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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36187 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Apparently the UK's entire net worth was £10.7 trillions in 2020 according to the ONS, their chief statistic agency. What's remarkable is that a whopping 60% of that is "non-produced, non-financial assets".

That's a fancy way of saying land. Why isn't this fact more well known? Should we expect it to be different for other countries? And why aren't more people talking about Georgism?

I made a top-level comment here a couple of weeks ago that tried to outline some of the major updates on the Georgism discussion in the ratsphere.

(Editing for less strawmanning.) I think that a lot of the problem is that Georgism strikes at the heart of fundamental value differences for folks. Many people seem to equate Georgism with Communism, or redistribution of wealth, which I don't find convincing.

For instance:

@bnfrmt:

LVT is equivalent to the state seizing all land, and renting it back at market rates; it's expropriation on a massive scale.

@Brannigan:

Georgism at heart is about identifying what is often the most precious possession a person can have, that most of the middle class has spent 30 years of their lives working to pay off, to render to their posterity, and stealing it from them despite the fact that they haven't really done anything wrong.

@laxam

"We know better than you how you should use your land", is roughly analogous to, "We know better than you what you should put in your body".

@Westerly

This strikes me as rationalists rationalizing their own class self-interest. The same way EA just so happens to only support democrat politicians, rationalism coincidentally just so happens to work out extremely well for the types of people that are rationalists. Easy to be YIMBY when you are 25 and living in a rented apartment in San Francisco.

@naraburns

My concern with LVT is that I regard most kinds of property tax (as well as income tax) as fundamentally immoral

@The_Nybbler

Still low-effort is "it's communism, but only with land". But given how bad communism has turned out, I think it's sufficient. The Georgist LVT is equivalent to the government owning all the land and leasing it out to the highest bidder.

@MeinNameistBernd

Frankly advocating "georgism" is the "break out the guillotines" limit for me, because the victims are my people and the preparators are /r/neoliberal vampires.

These are not cherry picked responses - all of these had at least 10 upvotes, and in many cases 25+.

Some of the responses were less charitable, which has led to me getting heated on this topic, such as people literally calling me a vampire (and getting 15+ upvotes) for arguing for a type of land reform.

Responses like "LVT is equivalent to the state seizing all land, and renting it back at market rates; it's expropriation on a massive scale." are not knee-jerk emotional responses, and they are light, not heat. That when this light is shed on Georgism, it becomes obviously (to most) a bad thing is a problem with Georgism, not the comments.

they are light, not heat

I disagree.

Here are some actual arguments against a LVT:

  • A LVT will force people to sell their homes, because people are cash-constrained

  • A LVT will force people to sell who have lived somewhere for decades, and the anxiety this creates among everyone (whether or not they are forced to sell) is a huge cost that outweighs the benefits

Arguments like "LVT is equivalent to the state seizing all land, and renting it back at market rates; it's expropriation on a massive scale" are just examples of the worst argument in the world. They're not careful analysis of values or cause-and-effect. They are simply trying to get you to associate the connotations of one idea (the government seizing property) with another (the government taxing property) with no critical analysis of the connection.

For instance, it is plainly obvious that a sales tax on cigarettes is dramatically different than a state seizing all cigarettes. Like, do I even need to state the differences? It is equally obvious that a LVT on a house is different than the government seizing the house - we already impose LVT on houses, we just bundle them with an additional tax on improvements and call it a "property tax".

Argument by analogy is, imo, usually a bad and lazy way to think and write. At best its value is as a brain-storming idea generator; definitely not as a finished thought. Alas, it is also one of the most common ways to "argue" on this very forum.

Arguments like "LVT is equivalent to the state seizing all land, and renting it back at market rates; it's expropriation on a massive scale" are just examples of the worst argument in the world. They're not careful analysis of values or cause-and-effect. They are simply trying to get you to associate the connotations of one idea (the government seizing property) with another (the government taxing property) with no critical analysis of the connection.

No. The 100% tax on imputed land rents that Henry George advocated is equivalent to the state seizing all land and renting it back at market rates. It is not similar in some contorted way, it is not an analogy; it is economically the same thing.

Really, this is just another way the quoted post is terrible.

A LVT is not equivalent to the 100% tax advocated for by George. Equivocating between the two is yet another shortcoming of the critique.

My guess is the majority of people who self-define as Georgists favour a land tax close to 100% (80% of the rent attributable to land and normal income tax rates on the part of the rent attributable to improvements is what I would favour in dath ilan, but in the real world I am not a full-on Georgist and favour incremental moves towards higher land taxes and lower other taxes).

If you accept the basic libertarian arguments that unavoidable taxes are confiscatory, and that non-sovereigns can "own" land the same way they own chattels, then full-on Georgism is indeed a confiscation of land (but not improvements), and a Georgist-inspired shift towards higher land taxes and lower income taxes is a partial confiscation of land. In fact, of course, you only ever "owned" the land at the pleasure of the State* and Georgism is a change in the terms under which the State allows you to continue "owning" it. Land taxes no more violate the property rights of landowners than Uber violates the property rights of taxi medallion owners.

  • At this point I am only making this as a factual argument, although I think it is more right than wrong as a moral argument.

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