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Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

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Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#561

Post by _heimdall »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #545
Gormo wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the proposal is that people should never be able to use the land they own for their own purposes without the threat of being dispossessed because strangers are willing to pay more for it, even if they don't want to sell? That sounds like a horrible situation, and it seems clear why real-world tax systems don't take this approach to its ultimate conclusion. There's also something very objectionable about attempting…

At the risk of feeding a troll... no, that is not the proposal. The proposal is to make it economically unviable to do socially suboptimal things with common resources. The underlying principle is that land - including natural resources as a whole - is finite. It's a common good owned by humanity as a whole; or, failing that, at least in common by the nation-state in which it falls. Allowing individuals to hoard thos…

> The underlying principle is that land - including natural resources as a whole - is finite. It's a common good owned by humanity as a whole; or, failing that, at least in common by the nation-state in which it falls. Allowing individuals to hoard those finite resources is bad for society.

There's a real risk in attempting to define exactly what "socially suboptimal" uses for land are. Everyone will have a different opinion on how they want land to be used.

Worse still, your definition means that any unused land is socially suboptimal and should be disincentivized through taxes. Given that land is finite, how do we guard against eventually using as much land as possible? And where do we get all the resources to develop and maintain the land as well as all the consumables used by everyone living there.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#562

Post by Gormo »

gitonup wrote: post #524
Gormo wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it? Elections are for political institutions, so what you're describing amounts to having political control over land use decisions. OTOH, the market is another, much more direct expression of the intent and values of the local people, so why not just stick with that?

> amounts to having political control over land use decisions This exists in America, in ways that have generally escaped the label of "Communism". The most basic example of this most will be familiar with is zoning laws, but there is significant precedent otherwise. There will always be a gradient of control, and claiming that a singular government action in expansion is therefore communist is not intellectually hon…

s people object to zoning laws for exactly the same reason. Have Jacobs won renown for pointing out exactly how zoning laws undermined the emergent nature of cities, and destroyed value for their residents. Whatever label you call it by, the critique is the same: central planning is far worse than organic emergence.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#563

Post by presentation »

eppp wrote: post #516
presentation wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Georgism but if business taxes were replaced would internet businesses that don’t need a physical location thereby pay much less taxes than those that do have need for physical location? That does sound kinda lopsided, unless we’re also doing a land value tax on prime domain name real estate.

Internet businesses have physical locations somewhere. Even if they are drop shipping than someone else is paying the land value tax for the warehouses they are shipping from. The land use exists somewhere at some level of the value chain and that somewhere would then be taxed.

Not all, for example my SaaS company is fully remote and has no physical location whatsoever. I am cool with paying less taxes and I understand that the purpose of the land value tax is more about utilizing a limited resource effectively and not necessarily about some notion of fairness, but it seems weird that someone like me would not need to buy in besides my own home because of the industry that I’m in.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#564

Post by hackerlight »

_heimdall wrote: post #470
hackerlight wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a clear way to guard this system from building higher and higher economic centers Sorry, is this a bad thing? On the social side: In the current system, poor people are forced to live in ghettos and spend 2 hours a day on a round-trip commute. It's too expensive to live near their work. If we had a land tax, the rich enclaves near the city are now financially incentivized to open up their public schools an…

Both of these scenarios are a gamble and not guaranteed. On the social side: the gamble is that social growth will outpace the increased economic pressure. Meaning, you need the new vertical growth to create opportunities faster than it increases prices further in the area. A land tax alone wouldn't pull people out of poverty, create affordable housing, or open up public school. Those are all just potential avenues f…

> On the social side: the gamble is that social growth will outpace the increased economic pressure. Meaning, you need the new vertical growth to create opportunities faster than it increases prices further in the area. A land tax alone wouldn't pull people out of poverty, create affordable housing, or open up public school. Those are all just potential avenues for the city to develop, not guarantees.

There are a lot of ill defined and bizarre things here. What is "economic pressure"? I have never heard such a term before. Why would there be "price increases" (inflation)? I have never heard anyone serious posit a link between density and inflation. It's the exact opposite because economics of scale and scope can deliver services more efficiently. Why shouldn't a land tax contribute towards "affordable housing" when the economic logic predicts it will have a deflationary impact on housing costs? Why do you think I'm saying that a land tax will "open up [new] public schools"? I said there would be a change in incentives away from excluding poor people from your local school catchment area, which has historically driven local resistance to upzoning. Honestly, it sounds like you should read up on basic economics before you form these opinions. The subject matter is primarily economics and such basic knowledge is a prerequisite to understanding the rationale behind one tax or another.

> The more you build up the more steel, concrete, glass, energy, etc is needed.

No, this is forgetting that you have the same number of people in either scenario. It takes more resources to build 1000 single detached homes (and associated roads, train stations, shops etc) than 10 apartment buildings with 100 homes (with less roads, less train stations than the former scenario).

