Jonathan Pearce dropped in to say this:
How is a tax, whether it be LVT or any other, "entirely voluntary", Mark? It is a freakin' TAX.
Seriously, whatever the merits of LVT (which I have questioned over at Samizdata numerous times, as you well know*), to argue that any tax is "entirely voluntary" is bizarre.
This is where the Faux Libertarians have a completely blind spot - if you pay rent to a private landlord, they say that because you are paying to a private individual, that's fair game and voluntary, but if the state levies a land-related tax on top (e.g. Business Rates) that this is involuntary.
I'll use the same analogy I have used before and see whether people can answer the questions and grasp the logic:
1. As a matter of fact, Crown Estates** is more or less indistinguishable from any other commercial landlord, their buildings look the same as those owned by private landlords and they charge the same rents etc.
2. So let's imagine you start up in business in a certain area. The offices on one side of the street belong to CE and the ones on the other side belong to a private landlord, and you end up renting an office for £1,000 a month, on top of which there's £400 in Business Rates. Business Rates are collected by the local council but pooled nationally - they are a truly national tax on the rental value of commercial premises.
3. Our hero rents offices from the private landlord. Would he be happy to pay the £1,000 rent (because that's a 'voluntary' payment to a private organisation) but complain bitterly about the £400 Business Rates (because that's 'tax')? Probably yes, to be honest.
4. Another businessman sets up in offices across the road in the CE premises. Would he similarly be happy to pay the rent and complain about the tax? Also probably yes.
5. So let's imagine, the government henceforth declares the side of the street with the CE buildings to be a Business Rates-free 'Enterprise Zone'. Would CE get away with increasing their monthly rents to £1,400? Of course - the next person who comes along looking for office space will be indifferent between paying £1,400 rent BR-free on one side, or £1,000 rent + £400 BR on the other side.
6. Does this change our answer to 4? Surely it must. If tenants are happy to pay £1,400 rent BR-free then that is surely a voluntary transaction at market value. So the tenant isn't bothered and the government isn't bothered - if CE's profits are £400 a month higher and BR receipts are £400 a month lower, so what?
7. If the government then declares the other side of the street (where all the offices belong to private landlords) to be a BR-free enterprise zone, would they not also increase their rents to £1,400 a month? Yes they would, why wouldn't they? That's the new going rate.
8. The tenants in the privately owned offices now have to pay £1,400 to their landlord instead of £1,000 to the landlord and £400 in BR.
9. So here's the final question: from the point of view of the tenant, if the £400 he used to pay in BR count as an involuntary tax, why doesn't the extra £400 he now has to pay to the private landlord not also count as a tax (albeit a privately collected one)? Why does something stop being an involuntary tax and become a voluntary market transaction merely because exactly the same income stream is diverted into private hands?
* Yes, as true Faux Libertarians, the Samizdata regulars hate Land Value Tax, even more so than they hate income tax. I would argue that LVT is inherently a 'good' tax and income tax is a 'bad' tax, but at least they could recognise that even if LVT is a 'bad' tax, at least it's not as bad as income tax (and VAT, Nationai insurance, corporation tax etc - whereby corporation tax is also voluntary - nobody is forced to incorporate their business, are they?)
** As Dearieme points out, this belongs to the government and is not personal property of HM Queen, unlike the Duchy of Cornwall which is the personal property of the Duke of Cornwall.
Signs Of Desperation From Remainers...
1 hour ago
74 comments:
Good stuff. Here's a question though...
The enterprise zone building (1400 a month) has slightly nicer toilets. Given that all the potential tenants have looked at both sides of the street, they have all gone to that ever-so-slightly nicer side (i.e. there aren't enough potential tenants to fill even one of the two buildings, so they all pick the nicer one); meaning that the other side stands empty.
Your point 7 happens. The empty side suddenly have 400 quid to play with. So they drop the price to 1200 a month. The nicer toilets aren't worth 200 quid a month, so the tenants in the CE side start moving.
The CE side doesn't want to lose tenants, so lowers to 1200 too.
And so on, and so on.
The rent on both sides is now 1000 (with some slight variation to explain the toilet quality). Hasn't the tax component been competed away?
OP, the total rent = location rent + how nice the building is.
If the CE had nicer building, faster lift, more helpful receptionist etc, it would have been charging £1,100 rent, not £1,000. Let's assume the two sides of the street have identical buildings.
And I accept that landlords sometimes cut their noses off to spite their faces by leaving building empty, but in the medium term, rents will adjust up or down so that office buildings are always 80% or 90% occupied. Having the same Business Rates on vacant and occupied buildings helps encourage full occupation.
PS, I'm a bit disappointed that some numpty hasn't yet left a comment saying "Ah, but doesn't the same apply if the government cuts income tax and your net income goes up? Would you consider the amount of the tax cut that now goes into your bank account to be 'privately collected tax'? Why is an increase in the landlord's net income different to an increase in a worker's net income?" to which the answer is blindingly obvious. Except to numpties.
There's a conceptual element that the faux-libertarians don't seem to be able to comprehend. When we purchase land what we're really buying is a government granted licence to collect taxes in a certain location. Given that the number of locations are finite in supply the owners of these licences hold a monopoly power to extract rents. Yes, this is a "private" exchange but voluntary it is not as non-owners have little alternative.
Having the state take the money would lead to less net coercion because they could then reduce more damaging taxes such as income tax and VAT.
CD, indeed. If I may liberally cut and paste from an email which and American FL'er sent me recently...
"This is where I differ with Georgists. I believe land that is totally unused and physically unclaimed is owned by no one. Therefore the homesteader who fenced off 20 acres that was unused by anyone and begins "working the land", has not aggressed against anyone.
The Georgists believe that original land is owned by everyone. So as soon as one person claims ownership and is not willing to pay a property tax to the world, that person is aggressing against every
other person in the world.
Our conclusion was this: some arbitrary assumption is required, in this case you arbitrarily accept that original land is unowned or owned by everyone. In the first case, laissez faire capitalism proceeds without any further coercion. In the later, state coercion is always present and furthermore the risk of corruption inside the state is extremely high."
He refused to accept that
a) The idea of somebody marching off and 'claiming' spare 20 acres was entirely irrelevant in today's society; or
b) That the concepts of 'land ownership' and 'the state' are synonymous; or even
c) That the rent on the mythical spare 20 acres which nobody else wants would be precisely $zero anyway.
d) And I am a Georgist and I personally do not believe that 'the land is owned by everyone'*, that's far too abstract for my mundane self, what I observe is that the rental value of land has mainly to do with what 'society in general' does in the surrounding area and not the efforts of the owner (slightly different for farmers of course).
* Actually land can't belong to anybody so it can't belong to 'everybody' either, so all land is stolen. But I'm a patriot. For sure, if the British people lay claim to all the land in the UK then they have stolen it from the rest of the world, but as a sovereign country, we owe the rest of the world precisely nothing and it's up to other countries to sort themselves out.
Mark, what do you think would happen to the rent you pay if all taxes were abolished and replaced with LVT. Do you think it would a) stay the same and the landlord would pay the LVT out of your rent, b) stay the same as your rent plus your council tax and the landlord would pay the difference out of your rent or c) go up by the amount of LVT levied on your home?
As you say his observations don't address the current situation. If there's plenty of spare capacity fencing off 20 acres is no big deal, the landless could homestead somewhere else. Once all the land has been claimed though the landless are in a tricky position, yet Royal Libertarians consistently disregard this and argue that the landlord's right to tax is sacrosanct.
There's two major problems with this.
1) They're effectively denying the landless's right to themselves, you can only be yourself on land, if you have to pay for that right then you're paying somebody else for your right to live. That is wrong.
2) There's the theft element. If I turned up at your workplace and claimed your wages RL's would be up in arms, yet landlords are able to do this when they charge for access to transport infrastructure or proximity to a school, somebody else has provided the service yet they're taking payment.
I've seen no valid counter-arguements against either of these points.
"This is where I differ with Georgists. I believe land that is totally unused and physically unclaimed is owned by no one. Therefore the homesteader who fenced off 20 acres that was unused by anyone and begins "working the land", has not aggressed against anyone."
Ah, the original homesteader argument of Murray Rothbard and Jan Narveson. I offer two situations which challenge the presumption that an original homesteader can claim a superior right to a piece of property over second comers and that the original homesteader principle is a universal rule that can solve all land property disputes.
First, the case of the co-homesteaders. A man approaches a square piece of property from the northwest and starts building a fence east and then south. Another man, unbeknown to the other, arrives from the southeast corner at the same time and builds a fence going west and then north. Both men finish their parts of the fence only to find the other part of the fence was already completed. Walking diagonally, they meet in the middle of the property to discuss who should get the property. What part of Rothbardian homesteading theory solves this dilemma?
Second, the tortoise versus the hare. Imagine Usain Bolt and anybody else in the world show up at the same time in a position 100 meters from a prime piece of property. Given that Usain Bolt is the fastest man ever to cover a 100 meter span, why is it just in a Narvesonian world that Bolt will be able to claim a better piece of property because his athletic gifts are superior?
*Sigh*
What is it with everyone at the moment that all the Libertarian bloggers feel the urge to get into pissing contests over 'who is more libertairan/not libertarian enough?' Don't we have bigger fish to fry than yelling 'splitter!'
As far as I'm conerned if you're socially and economically liberal (n the classical sense) the rest in trivial, so can we stop all this 'faux libertarian's crap please?
B, it's a circular calculation and it would be a mixture of all three; but on the whole, the worker or businessman would be better off and the landlord would be +/- the same.
This happens because the positive effects of scrapping taxes on production and output boost the overall pot; it's just a question of divvying up the gains.
CD, I see no valid counter-argument either, but they clearly do.
L, your NW/SE example is a good one. But if there were enough land for everybody (whereby location matters more than physical land area) they wouldn't need a fence in the first place, would they?
