Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism • Hacker News Board

Re: Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism

#161

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, May 02, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #160

colinmhayes wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean tbh we just have a paradigm difference. IMO there is no such thing as not enough parking lots. They're wasteful eyesores that encourage a horrible externality.

And yet, shopping centers with parking lots do more business than shopping centers without parking. You may like a life where you're dependent on delivery services for anything you can't carry to where it needs to go but the rest of us aren't willing to wear that hair shirt.

If a shopping center needs more parking and doesn't want to pay more LVT they can build a parking garage. That way the land next door can be used more productively. If building the garage is too expensive then the land was never that valuable to begin with and they can afford the lvt.

Re: Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism

#162

Post by anamax » Mon, May 02, 2022, 10:15 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #161

anamax wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, shopping centers with parking lots do more business than shopping centers without parking. You may like a life where you're dependent on delivery services for anything you can't carry to where it needs to go but the rest of us aren't willing to wear that hair shirt.

If a shopping center needs more parking and doesn't want to pay more LVT they can build a parking garage. That way the land next door can be used more productively. If building the garage is too expensive then the land was never that valuable to begin with and they can afford the lvt.

Why would they do that?

You've already stated that an essential part of your plan is eliminating parking lots.

You think that a world without parking lots, a world where people mostly carry stuff and otherwise rely on delivery services, is best. Aren't you going to at least followup with "people buy too much stuff anyway, so shopping centers that sell less are better."?

Surely you can defend your vision instead of just giving up when someone summarizes it.

Re: Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism

#163

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, May 02, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #162

colinmhayes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a shopping center needs more parking and doesn't want to pay more LVT they can build a parking garage. That way the land next door can be used more productively. If building the garage is too expensive then the land was never that valuable to begin with and they can afford the lvt.

Why would they do that? You've already stated that an essential part of your plan is eliminating parking lots. You think that a world without parking lots, a world where people mostly carry stuff and otherwise rely on delivery services, is best. Aren't you going to at least followup with "people buy too much stuff anyway, so shopping centers that sell less are better."? Surely you can defend your vision instead of ju…

In the end my vision doesn't matter. If you can agree that land speculation is bad you can agree that LVT is good. People should not make money for owning empty land that they do nothing with, it's really that simple.

Re: Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism

#164

Post by anamax » Wed, May 04, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #163

anamax wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they do that? You've already stated that an essential part of your plan is eliminating parking lots. You think that a world without parking lots, a world where people mostly carry stuff and otherwise rely on delivery services, is best. Aren't you going to at least followup with "people buy too much stuff anyway, so shopping centers that sell less are better."? Surely you can defend your vision instead of ju…

In the end my vision doesn't matter. If you can agree that land speculation is bad you can agree that LVT is good. People should not make money for owning empty land that they do nothing with, it's really that simple.

> If you can agree that land speculation is bad you can agree that LVT is good.

Why should I agree with something that is so clearly false?

Speculation is betting on a better tomorrow. That's clearly a social good.

> People should not make money for owning empty land that they do nothing with, it's really that simple.

Is it?

Suppose that I like looking at trees. (When a govt does that, it's called greenspace, parkland, etc, and everyone says how great it is. Feel free to argue that Central Park should be covered with high rises.)

Or, I'm waiting for Disneyland to be finished so I can put up a hotel if it pans out.

There are lots of great reasons to "do nothing" with land.

Note that Disneyland is an interesting case that disproves one of your core assumptions, namely that "the public" is responsible for the value of land, therefore it should get all of the "rent". "The public" in all of the nearby cities did just as much as "the public" in Anaheim, yet somehow the area around Disneyland is worth far more than pretty much any place in those cities. The public was, as is often the case, irrelevant.

Disneyland isn't an exception in this respect - I picked it because it's so blatant.

Let's come back to an essential point - why should your preferences regarding other people's property matter? Especially since pretty much every detail that you've used to support your position is wrong.

And it's not just the little details.

For example, you seem to think that efficiency is a goal. It's not. It's a tool. (Of course, your definition of "efficiency" is flawed.)

I get that you want to live in a cramped dysfunctional monoculture, but the rest of us don't. (I brought back monoculture because that's what your policies encourage.) Moreover, such a system is actually less valuable, which is a curious result given your repeated rants about maximizing value.

Re: Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism

#165

Post by yellowapple » Sat, May 07, 2022, 8:13 AM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #149

yellowapple wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This means that people owning property with a mortgage would suddenly be forced to sell their property at the near zero prices that Georgism is designed to foster. Not necessarily. Relatively few homeowners occupy all that much land value; it's probable that most homeowners' dividends would entirely offset their tax burdens, in which case they stand to benefit if anything.

I think this is fundamentally untrue. It seems plausible for condo owners in large buildings where each unit represents a tiny portion of land. For single family residences consisting of detached or semi-detached homes on slices of valuable land in a city or suburb of a city that's almost certain not to be true. Most of the people you're taxing in a land value tax are residential uses. Taxing the money doesn't magica…

Sorry for the late reply.

> Most of the people you're taxing in a land value tax are residential uses.

You're forgetting the sheer quantities of land (and land value) consumed by commercial and industrial use; this land, too, would be taxed. Such land is arguably far greater (in terms of value) than most residential land; consider every office building, every factory, every warehouse, every store, every parking lot/garage, every mine, every farm, and you'd see how that 1.362 trillion (and then some!) would be possible.

Another factor here is ATCOR (All Taxes Come Out of Rent), the idea that since non-LVT taxes suppress economic activity (because they tax things with elastic supply, artificially raising their prices), replacing all taxes with LVT would remove that suppression, spurring greater demand for land and therefore higher land values (and therefore higher LVT revenues). Basically: we're already taxing land indirectly and less efficiently, so we might as well just tax land directly.

Further:

> The point is the funds leave very little left for the citizen's dividend unless we want to vastly reduce existing government programs.

Which is very possible. A citizens' dividend, like any other sort of UBI, makes a lot of existing welfare programs redundant. Most Georgists/geolibertarians (myself included) frown upon the insane amounts of "defense" spending here in the US, so that'd be another thing we'd push to cut.