the_austrian
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Posts posted by the_austrian
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The gun protects the property, not the land. For example, this could be a boat, rather than a house. If you came into the house/boat without my permission, you must have damaged some property
No, that's why I said sneaks in; no damage to property. Or does this only apply to vessels on the sea, not land??
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Can I ask you a question -
What colour wallpaper does the 10th house along your street/road have in the back bedroom?
It would be risky to find out.
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In my case, they would be shot by the hand-made automated sentry gun
However, I'm sure there is a better solution.Sure, but if you're using the gun that demonstrates the view that there is such a thing as land rights, above simply property rights. Until the better solution arrives we are left with the use of force.
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Why would they want to, under such a situation?
Let's just suppose they do, they might not feel bothered about building a nice house and have less of a problem with (infringements on) personal space than the occupier.
If they didn't want to then we wouldn't be having this discussion because then rights would not be ambiguous. If you presuppose that people don't violate what they have no right to have the use of then there would not be an issue and property rights (yes, including land) would never have arisen to begin with.
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Presumably you make some windows, doors and locks to make entry impossible without damage to your property (hand made windows and doors)?
What happens if someone sneaks in, can you remove them?
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Bingo.
Property rights.
Not land rights.
And land cannot be owned because it has not been created, by hand... Fine but what's to stop someone sleeping in your house if you don't want them, do you reject any arguments from utility?
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Land isn't a market, it's a protection racket - an extortionist ring.
Once you realise that, the problem and the solutions become obvious and they don't include making the extortion official by land taxes!
What is the solution, no land rights??
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There is a much simpler way - tax economic rent. All thing created by the unity of land and labour are called wealth, and the labourer has a right to keep this as they earned it.
All value in land that is born of adjacent labour is economic rent, and is NOT earned - it is in fact the product of other peoples labour, and should not therefore be held privately.
Just as a point of clarity, when you say economic rent, is this just normal rent, what is rent that doesn't qualify as economic rent? Not wanting to be pedantic, just wanting to understand clearly.
My complaint about placing a tax on rental income alone would be that there is nothing intrinsically damaging about rent, is it not preferable if you have an empty house to rent it to someone who cannot be bothered to build their own?
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When I reply to you or anyone I don’t specifically reply to you but your argument and your point. Maybe its just me but I don’t memorise anyones names or posts, so if you and me are debating something tomorrow I wont even know it is you who I typed this message to.
So never take things personally or think they are directed at you.
So when I said communists like stealing and think they can write into law wealth it is a general comment on their viewpoints, not something you said or didn’t say.
Understand comrade?
That's cool, but my guess is that you are reading into things more than is apposite. Just because a person mentions property or the difficulties of being born into poverty does not require them to be a Statist.
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The inequality of property ownership?
Hummmmm……..
Can you read that aloud to yourself a couple of times and come back to me
If you want to scream Socialist!! at me that's fine you are barking at the wind.
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There?
I guess that saved you some time from trawling through the first few pages of the thread
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It would not necessarily mean more land is for sale but that all land has a lower value.
Prices are set on the margin; a single share changing hands can decrease the value of the other 1B shares in a company.
A land tax would not bring in much mula and would not do what most of you believe.
Hell there have been many communist countries in the world, why didn’t they implement it?
And the availability of land isn’t that bad, nor does lots of land being available help the poorer in some way. Are the Russian poor rich compared to those in the UK because they can buy plenty of land at £20 an acre?
Can we go back to this question: Is there a reason to think that normal taxes such as Income Tax, VAT are more robust a source of revenue than a Land Tax? Why so?
The aim of a Land Tax over Income Tax is not that it can give revenue, the reverse, that it has appealing externalities; rentiers don't like it and the tenant class are protected from the inequality in property ownership.
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Communists/socialists/statists whatever you wish to call them believe that you can write into law wealth and that steeling is not only fair but honourable.
Since that comment by Injin was addressed to me, can you tell me how anything said by me suggests either of your two claims??
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Simply because you can easily avoid a land tax by selling your land and buying cheaper land.
And if this results in more land being available the Land Tax has served its purpose.
A citizen's dividend is justified only because we are excluded from the land which we should have a right to, both in towns and in the countryside.
If prices fall, good, we can all go about our lives living in housing which costs a reasonable price and with access to land so that we can freely produce our own food without renting a field from a rentier farmer.
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Statists ARE rentiers.
What's the penalty for not paying, btw?
What are you willing to do to me if I don't pay you your tribute?
The penalty for failure to pay would be the withholding of consent to defend your property from poachers and squatters.
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I find it completely incredible that tax is being seen as the answer after the last 150 years of centralist tax based failures, up to and including the current cluster******.
Unreal.
The point of a Land Tax is not so the Government can do more for us, it is so that they can do less.
Its purpose is to construct a battle between the rentiers and the Statists, whoever loses we can accommodate ourselves to the loss.
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A land tax can not be used to collect a large potion of tax simply because it would crash the land market so badly that land would be near worthless and hence you would collect no tax.
Using some realistic assumptions you would need in the region of a 100% plus land tax to collect anything even approaching the £500B you would need to fund your £200 “citizen bonus”
The simple fact is you cannot write into law wealth
Note: you may just about be able to give everyone a £50pw “citizens bonus” however you would not be able to pay for it via a land tax as that is near impossible. It would be paid for via normal taxes, ie income, VAT, etc but then that basically cancels out.
Is there a reason to think that normal taxes such as Income Tax, VAT are more robust a source of revenue than a Land Tax? Why so?
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I think that is the nub right there - where you and the right AND the ability to walk away. Although I think the 'physical harm' bit is a red herring - walking away may not harm you there and then, but the downstream impact may well do you very real harm indeed.