AJ, I am socially and economically liberal, and I believe in the lowest taxes possible, but there is a clear split between the Royal Libertarians, who deny that land rent is a tax and who prefer income tax to LVT, and old fashioned libertarians who regard...
a) income tax, and the very concept of state-protected land 'ownership' without compensation, as abominations.
b) land rents as the bare irreducible minimum of taxes (the question being only - should they be collected by The State and divvied out again, or should we allow a State-protected class to collect them).
andy, this stance would hold a little more weight if Monetary libertarians (Rothbardians) would stop defending systemic human rights abuses. To a genuine libertarian this is intolerable, and why Georgists often add the prefix "faux" to their particular ideology.
The trouble I have always had with this line of argument is in two parts.
First, it isolates rent & business rates and treats them as a single package subject to an upper limit of affordability that is determined solely by the interaction of these two factors. As such it assumes that a fall in business rates (State rent) would lead to a commensurate increase in rent (private rent) and a fall in rent (private rent) would justify a commensurate increase in buisiness rates (State rent).
Secondly, it assumes that the package of costs comprising rent & business rates is independent of other business costs because these two are rent and all other costs are something else. Increases in electricity and/or wages and/or raw materials and/or machinery/IT, for example, seem to be assumed not to have any effect on either private or State rent.
I find these assumptions difficult to accept. It seems to me that total business costs combine and each determines, in part, what can be afforded for every other. Costs of heating, equipping and manning business premises are just as much costs of occupation as the costs paid for use of the land itself - whether that cost is paid solely to a landlord or in part also to the State.
Also, the example you give of one side of a road being free of BR and the other side being subject to BR is unrealistic because Enterprise Zones are not created in that way, rather they seek to identify land that is currently unattractive to business (primarily due to location) and making it attractive by making it cheaper. Only if the saving in cost outweighs the downside of an unattractive location can the exercise succeed. Where there is no factor in play other than removal of business rates it might well be that landlords could charge more, but that is neither here nor there because it is based on a false hypothesis.
Mark, you often make good arguments. But this post is like a whole fridge full of bad arguments whose compressor has failed so they've turned into ghastly, smelly, mouldy arguments so bad you can't bear to open the door on them, and you have to just take the whole thing to the tip and pray it hasn't burst open in the back of the car.
Try this: the government has a mental aberration and removes duty on one brand of cigarettes (Players No 6, say). Now, Players can still charge as much as all the other brands, because it is the going rate. Smokers are happy to pay that, so it must be the market price. So, they can't complain about tobacco duty. Of course, Players don't think of raising their sales by lowering their price in the absence of the tax.
QED.
Or, alternatively, total cobblers. Your choice.
-Ian B, "faux libertarian"
TFB: "As such it assumes that a fall in business rates (State rent) would lead to a commensurate increase in rent (private rent)"
TFB, I have worked in tax and finance for twenty years and have seen all manner of subsidies, taxes and regulations on land and buildings come and go.
It is an observable fact that total rents are a fixed amount and are entirely irrespective of the landlord's cash cost of doing business. If this were not true, then rents in London would be barely higher than anywhere else in the country.
Unlike you, I spent a long time observing the real world before making up my mind about stuff. I didn't make up my mind and then fabricate evidence to support it.
Your second paragraph is complete bollocks. I very much do assume that other business costs payable by the tenant business affect rents, i.e. if they scrapped Employer's NI, the chances are that rents would go up ever so slightly. But this is for future debate.
Finally, as to EZ's, it is observable that where Business Rates were reduced for a period, rents just went up. It is an observed fact.
IanB. If Player's 6 were now duty free, they would set the price rather lower than the price of other cigarettes to win market share, so maybe £6 instead of £7. In any event, in this case, Player's would have such a favourable position vis a vis other manufacturers that they can clearly be said to be rent seeking.
Or - just take real life. Smugglers buy fags in France for (say) £3 and sell them over here for £5 a packet. They have to undercut the shop price by a bit to get the business.
Ask yourself - would a smuggler be able to buy fags for £3 in France and sell them for £5 in Turkey, where fags only cost £1?
Or - what if tobacco duty and VAT were scrapped on fags? Would all manufacturers continue to charge £7? Certainly not, the price would drop accordingly (as we know from other countries with lower duty - they don't all charge £7).
if you pay rent to a private landlord, they say that because you are paying to a private individual, that's fair game and voluntary, but if the state levies a land-related tax on top (e.g. Business Rates) that this is involuntary.
Most uneasy about this one. A tax and a rent are two different things. One is payment for services directly rendered and the other a payment for theoretical benefits as a national whole.
@Ian B
Cigarettes are not equal to Land.
The "supply" of land is fixed; the "supply" of cigarettes is not.
That makes your argument using cigarettes invalid instantly.
Congratulations Mark, you completely missed my point.
You asserted that if tax were reduced on some land, the sellers/renters would raise their price to the taxed level. Because that is teh "going rate". The same argument applies to ciggies.
But if you want to argue that ciggie sellers would take advantage to undercut their competitors, you are screwed in explaining why renters won't do the same.
Oh- the land supply is fixed.
That doesn't affect the reality that a landowner with lower costs (Tax) can undercut the other side of the street. Does it?
Nobody is forced to use a particular plot of land. Cheaper land will attract tenants over more expensive land. That is why flatseekers hunt around for cheap areas e.g. of London to live in. They don't choose Mayfair because t is expensive.
Likewise, your argument falls apart. The untaxed landowners can cut prices and attract tenants away from taxed areas.
You can't have it both ways Mark. And you can't tax anything without it ultimately being paid by consumers, however much the magic of Henry George is supposed to make that true of LVT.
The cheaper land will allow cheaper rents and attract customers away from the expensive land.
Will it not?
IainB, OK, let's forget about the pro's and con's of LVT for the time being, I invite you to do a bit of research on the different effect of taxes and subsidies on goods and services with inelastic supply/elastic demand (e.g. land)and elastic supply/inelastic demand (e.g. cigarettes). It's basic and absolutely undisputed micro-economic theory (use supply and demand curves to help you) which explains the real observed world to a tee.
"Nobody is forced to use a particular plot of land."
Correct, but there are advantages to using one rather than another.
"Cheaper land will attract tenants over more expensive land. That is why flat seekers hunt around for cheap areas e.g. of London to live in. They don't choose Mayfair because t is expensive."
Also correct, but clearly landlords in Mayfair and landlords in Barking & Dagenham adjust their rents up and down so that the differential is exactly equal to extra value of living in Mayfair compared to B&D.
If tenants were completely indifferent where they lived and only cared about price, then clearly there would be no differential between M and B&D... but clearly there is such a differential and therefore tenants are clearly not indiffered as to where they live and clearly enough of them are prepared to pay that extra to live in M.
Or, let's agree that the interest that BTL landlords pay is a cost to them. We know that interest rates fell quite a bit recently. Did landlords drop their rents? Nope. And if and when interest rates go up again, will landlords be able to increase their rents? Also nope.
Don't forget I do this for a living, I talk to landowners and property developers all the time and they completely agree with me.
In some EZ's, the purchaser can claim 100% capital allowances on the building, and so all that happens is the landowner/property developer bumps up the price he quotes the purchaser for the building to a staggering £4,000 per square yard.
He knows perfectly well that the purchasers of the building are happy to overpay by this amount because they get 40% or 50% back in tax rebate, so the real cost to them is £2,000 to £2,400 per square yard (which is a more realistic price - it's a v ery high-tech building).
Property developers who own land in such EZ's have told me this to my face. Fact.
lvt cannot be described as voluntary no matter its other merits.
here is rothbard's killer argument against lvt
http://mises.org/rothbard/georgism.pdf
and here is my poor attempt to address some of the arguments raised here from the point of view of a voluntarist.
http://anangryanarchist.blogspot.com/2011/04/response-to-killer-arguments-against.html
Ian, there's a massive difference between the cigarette market and the land market. Cigarette manufacturers have to compete for market share, so they're more likely to reduce prices if granted tax relief; it increases the utility of their product.
Landowners don't have the same pressure as their share of the market is protected by government. It's a monopoly. Without the threat of competition they're free to raise prices as much as they like.
If your version of events was accurate there would be no such thing as a housing bubble as landlords would constantly be squeezing out costs. Clearly this isn't the case.
At the beginning of each reign, the new monarch agrees to swap the revenues from the Crown Estate for the Civil List. Given that the former is over a billion (and tends to rise without political unpleasantness), this must be one of the worst bargains anyone ever makes.
I wonder, if the talk of a republic got too serious, whether a new king might just choose not to make the swap.
If I am to believe wkpd, you're wrong about the Duchy of Cornwall: "Although the duke owns the income from the estate, he does not own the estate outright and does not have the right to sell capital assets for his own benefit." So it's not his property - he can't sell it. The obvious analogy would be a trust where he has a right to the income only. But further: "The prince paid a voluntary contribution to the treasury of 50% of his duchy income from the time he became eligible for its full income at the age of 21 in 1969, and he has paid 25% since his 1981 marriage." So, depending on how voluntary "voluntary" was, he has 75% of the income, not all of it. (And then, and so I should bloody well hope, he pays tax.)
H, D, details, details.
Will, you FLers have referred me to that one on many occasion, and I have dealt with it on many an occasion, the bit about idle land is not so important and I agree that farmland is not a suitable subject for LVT.
Let's look at his first Killer Argument:
The single tax theory is further defective in that it runs up against a grave practical problem. How will the annual tax on land be levied?
In many cases, the same person owns both the site and the man-made improvement, and buys and sells both site and improvement together, in a single package.
How, then, will the government be able to separate site value from improvement value? No doubt,
the single taxers would hire an army of tax assessors. But assessment is purely an arbitrary act and cannot be anything else. And being under the control of politics, it becomes purely a political act as well. Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers."
Which is twattish drivel of the highest order - see my subsequent post. Using facts and figures on sales of land and buildings and plot sizes held by HMLR, we could work out relative land rental values in every single postcode of the UK to within a +/- ten per cent margin of error with a team of ten Excel experts in the space of a month.
As long as the tax rate were set at (say) 80% of the full rental value, nobody would be paying over the odds, and in any event, nearly everybody would be far better off paying LVT than they are paying income tax, VAT and so on.
