tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post2113735814377795028..comments2024-03-23T12:05:13.464-07:00Comments on Ideas: Left-Libertarianisms David Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-68181203855503702062023-01-19T17:39:41.714-08:002023-01-19T17:39:41.714-08:00The tax is supposed to collect all of the site val...The tax is supposed to collect all of the site value, so a rate of 100%.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-43961103350154799212022-11-01T15:35:19.363-07:002022-11-01T15:35:19.363-07:00"Its central tenet is that since no individua..."Its central tenet is that since no individual has a just claim to the income from the site value of land, government ought to support itself by taxing all and only that income.[2] The amount of money needed by a government, at least in the view of a libertarian, is much less than the total produced by such a tax..."<br /><br />Surely that depends on what the rate of the tax is?Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11662433538478903686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-16214779109236733032022-10-29T12:34:20.780-07:002022-10-29T12:34:20.780-07:00@Mugwump:
Insofar as you can measure site value, t...@Mugwump:<br />Insofar as you can measure site value, taxing it has the advantage of no excess burden, since the supply is perfectly inelastic. That's the obvious economic argument in favor of the idea.<br /><br />In terms of fairness, the problem is that the present owners of land paid for the site value when they bought it, so when you institute a site value tax you are effectively expropriating them.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-35105807900128016862022-10-29T08:58:16.901-07:002022-10-29T08:58:16.901-07:00Sometime I'd love to hear your take on Georgis...Sometime I'd love to hear your take on Georgist taxation vs. the status quo taxes.<br /><br />Altho I share some of your skepticism about Georgism, it seems to me nonetheless less bad than what we have now, from a purely economic viewpoint. But I'd like to hear a modern economist's view.<br /><br />Given the prominence and (former) popularity of Georgism, I'm surprised so little has been written about it in academia.Modern Mugwumphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17893227760361314933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-18645248916183530152022-10-28T12:49:31.068-07:002022-10-28T12:49:31.068-07:00SB:
I am suggesting, did suggest, that the growth ...SB:<br />I am suggesting, did suggest, that the growth of large corporations and wage labor is one of the causes of the growth of government.<br /><br />What is your evidence that income inequality has increased over the past century? I would have guessed the opposite.David Friedmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06543763515095867595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-87063701625625854812022-10-28T10:23:59.213-07:002022-10-28T10:23:59.213-07:00I've never thought the Lockean proviso made go...I've never thought the Lockean proviso made good sense.<br /><br />Consider someone who wants to clear some ground and plant crops. That seems to be an application of the right to liberty. But if someone else can walk over the field and trample the plants, or come and take the grain or fruit or roots, then the payoff of that liberty is impaired, quite possibly to the point where there's no longer any point to planting in the first place; the value of liberty is destroyed as far as agriculture goes. And if you limit the occupation of land to the point where equally good land is still available, then you will reach a point where there is still land that might be occupied, but no one occupying it gains any right to it, which again is an impairment of the value of liberty.<br /><br />I think that the basic principle needs to be not that you can't diminish the potential to use and occupy land, but that you can't diminish the actual use of it. I'm also in favor of applying the rule of adverse possession, where if you have used an area of land for a certain purpose, you establish a continuing right to use it. That's a practical issue of minimizing conflict over land, as opposed to a theoretical construction from abstract moral theories.William H. Stoddardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-2109152619418654972022-10-28T04:21:42.611-07:002022-10-28T04:21:42.611-07:00You've presented theoretical arguments for why...You've presented theoretical arguments for why government, and in particular taxation, should encourage small business over large corporations, encourage self-employment over wage labor, and reduce income inequality.<br /><br />Yet empirically, over the past hundred years in the US and most "developed nations", it seems that the role of government has grown substantially and so have all three of these phenomena that you say government discourages. Is this an illusion? Are you suggesting that these three phenomena would have grown <i>even more</i> in the absence of government expansion?SBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09786720503589745463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19727420.post-56489141310745698142022-10-28T02:35:52.666-07:002022-10-28T02:35:52.666-07:00"While 'libertarian' can still mean a..."While 'libertarian' can still mean a left anarchist, 'left libertarian' usually means a libertarian in the newer sense who supports ideas or policies identified with the left. The oldest and probably best worked out doctrine along those lines is geolibertarianism, based on the ideas of Henry George ..."<br /><br />Er, no. The earliest would be the libertarianism of Thomas Paine (who sat on the left in the French Assembly), Frederic Bastiat (ditto), and Charles Comte / Charles Dunoyer, French leftists whose libertarian class theory Marx cribbed and ruined.Thomas L. Knapphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16271473384378782680noreply@blogger.com