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#565

Post by lesuorac »

Gormo wrote: post #520
atrus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the market were too small, the weakest would fail, right? Right? I find it interesting that we have sayings like this, and sayings like "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." > why should a politician need to step in to regulate, rather than letting the market decide? Because the market doesn't price in externalities. Sure the market will figure out which car washes live. But what abo…

> I find it interesting that we have sayings like this, and sayings like "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." How can the market be irrational? People either are purchasing enough of these services to make the business viable, or they are not. > Because the market doesn't price in externalities. Legal liability for harmful externalities factors directly into the market for insurance and…

Business are in general not solvent in their first years. Even some business such as Uber took 15 years to generate a profit [1].

However, the saying about "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." is that even if you can point out that say Enron / Wirecard / FTX are fraudulent, good luck making any money on that. Michael Burry nearly messed up his timing for '08 and could've lost to an investor revolt [2]; but he has messed up timing for Tesla (peak 400, current 200) and many other stocks causing him to exit those positions before making money.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/8/24065999/uber-earnings-pro...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Burry#Investment_caree...

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#566

Post by eppp »

presentation wrote: post #563
eppp wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet businesses have physical locations somewhere. Even if they are drop shipping than someone else is paying the land value tax for the warehouses they are shipping from. The land use exists somewhere at some level of the value chain and that somewhere would then be taxed.

Not all, for example my SaaS company is fully remote and has no physical location whatsoever. I am cool with paying less taxes and I understand that the purpose of the land value tax is more about utilizing a limited resource effectively and not necessarily about some notion of fairness, but it seems weird that someone like me would not need to buy in besides my own home because of the industry that I’m in.

Then the server farm where your code runs will be taxed. Maybe you run it from your house, in that case then it is part of that.

You are still just moving it around at the end of the day. Presumably as you grow more profitable and wealthy you would relocate to higher value real estate. If not then you are spreading the wealth to lower value areas which is also a good thing. Seems like all good things in the end.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#567

Post by mumbo_rmj »

Gormo wrote: post #558
lmm wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything? Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land. > But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying mo…

> Land in the right place is not merely economically scarce, it's economic land I don't see how there's anything particularly special about land that warrants construing it as something fundamentally different from any other scarce resource. > Supply and demand doesn't work for land because there's no new supply. I'm not sure that I agree that there is no new supply of land in an economic sense -- developments that i…

“I don't see how there's anything particularly special about land that warrants construing it as something fundamentally different from any other scarce resource.”

I’ve overheard enough conversations between high net worth individuals to say there’s absolutely unique qualities about land as an asset class or they wouldn’t hold so much of it.

read some solid reasons for land focused tax regimes long ago but couldn’t remember deets on why they were compelling so googled helped me remember …

‘Immobility: Land doesn’t move, making it a stable tax base. (Important for local services like deciding whether a town can afford the new school(s) or a road).

Scarcity: No more land is being created, so taxing it efficiently is crucial. (Kind of like capital itself)

Non-distortionary: Taxing unimproved land doesn’t distort transactions.

Local Funding: LVT may be an effective way to fund local government since land cannot be moved to avoid taxes’ (1)

(1) which BTW is the main reason often given why ordinary folks have to pay higher payroll taxes vs capital gains the wealthier brackets ‘pay’ because you know capital will just up and move somewhere else if we ask too much of them.

Well just tax the land, and if the capital holders want to move all their wealth out of the community, fine, but good luck extracting wealth from a local community without owning any land near it.

So yeah. Tax the damn land already. Especially to fund local government and services, which you kinda need to have a functioning society.

I clicked through because I’ve wondered often why there’s a dozen of these new washes in my community with ten more on the way and figured it was some financing/tax write off hack.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#568

Post by mumbo_rmj »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #356
dinp wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. If desirable high value businesses ar…

The theory of (LVT) land value tax is that it replaces other taxes. LVT has less or no dead weight loss so it's a more efficient tax. > If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. My claim is that the playing field is not currently even rather it is massively in favor for low-capital, low-labor, and low-regulatory businesses (like car washes) and ad…

> My claim is that the playing field is not currently even rather it is massively in favor for low-capital, low-labor, and low-regulatory businesses (like car washes)

The term ‘rent seekers’ comes to mind.

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#569

Post by donedeals »

speakfreely wrote: post #336

The answer is private equity "roll-up" strategies of "boring businesses". You're going to see this accelerate in tons of other things that PE thinks can be easily consolidated, the gold rush has already started for dental practices, primary care providers, coin laundry, HVAC companies, landscaping, etc. American small businesses are disappearing because that's what consumers want (what they vote for with their dollar…

PCP and dental practices are much harder to roll up. The doctors start a competitor, and bring their patients, the second the non-compete ends wiping the practice that was bought

Re: Why are there suddenly so many car washes?

#570

Post by BobbyTables2 »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #181

I really hate sounding like a broken record but this is just another instance of how low property taxes and the absence of land value taxes massively benefits low-value businesses. The real business of car washes is real estate, it's profitable enough to get 3-4x leverage with a low interest loan. TBH I think real estate used to have high information asymmetry between local residents and large investors; low property…

About 25 years ago, an automated car wash cost $2-3, the price of 1-2 gallons of gas.

Now they cost $10-15 at least!

I have to wonder if they are actually making profit without the real estate games too!

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