Re: Eminent Domain Abuse - LVT - Back to Basics

royls_at_telus.net
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 01:57:11 GMT

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:27:50 -0800, "David Schwartz"
<davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

><ruetheday@outgun.com> wrote in message
>news:1111418179.475464.111520@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Correct. This point is central to Georgism. One cannot exist in this
>> world without a place to stand. Given that there are a fixed number of
>> places to stand and that they are all privately owned, one cannot even
>> exist in this world without paying someone for the privilege of
>> existence.
>
> Umm, what if *you* owned one of those places?

Then he paid someone for the privilege of existence when he bought the
land.

>> Let me address the premise. Under Georgism, the land does not "belong"
>> to the community, the land is just there. It simply exists and is
>> available for anyone to use. However, most potential uses of the land
>> require exclusive use of a parcel of land. Georgists recognize this
>> which is why they do not advocate that land be held as "commons".
>> Georgists also recognize that granting exclusive use of a parcel of
>> land denies the use of that parcel to everyone else in the community.
>
> What about people not in the community? They can't use that land either.

They are free to use land. Just not to deprive others of it without
compensating them for the loss.

>> That "right to exclude" has a value and that value will rise
>> proportional to the activities of the community.
>
> You can view any value created by human effort as the "activities of the
>community"

Nope. Only if you are a liar (which, as we know, you are). The value
of products of labor is created and rightly owned by those who produce
them.

>and use this to deny that value to the individual laborers who
>created it.

That is a lie, as proved above. Laborers must pay rent for land in
any case. The only difference with LVT is that instead of paying the
rent to a private landowner who did not create it, the laborer pays it
to the community that did.

>Why you only do this for land is the mystery.

No. It is not a mystery to anyone who is willing to know the facts
that land is not produced by labor, and its value is not produced by
the landowner but by government and the community.

>> Therefore, it is only
>> logical that the recipient of that privilege be made to pay for the
>> privilege and continue paying for it until they are willing to
>> relinquish the use of the land to another member of the community.
>
> Sure, but they should pay the people who created the value not the
>"community".

The community did create the value. You are simply not willing to
know that fact.

>And the terms should be negotiated by contract, not imposed by
>tax decree.

We have already explained why contract simply results in the landowner
getting all the value for doing nothing, while those who create the
value get none of it. Contracts cannot internalize externalities.
That is just a fact of economics that you refuse to know. Why do you
think landowners are able to get all the land value for themselves and
leave none to those who create it _now_, hmmm?

>And if the people who created the value can't get that value by
>contract, then they're not entitled to get it by tax.

Yes, actually, they are, _by_contract_. The landowners already
_agreed_ to pay the taxes when they accepted the land titles the
government created. That was a condition of their holding the land,
right from the start. And certainly the landowners are incomparably
less entitled to get the rent than is the community that creates it.

-- Roy L

Relevant Pages

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    ... they invariably claim that recovery of publicly created land ... often to escape the community, ... You can't encourage discoverers by telling them they can ... "And we can do the same thing with the land, people can trade ...
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  • Re: automated reply to Georgist spams
    ... they invariably claim that recovery of publicly created land ... often to escape the community, ... You can't encourage discoverers by telling them they can ... "And we can do the same thing with the land, people can trade ...
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