Re: Income from a tax on land.
royls_at_telus.net
Date: 12/21/04
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Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 21:44:01 GMT
On 19 Dec 2004 23:30:45 -0500, jmhall@apex.home.net wrote:
>royls@telus.net writes:
>
>> On 19 Dec 2004 11:41:58 -0500, jmhall@apex.home.net wrote:
>>
>> >royls@telus.net writes:
>> >
>> >> On 18 Dec 2004 09:19:21 -0500, jmhall@apex.home.net wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >"lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au" <lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au> writes:
>> >> >
>> >> >> On a philosophical principled level all have equal right to natural
>> >> >> resources, as Locke pointed out.
>> >> >
>> >> >Yes and it was premised on some inference that
>> >> >we don't have the right to ourselves as we are
>> >> >the property of God and so have a duty to preserve
>> >> >our life--therefore we are granted the equal right
>> >> >(as inference Locke makes) to nature by God.
>> >>
>> >> The argument gets to the same conclusion without God. Equal rights
>> >> are meaningless without an equal right to use what nature provides.
>> >
>> >Gets to the same conclusion but loses it's moral
>> >force.
>>
>> Only if you consider God the only source of morality.
>>
>> >Now we have to agree on a morality that
>> >clearly not everyone is agreeing with.
>>
>> ?? And you think everyone agrees with Locke's idea of God?
>>
>> Obviously, not everyone is going to agree with any given moral
>> argument. The religious don't accept arguments that are not
>> consistent with their idiosyncratic assumptions of supernatural
>> revelation, and sociopaths don't give a fig for any moral arguments.
>
>Of course they're not going to. The point was that
>the moral basis of Locke is his appeal to an ultimate
>moral authority (which even today is still considered
>by a majority of people apparently a given fact).
>
>If one then jetison's that authority either some other
>basis for the moral claims and the moral conclusions
>is required or the moral claims go as well.
>
>You and Lev can take you pick.
One can use the principle of equal rights to use natural resources
without invoking divine sanction. If one doesn't accept equal rights,
one is obliged to embrace the alternative: privilege.
>> >> >The equal right to may or may not be a guarantee
>> >> >of such possession. It's also not what the LVT
>> >> >proponents are actally arguing.
>> >>
>> >> But it is the natural response to those who claim that land rent must
>> >> not be recovered for public purposes because certain people have a
>> >> special right to pocket it for their own purposes.
>> >
>> >Land rents--assuming we can actually trace them fairly
>> >to everyone and not some subset--are different, as you've
>> >said countless times yourself, from the land and ownership.
>> >Locke's, and any other agument that leads to similar conclusions,
>> >argument about our individual rights to individually appropriate
>> >from nature had nothing to do with land rent.
>>
>> Land rent was not understood at that time, but Locke's argument is
>> clearly relevant to current discussions of land rent. It is central
>> to solving the problem of reconciling the individual right to access
>> natural resources with the fact that such access must frequently be
>> exclusive to be useful.
>
>I find that a proplematic claim. It clearly existed and I
>find it hard to believe that people in general were not
>aware of rental rates for similar land, or prices for that
>matter, being driven by proximity to markets and town centers.
>Petty seems to have had some notion of the idea tha land value
>and prices were not only derived from land's productivity or
>the labor working it.
Of course people were aware of rent. But the underlying economics was
not understood until Ricardo.
>Prehaps rather than being unaware of land rents they were
>merely taken for granted.
Right. There was no clear understanding of the relationship of rent
to wages, marginal land, etc.
>> >> >> However, for pragmatic reasons, individuals or organisations possess
>> >> >> and are responsible for land (I have a great deal of sympathy for
>> >> >> "public ownership", but the "tragedy of the commons does apply).
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Therefore, the _proceeds_ of land need to be shared equally.
>> >> >
>> >> >The claim is that "the community" creates the rents earned
>> >> >by land. That at least has some merit in the claim.
>> >>
>> >> Indeed, it is a fact beyond serious dispute.
>> >
>> >But it's an imprecise propostion.
>>
>> Zero tolerance is unscientific nonsense.
>
>I didn't call for zero tolerance but until your response
>to me in another post I'd not seen you even consider
>the question. Even there I don't think you actaully
>made a huge effort to address the issue.
Maybe if you identify "the issue" specifically, I can address it.
>> >You need to also
>> >show that all the claim on those rents is uniform
>> >thoguhout the community.
>>
>> How else can the equal rights of all be secured?
>
>Equal rights doesn't mean mean if you have it I can
>now take it.
Right. B has no more right to deny it to A because A now has it than
A has to deny it to B because A now has it.
>Nor does equal rights to nature mean
>that society can now charge you for what you're using.
Society is just everyone whose rights are in play.
>If you want to claim that my use of land is generating
>$X in rents that I cam collecting for using that land
>and that $X exists merely because the actions of some
>others are producing this external value I'm now collecting
>as a land rent, that's a bit different.
Your use of land does not generate the rent.
>It's not the
>case that everyone in society has produced that external
>effect so how is giving them a share of it or kicking
>me off so someone else can pay and everyone then
>gets a share securing this equal right?
