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Working on Economics with Fable 5

wilsoniumite.com

91–99 of 99 posts

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are arguing the efficient baseline for roads is a use tax, then we agree! The un-priced state of government infrastructure and service use is a market failure, but this is exactly what modern georgism and LVT calls for in its myopic focus on land and natural resources!

Yes, we do agree on that. Georgism actually does not argue against Pigouvian taxes or use taxes per se. His view is more that you should expect to get less of whatever you tax. In this case, our shared view is that you actually want to tax road usage because you want less of it. I doubt George thought that people should use roads less, so I presume he wouldn't have been fond of the idea of taxing their use. And it's…

Yeah, perhaps I am arguing too much with with vocal online LVT proponents, and my criticisms should be directed at them rather than Henry George.

I think single taxers or mostly single taxers have bad policy, and also overestimate the difference in revenue from current property taxation of land and improvements. I most often hear it as an alternative to income taxes and paired as a funding source for universal healthcare and UBI.

I haven't read Progress and Poverty but my understanding is George wanted to abolish state-sponsored charity/welfare.

I think LVT as a social solution to poverty is largely out of date, and more of a niche policy fix for some urban NIMBY problems. Particularly because modern modes of consumption, value production, and (dare I say it) rent seeking have grown beyond material inputs.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#92
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I said is that every time Pangram has said 100% AI, it is 100% something I don't want to read. I don't particularly care if it was written by humans or LLMs. Every time I've asked for evidence from someone who claims something like you do there always seems to be a reason it can't be posted. So it makes one suspicious. Is there no way you can modify your prompt to be shareable?

> I never found a piece of text that pangram claims is 100% AI that to me seems like purely human written text. That's another claim you made, which is quite silly. You've never found something that Pangram marks as 0% human and which you deem to be 100% human? Huge gulf. And no, not really. It's copy from fundraising materials. Removing the identifiable portions of it would remove virtually everything, which is perh…

I said it wasn't something I wanted to read. Humans are capable of writing things I don't want to read. Which at this point is starting to include your comments.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we do agree on that. Georgism actually does not argue against Pigouvian taxes or use taxes per se. His view is more that you should expect to get less of whatever you tax. In this case, our shared view is that you actually want to tax road usage because you want less of it. I doubt George thought that people should use roads less, so I presume he wouldn't have been fond of the idea of taxing their use. And it's…

Yeah, perhaps I am arguing too much with with vocal online LVT proponents, and my criticisms should be directed at them rather than Henry George. I think single taxers or mostly single taxers have bad policy, and also overestimate the difference in revenue from current property taxation of land and improvements . I most often hear it as an alternative to income taxes and paired as a funding source for universal healt…

You should read P&P! It's a really incredible book, and I think you may be surprised the elegance with which it still "handles" a modern economy.

I think George's view on state-sponsored charity/welfare is more nuanced than that. It's a bit analogous to the prior argument. It's not that charity is bad, it's that in the absence of LVT, it will never be sufficient to solve the problem because a large portion of the intervention will get eaten by land rents. Basically that land rents rise to an equilibrium of "there's some poverty", no matter how much money you dump into the demand side.

Here's evidence of exactly that dynamic with a similar intervention of minimum wage increases: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00941...

Temporary reduction in evictions, then rents rise to equilibriate back at "there are some evictions." There is some set point of eviction rate that landlords as a whole are comfortable with, and they will set their prices to whatever is needed to achieve that rate.

He also seemed to believe that LVT itself would achieve the most aspirational visions of charity/welfare, so maybe (hopefully!) it would be unnecessary, but I don't remember him taking aim at charity/welfare as a concept.

IMO the right way to think about LVT is this:

Without LVT, virtually no other interventions can achieve shared prosperity. Minimum wage, UBI, public housing, rent controls, even just the advancement of technology itself... they all either equilibriate into higher land rents, OR they require controls on land rents that create catastrophically inefficient use of resources anyway.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#94
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never found a piece of text that pangram claims is 100% AI that to me seems like purely human written text. That's another claim you made, which is quite silly. You've never found something that Pangram marks as 0% human and which you deem to be 100% human? Huge gulf. And no, not really. It's copy from fundraising materials. Removing the identifiable portions of it would remove virtually everything, which is perh…

I said it wasn't something I wanted to read. Humans are capable of writing things I don't want to read. Which at this point is starting to include your comments.

Did you not write the quoted text?

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help incentivize real improved use of expensive property, and less speculative investment without improvement, perhaps leading to lower prices (thus lower land value, and lower taxes), perhaps reaching some kind of equilibrium with better improved land use in expensive areas, less speculation resulting in the expensive areas being less expensive, and more equitable taxation than our current system.

Yes basically you should expect to see significant densification with significant competition in how appealing to the market you can make that level of density (since you as the developer keep all the upside).

I would actually expect to see a reduction in densification if a LVT is more expensive than current property taxes.

While it obviously encourages putting high value land to greater use, it also encourages avoiding high value land itself.

If the tax burden of your San Francisco house or office doubles, you may look into relocating to where land is cheaper.

It obviously depends on the rates.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#96
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said it wasn't something I wanted to read. Humans are capable of writing things I don't want to read. Which at this point is starting to include your comments.

Did you not write the quoted text?

I did and it's true, but I amended my statement at the top of this thread, which you've ignored.

What I wrote is true (it is a claim about my experience), so I'm not sure what you're attacking.

I amended my statement to avoid a discussion about the provenance which is not what I actually care about. What I care about is if I want to read it. Humans could theoretically write something in AI voice and if they did, I wouldn't want to read it.

I have not seen any examples of human text in LLM style that clearly predate 2023. If you can supply one, that would be incredible evidence.

If you're able to supply a prompt which generates text that fools pangram and is not like one sentence long or a list of names or something, but actual prose I want to read, then I will concede.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#97
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not write the quoted text?

I did and it's true, but I amended my statement at the top of this thread, which you've ignored. What I wrote is true (it is a claim about my experience), so I'm not sure what you're attacking. I amended my statement to avoid a discussion about the provenance which is not what I actually care about. What I care about is if I want to read it. Humans could theoretically write something in AI voice and if they did, I wo…

Oh, well sure, but I don't care about your preferences for what you'd like to read. You can use a Ouija board to decide whether something is worth reading for all I care, just don't use it to accuse other people of plagiarism or dishonesty.

Duh.

If your statement was "my super special dowsing rods tell me what I want to read with 100% accuracy" I'd say "cool." But that wasn't your claim.

> If you're able to supply a prompt which generates text that fools pangram and is not like one sentence long or a list of names or something, but actual prose I want to read, then I will concede.

This is an even more conservative claim than the one you just made! Sheesh.

Have a good day.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#98
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human values ideally start deeper, in the creation of preferences, where economics simply takes as a primitive/preexisting part of the environment. Marketing theory is the one that focuses on manipulating human value.

Preferences come from selection pressures and needs. Taking them as a foundation leads to excessive focus on trade and obscures the fact that humans in almost all cases need essentially the same things.

> need essentially the same things

Eh. Bacon futures disagree with this hypothesis.

Re: Working on Economics with Fable 5

#99

Are there other alternatives to UBI in solving this problem?

not really, the unconditionality is kind-of a requirement. Pay people to not work and you skew in favor of not working, pay people to work and you skew in favor of working, pay them for any other condition and, well, it's skewed, or in economic terms, distortionary. You can still have conditional benefits on top, favor working or something else a bit more if you want, but the base needs to be unconditional.
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