Gareth321

I don’t think you read the comments above before you replied. They argue for “disruption” and “drastic measures.” Do you think they’re talking about a dance troupe?

This is why we should rely on precedent. It’s not like we haven’t tried other forms of governance and economies. We have. Many. The best so far has been capitalism. Since I live in Denmark I would argue the best social outcomes are from strong capitalist economies with strong social safety nets.

You’re making the mistake of thinking that “technology” is a binary state.

I neither believe you’re an economist nor feel there is much substance in this comment to reply to.

I do. My parents do. My wife does. Most of my friends do. Her parents do. Most of my colleagues do.

To be clear, I am not claiming that everyone is universally better off today than 20 years ago. Obviously that would be silly. I’m making the case that modern society affords many benefits in aggregate.

This is a tautology. Technological advancement doesn’t just appear. It’s the product of an interconnected social and economic system which encourages risk-taking. I can speak to my industry: pharmaceuticals. New drugs are developed because brave people are willing to risk billions of dollars. Most drugs fail. If they were smart they’d retire to a beach somewhere, but thankfully they want even more money, and they invest unbelievable piles of money into moon shots in the hope that one day they cure cancer and make a fortune.

Contrary to what Reddit might tell you, the majority of new drugs are developed by private industry, not universities. These include life changing drugs like propranolol, fluoxetine, sildenafil, atorvastatin, semaglutide, and many more.

Elon Musk didn’t build globally distributed internet for a laugh. He hasn’t reduced the cost of space logistics by 90% for fun. He did it because he wanted more money. He was incentivised to risk his entire fortune on more than one occasion.

I don’t subscribe to your violent retelling of MLK. He spoke at length on countless occasions of using words, not violence to affect social change.

> That's incredibly naïve. If being morally right was all it took, slavery would not have been a thing in the first place.

I think this is incredibly naive. Morality isn’t objective. It changes and adapts and grows. It is the product of culture and religion and circumstance. Values can deviate markedly between people in a single family, let alone within a nation and between nations.

Slavery used to be considered moral in the West. Then some time in 1833, the British people voted to end it across all colonies. Not because slaves terrorised British citizens into acquiescence, but because literature and education and culture had advanced, and the British no longer believed that people should be enslaved.

I’m sorry, I simply do not subscribe to your vision for society of might making right. That is the domain of dictators and despots, not democracies.

The same way all progress is made in a democracy: dialogue. Violence and domination has been frequently used throughout history, but we no longer solve our differences that way. At least, I don’t want to live in such a society.

I find it fascinating when people make the argument that the reason the civil rights movement succeeded was the harm done to society, and not because it was morally right. The implications of this claim are frightening, and can be used to justify all manner of violence for any and all political causes. Should someone wish to restrict abortion rights, they just need to sufficiently terrorise the nation to the degree that they get their way? I strongly disagree that that is how laws and rights work in a democracy.

I believe the civil rights movement succeeded in America because it was morally right. Not because black activists caused social harm.

Assuming I understand your question, I vote for people I would not have otherwise voted for merely to spite the people who have harmed me in some way. It's petty but it makes me feel like I have reclaimed some agency against said aggressors.

Thanks to. Humanity has attempted 37 separate experiments with communism in the last century alone, and they resulted in 100M+ deaths. To be clear, no one is claiming that capitalism is perfect. Merely that it is the best of all the options on the table. The problem with communism is that it doesn't account for the human element. Most notably greed, corruption, and nepotism. The reason capitalism succeeds where communism fails is that it embraces the ugly underside of humanity and harnesses it for good. Elon Musk would never have revolutionised internet payments, EVs, space-based internet distribution, and reduced space transport costs by 90% if there were no reward for him. Humanity benefits thanks to his greed.

Take heart in the knowledge that more people have been pulled out of abject poverty in the last century, thanks to capitalism, than any other time in human history. *Billions* of people can afford food and shelter and clothing now, who would otherwise have died. We have eradicated diseases which have plagued humanity and caused incalculable harm. People are surviving all manner of afflictions like cancer and heart disease. We have harnessed flight, and billions of people can now afford to travel to the other side of the world to begin a new life, or just experience another culture. The internet has enabled the poorest people in the most remote regions of the world to learn advanced knowledge, start businesses, and improve their lives and the lives of their communities.

Anyone who lives in a first world nations lives an infinitely better life than even kings did just a century or two ago. I think it is easy to see the negatives that living in our world entails, but in truth, there are so many positives, and I think it behoves us to remember that.

I'm no expert on Georgism but I think there are reasonable answers to your questions.

1. "Coffee shop draws more commence drawing more affluent people pushing up LVT driving out residents faster than even the spectre of “gentrification”"

This is an impossible premise. The relationship between the cost of the LVT and the popularity are directly and inseparably linked. LVT only goes up (and stays higher) when the neighbourhood is popular. It drops (and stays lower) if the neighbourhood falls out of popularity. In real life it would reach an equilibrium, but it might encounter some volatility along the way.

This is overshadowed by many more factors than a small increase in taxes, and I would propose that an LVT is a minor factor in the popularity of neighbourhoods.

2. Similarly how do you think about new uses for land emerging? If I lease desert land for a data center because it’s so perfect for it, instead of buying it … how (and when) does it show up in LTV increases? What if I trade you some other benefit to keep it out of LVT impacting records?

The tricky part about LVT is that it requires an assessment of value prior to realisation. Popular methods include using a combination of average of realised land prices in the area, against a velocity coefficient (the general gain/loss over a period of time), modified by negatively and positively correlated correlates like proximity to public transport and parks. There are countless ways proposed to do just this so I won't retread worn ground.