The equality is not in the contribution to the rent, but in the right
of use.
>> >Only at that point can you
>> >claim to have solved the problem of rents being extracted.
>>
>> More zero tolerance...?
>
>No, just good analysis. If you don't want to disaggregate
>the problem at least do some preliminary work to establish
>a reasonable probablility that it's a second order type
>issue or that it all nets out. Don't just assume it.
You need to specify exactly what problem you are talking about here.
>> >The other aspect is what about people who are using the
>> >land for non-productive uses and so not collecting any rent?
>>
>> What gives them the right to prevent others from using it?
>
>The fact they have just as good a right and currently
>ARE using it.
?? What?!? You can't obtain a right to violate someone else's rights
by violating them! Unless, of course, you want to live in the kind of
primitive, rights-ignoring society that allowed a rapist's offer of
marriage to nullify his crime.
>That appears to be a fairly well established
>social convention even in cultures that don't have any
>extensive private property rights.
It's a social convention because current users tend to hold the power,
and it's too much trouble and risk to assert the rights of the
powerless.
>> >Where does the community gain the right to expell this
>> >person from the land they've approrpriated, directly
>> >or indirerectly (un which case they may have had to pay
>> >a rent already) just beacuse they refuse to pay the
>> >rent to the taxing authority.
>>
>> Possession founded on nothing but appropriation is just as
>> legitimately overturned by appropriation. Where does the land's user
>> get the right to prevent others from using it?
>
>The social conventions for minimizing conflict that
>recognise the current users has a superior claim to
>use.
That social convention (which btw you just made up -- try not paying
your property taxes and see how far you can rely on it) wouldn't
mimimize conflict at all, as history clearly proves. It just shifts
the conflict to a higher level, as the greedy and ruthless would fight
among themselves to be recognized as "current users."
The current user's claim is in no way superior to anyone else's,
except insofar as he has made fixed inmprovements, has a crop in the
field, etc.
>If they stop using it but still want to prevent
>others then, depending on one's assumptions about
>property rights, others' right to access become into
>force.
Wrong. Others' rights do not depend on the indolence of those who
would violate them.
>If two or more are competing for the unused
>resource then some, preferably non-violent, rationing
>approach seems desirable.
Allocation can only be non-violent when all agree that forcible
appropriation is not a basis for a right of use. Those who defend a
right of use based on forcible appropriation are agreeing that others
are perfectly right to use force against them.
>> >It they are not collecting
>> >any rent they should not be required to pay any rents
>> >even if the land is fully capible of generating those
>> >rents.
>>
>> ?? Of course they should. Not charging them rent would grant them a
>> dog-in-the-manger privilege. Private landlords don't forego the rent
>> for unproductive users, so why would the community, which has a much
>> more valid claim to the rent? You also seem to be getting confused
>> between economic rent and vernacular rent.
>
>Because the community doesn't own the land either.
Nope. The community consists of all whose right to use the land is in
play. So the fact that the community does not own the land either is
completely irrelevant, as it acts in the capacity of a trustee for all
its members. A trustee does not own the trust's assets, yet has a
perfect right to charge the user of a trust asset rent for it.
You stand refuted.
>If a person is not using land to extract a rent
>from others then the community has no right to
>demand any payment.
Flat wrong, and lacking any supportive fact or logic whatsoever. This
line of "argument" leads straight to the most exorbitant form of
privilege: the big landowner's privilege to keep "his" land idle for
his own recreational pursuits, while others starve for its lack.
>Is this the new theme now, social ownership and social
>rights--all justified by Locke's theory of property
>that was a individual right?
Equal rights of _all_ individuals, which only the community can
secure. Anything else is privilege and tyranny.
>> >This becomes more complecated when
>> >we accept the imperfection of a democratic society and
>> >the potential for agenda setting and rent-management.
>>
>> That is the same with any spending and revenue system, net of inherent
>> characteristics of simplicity, transparency, equality, etc., which all
>> favor land rent recovery over other alternatives.
>
>Care to elaborate?
The public, one-dimensional nature of land rent and the inherent
justice of recovering it for the purposes of the community that
creates it render complexity, obscurity and partiality extraneous.
They become artificial blemishes on an inherently fair, simple and
natural system, not complex kluges needed to ameliorate the
destructive effects of an inherently unjust, flawed system.
>> >We curently see people using the government to create
>> >rents for industry and special interests. Changing
>> >to Georgist approach would simply shift the application
>> >of political power from rent-creation to rent-contol and
>> >management as beneficial to special interestes.
>>
>> Of course, any institutional arrangement can in theory be corrupted.
>> But it's much harder with land, because everything is public.
>
>It might be public but it's not always simple or transparent
>or clear.
?? Compared to what alternative?
>> >It might be that is only works a in a local setting
>> >but very poorly in a national or international setting.
>>
>> I don't know how it might be made international, but it has certainly
>> worked well in national settings.
>
>Where?
Meiji Japan, Denmark in the 1950s, post-war Taiwan, China in the late
17th and early 18th C, etc.
-- Roy L
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