Well that's a lot of fine mumbo-jumbo,
Translation: facts of objective reality that prove you wrong.
but it is not what Matt was saying. It contradicts what Matt was saying. His point was that the resources which built and maintain the factory have already been taxed by the LVT, so taxing the factory qua factory would then be a double-taxation.
I don't recall Matt saying resources would be taxed except insofar as they yield unearned, publicly created rent to their owners, but if he did, he was wrong. If someone can build a factory with resources no one else wants enough to be willing to pay for access to, he can build it without paying any tax, and own and operate it without paying any tax.
The stuff that makes concrete is land.
No, what makes concrete is labor. There is no land in concrete any more than in a chainsaw.
No, you were obviously just lying. Again.
No, it can't, because land value approaches zero as the rate approaches infinity and the tax amount approaches the market rent. Because of that fact, LVT CANNOT be made excessive. It can't be made to extract more from the landowner than he rightly owes for what he takes from society. The only way to make the land tax amount greater than the market rent is to stop taxing land value and tax by something else -- in which case the state risks forcing abandonment of the land and declining revenue.
The State can set it at whatever it wants. That's the great thing about being a State. Of course it would be irrational for the State to do that. The State does irrational things on occasion.
It's more than irrational: it's not LVT. So your "objection" to LVT is that it might not be LVT.
And you call the state irrational....
I could just say that owning the factory violates humanity's rights.
But you would be lying. But I repeat myself.
I could make up some bogus reasons why this is the case -- wealth redistributionists do this all the time. These reasons would be just as valid as your reasons that owning land violates others' rights: not at all.
No, that's plainly a lie, as already proved. It is self-evident and indisputable that others would be at liberty to use the land if the landowner did not initiate force against them. He therefore forcibly deprives them of liberty they would otherwise have. By contrast, they would
not otherwise be at liberty to use the factory, because it was not already there. The owner or a previous owner had to create it. The landowner did not create the land, and neither did any previous owner. All your bull$#!+ cannot make that fact disappear.
True. I was saying that the land, by being rearranged -- e.g. tamped down -- has become non-land. It's been delandified.
Only the rearranged soil has been removed from nature, not the land under it.
The evidence is mounting that your definition of "land" is purely locational.
The evidence has long been conclusive that you have nothing to offer but lies, strawmen, name calling, lies, equivocations, fallacies, lies, absurdities and lies.
Smith was a moron. Smith was wrong about almost everything. To read anything more by Smith would be self-torture. The guy was a fruitcake.
LOL! So says the guy who has claimed, "natural resources are bequeathed to us by human labor and intelligence," "feudalism created an economic miracle of prosperity," "a chainsaw contains raw matter," "a million dollars a year doesn't make up for even an hour a week of compulsory labor," and too many other idiotic howlers to mention.
It is not Smith who was a moron, sunshine. It is not Smith who was wrong about almost everything. It is not Smith whom it would be self-torture to read even one more word by. It is not Smith who is a fruitcake.
It's you.
And, you proceed to prove it, such as you know how. There is a key difference in the bandit, the tax collector, and the land-owner.
No, there is not. They are all parasites. And you know it.
The landowner can be avoided by the merchants if they just buy up their own land and build a different road.
I.e., by shouldering a greater cost than the rent the bandit charges in his officially approved landowner incarnation. But that was always an option, even when he was a bandit. That is why he didn't take so much that they would be scared off. Remember? I explained that specifically. That is always the way with land rent and other forms of rent-seeking banditry: it is determined by the economic advantage the user obtains. So in fact the option of avoiding the landowner is only a theoretical one, just like the option of avoiding the bandit by taking a costlier route: it's not economically feasible. Contrary to your claim, the bandit will
not pursue the caravans to a different route, because it's not worth it, any more than it is worth it for him as landowner to buy the land along another route the caravans won't take. He already adjusts his take so that the merchants keep using his route. That is how landowning and banditry work.
The bandit, by contrast, will just move to whatever road is being used.
There is no other road, because the competing routes are not worth taking. That is already known, because the bandit adjusts his take to make his route the most attractive, just like the landowner doesn't try to take more than the market rent, which is DEFINED BY the competing alternatives.
The tax collector will also just move, or maybe just make it illegal to travel by any road but that one.
The toll collector won't move because the caravans won't move. The toll is set at an amount low enough to keep them coming.
Only the landowner respects the property rights of the traveling merchants.
No, that's just a flat-out lie. He robs them of their property just as surely as the bandit does. It makes absolutely no difference to them that he has a piece of paper legally entitling him to take the loot (except that if they are gullible, brainwashed fools, they might actually imagine it does entitle him to take it).
He does not force them to pass through his land.
ROTFL!!!
Neither does the bandit, sunshine. Neither does the bandit. Just like the landowner, he simply appropriates the value government, the community and nature provide.
You have not even read all of them.
Yes, I have.
No, they do not.
No, it cannot.
Speaking of morons (and economic ignorami), the Law of Rent was discovered by Ricardo, not Smith. And like Smith, Ricardo was orders of magnitude more intelligent and economically literate than you.
But no one has a better claim to act on society's behalf:
"... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Defensive force is OK. Aggressive force is not.
Initiating force to deprive people of their liberty is aggressive. That is exactly what the landowner does.
Force of any kind is only needed if someone like yourself is trying to aggress and take land which is not his.
It is the landowner who commits aggression, and takes land that is not his. Your cargo-cult chanting of incantations ("presenting an official claim to a recognized land office, blah, blah, blah...") certainly can't make it his.
Then defensive force should indeed be used to repel him/you.
Initiation of force to deprive people of the exercise of their rights to liberty is not defensive.
This is, of course, historically inaccurate.
It is very accurate. In fact, it is exactly what happened when the Articles of Confederation were replaced with the Constitution.
It is. But they don't have liberty to use everything in the Universe.
Everything nature provided, they most certainly do. What would stop them, other than a vicious, evil, greedy parasite like you initiating force against them?
So when I deprive them of that make-believe liberty, I'm still good; still on the up-and-up.
No, you are a despicable, evil, greedy, thieving, murdering, vicious parasite.