of those sellers to lower their asking price (the price at which they would be willing to sell a single car), while others take their cars off the market entirely (owners change their minds, and are not willing to sell at a lower price), that represents (from the microeconomics perspective) a CHANGE IN SUPPLY. That is because supply is, in part, a function of price.

None sold, so there was no price. A wish or hope is not a price.

Of course, there is a specific kind of price involved there, which is not the market price, as not one car has sold -- which means that the market price has yet to be established by a transaction wherein the buyer and seller were in agreement. But you wouldn't know that, because once again you have trapped yourself (read=are hoping to trap others) into a single narrow definition of price, which you erroneously assume applies to every usage of the word price. I don't think you can get more obtuse than that, Roy, but it's one of your defining characteristics.

See? You're a One-Definition-Trick Pony. Only one definition of price in Roy's la-la land. Roy sees the word "price", and to him that means Market Price. At all times. Strictly. Solely. No exceptions, and no alternative meanings, despite the fact that economist employ many different uses and meanings of the word price.

Entrepreneurs build skyscrapers BECAUSE the people are ALREADY there and the land is ALREADY so valuable that it makes economic sense.

Oh, well, that would certainly explain Las Vegas, then. All those people already there, with that land already so valuable that "conferred benefits onto the owners" that someone thought, "Hey, I know! Let's profit from all these wandering desert people who have collected here and give them all a place to gamble and relax!"

Landowners don't contribute development...

That's some funny shit right there, Roy. Pretty daft. You could have said "Landownership does not contribute to development", but that would have opened up a different can of worms. So instead you said "Landowners". You are so blinded in your hatred of landowners and landownership that you see landowners as a kind of different breed altogether, as if that is all they are, as landowners are nothing-but-landowners in your mind!

ROY: "LANDOWNER - BAAAAD, DEVELOPER - GOOOOD. REWARD GOOD PRODUCTIVE DEVELOPER, PUNISH EVIL IDLE LANDOWNER!"
Landowning Developer: "Works for me!"

??? How can they be "cost prohibitive"? LVT is just what someone WILLINGLY pays for the economic advantage the land confers on its user. If the rental price goes up, it's only because that price is NOT prohibitive to someone.

Well, obviously, the life boats from the Titanic were not "cost prohibitive", as they conferred advantages on their users. If the price paid for getting onto one of those boats went up, it was only because that price was NOT prohibitive to someone. That is proof positive that the the Titanic Lifeboat Community was not only efficient, but it rewarded only the most productive users. Furthermore, the fact that the Titanic "lifeboat community" had 100% survivors is obviously a testament to its "swimming" success (pardon the pun, and pay no attention to the floating blue-white bodies in the water).

Which someone, Roy? You make no distinction between the "someone(s)" you threw overboard. You are pointing to the winners only, as if there was nothing but winners, as you say, "Who? Duhhhh, I don't see anyone it was cost prohibitive for." Those for whom land became "cost prohibitive" are the blue bodies with their UIE life vests floating in your icy LVT waters. Assuming they even got a "value redemption" vest for enough good buoyancy to keep them afloat, of course. Otherwise, bye Jack, bye Granny... ::: blub blub blub :::

But it is developers -- members of the community -- who contribute developments, not landowners.

Landowning Developer: "Works for me!"

Even without a UIE, LVT actually makes homeownership more affordable.

The cost of homeownership falls, even as the perpetual cost of landownership rises. Zero-sum game at best. At worst, a perpetual people-sweeper, as the natural meritocracy that is the free market, which rewards people on the basis of how well they serve their fellow beings, becomes a FASCIST/SOCIALIST meritocracy, where people are artificially rewarded on the basis of how well they serve the state.

The homeowner is no longer paying for government twice to support idle landowners.

The homeowner (who is also a landowner) now pays the government not once, not twice, but perpetually and infinitely to support the new idle state landlord, the rents of which are due without regard to whether or even if anything is given "in return".

 

[Roy L]

Yes.

I don't know quite how to tell you this, but Gekko was the bad guy.

