Comment by iamnothere | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamnothere | Hacker News Reader

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Land is a category of thing that isn’t always straightforward. All land borders other land. Land has more land underneath it and sky above it. Water runs both into it and out of it, and often that water is crucial to neighbors. It has been there before you and will be there after you. Land as an aggregate defines a nation of laws and men. Land can be on a national border.

This is why there’s so many complicated rules around land, it doesn’t fit neatly into a defined yours-or-mine category.

Georgism allows exclusive use of land—ideally without restriction unless it affects neighbors through pollution—it just asks that landowners pay for that exclusivity on an ongoing basis. If they no longer wish to pay, or no longer can pay, then the market can allocate that land to someone who will pay. It’s a pro-development system that calls for increasingly limited land to be put to economic use, unless that land just isn’t very useful/valuable.

First you are deflecting and going in discussions about points that were never made, then you keep preaching a system where you don't have property rights under the nice "think of the children" pretext that it is a "pro-development". Basic communist argument of the greater good against the individual.

A number of people do refer to it disparagingly as “land communism.” (Especially those on the California property ladder.)

I just think it’s better than other forms of taxation. I don’t see why I should need to report my income or employment to the government, nor do I see why I should be taxed on my labor. To me this is much less justifiable (and much more invasive) than just taxing land.

Why do you “own” land? Who first owned it to have the right to sell it? Usually land ownership claims eventually go back to violent conquest. Why did the conqueror who stole it have the right to sell it? Why should we treat the claims that descended from this as inviolate?

How about we make taxation as a fix amount per citizen and then nobody needs to declare their income OR land? And it is equal and fair, as in "pay your fair share", and that's it: you are a citizen, then you pay $X as your contribution like everyone else. Problem solved.

Flat tax is also a possible solution, but a truly flat tax would probably have to come with substantial welfare for the lower classes, as the tax burden would fall disproportionately on them. (This is less about “fairness” and more about preventing bad outcomes like mass criminality and/or revolution.)

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