I have tried to focus on the important issues and ignore irrelevancies (such as Roy
attempting to prove something pro-LVT with Atlas Shrugged, which clearly either he has not read or he has forgotten that in Galt's Gulch the land was owned privately and absolutely and was bought by the money of Midas Mulligan, who got it from giving loans to successful businessmen.
Mulligan was not only the owner but the
government of "Galt's Gulch." He -- i.e., the
government -- owned the land and used the land rent to pay for services and infrastructure. Like Sheik Mohammed in Dubai.
So Hong Kong proves me right and you wrong; Dubai proves me right and you wrong; and Galt's Gulch proves me right and you wrong.
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?"
Production is aided by the land owner (or harmed by him) because of the good decisions (or bad ones) that he makes regarding the disposition and management of the land.
Wrong. Production CANNOT be aided by the landowner's decisions, as the most productive user would otherwise be at liberty to use the land: if everyone had equal rights to use the land, as under LVT, whoever was willing to pay the rest the most to stay off would get to use it. So the landowner can
ONLY harm production by excluding the most productive user in favor of someone else.
Allowing the market to reward his good decisions and punish his bad ones ensures that there will be a tendency for production to be aided by the landowner instead of harmed.
Nope. Wrong
again. The market will indeed maximally reward him for doing nothing but accept the highest bid rather than devote the land to some other, less productive purpose; but that just means he is being paid off not to harm production, like any other protection racketeer. Protection racketeers do not aid production by accepting payment of their extortion demands, sorry.
Every other sector of the market functions the same way.
No, it does not, because in other sectors supply is not FIXED. When producers pay for capital or labor, they are paying for the CREATION of those factors. When they pay for land, by contrast, they are only paying the landowner to stay out of the way.
Competition and consumer preference means that behavior not aiding production to satisfy humans' wants will be punished, while behavior which does will be rewarded.
We have already established that the landowner's behavior is equivalent to the protection racketeer's, or the bandit's in the pass. He does not aid production merely by accepting money for staying out of the way, as production would proceed equally well if he had never existed.
Mr. L. will say "But the landowner doesn't do any labor, thus he's a parasite".
Wrong AGAIN. He's a parasite because he demands a share of production without contributing
anything to production. He doesn't contribute labor, because the market identifies the most productive use and the most productive user
for him; he doesn't contribute capital, because land isn't capital; and he doesn't contribute the land, because it was already there, ready to use, with no help from him or anyone else. His "decision" not to be an @$$hole by reducing or blocking production on the land nature provided is not a contribution to production any more than a protection racketeer's decision not to burn down one of his victims' businesses is a contribution to production.
Well that's just the Calvinist Smith talking.
No, it's just
you talking.
Everything was all about labor to Smith -- the pain of labor was good and righteous and that is what gave economic products value. But bzzt, wrong, in fact the subjective preferences and values of humans is what gives goods value. The labor theory of value is so shot full of holes and absurdities it's impossible for me to shoot any new ones in it. So anyway, it's wrong.
Which might be why I have never advocated it. You are simply lying about what I have plainly written.
Labor is irrelevant to value. If I can satisfy millions of consumers by doing no labor whatsoever, then of course I should get paid tremendously for it. I deserve it!
If the "no labor" you "do" to satisfy millions of consumers is simply refraining from robbing them, then no, you DO NOT deserve it.
The end goal is millions of satisfied humans, not some kind of ascetic labor for the sake of labor.
Stop trying to change the subject. There are THREE factors of production, and the landowner does not contribute any of them.
And the landowner, if he makes decisions regarding his land which satisfy his fellow humans, then obviously he's contributed to the satisfaction of his fellow humans.
No, that is one of the most evil lies ever told. Someone who has power over others' lives does NOT contribute to the satisfaction of his fellow humans if his decision is merely a decision not to exercise his power to kill them all, because they would be just as satisfied if he had never existed. Likewise, human satisfaction would be just as great if the landowner had never existed.
He's created value, or "aided production" as Mr. L. phrases it.
Lie. How is the value created any greater than if he had never existed, and the most productive user had merely paid his high bid to the community of those whom he deprived of the land, hmmmmm?
Blank out.
But the landowner can get rich even just by leaving the land idle and that's inefficient and horrible, says Mr. L. Well, who says leaving it idle is inefficient?