Greed (unfortunately mistranslated as "love of money") is the root of all manner of evil. It is always to satisfy their greed (excessive, rapacious desire for more than one needs or deserves) that people do evil (deliberate violation of others' rights without just compensation).

Therefore, to claim that greed is good is deeply, grotesquely evil.

 

[Steven Douglas]

I don't know quite how to tell you this, but Gekko was the bad guy.

Not nearly as bad as Marx and Mao.

Greed (unfortunately mistranslated as "love of money") is the root of all manner of evil. It is always to satisfy their greed (excessive, rapacious desire for more than one needs or deserves) that people do evil (deliberate violation of others' rights without just compensation).

Therefore, to claim that greed is good is deeply, grotesquely evil.

Yeah, almost as bad as any over-generalizing class warfare ideologue who is presumptuous enough to want to determine what "needs or deserves" means on behalf of everyone else. Now that is a bottomless cesspool when it comes to grotesquely evil. Those types make Gekko look like Gandhi.

 

[Roy L]

Not nearly as bad as Marx and Mao.

You know that Marx and Mao were both anti-geoists, like you.

And Gekko is actually far worse. Marx was merely a misguided crank, and Mao at least ended the constant warfare that had wracked China for 100 years. That's an omelette that could never have been made without breaking a lot of eggs. The Gordon Gekkos of the world are sociopaths of a very particular and far worse sort: soulless, amoral greed robots. Soulless, amoral greed robots are always landowners, because that is the easiest and most reliable way to profit from the deliberate, uncompensated violation of others' rights -- i.e., from evil. The soulless, amoral greed robot is just the distilled essence of pure evil, because his only motive is greed, the root of all evil. So he will cheerfully rob, enslave, starve, torture and kill other human beings to obtain even the smallest material gain.

We've already seen that you are in favor of the two Holocausts a year that landowner privilege inflicts on the innocent. You've admitted that you are a follower of the propertarian cult that lays many millions of human sacrifices on the altar of the Great God Property EVERY YEAR. And the toll of robbery, enslavement, torment, starvation, despair and death inflicted by the propertarian cult that you worship exceeds the anti-geoist depredations of Marx and Mao combined EVERY FIVE YEARS.

Yeah, almost as bad as any over-generalizing class warfare ideologue

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” -- Warren Buffett

The privileged are waging a war to enslave the productive, and you are on the side of the privileged. It's really just that simple.

who is presumptuous enough to want to determine what "needs or deserves" means on behalf of everyone else.

No, that's just more stupid, dishonest $#!+ you made up. The definitions of those words can be found in dictionaries, and you know very well what they mean. You just have to refuse to know, because you have already realized that the simple dictionary definitions of ordinary words prove that you are rationalizing, justifying and defending evil.

Servants of evil always have to find a way to deflect attention from the fact that they are enabling and empowering greed. So your false and completely unsupported accusation that I have some presumptous agenda to 'determine what "needs or deserves" means on behalf of everyone else' has to be understood as a psychological necessity to prevent you from committing suicide in self-revulsion.

Now that is a bottomless cesspool when it comes to grotesquely evil.

ROTFL!! I see. So now even lexicographers must be denounced as a "bottomless cesspool when it comes to grotesquely evil," because they accurately identify what ordinary words mean, and those words can be used to identify the fact that you are a servant of evil?

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that...

Those types make Gekko look like Gandhi.

As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"

 

[Roy L]

If capital starts off as land, and we can't appropriate land, how does capital come to exist as property, not subject to LVT?

Through an act of production that adds to the sum of wealth: being removed from nature and made into a product of labor that did not previously exist. Picking fruit from a natural tree is production: the fruit in the basket is something that did not exist in nature. Saying, "The fruit on this natural tree is mine," OTOH, is appropriation. It adds nothing to the sum of wealth.

Also, if the landowners are somehow forcing the rest of the community to increase land values

That is not what is happening. All the landowners could be comatose and the community would still make them richer just the same.

then wouldn't the more precise mechanism be a 100% capital gains tax on land?

No, because the current rental value of land is the current welfare subsidy giveaway to the landowner. He is pocketing it even if he never sells the land. A 100% capital gains tax on land would just freeze titles in the hands of the current owners, removing all liquidity from the market and preventing the price system from improving allocative efficiency.

