Steven Douglas
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- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
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- 1,956
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.
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 shits 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).
...a myth? ...a misnomer? ...evidence of socialist theft?
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