This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The recent Georgist uprising in the rat-sphere seems to be spreading outward, and gathering steam if anything. Lars Doucet, who wrote the original ACX post that blew up, is now releasing a book called Land is a Big Deal which summarizes his writings thus far.
There was also a major takedown of Detroit land assessment practices by a major land parcel data collector, ReGrid that dropped a few days ago. Major takeaways:
In addition, some fairly mainstream political candidates such as Chloe Brown who's running for Mayor of Toronto, seem to be gaining steam. Land value tax is a large plank in her platform.
I got interested in land reform through the original series of ACX posts, and frankly I'm surprised how interesting the problem is and how overall neglected the topic seems to be. Even extremely intelligent and well read folks I talk to about it are surprised when they learn that land value is usually just pulled out of thin air - the industry standard is to just take 25% of the purchase price and not give a shit about location or any other factors, which seems bizarre upon a critical review.
I've seen some discussion about Georgism/LVT here, but curious if anyone else has been following this?
Also, what are the arguments against LVT, besides low-effort "taxes are always bad and raising them is evil?" Genuinely curious for well thought out reasons why an LVT would be a bad idea.
Edit: For those new to this idea, a Land Value Tax in it's most basic form simply says we should tax away the value of the land, and only let people who sell land profit off of the 'improvements' they make, such as buildings, restorations, etc. For instance if you bought a piece of land and tried to sell it 1 year later off pure speculation, doing nothing to the land, you would not receive any profit.
My understanding is that this is effectively an opportunity cost tax. I.e., if you are sitting on a valuable plat which could generate 10 M$ in rents with 1 M$ of improvements, the market value of the plat should be about 9M$, and you would be taxed on that value, even if you were only generating 100K$ of rents (including imputed rents).
This is economically very efficient, as it encourages land to be used for its most economically efficient purpose. However, this butts directly up against peoples' real-world desires to "settle" - to establish a home in a place and be able to stay there indefinitely. If, for reasons beyond their control, the price of their property increases, they can be financially forced from their homes, which is about as soulcrushing as being foreclosed upon, while also seeming much more unfair. It destroys a person's ability to make stable long-term plans regarding a very fundamental fact of life. It also destroys residential community, by creating a disincentive to make a community that people want to live in, which has the natural effect of increasing property value. These are already problems with existing property taxes, that would be greatly amplified by taxing away all of the land value (leaving only rents).
After all, most people recoil about applying the same logic in other contexts: should a person's income tax be based on the amount of money they theoretically could be earning, if they worked as much as possible in the most valuable field they are qualified for, in the location with the highest salary? Hard-core utilitarians have seriously proposed this, but the concept of being treated as an economic ends with no function other than to produce social benefit, rather than a sapient being with noneconomic needs and desires makes most people reject this with prejudice.
This is a good argument, thank you for giving me this perspective!
I'm definitely more of a YIMBY, I understand that losing a house can be a serious blow, but I am more concerned with the fact that our cities are becoming increasingly less dense, losing valuable network effects, and wasting huge swathes of land.
To me this is the most salient problem you bring up, although I tend to come to the opposite conclusion. Yes a poorly implemented immediate LVT would absolutely destroy community, the idea is to slowly introduce it at say 30% of land value, and raise it over time to soften the blow.
From what I can tell though, one of the big issues of community being destroyed in the U.S. especially is the lack of density. It's much harder to have a strong social group when you have to drive 15-30 minutes to see any of your friends, being able to walk to another building one block over is much easier. That being said, we do tend to have an issue building ugly, dystopic dense housing which actively disincentivizes community. That's a separate problem we need to fix.
I could never get behind this, and you're changing my mind on the 100% LVT. How would you feel about an LVT that taxed away 80% of the land value?
Build new cities! Sounds glib, I know, but there is really no shortage of unzoned, unoccupied land in the United States, in nearly every temperate zone. Sure, the best port locations and the most ideal of weather locations are taken, but this isn't Europe. There's no reason that building the cities you want must entail destroying the ones that exist, unless you are unwilling to settle for anything less than the maximum possible ideal locations, in which case no amount of land reform is ever going to solve the problem that millions of people want to live in those places without also living in proximity to millions of other people.
I disagree, I think too much density is also harmful to community. There is balance between not having enough people to form a community and having so many people proximate that your community is too large to meaningfully participate in. I suspect that in reality, the ideal community is within an order of magnitude of Dunbar's number, and the physical size of one's "community" is simply scaled by the density. In a small town, the entire town is your community. In a suburb, it is your residential neighborhood. In a larger city, your block, and in a megalopolis, your building, or maybe even your elevator stop.
Better, but still not very positive.
I'm also on the build new cities train. I think the problem is building a new city is extremely hard. Not the actual infrastructure, but the getting people to move there. To be clear if we do institute a LVT, I think we should test it extensively on smaller/new cities and areas instead of just roll it out immediately.
Interesting point here. I definitely find it compelling, and it's a huge problem. I'd like to think a Georgist system where people can name their price for a piece of land would enable stronger communities but a lot of people in this thread seem to disagree.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link