Next, the notion of using land rent to get people change how they use land seems eerily similar to deliberately debasing currency in order to stop people 'hoarding' cash.

Currency is presumably issued to serve as a medium of exchange, and hoarding it rather defeats the purpose. There is also a problem of positive feedback creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: currency is also supposed to serve as a stable measure of value, but when people hoard it, it gets scarce, its value rises (deflation), leading to even more hoarding in expectation of further deflation. This vicious circle can cause the economy to seize up, as occurred in the Great Depression. Regulating the value and availability of money to optimize economic growth is a tricky problem, but one "solution" we can confidently say is no good is the current one of leaving the creation and regulation of the money supply up to private banksters.

 

[Steven Douglas]

You know that Marx and Mao were both anti-geoists, like you.

Complete arrogation of an entire factor of production for the state was definitely something Marx and Geoists have in common. The only thing they had against geoism is that it didn't go far enough in their minds.

...Mao at least ended the constant warfare that had wracked China for 100 years. That's an omelette that could never have been made without breaking a lot of eggs.

Nice rationale for murder by the tens of millions. Apologist much? How many "eggs" would you feel justified in seeing broken to make your LVT omelet?

We've already seen that you are in favor of the two Holocausts a year that landowner privilege inflicts on the innocent.

What?! What the hell are you talking about? I distinctly remember ordering four holocausts per year as a bare minimum. The nerve of those lazy goldbricking holocaust slackers of mine.

You've admitted that you are a follower of the propertarian cult that lays many millions of human sacrifices on the altar of the Great God Property EVERY YEAR.

Roy, it's not that your whackjob, moonbat crank soundbites sound like they were ripped off from a ragtag cult movement from the late sixties. That's not what makes me giggle inside. It's that you don't even see it. That is what cracks me up most. In terms of who has the most detrimental effect on geoism, and how it is understood and received by others, you're far more anti-LVT than me! In fact, if it was ever found that you were really a counter-insurgent working against LVT, everything about your approach would begin to make perfect sense.

Look at the crap you type with what I assume is a perfectly straight face:

And the toll of robbery, enslavement, torment, starvation, despair and death inflicted by the propertarian cult that you worship exceeds the anti-geoist depredations of Marx and Mao combined EVERY FIVE YEARS.

Priceless. You meant that shit too, I can tell.

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” -- Warren Buffett

The privileged are waging a war to enslave the productive, and you are on the side of the privileged. It's really just that simple.

Would you like a side of psychedelic blacklight posters or a complementary sleeping bag in the public park to go with that?

Servants of evil always have to find a way to deflect attention from the fact that they are enabling and empowering greed.

The solution for you is simple then, Roy. Stop trying to be and do just that. Nobody's forcing you.

ROTFL!! I see. So now even lexicographers must be denounced...

No, just a single clueless wannabe ideologue who misapprehends and twists most of what the real lexicographers have actually written to suit his own agenda.

 

[Roy L]

Complete arrogation of an entire factor of production for the state was definitely something Marx and Geoists have in common.

No, you are aware that geoists favor market allocation of land to private users, and Marx himself called this proposal "capitalism's last ditch."

You continue to heap disgrace upon yourself by your relentless fabrications to rationalize evil and justify injustice. As you have chosen the path of anti-geoist evil, you have no choice.

The only thing they had against geoism is that it didn't go far enough in their minds.

No, you are aware that Marx and the socialists and communists are actually in agreement with neoclassical capitalism against the very foundation of geoism: the land-capital dichotomy.

Nice rationale for murder by the tens of millions.

It stopped murder by the scores of millions.

Apologist much?

Realist.

How many "eggs" would you feel justified in seeing broken to make your LVT omelet?

Every one that opposed liberty, justice and truth by force, that's for sure.

What?! What the hell are you talking about? I distinctly remember ordering four holocausts per year as a bare minimum. The nerve of those lazy goldbricking holocaust slackers of mine.

To the soulless, amoral greed robot, another Holocaust a year is of no concern if it puts another dollar in his pocket.

