Product as a Service at its finest
You buy a thing, but still don't own it after the purchase.
Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.
You buy a thing, but still don't own it after the purchase.
Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.
(These days, however, I'm hesitant to pay for anything that isn't open source. I just don't trust any of you.)
So land taxes?
This is more like "protection" racket
And people would still like roads and schooling for their children whether the government provides it or not. It's interesting how even under our current system people still build these things privately.
It's entirely different, because those are under the control of the people. You (presumably) have a lot of protections when it comes to speaking your mind regarding those, and voting rights when it comes to electing the people who set those taxes.
Your fridge maker has no obligation to listen to you.
My ability to "vote" out my fridge is directly correlated with the thickness of my wallet. I, for one, would be disgusted to live in a society where that's equated with voting power.
You are not forced to pay taxes. Owning property and earning money are choices, if you wanna take it to this ridiculous extreme.
There are plenty of other options besides standard residential refrigerators. To start with you can avoid refrigerated goods altogether, or buy them as needed for each meal. You can use an icebox or one of the small portable fridges sold for camping and travel. You can buy a commercial model rather than something aimed at residential users. Or, finally, you can make your own—the basic principles of thermoelectric or compressor-driven refrigeration are very well-known and instructions are available online.
If you limit yourself to the most popular solutions right out of the gate, don't complain about your lack of choices. The prison you live in is of your own making; you have no one to blame but yourself.
Even if we were talking about something more basic, however, such as food in general rather than merely convenient cold food, there is a very big difference between being "forced" to provide something for yourself due to the nature of the universe and being forced to do something by the deliberate action (or threatened action) of another human being.
> Owning property and earning money are choices, if you wanna take it to this ridiculous extreme.
Nothing about owning property or earning money entitles anyone else to take a portion of your wealth or profits. Force is force, even if you might have avoided being victimized by acting differently. You have a right to do these things without asking anyone else's permission. If they step in afterward and demand that you pay them in response, they are forcing you to pay. As in: making unilateral demands and threatening the use of force against you if you don't comply.
2. Taxes fund a big part of what gives land more value. If you own the land, that means you're getting a part of that value, meaning you should be paying for it.
All the land there is already belongs to someone. The only way to get land, is to buy/take it from someone else. We can't make more, even with immense resources (no, artificial islands and reclaiming oceans aren't viable enough to matter yet). Someone can single-handedly destroy the supply with a one-time cost.
Fridges aren't finite in the same way, as we can always make more, as long as we have the resources. If we run out of resources, we may be able to figure out how to make them out of different resources. If we run out of those, we have a much bigger problem than fridges and no time to talk about economics. As it stands now, if someone wants to destroy the supply of fridges, they would have to keep buying them as they are made almost indefinitely (i.e. NOT a one-time cost).
Once we run out of all the base materials to construct fridges with and the "fridge economy" is based entirely on trading working fridges and recycling old ones for material to make more, then you can start to compare the two.
The single argument I made was quite clear and unambiguous. Everything composed of matter is finite in nature, and that fact contradicts your previous suggestion that land is somehow special in this regard.
> Setting aside the long-term "everything on this planet is finite" and the even less useful "the universe is infinite" arguments
I think you may be using a different definition of "argument" than me. Feel free to elaborate.
> none of them operate on a time scale that's relevant to an individual today
Quite to the contrary. Scarcity is the basis of the entire field of economics.
> land is finite in a way that very few things are
Land is more finite compared to what? Land and refrigerators are apples and oranges. Land is also as hypothetically infinitely divisible beyond practicality as any number of other things including refrigerators.
> All the land there is already belongs to someone. The only way to get land, is to buy/take it from someone else.
Does this not also apply to all raw materials which a refrigerator is composed of?
> Fridges aren't finite in the same way, as we can always make more, as long as we have the resources.
See above
> If we run out of resources, we may be able to figure out how to make them out of different resources.
Changing which finite resource you are using does not change the fact that those resources are still finite.
> no, artificial islands and reclaiming oceans aren't viable enough to matter yet
Somehow, you claim that these are not viable options, yet offer the possibility of making refrigerators with different resources. If land costed enough to make artificial islands a good investment, they would exist. Similarly, if refrigerators could be produced and sold using different raw materials, we would see that reflected in refrigerators currently available for sale.
> If we run out of those, we have a much bigger problem than fridges and no time to talk about economics
It is an established fact in economics that (at least privately owned) resources generally never run out. The less that is available, the more expensive resources are to extract, and the harder it is to maintain economies of scale. These and other factors contribute to higher costs of the raw goods themselves and products produced with them, driving demand to the use of other raw materials to achieve similar ends. For example, we are not going to ever run out of oil. It will simply increase in price until electronic vehicles or other options will become dominant, and the use of oil will become more confined to niche products.
> As it stands now, if someone wants to destroy the supply of fridges, they would have to keep buying them as they are made almost indefinitely (i.e. NOT a one-time cost).
If enough fridges are purchased, the finite nature of which is represented by raw materials required, then the exact same thing will happen as in the case where enough land is purchased. The prices will increase until it becomes impossible to keep making purchases.
> Once we run out of all the base materials to construct fridges with and the "fridge economy" is based entirely on trading working fridges and recycling old ones for material to make more, then you can start to compare the two.
Again, this is impossible, and if you read and understand everything else I have said above then it will be quite clear that you can in fact compare the two, which was my (actual, not "implied") original argument
I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it really feels like you're just being deliberately obtuse. This is a discussion about the practical real-world economics of the situation, not a treatise on the nature of physical reality.