And people (i.e. markets, respond), if the rate were 'too high' in one area, we'd observe that selling prices fall, so the figures get re-worked and the tax rates are adjusted.
And once people are paying ground rent in cash every month, we now have a market! If people think the tax is too high, they can sell up, or not buy there in the first place; or wait for others to sell so that the prices drop and hence the tax drops. And vice versa.
Or would you argue that rents that tenants pay are not market rents? If the landlord wants to charge more, then his tenants simply move out. That's how markets work. If the LVT is 'above market rate' then people will just stop paying it.
mark - just to be clear im not a freeman on the land proponent if that is what you refer to by 'FLers'. i used to stop by Ranty's place but equally ive been to scotland and am not scottish even if youve seen me in edinburgh.
im an anarchist so im not here to argue the relative merits of lvt vs income or vat.
ive just read your japanese rubble scenario and i have to disagree.
how on earth can anyone calculate the value of a plot of land in the city of london (for example)? how could anyone separate the value of the building from the land upon which it stands. yes in your japanese rubble scenario this can be easily done since a freak act of nature has physically separated most of the buildings from the land. this is impossible in any location where buildings remain upon their plots and in anycase the market value of a rubble strewn disaster site is not an accurate reflection of its value pre-disaster with a conurbation on top. the market mechanism may be capable of calculating value but it cannot calculate theoretical value of something that does not exist. if a building stands upon a plot of land surrounded by other buildings the market cannot disconnect those components. your theoretical land value must be inherently subjective. eventually after your team has destroyed a certain amount of wealth, value and property with their subjective and theoretical valuations, like you say market forces of dissatisfied former property occupants leaving misvalued areas will enable you to adjust your valuations. but even then this will not reflect any objective market value as the surrounding 'society' to which the property occupant apparently owes something has left.
ive just posted a reply to chefdave who was kind enough to indulge my own blogpost on the subject. this social debt of value only holds true if that society is giving away services and infrastructure for free. in anarchist libertopia there will be no such thing as public roads or hospitals. if you add value to my house by building a road up to it you capitalise directly upon that value by charging me for access to your road. anyone i sell the house to will likewise pay for access. therefore i cannot charge for the added value of my property's proximity to the road since access is not bundled in with the house like it is in todays 'free' roads and schools world. likewise shops, hospitals and restaurants. there is no need to subjectively extort money from me and redistribute it amongst those whom you deem i owe a debt. if i patronise their establishments then i pay for their services. if i manage to sell my house on to a subsequent owner for a higher amount because of some subjectively perceived additional value added by its proximity to such outlets those very same commercial enterprises will be reciprocally benefiting by a continued local customer base. if i didnt sell the house and merely left along with all the other residents then their businesses would go bust. thus we can see that geographic proximity is mutually beneficial and not the one way street that georgists seem to believe.
i am fully with you on youre assessment of coercive restrictions upon the free use of land and the homeownerist (almost) conspiracy to inflate costs etc. but, in the same way that legislatively legitimising unionist blackmail in a misguided attempt to counter a shipyard's legislatively granted monopoly on employment does not make the inequality more legitimate, likewise maintaining monopoly services and infrastructure is not legitimised by some kind of lawful extortion to counter 'postcode lottery-ism'.
absent the state voluntary association, mutually beneficial trade and free land use would iron out all the illegitimate inequalities of the landed elite.
Will: "how on earth can anyone calculate the value of a plot of land in the city of london (for example)? how could anyone separate the value of the building from the land upon which it stands."
Property developers do it all the time. A lot of my clients are property developers and they do exactly the same calculations (sometimes I even help them negotiate).
If it's a vacant site, it's easy; if 'the wrong type of building' is standing on it, they deduct demolition costs from the price they'll pay.
So if the 'right type of building' standing on it, it is even easier.
You just deduct the known rebuild costs from the known market value of land + buildings. Converting between capital values and rental values is just as simple.
Or another way is to take the cheapest semi in the UK (£80,000, let's say) and compare it with cost of cheapest semi in any area - round my way, the cheapest semi's are about £350,000, so the capital land value is clearly about £270,000 - unsurprisingly, if a plot of land comes up on which you can build a semi (or an end-terrace), it sells for about £270,000.
Will: "if you add value to my house by building a road up to it you capitalise directly upon that value by charging me for access to your road"
Are you in favour of or against this type of system? Surely, that is exactly what the Georgist model proposes?
surely you must agree with Rothbard's assertion that "Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers." thats the crux of the calculation problem that failed socialism. this must be beyond argument in economics.
in rebuking Rothbard's "twattish drivel" you assert that "Using facts and figures on sales of land and buildings and plot sizes held by HMLR," "we could work out relative land rental values in every single postcode of the UK ... with a team of ... Excel experts,"
how is this different from the scenario which Rothbard rightly criticised for arbitrary political subjectivity?
"No doubt,
the single taxers would hire an army of tax assessors. But assessment is purely an arbitrary act and cannot be anything else. And being under the control of politics, it becomes purely a political act as well."
if you believe that value can be determined by outside observers, that these observers should work as part of the state and using state figures and that redistributive taxation is legitimate then does this not place you pretty close to communist central planners?
Rothbard's 'ethics of liberty' argues strongly against subjectivity in social organisation. basing ethics of organisation on objective first principles self-ownership precludes any form of taxation as coercive extortion. his additional criticisms from a pragmatic economic-political position are just more nails in the coffin.
i will concede my naivety and that that your calculations for land value do make alot of sense - demolition, bricks n mortar etc.
what i was arguing was that that land value cannot be objectively attributed to any single or group of factors. this attribution of contributors to added value is particularly impossible in an environment where services and infrastructure are available for 'free' and divvied out based upon geographic location. that 270,000 round your way must be attributable to some local primary school postcode lottery, or country walks amongst countless other factors. if one were to pay for access to all such services then a property owner could not demand the value of those services be added to the price of his property.
you are quite correct in your last comment that i am in favour of everyone paying their way for everything. in an entirely voluntary society almost everything would be private. so rather than the georgist model of state provided roads funded by a subjective lvt, anarcho libertopian roads would be paid for only by their direct users at a much more objective and accurate market rate. the complexity of the market mechanism would accurately attribute value and costs. for example the biscuit lorry would pay to use the road and the biscuit eater would probably pay toward this in the price of biscuits. currently even a hypothecated tax system would fail to achieve such distribution. a system as generalised as lvt would have no way of valuing proximity to a road or miles travelled etc.
Will: "surely you must agree with Rothbard's assertion that "Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers."
Of course I bloody well don't, and certainly not with regards to land. This is my job. That is arrant nonsense peddled by an FL'er who knows nothing about real life.
In any event, LVT is still a lot less bad and less adminsitration hassle than income tax etc, a point which you have not addressed.
"that's the crux of the calculation problem that failed socialism. this must be beyond argument in economics."
What does 'socialism' have to do with it? They were just as Home-Owner-Ist as anybody else.
"if you believe that value can be determined by outside observers, that these observers should work as part of the state and using state figures and that redistributive taxation is legitimate then does this not place you pretty close to communist central planners?"
Nope. It has nothing to do with central planning in the slightest. The rules are "Lift regulations and taxes on incomes etc and let people put land to its optimum use. Allow the market to decide rental values. Then tax these rental values."
"What i was arguing was that that land value cannot be objectively attributed to any single or group of factors."
Agreed. It is night impossible to untangle them, but that is entirely unnecessary. It is quite sufficient to work out the value of the location, which depends entirely on factors outside the landowner's control.
As to private roads or railways, forget it. Roads and railways only ever get built if the state forces through the planning consent. This was true in Victorian times or under the Romans. If we waited for hundreds or thousands of land owners to get together to build a road or railway, then there simply wouldn't be any.
Or do you think it is a better idea for the state to ram through planning consent for a road to be built by a private monopoly to capture and collect the rents? Now that's what I call crony-capitalism (or 'socialism' as it's known in Venezuela)!
additionally without state provision of services and infrastructure egregious landlords would no longer be able to externalise their costs. every inch of boundary would have to be fenced, patrolled and enforced at their expense. every foot of access road would cost them.
to use a recent example there is no way the duchy of cornwall would be able to maintain ownership of such a vast swathe of the country if the rest of us were'nt subsidising cornish policing and road networks.
wouldnt a georgist like that?
W, your example has nothing to do with real life. The Duchy of Cornwall could quite happily finance its police etc. out of income tax levied on people living there.
Do you not grasp that 'the state' and 'land ownership' are synonymous? You cannot have one without the other. Who says that Prince Charles owns the DoC? His army (i.e. the police force), that's who. If you have a police force protecting people's land titles, you have 'a state'. It is impossible for the police to be funded by anybody other than 'the state' because whoever employs the police force IS THE STATE!
As to private roads or railways, forget it. Roads and railways only ever get built if the state forces through the planning consent. This was true in Victorian times or under the Romans. If we waited for hundreds or thousands of land owners to get together to build a road or railway, then there simply wouldn't be any.
Or do you think it is a better idea for the state to ram through planning consent for a road to be built by a private monopoly to capture and collect the rents? Now that's what I call crony-capitalism (or 'socialism' as it's known in Venezuela)!
Nope im not a 'statist when it suits me anarcho capitalist'. I am aware that the state granted preferential privileges to the 'private' entrepreneurs who built the uk road, canal and rail networks. If an objectively ethical voluntary society precludes the emergence or maintenance of a large scale road network then so be it. There is no point compromising principles for preferred pragmatic considerations.
We can still see the effects of crony-corporatism vis a vis roads and infrastructural development. The first thing the world bank etc does when it 'develops' a country ostensibly for the good of it's people is to build a massive port and motorway network with which developed member states of the IMF can use to plunder that country at the expense of its people. I dare say that such infrastructure in the uk had similar negative effects for the majority of people whilst the connected corporatists benefited from the coercion that is compulsory purchase.
There is no point trying to predict the future. It is possible that thousands of land owners may well voluntarily sell to a road builder at economically viable rates then again it may not and coastal freight barges may take over. Who knows?
Will: "surely you must agree with Rothbard's assertion that "Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers."