You meant that shit too, I can tell.

It's the literal truth.

Would you like a side of psychedelic blacklight posters or a complementary sleeping bag in the public park to go with that?

Warren Buffett was clearly stating a truth of which he had first-hand knowledge. You just have to deny and refuse to know it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

No, just a single clueless wannabe ideologue who misapprehends and twists most of what the real lexicographers have actually written to suit his own agenda.

I quote dictionaries to support my correct English usage. The only time you quote dictionaries is to claim falsely that they support your usage when they self-evidently contradict it.

 

[Steven Douglas]

How many "eggs" would you feel justified in seeing broken to make your LVT omelet?

Every one that opposed liberty, justice and truth by force, that's for sure.

Excellent. We're at least in perfect agreement on our respective levels of commitment. I am just as opposed to the real slavery that is LVT as you are at pretending landownership is slavery, in and of itself. Let there be war.

 

[Roy L]

Yeah, once we get past that little detail of the involuntary, non-market-based, non-beneficiary-pay, non-value-for-value transaction called, "The state has a monopoly claim on all land rents".

That "transaction" is required to correct the earlier involuntary, non-market-based, non-beneficiary-pay, non-value-for-value "transaction" called, "I now own what you formerly had the liberty to use, so from now on you'll be paying me for everything government, the community and nature provide there, or you'll do without."

The community's "monopoly" claim on land rents (all land markets are inherently monopoly markets) is based on the fact that it provides the services, infrastructure, opportunities and amenities that create them, and enables the private landholder to collect them.

So on what, exactly, is the private landowner's claim on publicly created rents based, hmmmmmm?

Other than his unlimited greed for unearned wealth, that is...

Once we get past that little coup that many would see as theft,

But as I have already proved to you so many times, the real theft is the landowner's forcible appropriation of what neither he nor anyone else ever created, and that others, before he stole it, were perfectly at liberty to use:

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?

Is any other landowner charging rent for what nature provided for free any different?

Do the merchants, by using the pass when they know the bandit is there, agree to be robbed?

If there were two, or three, or 300, or 3 million passes, each with its own resident bandit, would the merchants' being at liberty to choose which bandit robs them make the bandits' enterprise a competitive industry in a free market?

it's all voluntary sailing after that!

Indeed it is. It is certainly much more voluntary to pay the creator of land value for it once through a consensual, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction than to be forced to pay its creator for it in taxes without getting it, and then have to pay someone else who didn't create it in order actually to get it. That's really an involuntary, non-market-based, non-beneficiary-pay, non-value-for-value transaction.

Why, after that, we're all just shopping in Roy's Progressive LVT Land Rent Store! YAY! All voluntary, doncha know. If you don't want to pay (perpetual, never-ending rental fees to the state) for a resource, don't use that resource!

Why would the payment for perpetual benefits (whose value is only known when they happen) not continue perpetually, being adjusted according to their value when they happen? Your demand for perpetual benefits in return for temporary payments simply demonstrates that the basis of your whole philosophy is your greed to get something for nothing.

Why, once we establish that it's just One Big Happy Collectivized Monopolistic Land Rent Store,

<yawn> How predictably puerile.

we can then reason that "People would have no reason to avoid "high taxes" on land any more than they avoid paying for the groceries they want."

Which is exactly correct. People willingly pay for value they want.

Forget that it's a moronic analogy, as groceries are perishable and NEVER RENTED OUT.

Huh? BWAHAHHHAHAAAAAHAHAAAA!!!

Talk about moronic! What on earth could that have to do with it? The analogy is just as valid if we talk about renting a car rather than buying groceries. Buying groceries is just a voluntary, beneficiary-pay, market-based, value-for-value transaction that everyone is more familiar with than renting a car. It's no less analogous.

And forget that there would be no option to grow the "land=groceries" you need (not simply want) should the Monopolistic State Land Grocer decide to get gross with his Groceries=Land Rental Prices.

Same option as if the private landowner decides to get gross with his demands: do without. The difference, of course, is that the government is accountable for such incompetent policies through voting. The private landowner is not accountable at all, and can cut off everyone else's noses to spite his own face.