Everyone who could otherwise have used it productively to SATISFY HUMAN DESIRES.
In many cases, that is the most efficient thing to do.
No, that is just an outrageous, grotesque, absurd, despicable lie.
Putting improvements on the land might actually lower the value of the land for someone coming along later.
But would enable productive use in the meantime.
Let's say you build a gas station on some land. OK, now a couple years later it turns out that would've been a great place for an apartment complex.
That sort of thing only ever happens because of (almost always corrupt) zoning changes, not because of market changes. No one (other than a chronic liar) denies that land speculators make money from government corruption when they hold good land out of use awaiting zoning changes.
The apartments are a much better, more efficient use of he land, according to market preferences.
Just as they were before the speculator got the zoning changed.
Now the gas station will need to be torn down -- it's a dis-improvement, an annoyance, and a large cost.
True: the corrupt zoning decisions that land speculators -- i.e., landOWNERS -- pay for do impose large costs on society. But LVT removes the financial motive for such corruption. Remove the landowner, and the
mechanism of the corruption disappears.
A speculator wise enough to hold it out of use and off the market for a couple more years could have saved everyone a lot of money. That is, he could have created value.
Lie. The gas station has been creating value in the meantime, and land speculators never, repeat, NEVER make money by successfully anticipating that the most productive use will soon be so different that land would more productively be held out of use. What they do is get the most productive PERMITTED use changed, in order to pocket the resulting publicly created value increase.
Land owners perform a very important entrepreneurial function: they allocate and make ultimate decisions regarding scarce land.
Nope. The market decides the most productive use of the land. The landowner can only choose to contribute zero, accept the high bid, and allow it, or to make a negative contribution by not allowing it. By your "logic," protection racketeers also perform a very important entrepreneurial function: they allocate and make ultimate decisions regarding scarce security. And just as the protection racketeer is the one MAKING security scarce by sending his goons around to lean on his victims, the landowner/speculator is the one MAKING land scarce, by holding it out of use -- which you so stupidly, absurdly and dishonestly claim could somehow be "creating value"!
This is not a parasitic function.
It is entirely and indisputably parasitic on the part of the landowner, as it would be performed just fine by the market in his absence.
This is a critically important function.
Sure. It's just a function that the landowner does not in fact perform.
They may delegate many or all of the decision-making to managers. Fine. So too may the shop owner or restaurant owner delegate many or all of his decisions to managers.
The shop or restaurant owner has CONTRIBUTED CAPITAL in addition to making decisions. The landowner HAS NOT contributed any land.
But the owner in all cases still plays a vital role.
No, that is a LIE. WHAT WOULD STOP THE MOST PRODUCTIVE PROSPECTIVE USER FROM USING THE LAND IF THE LANDOWNER HAD NEVER EXISTED, HMMMMMMMMMM???
We have already established that without landowners, everyone would have equal rights to use the land, so simple self-interest in a free market would ensure that all the less productive users would simply accept the most productive user's bid. And that, in essence, is how LVT works.
Your "arguments" for the landowner's productive contribution are all just absurd, dishonest garbage.
He must find and hire the best managers. He must make sure the managers are doing a good job, making him lots of money.
Ooohh, riiight, it takes exceptional skill and diligence to find someone capable of figuring out which bid is the highest and depositing it in the bank every month...
And he is always and unavoidably the ultimate manager, the manager of managers, the one with the money on the line and who determines the direction and future of the restaurant or shop or land.
You keep forgetting: the protection racketeer is
also a manager of managers -- in fact, he is a manager of
owners! -- he also has money on the line, and he also determines the direction and future of the shop or restaurant or land. How, then, exactly, is the landowner making any more of a contribution to production than the protection racketeer?
Blank out.
He must correctly anticipate consumer desires.
Lie. The land
user does that, not the land
owner.
In landowning, that means anticipating city growth trends, adopting new and innovative ways of utilizing land if they will allow better satisfaction of consumer desires, rejecting them if they will not, making connections and putting together projects (roads, electrical, water, making it all fit together, on a free market landowners would do all this, not the state;
More lies. Land USERS do those things, not landOWNERS. The landowner is simply paid not to get in the user's way, like the protection racketeer. That's all.
there's no reason to put the state in charge of roads, electrical, water, or any of those kinds of things,
In fact there are very good reasons. You just refuse to know them.
it will be the job of clever landowners working together to make everything fit together into urban [or rural, or suburban] spaces people will love), keeping land undeveloped when it will be most efficient to do so, developing it when that will be more efficient, and deciding what will be the best and most profitable type of development for which to use the land.