Of course I bloody well don't, and certainly not with regards to land. This is my job. That is arrant nonsense peddled by an FL'er who knows nothing about real life.
I am not a freeman-er. I do not pretend that my desires are current legal fact.
How can you claim to be a free market economist if you dont agree with the following "Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers.”?
In any event, LVT is still a lot less bad and less adminsitration hassle than income tax etc, a point which you have not addressed.
I havent addressed income tax because I am not another deluded pro-state faux libertarian. I do not assume the necessity of taxation and then argue over which form of extortion is best. I dont particularly agree with lvt and I dont agree with vat or income tax. Their relative mertis may be an interesting academic question but theyre all illegitimate. Just to repeat I am an anrchist.
"that's the crux of the calculation problem that failed socialism. this must be beyond argument in economics."
What does 'socialism' have to do with it? They were just as Home-Owner-Ist as anybody else.
I mention socialism because it is a completely failed economic doctrine. Mises identified and explained the calculation problem inherent in planned economies and I am comparing that negation of market forces in favour of 'expert' valuation to your suggestions for lvt assessment. Your lvt experts will be as unable to 'calculate' their figures as stalins agricultural economists were unable to calculate the harvests.
"if you believe that value can be determined by outside observers, that these observers should work as part of the state and using state figures and that redistributive taxation is legitimate then does this not place you pretty close to communist central planners?"
Nope. It has nothing to do with central planning in the slightest. The rules are "Lift regulations and taxes on incomes etc and let people put land to its optimum use. Allow the market to decide rental values. Then tax these rental values."
fair enough but in attempting to calculate the appropriate rates of taxation for these market values you are unable to use market forces. You necessarily must rely on subjective human assessments, projections and guesswork.
"What i was arguing was that that land value cannot be objectively attributed to any single or group of factors."
Agreed. It is night impossible to untangle them, but that is entirely unnecessary. It is quite sufficient to work out the value of the location, which depends entirely on factors outside the landowner's control.
You may be able to work out the value of the location but who has contributed to that value and who deserves the 'citizens income' from the lvt? Does the supermarket contribute more to the property value than the bus stop?
Will:
"How can you claim to be a free market economist if you dont agree with the following "Value can only be determined in exchange on the market. It cannot be determined by outside observers.”?
I disagree with that statement because it is not true, particularly in relation to bare land values or land rents. There are so many transactions taking place every month and every year that they are easy to calculate on an averaged out basis.
"You may be able to work out the value of the location but who has contributed to that value and who deserves the 'citizens income' from the lvt? Does the supermarket contribute more to the property value than the bus stop?"
The bus stop contributes to the value of the supermarket; the supermarket contributes to the value of the houses; the presence of people in those houses contribute to the value of the bus stop and so on ad inifitum.
Similarly, muggers on rough estates in South London contribute to rental values in Mayfair by doing their mugging in South London and not in Mayfair.
As it is impossible to calculate who contributes how much to what, we return to the basic observation that the occupier of any site contributes practically nothing, ergo that 'everybody else' contributes nearly all of it and in the absence of a better idea, to the extent that LVT receipts exceed the minimal cost of running a state, the surplus gets dished out per capita (with lower rates for kids and higher rates for pensioners).
So an average landowner pays an average amount of LVT and collects an average Citizen's Income and lives in a truly tax-free world.
If you have spare income and want to spend it on living somewhere nicer than average, and thus benefitting more from everybody else's efforts, then you also compensate everybody else.
That is why LVT is the fairest tax of all - those people who are willing and able to chip in more than others get to live in the nicest houses or to trade from the most favourable locations.
W, your example has nothing to do with real life. The Duchy of Cornwall could quite happily finance its police etc. out of income tax levied on people living there.
Assuming youve read and understood where im coming from – how would the duchy of cornwall levy a tax in anarchy? Please understand that my arguments in favour of voluntarism versus your coercive taxation are not an attempt to describe current legal fact. I am arguing a theoretical construct of the future.
There is noone preventing the emergence of competing defence forces and security services so how is the prince of wales (now no more than just another strange old man) going to be able to extort individuals living in any given area? Theyve got their own private police paid to defend them from just such robbery. The competing police forces and charles' police are not going to do battle in order to extort 'taxes' because this is economic insanity and they are purely profit seeking businesses. The profit motive will drive them toward cheaper methods of settling disagreements such as mutually agreeable arbitration. Again there is no way such arbitration will uphold charles' right to extort his niehgbours
Charles will have to finance the security of his gigantic estate completely out of his own pocket. He will be completely dependent upon the proceeds of voluntary tading for income. He could rely on the sale of those jams and biscuits or he could sell off a whole load of his ill-gotten lands in order to pay for the maintenance and security of the remainder.
Perhaps you feel that anyone living inside charles' estates will be his property and he will be able to coercively extort them? He may be able to but a) competing landowners will attract tenants by agreeing not to extort them so charles will lose yet more income and b) noone will trade with an estate that has proven itself to break contracts by extorting its customers.
Do you not grasp that 'the state' and 'land ownership' are synonymous? You cannot have one without the other. Who says that Prince Charles owns the DoC? His army (i.e. the police force), that's who. If you have a police force protecting people's land titles, you have 'a state'. It is impossible for the police to be funded by anybody other than 'the state' because whoever employs the police force IS THE STATE!
The state and land ownership are not synonymous. True one cannot own land within a state independent of that state. However this does not mean that in the absence of a state land ownership is impossible.
You talk about 'a' police force and 'the' police force. A singular monopoly on the legitimised initiation of force is the objective definition of the state. So you are correct - a singular police force is the state. However absent a state there will be a plurality of commercially competing security forces protecting properties registered with mutually cooperating competitive legal systems. If youd read any rothbard beyond the first paragraph of that linked essay you would be aware of this idea.
all these pro lvt arguments will lead to vague and inaccurate calculations.
yes you can observe the market over time and 'average out' all the values but this is not accurate or just. by ignoring the individual actors within the market and attempting to base assumptions upon generalised estimations and averages you are committing both the economic and social blunders of socialism. the calculation problem is unavoidable. just because market values are involved in your calculation does not mean that it is anything more than a human calculation.
likewise your argument that its simply too difficult to work out who should receive the money you are forcibly extorting from me is horrendously compromised. its too difficult to have a just and ethical social structure so we'll just average everything out and ignore the infinite variety of individual actors in a complex market place.
it ignores variety among individuals and within the market and settles for a lowest common denominator beige average where everyone gets nothing in particular.
lvt may be the fairest tax but that is like saying it is the most gentle form of rape.
Will, I did read the Rothbard thing. It is a load of shit. You think it's Gospel. So we'll have to agree to disagree.
"This does not mean that in the absence of a state land ownership is impossible."
The very concept of 'land ownership' implies the existence of a state, i.e. a single force which can arbitrate between competing claims to any bit of land (or regulate planning permission etc). The minute that two neighbours agree to respect each other's patch of turf, then we have a proto-state. If they decide to arm themselves and fight off trespassers on either patch, then they are a full state.
Or perhaps the neighbours hate each other and wage a permanent war. You can only hang on to your bit provided your 'army' (i.e. you) can fight off invaders from your patch. Ergo you are a mini-state in your own right.
i.e. Robinson Crusoe was 'the state' because he had a rifle and Man Friday didn't. If Man Friday had turned up with a mate and two rifles, then those two would have been the state. (I've no idea if RC had a rifle, this is just for illustration).
i.e. what if a foreign country invades the UK? One set of anarchists might arm themselves and fight back, another set (i.e. me) might slink off to Canada. Whowever wins the war then gets to decide who 'owns' the land.
Or do you think that the victorious foreign country will just claim all the land left behind by the deserters and leave the land claimed by the fighters untouched?
Will: "it's simply too difficult to work out who should receive the money you are forcibly extorting from me is horrendously compromised."
No it's not compromised, and neither is it forcibly extorted, it's an entirely voluntary payment, which, if not collected by The State would be collected by those to whom The State gives special privileges.
Which gets us back to the original point of my post which you have singularly failed to address.
As a thought experiment, would a private defense force charge a flat rate or would different people pay different amounts? If different, on what would the differing charges be based?...
youre right i do think the concept of self ownership is gospel - it is unarguable objective truth. if you personally dont think you have total ownership of yourself then fine but how that is compatible with libertarianism or any form of individual freedom i dont know. if you believe in the legitimacy of a state then you cannot simultaneously believe in the inviolability of your own self. if you do believe your person to be inviolable then the threats of violence that taxation and involuntary law rest upon would be illegitimate and ineffectual. ergo no state.
if you believe in the purely subjective notion of a social collective that in some way owns you and commands a duty then you deserve nothing more than that form of slavery but you still have no legitimacy in enforcing that upon others.
disagree all you like but you'll be a libertarian turkey arguing for tyrannical christmas.
in fact by agreeing to disagree you have proved the concept of voluntarism (anarchy) over that of coercion (statism). the state is built on and operates by initiating force. if you truly believed in the initiation of force to solve problems and settle arguments then why take the mutually beneficial and peaceable option of voluntarism? we all do this rather than smashing in the face of everyone that disagrees because the opportunity costs of initiating violence are too high. it is far more beneficial to our own self interest to avoid violence. the state is able to externalise the costs of violent enforcement and thus prefers this method.
we can see this from your own example of two neighbours agreeing to respect each others property because it is in their mutually beneficial self interest. both will be better off than if they gambled the costs of violence against the possibility of gain.
'a load of shit' is far from a nugatory critique.