And forget that if everyone was a private landowner, there would be no "voluntary" payment due to any "fellow" private landowner in the first place.

<yawn> And most of all, forget that no one would get to be a private landowner without making such a "voluntary" payment to some "fellow" private landowner for what government, the community and nature provide.

You simply can't evade the stubborn fact that paying the state for land is at least paying the one providing the benefit, while paying a private landowner for it is exactly the same as paying off a parasitic protection racketeer: you pay him not to deprive you of what you would be perfectly at liberty to use and benefit from if he had never existed.

Oh yeah, I can see the atrocity of slavery as a result of LVT,

Because it is so absurd, dishonest and implausible, like everything else you claim to "see" about LVT. Right.

But do tell me, Mr. Argument-By-Strawman-Ridicule Salesman, do you have anything more in the state's historical size and color we could look at? You know, a shoe that actually fits? Something more in the realm of absolute probability, not just possibility, based on actual present behavior and past history of the state? Any real precedences that might give us an idea of what the state would likely do in such a case?

Try to maximize revenue. Which under LVT means try to serve the public interest as honestly and efficiently as possible.

That's where your macroeconomics head in the vacuum has failed you, as you obviously don't know anything about the economics of art, or long term demand with respect to rare and unique works.

Whose supply just happens to be fixed, like the supply of land.

Hell, for that matter, you don't even believe that value is subjective!

It's definitely not subjective. That's utility, not value. Value is what a thing would trade for; therefore it requires the reconciliation of at least two different opinions; and it is therefore by definition not subjective.

Worse yet, you're trying to reckon art using a standard commodity supply and demand model. It doesn't work that way, Roy.

No, that is a fabrication by you. A standard commodity supply and demand model does not have fixed supply like the land and original art markets.

Your example of an art collector who tries to increase the value of his Picasso (of all artists!) collection, by "burning a few canvasses" was truly pathetic.

Because it proves you wrong?

Anyone who has dealt in the worlds of art and collectibles, and I have, knows that art value follows the economics of scarcity -- anything rare, unique, in finite supply and high in demand. It is entirely subjective, completely unpredictable, and the lower the supply and greater the demand, the more difficult, if not impossible, it is to model. It certainly does not follow a typical commodity supply and demand curve.

<sigh> It follows the economics of collectibles markets because as with the land market, SUPPLY IS FIXED.

If a thousand wealthy collectors of a certain specific collectible genre are all aware that only three of a certain unique work, already high in demand within that genre, are known to exist, those particular pieces have greater value (IN THE EVER-SUBJECTIVE MINDS OF CERTAIN COLLECTORS), precisely because there are only three. Then comes the knowledge that two of these extant works were recently destroyed (we'll say in a fire, accidentally and not deliberately), such that every collector is now absolutely certain that only ONE piece remains. It is ENTIRELY conceivable that the one remaining piece could be valued, and ultimately priced in exchange at many times the sum total prior exchange rates of the original three works, had all three have survived. That could be for no other reason than the prestige in owning THE ONLY ONE, and only because ONE COLLECTOR felt strongly enough about it to outbid the THREE OTHER COLLECTORS who were also willing to pay handsomely for that same prestige.

But the demand for land in a LVT system is demand for use, not prestige or speculation. Holding land out of use reduces total rent because it forces production onto less advantageous sites where it must be less efficient. This is an inescapable result of market allocation.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Originally Posted by Roy L But greed, somehow, is good...?

Yes.

This displays the freeloading mentality of the majority of posters on this thread. This is sad. Especially when it is clear greed asisted in bringing down the world banking system.

 

[Roy L]

I am just as opposed to the real slavery that is LVT as you are at pretending landownership is slavery, in and of itself.

But the objective historical facts have already proved me right and you wrong. The condition of the landless in landowning societies where government does not intercede in their behalf to rescue them from the enslaving effects of landowning -- Pakistan, the Philippines, Guatemala, Bangladesh, etc. -- is always effectively indistinguishable from that of slaves, while there has never been a modern society that used a substantial LVT where people's condition resembled that of slaves -- and most certainly not the landowners' condition. Indeed, very much the contrary: LVT's stellar record of success in lifting whole communities and nations out of poverty, injustice and oppression is not even approached by any other public policy.