The point to illustrate here is that you DO NOT have the ability to 'walk away' when doing so will leave you to die - you do not have a choice when it comes to expending labour to satisfy subsistence. The 'free markets' that exist today are those of non-essential exchange - you can live without them. Essential exchange - for food, shelter etc - is governed by social Darwinism - the able have taken and are controlling the less able. This is not 'fair', but arguably it is 'just' in the narrow neolibral perspective.
A more fair AND more just approach would be to redistribute wealth which is not earned - economic rent.
To do so would require a state to collect and distribute this wealth, but it would be more just and more fair than wealth and power going to those who use force to maintain their special privilege. There doesn't seem to be any zero state option here, unless you include every organised body in your definition of 'state'.
The problem we have at the moment is that the Means of Production are held by too few people. This gives legitimacy to entitlement ideas which would have no currency otherwise.
We would be well served to address this issue.
Allowing the Government to redistribute wealth is problematic because, as we see when people give charitably to despotic regimes, it rarely ends up in the hands of the intended recipients. Don't expect the Government to ever get around to giving the wealth to the little man, person. The grasping hands of the Government are sticky.
A better approach, it would seem to me, would be to reduce the possibility for any one person to own too great an extent of the Means of Production. So a very simple example, in the case of the subjects of labour, would be to place a ceiling or cap on the ownership of property, or land. To give an example, it might be illegal to own more than 10 acres of arable land, or 2 acres of urban land, something like that.
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Question: has there ever truly been a free market?
There is a free market whenever force is not involved, it happens all the time when you collaborate at work, or at home, or with friends.
Anything where you have the right and ability walk away without physical harm is a free market.
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You wouldn't save any money from sacking all the staff because they would employed as an army of land-valuers
Look, if you want to discuss the merits of a land-tax that's fine - start a thread on it.
If you want to discuss the merits of a citizens wage that's fine - start a thread on it.
Combining two separate discussions is just a recipe for chaos. You cannot show that one will pay for the other so why bother.
It makes sense to combine the two because the justification for a citizen's wage is land inequality.
If we each had our own suitable plot of land upon which to raise our families then there would be no reason for a citizen's wage, but because we are prevented from growing crops by the land rights enforced by the State, we are owed compensation.
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The management demands the right to be rewarded according to the amount of wealth it creates- yet when it's employee doubles his wealth creation they reduce his wages- why?
The wages are reduced because it is now less expensive to employ the machine to do the work, we don't employ people to do our washing by hand any more because we have machines to do that now. The old washers are not owed any money because they have a redundant skill.
If no one is owed an income why do they complain when the government takes it off them?
We are owed an income if we have produced it, we are not owed an income from someone else.
Well, the capitalists say that they are owed a reward relative to the wealth they create- the just don't extend the same rule to you.
In what manner is the principle not extended to other people, please can you give an example or state how this is so?
Let me introduce you to the lost cat-
You lose your cat.
A guy finds your cat and politely asks if there is a reward.
You say no you will not reward his efforts to find your cat-for the following reason; 'Anyone could have done what you did'.
Do you think your reason is valid- if so why? And if not- why not?
The difficulty of achieving something does not affect its price, it might be difficult to run a marathon, but there is no monetary reward for doing so unless someone has offered to pay for it. We have no right to demand an income from those who are not free to refuse.
What is the market value of truth?
Whatever someone will pay for it.
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Bogbrush seems to argue that replaceability is the only metric that applies- so you seem to disagree- I think.
Take this example;
A semi skilled man works in a factory where a new machine is installed. This machine has two advantages-
1) It doubles his productivity- he creates twice as much wealth as before.
2) It semi automates the task, making it much easier to perform. This means that a lot more people could now do this man's job, since it has been de skilled.
At this point Bogbrush would argue that despite the fact that this man is more productive than before- he creates twice as much wealth- his share of the wealth created should actually be reduced, since he is now far more easy to replace.
But what is interesting is that when it comes times to bank the profits Bogbrush will argue that he has a moral right to keep it- and that any attempt to redistribute it would be an infringement of that moral right.
So why does this moral right not apply to the worker- is he in some way less than human?
The management does not owe compensation to the workers for new technology. That is not to say that I dismiss the troubles arising from the lack of demand for labour which results, only that the issue does not lie with the management of the company.
I don't want to speak about Bogbrush's position too much because I might mischaracterise it and I guess I wouldn't have too much against it either.
There are issues to concern ourselves with when it comes to mechanisation and technology but it doesn't mean Capitalists owe anyone an income, if anything we are owed property, the Means of Production... but this must come via the Government, or at least it is they who would deny ownership to the Capitalists.
There is no theft going on here, for that to have been the case we would need to see an illegitimate transfer of assets which has not been identified.
Also, it's not accurate to label Libertarianism as the dogma with no respect for humanity, or morals. Neither Statism or Libertarianism have a monopoly or are absent of morality, both can be framed with or without.
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It's your opinion I'm asking for- do you personally agree with the following proposition;
Bogbrush says that he should be paid according to the wealth he creates, while you should be paid according to how easy you are to replace.
And if you do agree can you explain your reasoning?
I would agree that we all should be paid according to the wealth that we create, and equally, according to how easy we are to replace. I assume Bogbrush makes no special claim for himself.
Should we not be paid according to what we crate, or our replaceability?
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If you search the archives I've argued that the minimum wage is not an optimal solution, but about the only one we'll ever see implemented.
Why not be more optimistic? To which generation do we delegate these reforms??
The Debt Based Economic System
in House prices and the economy
Posted
No, but that's not the same, in the end we need to decide who gets the final word when both people want to sleep in a single bed.