In the case of the desert data centre, it is likely that the land will not increase much in value. This is by design, because we want data centres (and similar industry) to move into the middle of nowhere so that scarce land is instead used for more productive enterprise like housing for workers so they can get to work easily.

3. Are you just costing the world coordination surplus by forcing high value enterprises to distribute themselves (inefficiently) just far enough apart that they don’t drive up each other’s LVT? That’s a deadweight loss.

This is the brilliant part of Georgism, and the reason I "converted." A well designed LVT imputes the social costs (implied by their economic costs) of the use of land. It then gives the businesses the fully informed choice of how to deploy their capital. It could be that the efficiency you allude to is real, and is worth remaining on high value land. So be it. The business is the best actor to make that decision. On the other hand, if the deadweight loss is lower than the LVT, then the land should be better utilised by another company which would have better utility for its location.

Georgism aligns social costs with business interests in a way no other tax currently does. Meaning that businesses act in their best interests, and in doing so, act in the best interests of society.

On principle I usually vote against anyone who harms me, my life, or my family’s life. I’ve never accepted the claims that people who hold up traffic to “raise awareness” for global warming were effective. We’re all aware of the phenomenon now. You’re just being an asshole and throwing a tantrum because people aren’t voting like you want them to.

It's so bad. I'm cool with paying for good products but it's offensively bad.

> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?

CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.

I think there will always be a market for human-made things, but this comes with a premium and not everyone can afford it.

"Pay your taxes, grandma." If you think tax is theft I can see why this doesn't abide, but I do not share your opinion.

Are you making the argument that land banking is economically productive? Or a more esoteric point about the how people "earn" money? Because land banking is economically unproductive, and there isn't much dispute about that. I'm much less interested in a philosophical argument about whether you believe land banking is definitionally money earned or realised.

My comment was made with the lens of a regular home that people live in.

I don't think some extra taxes on expensive land is the red line you appear to believe it is. People who own expensive land have many options the rest of the world could only dream of, including reverse mortgages. Meaning no one is actually forcing anyone off their land. They're just being asked to pay some extra taxes. If you believe tax is theft, I can see why this is agitating, but I do not share that view.

Listening to these leaders speak, this appears to be a major component. They're trying to pour trillions of investment into communities all over the world, and local communities are rejecting it. The reasons are complex and I'm not going to paint either side as the bad guy. However if they can't get approval to build more infrastructure on Earth, they going to build it in space. At least what is economical. SpaceX has already reduced the cost of space delivery by 90%. This has already made all kinds of new applications commercially viable. Every efficiency increase from now unlocks exponentially more use cases.

As a long time space and technology nerd, this is the coolest fucking time to be alive!

> Landlord costs affect supply in the long term, so you will see changes, just not necessarily immediately over a one year period, but definitely over a 5-10 year period.

This is true, but the degree depends on elasticity of supply, and that depends a lot on profitability of the sector.

Through no plan of your own, you now have $1M - tax free. I am currently playing the world's smallest violin.

You would take it and then you would pay some tax.

I disagree. A major premise of Georgism is efficient use of high demand land. E.g. housing close to high wage workplaces in cities. If we make exemptions for people to sit on land forever - who do not need or want to work in those workplaces - a major structural efficiency is lost. Instead of the land owner building high density housing on that land, they just retire on it forever, locking up productive land which could have housed 10 families. For this to work, all land needs to be taxed proportionate to its value. Yes, it's annoying to have to move because your house is suddenly worth $2M, but that's a pretty great problem to have, all things considered. In most places that tax free money - more than most people will earn in a lifetime.

Elderly retired people living in large houses close to where the work is has caused massive social, economic, political, and cultural harm. Young people can no longer afford to buy homes close to work, so they're forced to commute long distances. Their taxes then go in part to pay for the elderly person who lives in a million dollar house with multiple rooms, who receives many tax breaks. The young person cannot afford to start a family, cannot afford to buy a home, loses a lot of time each day on commuting, spends a fortune on commuting, has less time for family, and causes enormous inefficiencies in the job market. This is nothing short of a concerted redistribution of wealth from the young to the old. It's a travesty which the elderly today would not have accepted.

I do not feel sorry for the elderly person sitting on a large and expensive property who demands to spend their final decades squatting on land which could house a family and allow parents to get to work within a reasonable amount of time. They have options the young person does not. They can get a reverse mortgage, for example. They get social security, and draw down on whatever pensions and investments they've accrued over their lives. Their costs are much lower - they don't have children to support. Or they can move, and I'm sorry, but it's not impossible for a retired person to move. Millions of them do it every year all over the country. Often to really nice elderly communities full of activities and specialised care.

I say all of this as someone who leans more libertarian than collectivist. Society is interconnected and interdependent. We cannot function if he keep young people under our boots. Asking the elderly to move is a *very* small price to pay if we expect the young to shoulder the enormous tax and debt burdens said elderly have imposed upon them.

I would be wary of gatekeeping art. Who defines art? Why should we not allow greater access to consume and create art in new ways by everyone? These tools allow children to create beautiful works of art, and I do not lament that. I agree some of it is bad, but some of it is great. Humans make good and bad art too. Art is subjective.

You see this as making animators obsolete. I see this as giving everyone the ability to make professional looking videos for their products, services, events, and websites. Automation has taken many jobs over the years, but it has also given us much cheaper and better products and services. I do not lament progress, but I think we should do a better job of distributing the benefits of this progress.