 

[EcoWarrier]

Marx and Geoists have in common.

You, and all the others, have been continually been told that Marx and George had little, if anything, in common. You have been told that LVT is a mere tax shift and is apolitical, but in your conditioned freeloading mind this does not compute. You have been given books, youtube videos, links and references galore, yet your freeloading, greed indoctrination cannot be brought to sanity.

Communist states would love the likes of you.

 

[EcoWarrier]

MY ALTERNATIVE (once again): All taxes abolished on anything by free and natural Citizens who exist and behave as a matter of unalienable right. That does not mean no taxes, nor does it mean no state. The state exists, and taxes are levied by the state, at will, on all other entities.

Steven, congratulations. You ARE getting it. This is encouraging. Geoism is pretty well the same. Geoism is taxing:

• Commonly created wealth that is then used for common purposes.
• The extraction of land's resources
• The usage of common resources.
• Leaving private wealth in private hands

This eliminates economic parasites and leaves productive people and organization alone to concentrate on enterprise.

Steven please keep this. Do not sway into the freeloading greed mentality that comes to the fore of your jumbled mind. But keep it up Steven. Keep trying.

 

[EcoWarrier]

David Harvey as usual hit the reasons for failure clearly:

"the suburban solution to absorbing surplus capital [pouring debt after debt into land], which has been going on for the past 50 or 60 years has probably reached its end point in the United States and you cannot do that anymore."

David Harvey, theorist and author, talks about how urban and suburban expansion is used to rescue capitalism from recession -- but ends up sending it back into crisis....



In his solution I think Harvey is wrong in saying we can't go on building houses. We can't go on allowing private people to appropriate common wealth. In the greed to get something for nothing in land speculation surplus money was poured into land which in turn collapsed the housing market. Housing in itself wasn't the problem. The problem was unearned income from increasing land values. The western world needs houses, the problem was land.

Harvey does hit at the root problems of the causes - of which he tend to be brilliant at.

 

[Steven Douglas]

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THE BANDIT - OR - DO IMPROVEMENTS ENTITLE ANY ENTITY TO RENTS ON WHAT NATURE PROVIDED FOR FREE?

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 purchased, for an annual fee, a license from the state (i.e., gave the state, not those being robbed, "something in return") to charge tolls of those who use the pass. This license could be issued by the government of one of the countries -- or even both of them. From the all-important perspective of those being robbed, does that license fee paid by the bandit to the state constitute "giving something in return"?

The tolls that the licensed bandit charges are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? How can the mere existence of that piece of state-created paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them? He is still just a thief, right? He is still just demanding payment and not contributing anything in return to the caravans he robbed, save safe passage and protection from other bandits, none of which would have been required in the absence of all bandits. Would contributing something else in return (to those caravans, of course) make a difference where extortion or highway robbery are concerned? Would legitimacy be in effect if the bandits offered other goods, services and opportunities to caravans on a strictly voluntary basis in addition to the rents charged for the pass itself, which nature provided for free?

But what if the bandit found that more people preferred to use another mountain pass, occupied by other state-licensed bandits, because the other bandits took less by force from the caravans than he did? And what if that bandit responded by robbing the caravans in "his" pass of even less, such that word spread that it was more desirable to be robbed by him instead? Would those thefts of a lesser amount lend any legitimacy to the bandit's theft, such that it was no longer theft?

What if, to be even more competitive with the other bandits in other passes, the bandit actually blanketed the pass with improvements, and assured a safer, more pleasant passage as an enticement? Would that legitimize the bandits claim of rents on the underlying pass that nature nonetheless provided for free?

And now suppose, that instead of a license to steal, the "native" bandit attends a summit, appeals to a league of nation-states, and negotiates a deal that causes the entire pass to become a recognized independent state. The once highly organized crime racket-cum-state now charges the caravans the exact same amount in "rent" for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable state. How can the mere existence of that state-created piece of paper, even if it nothing but a former bandit now issuing it, entitling him to rob the caravans, alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?