"The minute that two neighbours agree to respect each other's patch of turf, then we have a proto-state." no you dont - you have a voluntary agreement between individuals. the antithesis of the coercive state and the basis for voluntary society.
youre right that a forcibly maintained monopoly arbiter is a state but again, the absence of such tyranny does not preclude the concept of property - in fact property rights are stronger absent the lawless power of the monopoly arbiter. see compulsory purchase, conscription etc
you are confusing the concepts of sovereignty and statism. the personal sovereignty of a self owning individual does not make him a state. a state is the legitimised monopoly of coercive power in a given area.
the hobbesian fear of a war of all against all that you allude to in your strawman scenarios is highly unlikely (only a utopian would offer guarantees). even a complete fool would soon realise that it was in his own self interest to enter in to mututally beneficial non aggression agreements with others in society. waging war against your neighbour every day is far more expensive than voluntarily agreeing to respect each others rights to life and property.
simply having a gun or more guns than anyone else does not create a state and neither does claiming ownership of any form of property.
man friday was a serf under crusoe's statist coercion only because in that extreme example they were alone. man friday was unable to obtain weaponry for self defense or contract with others for mutual aid. this is the definition of our current state. you are precluded by coercive law from forming your own defensive force or obtaining defensive weaponry - the very purpose of this is to make the slaves easier and cheaper to control.
yes if a foreign state with all the coercive mechanisms by which they can externalise the costs of naked aggression chose to invade an anarchist isle then the individualists may have a bit of a challenge. however the foreign power would be attempting to invade a completely decentralised non-state. there would be no capital to seize, no taxation rewards, no ready made monopoly police to enforce the occupiers law. the individualist anarchists would likely be armed. you coulndt just take over westminster and have control of the whole country. you would have to wage a costly ground war the whole length of the country. this seems pretty unlikely. additionally the superior anarchist economy would be such an attractive prospect for foreign businesses that most countries would be so entwined with anarchist isle that any invasion would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. see hong kong and china for a similar situation.
anarchists would be at a massive advantage over their statist neighbours in terms of wealth and technology so it would be akin to soviet bulgaria taking on switzerland except with all the benefits of polycentric free market defense forces
yes you do end on the main point which i have more than rebuked. taxation can never be voluntary. if it were it would no longer be taxation by definition and the state would not be a state.
your argument seems to be that if people become resigned to the artificially high prices of goods and services that incorporate a component of taxation then they are effectively unopposed to this taxation and are accepting it voluntarily. to use your own terminology this is 'a load of shit'. just because you are willing to pay 3 pound a pint in the absence of anything cheaper does not mean that if offered an otherwise identical yet 80pence pint you would continue to 'voluntarily' pay the tax.
Will: "You're right, I do think the concept of self ownership is gospel - it is unarguable objective truth."
Jolly good, we can agree on that. So in your perfect idealised world (whatever that would look like), when I leave home at 18 without a penny to my name, am I allocated some land on which to live and farm or do business, or do I have to pay rent to somebody else first, save up as much as I can to buy myself somewhere etc?
perfect idealised world? im not planning a utopia i am just pointing out the impossibility of legitimate coercion. the concept of the state is illegitimate. i offer guesses at what a voluntary society may look like merely to satisfy those who would happily compromise the principle of self ownership in exchange for the familiar safety of their statist slave cage. to reassure them that humanity is perfectly able to find solutions to any problem of social organisation.
the true utopians are those that believe a monopoly on the initiation of force against individuals can ever be made to self limit. minarchists, libertarians whatever look at what happens - power corrupts. the US constitution was an attempt to design a straight jacket for coercive power by people that still believed such tyranny no matter how small to be necessary. they compromised their total freedom by permitting the legitimisation of coercive power and look what happened. power has burgeoned unstoppable in the face of even the fiercest opposition.
like someone said here earlier - if you allow even the smallest soupcon of a state it will snowball into oppression.
to answer your question mark i am sure you may be of the opinion that freedom is inescapably linked to responsibility. total freedom as in anarchy is obviously even more so. if the 18yo Wadsworth voluntarily chooses to leave home without a penny to his name then he undertakes sole responsibility for his own self. if he can find an employer that may directly house and feed him he may be ok. perhaps he may be able to earn enough to rent a room. either way it is not my responsibility nor that of anyone else to fund his irrational and ill advised adventure.
as you have told me in an email only 3% of this island is currently available for use as housing. under anarchy this is going to be completely different. there will be no coercive limits and thus the supply will be far larger and more natural. this is purely supposition but i doubt anyone would really need to rent where ownership was likely to be so affordable. the pressure to work would be similarly reduced and so the young Wadsworth despite his irresponsible abandon may fair well.
i do not pretend to have all the answers. as i have explained the guess i do offer are merely to help those frightened by the possibility of freedom overcome their concerns that Hobbes' fictitious state of nature may overcome all that they know of probable human behaviour.
if i did know all the answers and could plan perfect systems like you statists do with your faith in surrendering yourself unto frequently fallible human masters, then that would be a perfect argument against anarchy and the market mechanism. you could all just sign up to dictatorship under my enlightened despotism.
wills wrote:
just because you are willing to pay 3 pound a pint in the absence of anything cheaper does not mean that if offered an otherwise identical yet 80pence pint you would continue to 'voluntarily' pay the tax.
I might. If the otherwise identical pint is produced from a well so far away that it costs 2 pound 50 to transport it to me (or me to it), I probably would 'voluntarily' pay the tax.
And before you say that the cheap pint is not identical if it's situated far way, let me point out that that is the big difference between pints and land. When faced with two pints the extra couple of inches between them may not be significant. But one square mile cannot be identical to another because they are all situated in very different places. Whereas pints and other movable goods can be placed in such close proximity that distance is not an issue. That is one (of several reasons) why you can't sensibly treat land as if it was a movable, man-made good.
fair point derek but as i have said the only difference between plots in different locations in the absence of state infrastructure is geography/geology to which no man has contributed and thus deserves no debt from the owner.
if a nearby property owner is offering services then he regains any value he may have added to the taxable property by charging for those services. the georgist argument makes alot of sense if you are a traditional statist. if you want to offer collective healthcare, education, legal and defense services then lvt may be a good way of funding them. but do not pretend that it is voluntary. no tax can ever be voluntary.
if you desire the greatest possible individual freedom then statist libertarianism is not going to last long before it morphs into C21st UK/USA. the only way to protect the freedom of the individual is to recognise that the state and any form of taxation are illegitimate and can never be voluntary.
why, as a property owner, i would owe anything to an individual with whom i have not voluntarily contracted is beyond me. Mark seems to be of the view that each and every one of his neighbours in some way adds to the value of his home. i would argue that a nice new kitchen may be more significant than the proximity of old doris at number 28. if one of those neighbours owns and runs a school then that may add some value but only if the availability of that service is dependent upon the proximity of any prospective customer to that site - ie the uk school postcode lottery. if one has to pay admission then all the mutual exchange has been taken care of with this voluntary transaction.
if Mr. Wadsworth wants to voluntarily pay a tax to some kids in south london because he believes they have added value to his home by not burgling it then i wont initiate violence against him in an effort to prevent this voluntary act. however he seems happy to advocate violence against individuals that do not wish to pay his coercive extortion.
if you benefit from living in close proximity to your place of work then that has already been reflected in the cost of that property to you. the employer benefits by having such a suitable candidate available. this is a two way reciprocal benefit. the georgists seem to only see a single sided benefit in which the beneficiary must make good this 'debt'
wills wrote:
why, as a property owner, i would owe anything to an individual with whom i have not voluntarily contracted is beyond me.
Me too. But that's the central point. If you homesteaded the land, you did not voluntarily contract with me. If you bought it from someone else, you did not voluntarily contract with me. Therefore I have no obligation to respect your ownership claim. If you wish to exclude me from your property then you must do so either by force (personally or by paying for a private defence force of some kind) or you must voluntarily contract with me to respect your property rights.
Naturally as a reasonable man, I am perfectly willing to do so -- and for much less than you would have to pay a private defence force too. Basically if you pay me for the inconvenience caused by my having to walk around your property in order to reach the city I will be happy. If you further pay me compensation for denying me access to the fine fishing spots which can only be accessed from the river bank on your land, I will be ecstatic.
Of course that just takes care of me but there is no reason why you shouldn't do the same with all your other neighbours and of course no reason why we shouldn't do the same with you so that you will respect our property rights. If we all do it there's no need for the expensive private defence forces, which of course all have the potential to turn into proto-states and coerce payments from us landowners.
This final solution does look suspiciously like a Georgist LVT/Citizen's income one. But it is nothing of the sort because of course the payments are all voluntary transactions between individuals rather than involuntary taxation based on State registered Land Valuation.
The practical resemblance is purely co-incidental.
Derek, thanks for picking up the baton. I was getting a bit tired with all this.
the only difference between plots in different locations in the absence of state infrastructure is geography/geology to which no man has contributed and thus deserves no debt from the owner.
??? But he can extract a debt from others to use the very place he contributed nothing to? How is that even vaguely logical?
if a nearby property owner is offering services then he regains any value he may have added to the taxable property by charging for those services.
1) That's simply not true. He gets the value of the services he provides. That's all. He absolutely does *not* get the value added to nearby properties due to them being *close* to those services. There is a distinction and it's vital to understand - and it's not even geography, it's *geometry*.
2) Your example begs the obvious question - what happens if he does not provide services?
no tax can ever be voluntary.
True, but LVT is simply a synonym for ground rent where the ultimate landowner is a government. Ground rent already exists and always does regardless of whether there is an LVT so called or not. Yet you think ground rent is voluntary...
simply having a gun or more guns than anyone else does not create a state and neither does claiming ownership of any form of property.
A state consists of two things: territorial control and the means to enforce a will within that territory. That anarchism does not call these land-holdings states is irrelevant, they still walk and quack like ducks.
if you benefit from living in close proximity to your place of work then that has already been reflected in the cost of that property to you.
Wow! You manage to state the situ while being totally oblivious to it.
Who receives the money from that transaction? Not the employer/employee. They still have a further transaction to make with each other.
(sorry for multiple posts - blogger is throwing wobblies when I try to put it all in one)
F, ta for tying up a few more loose ends.
As usual, the Homeys and FL'ers refused to answer the questions, like "If you rent your offices from Crown Estates and also pay Business Rates, do you consider the rent 'voluntary' and the Business Rates 'involuntary'?".
