Re: Relative Appropriation of Economic Rents

On 24 Jan 2007 08:30:55 -0800, "Beal" <bealrabbitslayer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jan 24, 12:11 am, r...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 23 Jan 2007 14:47:30 -0800, "Beal" <bealrabbitsla...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

.......

You have proved that something can be appropriated that was not already
previously owned by another individual, group, or the community? That
seems like a pretty amazing bit of logic.

A community of people all use the same waterhole. None of them own
it, nor do they own it collectively

If that community uses it, that community owns it. But of course, this
is not even a good analogy because your idealized government would not
leave these proverbial watering holes open for free access to all.
Your idealized government would still grant exclusive use (fencing off)
to these watering holes. The only difference is who does the
allocating.

And also who gets the money.

The idea that "everybody will get to use the land and share it freely
with any travelers who happen to pass through" is nonsense rhetoric,
even by Georgists' standards.

The Georgists' plan explicitly is to allocate property with the right
to *exclusive use* exactly as now. How is land leased out by a
Georgist government with a factory or office building built on it
going to be "used by all" any more than it is today?

In fact one of the very first things Georgists proclaim is that the
best uses of lands and costs of leases will remain unchanged from
today. So the community, the people, will be excluded from the land
exactly to the degree they are now.

The only differences are that the lease allocation decisions
determining who gets exclusive use of land will be made by government
-- i.e. politicians -- rather than private parties in a free market,
AND the lease payments will be made to the very same politicians.

And thus, the Georgist claims in this very discussion: "LVT removes
the influence of politicians from the system"!!

ROTFLMAO!

This guy is a hoot. ;-)

...
You see? You stand refuted. That is going to happen to you every
time you presume to dispute with me, so I would advise you to get used
to it right now.

Wow, you really are full of yourself aren't you? I just refuted the
hell out of you, son. Your analogy was false and your attempt to
ignore the reality of your own ideology is quite telling.

You'll see in his proclamations of such things as: "In the Asian
financial crisis of the late 1990s Hong Kong was barely affected (!)
because it had a LVT" (!!) that he has fully refuted reality itself,
in his own mind. ;-)


Wrong. We all have a right to use all land, just as we all have a
right to use the atmosphere, or the alphabet.

Then what the hell are Georgist doing proposing to lease it out for
the exclusive use of factory and office building builders?

Are the Georgists going to be leasing out the atmosphere and the
alphabet to private users for exclusive use next?

No one rightly owns it,
nor ever can, but it can nevertheless be appropriated by force of
violence. Do you not think it would be appropriation of what was
never owned by anyone if government sold somebody a title to the
atmosphere, or a copyright on the alphabet?

At one time no land was privately owned. Now almost all useful land
is privately owned. As land is not produced by labor, the only way
land can ever come to be privately owned is by appropriation from
everyone else

And that can only be true if everyone owned it in the first place.

Of course, you're right, that's just more Georgist counter-reality
ideological idiocy.

1) The community says: "We need more land, but beyond the ridge is the
unknown, filled with risk and danger. Here's the deal -- we want
adventurous people to go out and look for usable fertile land, so the
community can grow. Yes this will be costly and risky, you must leave
your jobs and families, lose income, take risks in the unknown and
likely fail. So we must provide way to pay you fairly.
"Thus: If you succeed in finding usable land of value to the
community, and showing us the way to it, you may *keep* its value and
*trade the same* to others in the community for *exactly its own
value* in free exchange -- for goods, services, dowries, whatever.
"In this way if you succeed in finding land for our community, you
will receive a reward of *exactly the value* that you produced for us.
"What could be fairer?"

2) The community convenes and says: "This commons business where we
all use all the land and all the waterholes together for our cattle
herds as much as we want just isn't working -- the land is stripped
bare and the water is all contaminated with cattle crap and people
throwing their garbage in it. It's getting on being a tragedy.
"How about if we introduce a little specialization to increase
our group welfare? Here's an idea...
"What if some people trade their cattle to the rest of us for the
waterholes in return? Then they can maintain the waterholes and fence
'em off to keep the cattle from crapping in them and everybody else
from messing them. And they can charge the cattle owners for this
service -- not too little or the holes will still get spoiled, and not
too much or they'll lose income. Competition between them will get
them to the right amount.
"And we can do the same thing with the land, people can trade
their cattle for plots of it, then specialize in maintaining it for a
voluntarily negotiated fee.
"In the end the waterholes and the land will all be in much better
shape, so they will be able to support *more* cattle than today, so
WE'LL ALL BE RICHER! The whole community will be much better off.
"Who's up for doing this, lets see the vote..."