How has the nature of the bandit's business really changed? It's all legal now, but regardless whether he as a single bandit or a gang of organized bandits called a State, he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free. If he divides the proceeds equally amongst his Royal Family, friends, and other closely related mountain pass community members, that will not constitute "giving back" to those who continue to be robbed.

What this really boils down to are the improvements that someone made to the pass, making it more desirable or easier to use than other passes. Are those improvements what entitles the bandit/licensed-bandit/state to rents on what nature nonetheless provided for free?

If there were two, or three, or 300, or 3 million improved passes, each with its own resident state/bandit, would the merchants' being at liberty to choose which state/bandit robs them make the bandits' enterprise nothing more than a competitive industry in a free market?

Do the merchants, by using the improved pass when they know the bandit/licensed-bandit/state is there to collect rents, "agree" to pay for what nature provided for free on the basis of something else offered in addition? Because (as we have established), paying rents on the undeveloped pass was never necessary, as that pass was not provided by any human or collection of humans. So we are only talking about improvements, and whether their existence blanketing an area of land constitutes a perpetual entitlement to those that produced them - public or private. And even if we consider that the caravans had the option of using another pass, does the existence of improvements, regardless of the source, mean that the merchants have agreed to pay rents on those improvements, even if it can be shown that they really only wanted to use what nature provided for free, and nothing else?

In other words, is any entity (state, private bandit, licensed or otherwise) morally entitled to rents (let alone a monopoly on rents) for what nature nonetheless provided for free, and strictly on the basis of opportunities or improvements, directly or indirectly provided in addition to what nature nonetheless provided for free?

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[EcoWarrier]

Not nearly as bad as Marx and Mao.

Marx did something bad? How? Where? Who did he kill? Whose lives did he ruin? He was an economist who analyzed the economy of the 1800s and Capitalism in particular.

His research and analysis to the failures of Capitalism is still relevant today as in the 1800s, hence why Marx never goes away.

 

[angelatc]

Housing in itself wasn't the problem. The problem was unearned income from increasing land values.

Wow. Just, wow.

 

[awake]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]“Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.” Can any one guess where this is pulled from?
[/FONT]

 

[Steven Douglas]

Marx did something bad? How? Where? Who did he kill? Whose lives did he ruin?

Wow. Only a truly Helter Skelter mind could have conceived those words.

The ideals and actions of Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, just to name some of the most brutal, were ALL spawned by Marxist visions and ideals. But let's go with your seriously demented, tortured reasoning and play your One Degree Of Clean Hands Separation game. Marx never pulled a trigger AFAIK. Thus, you could say that Marx was every bit as innocent, with hands that were every bit as clean, as those of Charles Manson, who was also not known to have directly killed anyone. But did Marx, like Charles Manson, believe, state, or even imply that it was necessary to kill anyone? You wouldn't happen to have a swastika carved into your forehead by any chance, would you?

You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible. (Published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973 edition, page 66)

And for the record, Marx was not just "an economist". Marx was philosopher and a political ideologue -- an activist with a policy agenda who advocated for the cause he authored.

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." Communist Manifesto, Page 96

Some Marxist apologists will ignore the track record of Communism and attempt to argue that none of Marx' statements should be taken literally, that they do not suggest or imply that mass murder is actually necessary for Marxist ideology to be enthroned. Roy (as well as all the mass murderers listed), thought otherwise, as a means to a greater good:

ROY: [mass murders by Mao] at least ended the constant warfare that had wracked China for 100 years. That's an omelette that could never have been made without breaking a lot of eggs.
ME: Nice rationale for murder by the tens of millions.
ROY: It stopped murder by the scores of millions.
ME: How many "eggs" would you feel justified in seeing broken to make your LVT omelet?
ROY: Every one that opposed liberty, justice and truth by force, that's for sure.

Marx did something bad? How? Where? Who did he kill? Whose lives did he ruin?

WTF - Don't ask me, ask the hundreds of millions who suffered and died as a direct result of his economics and political agenda experiments being put to the test by his followers.