Derek - “If you wish to exclude me from your property then you must do so either by force (personally or by paying for a private defence force of some kind) or you must voluntarily contract with me to respect your property rights.”
are we all agreed on this? I couldnt agree more. However Derek then goes on to say this
“Basically if you pay me for the inconvenience caused by my having to walk around your property in order to reach the city I will be happy. If you further pay me compensation for denying me access to the fine fishing spots which can only be accessed from the river bank on your land, I will be ecstatic.”
the mutual respect of property rights will likely be enshrined in voluntary polycentric legal codes. It is a two-way agreement. I dont need to pay you to respect my rights and then you pay me to respect yours. We are both agreeing to respect the other in our own self interest. By agreeing not to trespass into Derek's property I can rest easy that I have gained the reciprocal agreement from Derek that he wont trespass into mine. Any inequality of plot size/value is accounted for in my premium payments to my legal insurer. If I have huge amounts of poorly enclosed land full of valuable resources then it will cost me more. Correspondingly Derek, if he happens to have a slightly smaller/better enclosed property will gain from proportionally even lower premiums since the bulk of the insurer's profits come from larger land owners. This seems to be the same result as an lvt except with the massively important exception that these legal systems are polycentric and truly voluntary. That is to say there will be a plurality of competing organisations with competition and market forces keeping them more constrained than even the finest codified system of checks and balances could ever hope to achieve with a monopoly legal system.
You dont want to be killed, robbed, burgled or defrauded. Any of these aggressions violate your self ownership and derived property rights. Since you dont want to be aggressed against you sign up to a legal organisation (some theorists call these dispute resolution organisations/protection agencies/legal insurers). The organisation will compensate you if you become the victim of aggression but like all insurers they wont cover you if you go round aggressing against others – it simply isnt in their profit seeking interest. So by signing up for protection against burglary, tresspass etc you are voluntarily agreeing not to aggress against others.
Anarchists talk about private defence forces but not from a might is right position. We are not violently seizing land and excluding others against their will. There is no final arbiter to officially find an individual guilty of tresspass so there is nothing except fences etc keeping you from my land. Absent tyrannical coercion from a state monopoly legal system free individuals must rely upon voluntary agreements. If Derek wishes to be free from tresspass and burglary I would suggest that entering into voluntary agreements with others where everyone realises it is in their best interests not to aggress against the property of another is the most economic solution. Might is right solutions are going to be massively expensive compared to voluntary agreements. For example promising not to invade your neighbour in exchange for a reciprocal promise is cheaper than building coldizt and employing and arming 24hr guards. The voluntary legal agreements would be as strong and binding as possible because no individual or business would want to deal with a person without a reputation for sticking to voluntary contracts. Individuals would have reputation scores similar to ebay's feedback system. If you murder someone after having signed a contract where you promised not to murder (in exchange for protection from murder yourself) then who will contract with you then? The supermarket? The road company? The electricity company? No-one would want to and no-one else's insurers would permit them to. So Derek would really not want to tresspass into my land for the small pleasure of fishing when it would damage his legal reputation to such an extent that he may well lose his job, home, power, access, food source etc. we can see this in todays society. We abstain from minor infractions of the law not so much because of the relatively small fines or overnight jail spells but because we will in all likelihood lose our jobs.
From Derek's comment re voluntary contracts I think we're all after the same thing but once you realise that the coercive state is not only illegitimate but also unnecessary and not even the most effective or efficient method of protecting property and freedom then you end up at anarchism rather than georgism.
Derek is correct that the theoretical end result appears similar but I continue to contend the original and main point of this discussion that a monopoly legal system established and maintained through coercion is illegitimate and ANY form of taxation cannot be voluntary.
If I chose to buy a VAT product do I chose to pay the tax? no. I am coercively prevented from producing and/retailing that product without charging VAT. Coercive force prevents the retailer selling me the product without VAT and coercive force prevents me from choosing to buy it without VAT. How will the georgist state deal with those who refuse to choose their 'voluntary' lvt?
Anarchists talk about private defence forces but not from a might is right position. We are not violently seizing land and excluding others against their will. There is no final arbiter to officially find an individual guilty of tresspass so there is nothing except fences etc keeping you from my land. Absent tyrannical coercion from a state monopoly legal system free individuals must rely upon voluntary agreements. If Derek wishes to be free from tresspass and burglary I would suggest that entering into voluntary agreements with others where everyone realises it is in their best interests not to aggress against the property of another is the most economic solution. Might is right solutions are going to be massively expensive compared to voluntary agreements. For example promising not to invade your neighbour in exchange for a reciprocal promise is cheaper than building coldizt and employing and arming 24hr guards. The voluntary legal agreements would be as strong and binding as possible because no individual or business would want to deal with a person without a reputation for sticking to voluntary contracts. Individuals would have reputation scores similar to ebay's feedback system. If you murder someone after having signed a contract where you promised not to murder (in exchange for protection from murder yourself) then who will contract with you then? The supermarket? The road company? The electricity company? No-one would want to and no-one else's insurers would permit them to. So Derek would really not want to tresspass into my land for the small pleasure of fishing when it would damage his legal reputation to such an extent that he may well lose his job, home, power, access, food source etc. we can see this in todays society. We abstain from minor infractions of the law not so much because of the relatively small fines or overnight jail spells but because we will in all likelihood lose our jobs.
From Derek's comment re voluntary contracts I think we're all after the same thing but once you realise that the coercive state is not only illegitimate but also unnecessary and not even the most effective or efficient method of protecting property and freedom then you end up at anarchism rather than georgism.
Derek is correct that the theoretical end result appears similar but I continue to contend the original and main point of this discussion that a monopoly legal system established and maintained through coercion is illegitimate and ANY form of taxation cannot be voluntary.
If I chose to buy a VAT product do I chose to pay the tax? no. I am coercively prevented from producing and/retailing that product without charging VAT. Coercive force prevents the retailer selling me the product without VAT and coercive force prevents me from choosing to buy it without VAT. How will the georgist state deal with those who refuse to choose their 'voluntary' lvt?
April 2011 19:48
fraggle said...
the only difference between plots in different locations in the absence of state infrastructure is geography/geology to which no man has contributed and thus deserves no debt from the owner.
??? But he can extract a debt from others to use the very place he contributed nothing to? How is that even vaguely logical?
Theoretically the first individual to find the land and mix his labour with it thus earned that property. Subsequent individuals voluntarily traded with this homesteader and this chain leads all the way up to this theoretical anarchist landlord. Locke probably explains it better than I.
To avoid the horrors of voluntary agreements between landlords and tennants (much less inequitable under anarchy since land use will be totally freed up from the 3% we are currently limited to for housing by coercive government) you advocate that there be a single super landlord in the form of the coercive state and you simply hope against the weight of empirical history that this state will be benevolent, self-limiting and liberal? That is illogical.
Without the homeownerist mechanisms that Mr. Wadsworth so admirably catalogues artificially turning land ownership into a form of mega investment and without the aforementioned coercive limits on availability and use of land becoming an evil extortionate landlord will be hugely disincentivised. They will have virtually nothing to gain since there will be little difference in cost between renting and owning. In the same way that you probably dont rent the cutlery in your house. Temporarily renting a property will be a service of convenience for itinerant workers etc and will accord a level of incentive more similar to other services in a truly free market. There seems little reason to blame the landlords for the current system. It is the coercive limitation of free use of land that gives the landlord the opportunity and incentive and machinery with which to operate such 'extortion'. The state is the problem. You only need the admittedly ingenious lvt mechanism to redress the balance if you insist upon retaining a legitimised monopoly force of coercion (the state).
2 April 2011 01:35
fraggle said...
if a nearby property owner is offering services then he regains any value he may have added to the taxable property by charging for those services.
1) That's simply not true. He gets the value of the services he provides. That's all. He absolutely does *not* get the value added to nearby properties due to them being *close* to those services. There is a distinction and it's vital to understand - and it's not even geography, it's *geometry*.
If the service provider is surrounded by properties full of customers then his prices and earnings will reflect this supply-demand ratio. No he isnt going to get some arbitrarily deduced 25,000 'added value' from a nearby property sale because he simply has nothing to do with it.
If we consider a completely empty patch of land (theoretical 'state of nature') where an individual homesteader mixes his labour with some land and generates a property. Then an enterprising blacksmith does the same next door in anticipation that the first homesteader might desire to enter a voluntary trade of money in exchange for horse shoes. We can see how the two will trade based upon mutual benefit where they both gain from the bargain. One money the other horse shoes. Yes, if the first homesteader sells his house he will probably have gained some value from the fact that the blacksmith homesteaded nextdoor, however the blacksmith will gain from the sale the continuation of his business. He built his forge nextdoor to a house because he wanted customers. That is what he gains from the proximity. It may seem unfair that the first homesteader gains value from the actions of the blacksmith but the blacksmith is not at a loss. Any value the blacksmith has added to the property will be from the proximity of that property to a blacksmith's forge. The fact that the new buyer has paid extra for this value is indicative that they desire such proximity and the blacksmith will continue to have a customer nextdoor – which was the reason he homesteaded there originally. If noone considers proximity to a blacksmith to be desirable since they would not patronise his forge then there will be no added value to the first homesteader's property from the actions of the blacksmith when he homesteaded his forge. He deserves no guaranteed compensation for simply being there. The fact that the first homesteader chose to sell his home may well have been motivated by the additional value created form the blacksmith homesteading his forge right next door. This market incentive has given the first homesteader the economic signal that if he doesnt really need horseshoes as much as he needs that extra value tied up in his property then he is now incentivised to sell. The property will attract buyers who really want to live nextdoor to a blacksmith. Thus by adding this value to the first homesteader's property that blacksmith has initiated a complex and invisible market mechanism whereby people with even greater need of horseshoes will now occupy his neighbouring property. Thus 'the invisible hand' of the market delivers the blacksmith as much as he has earned by adding to the value of his neighbours property. Smith's 'invisible hand' is the only mechanism required. George's lvt is unnecessary unless you need to justify the maintenance of a coercive state.
2) Your example begs the obvious question - what happens if he does not provide services?
