A lot of talk about personal data ownership and markets, mentions repay-me, datum, enigma, but there is also synapse, ocean, iota-ish, numerai-ish, streamr.
Some taken from here: https://i.imgur.com/mOWKrQE.jpg
On Radical Markets
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: On Radical Markets
#22Wouldn't the self-assessed tax lead to unfair competitive practices? Imagine a small bookstore opening in the same town as a Barnes and Noble. What if there's no tax level that the small store can afford that prevents a mega-corp like B&N from buying out their property? Imagine you live in a neighborhood with deep community or family ties. Someone down the street wins the lottery/makes an 8-figure exit and wants to b…
I think the property/personal home example is hard to defend. Consider industrial property, such as a factory or warehouse. The most reasonable application of self-assessed tax would be to any property that can be valued on purely economic/objective bases.
I think the biggest problem with it, even with industrial stuff, is that it's ignoring transaction costs of moving buildings?
Eg. I buy a property that I want to use as a factory. Some people who work for me move their own accomodation to be close to my factory. I spend absolutely tons of time and money filling my factory with machines, some of which are bolted to walls or have to be constructed inside the warehouse.
The price I'm willing to accept for this property isn't the price of the property, it's the cost to me of moving all my people and goods and rebuilding things. Plus the cost of the interruption to my production flow etc.
Caveat I know nothing about manufacturing but the point is more general, property isn't even close to fungible.
Tesla wouldn't sell their hyperfactory thing for the price they bought it for!
Everyone would be overpaying tax to the extent that their reliance on property isn't fungible, I'm not sure what the implications of that are but property is so fundamental and so much money that they'd be huge.
Re: On Radical Markets
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the property/personal home example is hard to defend. Consider industrial property, such as a factory or warehouse. The most reasonable application of self-assessed tax would be to any property that can be valued on purely economic/objective bases.
I think the biggest problem with it, even with industrial stuff, is that it's ignoring transaction costs of moving buildings? Eg. I buy a property that I want to use as a factory. Some people who work for me move their own accomodation to be close to my factory. I spend absolutely tons of time and money filling my factory with machines, some of which are bolted to walls or have to be constructed inside the warehouse.…
If everyone is overpaying tax, that's OK, you can just adjust the tax rate.
I think the real issue is whether is promotes certain uses of land over others, and whether that's problematic.
Re: On Radical Markets
#24> Consider a system where property owners themselves specify what the value of their property is, and pay a tax rate of, say, 2% of that value per year. But here is the twist: whatever value they specify for their property, they have to be willing to sell it to anyone at that price Valuing an asset takes work. The process consumes resources. There is a reason we have brokers for assets where one needs someone standin…
But property taxes already face this challenge: the assessing authority has to specify a value – which may then be disputed by the property-owner in a costly appeals process. This proposal lets the actor with the keenest interest and best knowledge of the property set a value, and lets the 'challenge' occur in the marketplace, by someone who's willing to buy it at that price. It lets the "brokers" and other experts o…
Not to mention that homeowners wanting to sell their home also face the same challenge: they need to assess the market and determine what they are willing to sell their home for.
Re: On Radical Markets
#25I like how engineers have expanded their ambition from starting as almost clerks to scientists (when the job of a programmer was almost exclusively data entry a few decades ago) to nowdays feeling like they can understand and modify everything in society with these powerful tools below their fingertips.
Vitalik can’t get his own flawed cryptocurrency to be useful or usable (except for scammers) and yet he wants to tell everyone how to solve the rest of the world’s problems?
I find his cryptocurrency useful, and I am not a scammer, a purchaser of illegal drugs, or even (much of a) speculator.
Re: On Radical Markets
#26When I saw the name “Eric Posner” as a coauthor of the book Vitalik mentions, I figured he must be related to Richard. Indeed, Eric is Richard’s son. Richard Posner has some extremely fascinating writing.
Re: On Radical Markets
#27Wouldn't the self-assessed tax lead to unfair competitive practices? Imagine a small bookstore opening in the same town as a Barnes and Noble. What if there's no tax level that the small store can afford that prevents a mega-corp like B&N from buying out their property? Imagine you live in a neighborhood with deep community or family ties. Someone down the street wins the lottery/makes an 8-figure exit and wants to b…
> What if there's no tax level that the small store can afford that prevents a mega-corp like B&N from buying out their property? Be bookstore owner. Set the value to be twice as much as comparable neighbor property. Get bought by B&N. Buy property next to you, move your books, pocket the difference. > I get that making $15m for my house would make me rich, but this is our first home as a family and all our memories…
>Price it accordingly. :)
I don't see this as very helpful. The above poster views their home as something to protect from the market. It is a safehaven for family and friends and community connections, it is something that holds all the most important things in life and so it is above market mechanisms to the extent possible. Seeing this and purposefully advocating a system which forces them to put an actual price on their family memories supposes that there should be zero aspects of our life which are safe from market mechanisms. That seems like an impoverished way of looking at life.
Re: On Radical Markets
#28> As it turns out, it is absolutely possible to have a system that contains markets but not property rights: at the end of every year, collect every piece of property, and at the start of the next year have the government auction every piece out to the highest bidder.
I know this is just a hypothetical example, but...the government takes all property at the end of the year, except for money? Since presumably people need something with which to buy property at the auction. How does this work out at all from individual economic incentives? Seems like that just incentivizes everyone to try to end up with as much money and as little property as possible as the end of the year. And does the money from the highest bidder go to the previous owner? That would make sense, but this article implies that it just becomes government revenue.
Re: On Radical Markets
#29I like the self assessed property tax idea, although presumably if someone wants to buy your property and you are not ready to sell, you should be able to "correct" the assessment and pay the back taxes (for the year only) in order to discover the true price.
Wouldn’t it work to have the government run an auction-style website where the self-assessed property values are kept hidden, but people can submit a bid to buy a piece of property. If that bid is greater than or equal to the property’s assessed value, the property owner is given the option to increase their valuation to just above the bid price. If the property owner instead decides to sell, the bidder is obligated to go through with the deal (perhaps at the assessed value rather than the bid price).
Re: On Radical Markets
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the biggest problem with it, even with industrial stuff, is that it's ignoring transaction costs of moving buildings? Eg. I buy a property that I want to use as a factory. Some people who work for me move their own accomodation to be close to my factory. I spend absolutely tons of time and money filling my factory with machines, some of which are bolted to walls or have to be constructed inside the warehouse.…
If everyone is overpaying tax, that's OK, you can just adjust the tax rate. I think the real issue is whether is promotes certain uses of land over others, and whether that's problematic.
Exactly, that's what I meant but I should have emphasised it more.
Everyone overpays, but they overpay in proportion to how sticky their business is to a specific property. It would take someone who knows more about commercial property to dissect what businesses would get destroyed by that.