??? ROTFL!! I.e., all the things that "clever" landowners working together have never managed to do in the whole history of the world...
What clever landowners ACTUALLY do, of course, is try to prevent productive use of
each other's land, to increase the unearned income they can extract from their
own land.
And much more! Landowners have a busy, busy job, a lot to do.
Lie:
"The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil de Boeuf, hath an alchemy whereby he will extract the third nettle and call it rent." — Thomas Carlyle
A big landowner may not be down in the trenches doing lots of manual labor improving his properties. Instead his labor is making decisions.
I.e., deciding how much he will steal from producers, and how much he will prevent others from producing.
Well, just so the big CEO's job is largely decision-making.
I don't think you want to go there, sunshine, as CEOs have also been very busy lately deciding how much to steal...
Decision-making is important.
Of course, just ask the landowner or protection racketeer! It's very important to decide that only the people who can pay the most for your "services" will get access to the opportunities you control!
Unless you are a landowner or other rent-seeking parasite, and therefore only deciding by how much you will reduce production.
It is, in fact, indispensable and probably the most productive thing one can do!
Like the contributions of that Hero of Production, the protection racketeer, who also devotes enormous, intensive labor to making decisions!
HOW ARE THE LANDOWNER'S DECISIONS ANY MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN THE PROTECTION RACKETEER'S??
That is why production is aided by the landowner getting paid.
Lie, as proved above. Production would be just the same, or even greater, if the landowner had never existed. In the whole history of the world, production has NEVER been aided by the landowner getting paid. Only when, like Sheik Mohammed of Dubai, the landowner decides to be something
more than be an idle, parasitic landowner, and invest his unearned income in capital improvements that actually DO aid production, is any contribution made. But that is only a landowner choosing to become an investor in productive capital. Qua landowner, he has still contributed nothing whatever.
By the way, the other side of this is that he can sustain losses, too. Under Mr. L.'s Platonic ideal, he can't make any profit, but neither can he incur any loss. That's bad.
Wrong
AGAIN. Under LVT, if the landowner does not permit the most productive use, he incurs a loss: he can't pay the land tax without dipping into his other assets, because only the most productive user can afford to pay HIM the full land rent. That is very much the point. You just pretend it doesn't exist.
Via the fantastic and quasi-miraculous mechanism of profit and loss, markets reward the value-producing, punish the value-destroying, and thus get more and more of the productive and less and less of the destructive.
Except when the market is not free, and rent seekers like landowners are empowered to take value without producing any, and to destroy value without incurring commensurate losses. But that can't happen under LVT, as the worthless and parasitic landowner simply disappears, his non-contributory extortion demands dispensed with.
Without that incentive mechanism, there is no reason for any landowner (land-tenant under Mr. L.'s ideal) to take any risks, to go to any huge mental effort regarding his land, to do anything to try to increase the value of his land.
Landowners don't do that anyway, except as predators and corrupters of government who contrive to prevent production on each others' land in order to increase the value of their own (all the well-funded NIMBY groups are backed by rich, greedy landowners). But the net effect of that is of course to reduce total production and increase prices, harming everyone.
That increase will go to the nation-state; he won't see a dime.
Which is good, because he didn't earn a dime. It is government and the community that create land value, not landowners. You simply want the landowner to be given millions of dimes for doing nothing, as a welfare subsidy giveaway.
Also the best landowners will not be able to progressively control more and more land while the worst lose more and more to their superiors outcompeting them.
As happens in landowning utopias like Mexico, Paraguay, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan, etc., where a handful of wealthy families own most of the land, and the results are plain to see -- except that you
refuse to see them.
There is still an incentive mechanism in the ability to make profit or loss on the improvements, Mr. L. will belaboringly remind us, but there will not be any such mechanism on the land itself. The loss of that mechanism will cause the land allocation to become, eventually, crummy.
Nope. That's just brainless nonsense with no basis in fact. The landowner does not affect the land's value, government and the community do.