If he doesnt provide a service how can he have 'earned' anything? What has he contributed to the value of the neighbouring property? How much would you voluntarily pay your neighbour right now today just for happening to live beside you? How much would you pay a man who lived 100 miles away but just so happened to be within the same arbitrary geopolitical area? What do I owe such a distant individual or even a local? It may appear simple on an island such as this but why would a Spaniard on the French border owe another Spaniard on the Portuguese border a sum anymore than he should owe the Frenchman living 50 meters away over the imaginary arbitrary line? If your answer involves state provided services then surely the simplest way to justly charge for services is by direct and voluntary trades between individuals in the absence of a state rather than devising all these complex mechanisms to justify and maintain illegitimate coercion?
no tax can ever be voluntary.
True, but LVT is simply a synonym for ground rent where the ultimate landowner is a government. Ground rent already exists and always does regardless of whether there is an LVT so called or not. Yet you think ground rent is voluntary...
Proudhon identified this or similar issues with land and the particular problems it presents the notion of voluntarism. In all honesty I cant really answer your point and I dont pretend to hide that. This is a discussion from which I hope we might all be able to gain something. Im not out to troll anyone's blog or attempt to 'win'. I hope it doenst come across as such.
The best attempt at an answer I can offer (given the limits of my knowledge on this debate in theoretical works) is that a trade between a tenant and any one landlord in a truly free and competitive market in the absence of a coercive state is nearer voluntary (if, as you say, not entirely voluntary) than between a tenant and a single monopoly landlord backed up by the legitimised monopoly on the initiation of force. Is there not a possibility, if not probability, of despotism and all the undesirable aspects of monopoly present in the state-as-landlord model?
2 April 2011 01:35
fraggle said...
simply having a gun or more guns than anyone else does not create a state and neither does claiming ownership of any form of property.
A state consists of two things: territorial control and the means to enforce a will within that territory. That anarchism does not call these land-holdings states is irrelevant, they still walk and quack like ducks.
You are ignoring monopoly and legitimacy. The state has the legitimised monopoly on enforcing their will within a given territory. In an anarchist society of voluntary association you may have a gun but you have no legitimacy outside of your own property to violate my self-ownership by shooting me for no reason. Within your own property you may well wish to operate like a mini-state whereby you enforce your will upon visitors by threat of force. I doubt you will have many visitors and remember, as I have explained the system of voluntary association and agreements, this will likely preclude a doctor from entering your property for example. Beyond your property, and this includes the private road beyond your boundary that you rely on for access, you are only permitted access to any other private property by voluntary agreement. You mini-state despotism will likely no t be tolerated beyond your fence. This is because other individuals will not voluntarily agree that you have a legitimate monopoly on the use of force over them.
2) Your example begs the obvious question - what happens if he does not provide services?
If he doesnt provide a service how can he have 'earned' anything? What has he contributed to the value of the neighbouring property? How much would you voluntarily pay your neighbour right now today just for happening to live beside you? How much would you pay a man who lived 100 miles away but just so happened to be within the same arbitrary geopolitical area? What do I owe such a distant individual or even a local? It may appear simple on an island such as this but why would a Spaniard on the French border owe another Spaniard on the Portuguese border a sum anymore than he should owe the Frenchman living 50 meters away over the imaginary arbitrary line? If your answer involves state provided services then surely the simplest way to justly charge for services is by direct and voluntary trades between individuals in the absence of a state rather than devising all these complex mechanisms to justify and maintain illegitimate coercion?
no tax can ever be voluntary.
True, but LVT is simply a synonym for ground rent where the ultimate landowner is a government. Ground rent already exists and always does regardless of whether there is an LVT so called or not. Yet you think ground rent is voluntary...
Proudhon identified this or similar issues with land and the particular problems it presents the notion of voluntarism. In all honesty I cant really answer your point and I dont pretend to hide that. This is a discussion from which I hope we might all be able to gain something. Im not out to troll anyone's blog or attempt to 'win'. I hope it doenst come across as such.
The best attempt at an answer I can offer (given the limits of my knowledge on this debate in theoretical works) is that a trade between a tenant and any one landlord in a truly free and competitive market in the absence of a coercive state is nearer voluntary (if, as you say, not entirely voluntary) than between a tenant and a single monopoly landlord backed up by the legitimised monopoly on the initiation of force. Is there not a possibility, if not probability, of despotism and all the undesirable aspects of monopoly present in the state-as-landlord model?
2 April 2011 01:35
fraggle said...
simply having a gun or more guns than anyone else does not create a state and neither does claiming ownership of any form of property.
A state consists of two things: territorial control and the means to enforce a will within that territory. That anarchism does not call these land-holdings states is irrelevant, they still walk and quack like ducks.
You are ignoring monopoly and legitimacy. The state has the legitimised monopoly on enforcing their will within a given territory. In an anarchist society of voluntary association you may have a gun but you have no legitimacy outside of your own property to violate my self-ownership by shooting me for no reason. Within your own property you may well wish to operate like a mini-state whereby you enforce your will upon visitors by threat of force. I doubt you will have many visitors and remember, as I have explained the system of voluntary association and agreements, this will likely preclude a doctor from entering your property for example. Beyond your property, and this includes the private road beyond your boundary that you rely on for access, you are only permitted access to any other private property by voluntary agreement. You mini-state despotism will likely no t be tolerated beyond your fence. This is because other individuals will not voluntarily agree that you have a legitimate monopoly on the use of force over them.
2 April 2011 01:36
Mark Wadsworth said...
F, ta for tying up a few more loose ends.
As usual, the Homeys and FL'ers refused to answer the questions, like "If you rent your offices from Crown Estates and also pay Business Rates, do you consider the rent 'voluntary' and the Business Rates 'involuntary'?".
2 April 2011 09:08
Man, how many times? I am not a freeman (if that is what you mean by Fler) pretending that under current uk state law everything must be voluntary. I am aware of reality. You are not brushing off another freeman here. You can stop claiming I am unaware of reality and all the other standard arguments you use. Likewise I am not defending the status quo if that is what you mean by 'Homeys'. Again I am not a faux-libertarian arguing that some other form of taxation is better than your form of taxation. I happen to think lvt is a pretty good form of taxation (if you believe taxation legitimate) which is why I have never argued here before. The reason I felt the need to stick my head over the parapet was that you simply cannot describe taxation as voluntary. I am an anarchist. I base my advocacy for anarchism on objective philosophical reasoning deducing the primacy of the individual as the irreducible unit of socio-economic organisation. Self-ownership is an unavoidable objective truth and unless you argue that you are a slave beholden to David Cameron you must accept the illegitimacy of coercive state government. You own yourself and thus noone can invade that property. Noone can legitimately harm you and thus all threats are empty. Coercion is therefore illegitimate. You can ask me to pay a 'tax' but I wont. Therefore unless you believe you own me as your property you cannot harm or threaten to harm me without violating my property – my body. You cannot force me to pay your 'tax' and you cannot threaten to force me to pay your 'tax'.
If you believe in property rights and you believe you own yourself as an individual then how can you simultaneously believe the state to be legitimate? This is deontological individualist voluntarism – most certainly NOT freemanery ok?
It leads to the most effective form of free market economics and individual liberty so it is both ethically and practically desirable.
Will: Therefore unless you believe you own me as your property you cannot harm or threaten to harm me without violating my property – my body.
No LVTer wants to own you or you body or your income or collect income tax. But if you in turn want to 'own' land (more accurately: have exclusive possession to or control of a plot of land) then you pay up your LVT. Obviously, there's no obligation on you to collect your Citizen's Dividend either.
But you'll find that two-thirds of households receive more or as much in CD than they pay in LVT. It's only if you want to live somewhere big or expensive that you are a net payer.
End of.
Will,
It still puzzles me why you as a self-professed anarchist would rather pay dues to some third-party quasi-state which promises to protect your property rights rather than to your fellow anarchist neighbours. Who will in all likelihood offer you a better deal, since the cash you owe us will be more-or-less balanced by the cash we owe you.
At least if you make an agreement with me we both know what we are agreeing to. And we can tailor it to suit our exact needs. On the other hand if we each make agreements with separate rights insurers, you may end up being covered by an agreement which defines trespass in the English way (unauthorised entry) whereas my insurer may define it in the Scots way (unauthorised damage). There lies a recipe for the lawyers to make their fortunes as my insurer maintains that I have the right to walk along the paths on your land whereas yours maintains that I am not allowed through your gate.
Moreover polycentric legal codes are still legal codes. They form the thin end of the wedge and will gradually lead to a single legal code through mergers and acquisitions of the proto-states which enforce them. Best to avoid anything more than agreement between individuals unless you are willing to accept the whole statist schtick.
mark - "if you in turn want to 'own' land (more accurately: have exclusive possession to or control of a plot of land) then you pay up your LVT"
from the angle that Derek is arguing i would agree that in a voluntary society in order to secure property rights some sort of contractual agreement may have to be made – in fact this is no surprise and is covered in the majority of anarchist works. it may be a commercial transaction or it may be a mutual agreement but in both cases it must be voluntary. in this case it cannot be described as a tax and a coercive state cannot exist.
"then you pay up your LVT" therein lies the problem - it seems i HAVE to. who's gonna make me and how will they do it? your refer to lvt in the singular implying that for some reason it must be a monopoly system - why and how will this monopoly be maintained? more coercion? You cannot avoid the fact that at some stage you will have to physically aggress against a sovereign individual (I mean this is the afore mentioned objectivist philosophical context not your imagined will-is-a-freeman-on-the-land context) in order to force them to pay a tax.
Income tax is not the only coercive tax. get out of the one tax vs another argument and realise that no form of taxation is legitimate.
reciprocal and mutual agreement may be necessary for recognition and respect of property rights but this can be achieved through voluntarism. there is no need for a coercive state or for charges based on land value to be coercive taxations.
I dont really care whether I will be better off or worse off, a client or a victim of your coercively extortionate lvt. Perhaps I am a net beneficiary of statist coercion right now. Perhaps under anarchy I will no longer enjoy my privileged position and will justly have to work harder? Who knows. Coercion is illegitimate whether you dangle the power-buying 'Citizens'' Dividend' under my nose or hit me with a net-loss-to-will-the-estate-owning-landlord LVT.