Bah, that's *two* ways land could originally have been obtained with
no "appropriation" at all.

The Georgist is refuted! And refuted again! ;-)

As if how land was distributed 1,000 years ago has any effect at all
on the economically optimum way to allocate land today.

This whole argument about "original -- way, way, back first ownership"
is another example of how Georgism is a *moral* creed, a subjective
*belief system* of shoulds and should-nots, not any kind of economic
analysis. That's why Georgists get so self-righteously inflamed about
these things -- those who disagree with them aren't arguing economics
.... they are *immoral*!

And also why Georgists are compelled to make things up out of whole
cloth -- as this thread will continue to demonstrate! -- to cover the
difference when reality conflicts with their moral creed, which of
course must come first!

Hey, nobody "appropriates" land today except politicians using the
government's power.

Land investors are compelled to buy it for market value.


just like the landowner fencing off what was formerly a
freely accessible waterhole.

Now if you don't believe the "considerable risk of loss" facing land
investors, just remember the notorious boom-bust cycle for real
estate, and consider the "bust" part. Land is a classical example of
an item that has a volatile price due to fixed supply, which causes
the market response to demand changes to be expressed *entirely*
through change in price, as mitigating change in supply is not
possible.

And unless you borrowed money to buy your land, you can just ride out
the bust.

ROTF.

It's fun to ride out busts that last years, decades, maybe last longer
than you do! ;-)

Incredibly simplistic.

Fact. It is effectively impossible to go broke by owning land, unless
you either borrowed to buy it or are really, really stupid.

ROTF.

It is "effectively impossible to go broke" by owning near *any* asset
-- buildings, jewelry, precious metals, used cars, whatever, unless
you either borrowed to buy it or are really, really stupid.

All assets have some value they will retain.

Of course, you can take a huge loss on them nonetheless.


It may be a fact. That doesn't mean it isn't simplistic stupidity.

Since land investors can switch to investing in anything else if the
expected risk-adjusted returns from anything else are higher than from
land, and investors in everything else can switch to investing in land
if the expected returns from land are higher, and such switching must
necessarily equalize expected risk-adjusted returns from land and
everything else,

Wrong, as I have explained before: people are mortal; land is not.
Because people steeply discount returns that will happen long after
they are dead, land is almost always underpriced relative to other
investment vehicles, and its long-run returns are consequently higher
than those of any other major class of asset.

That makes no sense.

It's is the most stupidly incoherent anti-mathematical anti-economic
nonsense you'll hear in a long time.

This is where Georgism veers into being a religion -- a manufactured
belief willfully denying reality.

Of course he can't cite a single economic paper backing this claim or
explaining it.

You know why: "conspiracy" ;-)

Fortunately for Georgists not all of them are this loony, or they'd
be totally extinct instead of still being able to survive on the
fringe.


It is discounted for very good reason: time value of money.

That is just another way of saying the same thing; and time value of
money does not explain the consistent undervaluation of land.

"Consistent undervaluation". Oh, the poor land investors are never
able to get full value for their land! ;-)

Gawd, these land investors who manipulate the whole system (and fund
the conspiracy to cover up their manipulations, even editing the
Encarta to hide the truth, no less!) to continue reaping their
exploitative profits from land ... really are **stupid** to
undervalue land so, and not bid up its price. ;-)

Don't they know where their profits come from?

ROTFL.

Of course he can't cite a single economic paper backing and explaining
this as an empirical claim either. It's pure religious belief.

It is only undervalued in your meaningless opinion. Just because you
do not understand the time value of money does not mean that others are
incorrect in their valuation of land.

I am simply identifying a fact: land provides the highest average
return of any major asset class, with lower long-term risk than any
major asset class.

Do you actually have an objective study you can cite that proves this?

Of course he doesn't.

The person who did any such study proving and explaining any such
thing would be in Sweden collecting his Nobel for reversing the
risk-reward relationships on investment returns.

"The lowest-risk-of-all investment produces the highest return of all!
The risk-reward relationship is refuted!"

Free dinner with the King of Sweden!

But alas no, to make up crap like this yourself and pull it out of
your own...

Calling it a "religious belief" that contradicts reality is really
polite.

<snip>
.

Relevant Pages

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