Derek - you are right that not all anarchists favour the 'anarcho-capitalist' style professional insurer model. there are voluntary mutualists, communalists, rural primitivists etc in a never ending spectrum of variety among infinitely varied individuals as permitted by the freedom of anarchy. some imagine small communities with volunteer keepers of the peace, direct compensation and juries others imagine american style gated communities with professional full time guards, insurers and courts etc
the common principle is that it must be voluntary. no-one can be coerced into any kind of contract - as we are in the present day 'social contract'. under anarchy there may be such variety or some kind of uniformly preferable consensus may emerge - no-one can predict the future and i probably shouldnt try.
the third party 'insurer' that i choose to voluntarily pay for protection and/or legal cover does not constitute a state because i voluntarily choose it. it is unlikely to gain the power of coercion because without the ability to externalise costs through coercive extortion like the state it would be unable to expand to such a degree within a competitive and totally free market. eg. if lidl started building an army, their beans would cost a packet and all their customers would switch to aldi.
the issue of differing legal codes - yes there may be communities (geographic or otherwise linked) that choose to have unique agreements amongst themselves. this is easily explained by pointing to international trade - traders from countries A and B, in the absence of one world government, choose voluntarily and mutually agree to be bound by either the legal code of A or B or even C. similarly it is in the business interests of profit seeking competitors to build mutual agreements for cooperation in such cases. my current car insurance company will share information and deal with yours even though they are competitors and we have different policies. Some religious groups may legally and voluntarily prohibit trade between their groups on holy days. This will not affect individuals outside of that legal code but it will not preclude the religious group from universally agreed upon laws such as murder. perhaps a universal minimal code may emerge - who knows?
what i think is really interesting and encouraging is that we seem to have got beyond the issue of voluntarism vs taxation as Derek suggests that we may be better off dealing directly with our mutual agreements with no mention of taxation or the state. (I am not claiming to have converted anyone and lord knows I have had zero success but to even introduce the idea that property rights may be possible without a coercive state is encouraging).If derek merely wants to establish voluntary mutual agreements between him and his neighbours directly then under anarchy no-one would force him to do otherwise. if you feel it offers the better option then you will be free to enter into mass direct agreements - for example something akin to peer to peer file sharing or decentralised collaborative projects such as wikipedia may offer a glimpse as to how individuals (in the near anarchy of the internet) can voluntarily organise peacefully and effectively.
Derek's compensatory property rights model can be voluntary. there needs be no coercive monopoly power forcing people to adopt it.
my anarcho-capitalist legal cover organisations may, as i think fraggle may have been digging at, chose to charge based upon something similar to lvt.
as i said im not against lvt - i just want to live in a world free from coercion.
polycentricity does not inevitably lead to monocentricity. again we can see mutually beneficial cooperation from the world of technology - voluntary universal standards that exist between competing companies without any state involvement and show no signs of forming a dominant tyrant - usb sockets, web code, credit cards.
my local legal code, whether directly mutual or commercially established will be motivated to cooperate with yours and agree upon mutually beneficial standards. there is little reason to believe that there exists some inevitable economy of scale that will turn 'Anarcho-guard Piddlington' into a coercive tyrant.
does turning over ownership of all land to a monopoly state not seem like the thin end of the wedge? establishing legitimsed monopoly coercive power in the first place most definitely was the thin end of the wedge and we should not be surprised at the daily increasing oppression we now suffer.
many thanks for all your time and i hope this has all been received in good nature. Ive certainly taken something from the idea of direct payment in exchange for respect of property rights.
Will: "then you pay up your LVT" therein lies the problem - it seems i HAVE to. who's gonna make me and how will they do it?"
Whoever has the biggest army IS the state, it's quite simple. Now, organised states can do wonderful things, it's the framework for a low-crime society, free trade, property rights etc. And thus 'a state' allows people to generate more wealth and live longer and more happily than in anarchy.
Problem is, the kleptocrats sneak in and cream off half the extra wealth which the existence of 'a state' generates (kleptocrats include at least half the public sector, the EU, the UN, the banks, the Home-Owner-Ists, the big landowners etc).
So, assuming you are happy to claim your CD (you may be principled and refuse to do so), if you want to 'own' a bit of land (or a house or whatever) where the LVT exceeds your CD (which applies to about a third of homes, for example) the state only protects your exclusive right to do so if you pay up the difference.
If you are a proper anarchist who wants to do small holding out in the countryside, you'll still be a net cash recipient. It's only if you want to benefit from the very best that 'the state' has to offer - be that good public transport, Hyde Park, the police force, free museums and the most job and shopping opportunities - that you are a net payer.
If you want to opt out of the Georgist system entirely and waive your CD and just rent a bit of land (or a house) from a state-protected landowner, then go ahead - your rent will in most cases exceed the LVT that he is paying thereon.
You are ignoring monopoly and legitimacy. The state has the legitimised monopoly on enforcing their will within a given territory.
Just like an anarchist landlord. It's only the scale that's different.
Now I'm quite open to the idea that maybe having lots of nano-states is better than having a few large states, but states they still are.
I think you need to be careful in your definitions. For example, what is a legitimised monopoly? How does it differ from a non-legitimised monopoly? You have also used the term 'coercive state' several times. Again how does that differ from a 'non-coercive' state, or is it a rhetorical device?
my anarcho-capitalist legal cover organisations may, as i think fraggle may have been digging at, chose to charge based upon something similar to lvt.
as i said im not against lvt - i just want to live in a world free from coercion.
Lol, yep, well spotted! :)
There are several theories on how dealing with the rent question can be put into practice, including in voluntaryism (google Geoanarchism for example). As you can see, MW definitely thinks a traditional state is required, and right now I'm inclined to agree with him, because as I say I don't see the difference between a landlord and a state, except in scale.
You mini-state despotism will likely no t be tolerated beyond your fence. This is because other individuals will not voluntarily agree that you have a legitimate monopoly on the use of force over them.
This sounds uncannily like the way states behave with each other as states...
(Start of paragraph snipped to try and get this post to work)...Is there not a possibility, if not probability, of despotism and all the undesirable aspects of monopoly present in the state-as-landlord model?
I would agree with the fundamental possibilty, because any arrangement can at the end of the day be reneged unilaterally. Physics does not respect contracts. There may be consequences (or attempts at consequences) but it's doable.
In a sense though, this is beside the point for me. Whether a georgist paradigm is possible in voluntaryism isn't really meaningful whilst we disagree on whether the georgist economic model (which doesn't actually rely on any particular politcal arrangement per se) is not sound.
(Mark, is there a char limit on comments? I'm still having trouble here)
@Will
Unless you're planning on wiping out half the population or taking us back to the Stone Age technologically anarchy is no longer an option. It was only really feasible when there was enough land to permit migration away from established settlements (i.e the Wild West), and even then would be highly unstable resulting in a demand for all the paraphernalia of the state.
True anarchy could only be achieved if we were able ro occupy land without placing external costs upon other. This is a fantasy. Back in the real world when somebody homesteads;
1) They reduce the liberty of others by reducing their freedom of movement, and
2) They implicitly demand that the unfortunates sacrifice themselves by forcing them onto less fertile land.
The logical outcome of Rothbardianism is unequivocal liberty for landowners with no rights for the landless. Sure, Rothbard sold it to us by ignoring the plight of the later but it would be pretty difficult to just sweep it under the carpet like that.
In fact his model would exaccerbate the current situation as people had to pay more to achieve landlord status, the landlord is the ultimate unencumbered human and that privilege would come at a (hefty) price.
Frag, I don't know if there's a character limit, your comments don't appear overly long, but thanks for patience anyway.
CD, if people want to be anarchists under Georgism, they are free to do so. They pool their CDs, rent themselves a farmhouse out in the Welsh hills and get on with it.
Theoretically the first individual to find the land and mix his labour with it thus earned that property. Subsequent individuals voluntarily traded with this homesteader and this chain leads all the way up to this theoretical anarchist landlord. Locke probably explains it better than I.
I'd be interested in everyone's take on the homesteading principle, especially the proviso.
At the moment I just don't see how using land makes it yours forever. It doesn't make the land any more a product of your labour even though products of your labour may now stand there.
F, if all the land in the UK is already claimed and registered, then the whole idea of homesteading like in the British colonies is superseded. Instead, you get a CD which is enough to pay the LVT on a 1/62 millionth share of what's available.
I agree with your last paragraph. It is quite easy to distinguish between the two. Farmland is a special case, but the location rent element of UK farm land is about 1% as much as the location rent of UK urban land so give them the benefit of the doubt and exempt it - but they can still pay LVT on their residences.
IAN B wrote the following question.
'You asserted that if tax were reduced on some land, the sellers/renters would raise their price to the taxed level. Because that is teh "going rate". The same argument applies to ciggies.
But if you want to argue that ciggie sellers would take advantage to undercut their competitors, you are screwed in explaining why renters won't do the same.
Oh- the land supply is fixed.
That doesn't affect the reality that a landowner with lower costs (Tax) can undercut the other side of the street. Does it?'
Magrathea replies -
It is related to fixed supply, but the issue may be more accessible, if you think about it like this -
Yes, the landlord can undercut the other side of the street, but there is no or little advantage for him in doing so. Remember, the competitor producer of cigarettes is selling a produced item which can be in all senses entirely replaced and so if our producer's price is significantly cheaper he can take the market share of his competitor by replacing all the cigarettes they would have otherwise sold- and reap huge profits by doing so. Our landlord however can only sell his share of the land monopoly once - he cannot take the market share of his competitors because they hold another part of the land monopoly which he is not entitled to replace.
M, that's another good way of explaining the difference between cigarettes and office space.
There is no advantage to a landlord trying to undercut his 'competitors' because he cannot expand his market share by doing so.
Seeing as cigarettes only cost £1 to make and sell and duty is £6 on top, if one company only had to pay £3 duty, then it could stick with selling price £7 and take 1% of the market, or drop it to £6 and take half the market, or drop it to £5 and take the whole market.
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