Murray Rothbard on Georgism: Part 1
w_b_...@yahoo.com
The Single Tax: Economic and Moral Implications
[Reprinted from a paper published by the
Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-
Hudson, New York, 1957.]
Seventy-five years ago, Henry George spelled out
his "single tax" program Progress and Poverty, one
of the best-selling economic works of all time.
According to E.R. Pease, socialist historian and
long-time Secretary of the Fabian Society, this
volume "beyond all question had more to do with
the socialist revival of that period in England than
any other book."
Most present-day economists ignore the land
question and Henry George altogether. Land is
treated as simply capital, with no special features or
problems. Yet there is a land question, and ignoring
it does not lay the matter to rest. The Georgists have
raised, and continue to raise, questions that need
answering. A point-by-point examination of single
tax theory is long overdue.
According to the single tax theory, individuals have
the natural right to own themselves and the property
they create. Hence they have the right to own the
capital and consumer goods they produce. Land,
however (meaning all original gifts of nature), is a
different matter, they say. Land is God-given. Being
God-given, none can justly belong to any
individual; all land properly belongs to society as a
whole.
Single taxers do not deny that land is improved by
man; forests are cleared, soil is tilled, houses and
factories are built. But they would separate the
economic value of the improvements from the
basic, or "site," value of the original land. The
former would continue to be owned by private
owners; the latter would accrue to "society"-that
is, to society's representative, the government.
Rather than nationalize land outright, the single
taxers would levy a 100 percent tax on the annual
land rent-the annual income from the site-which
amounts to the same thing as outright
nationalization.
Georgists anticipate that the revenue from such tax
on land would suffice to conduct all the operations
of government-hence the name "single tax." As
population increases and civilization develops, land
values (especially urban site values) increase, and
single taxers expect that confiscation of this
"unearned increment" will keep public coffers
overflowing far into the future. The increment is
said to be "unearned" because it stems from the
growth of civilization rather than from any
productive activities of the site owner.
Almost everyone would agree that the abolition of
all the other taxes would lift a great blight from the
energies of the people. But Georgists generally go
beyond this to contend that their single tax would
not harm production-since the tax is only levied
on the basic site and not on the man-made
improvements. In fact, they assert the single tax will
spur production; it will penalize idle land and force
landowners to develop their property in order to
lower their tax burden.
Idle land, indeed, plays a large part in single tax
theory, which contends that wicked speculators,
holding out for their unearned increment, keep sites
off the market, and cause a scarcity of land; that this
speculation even causes depressions. A single tax,
confiscating unearned increment, is supposed to
eliminate land speculation, and so cure depressions
and even poverty itself.
How can the single taxers give such importance to
their program? How can they offer it as a panacea to
end poverty? A clue may be found in the following
comments about the plight of the undeveloped
countries:
"Most of us have learned to believe that the people
of...so-called backward nations are poor because
they lack capital. Since...capital is nothing more
than...human energy combined with land in one
form or another, the absence of capital too often
suggests that there is a shortage of land or of labor
in backward countries like India or China. But that
isn't true. For these 'poor' countries have many
times more land and labor than they can use...they
have everything it takes-both land and labor-to
produce as much capital as people anywhere."1
And since these countries have plenty of land and
labor, the trouble must be idle land withheld from
production by speculative landlords!
The deficiency in that argument is the neglect of the
time factor in production. Capital is the product of
human energy and land...and time. The time-block
is the reason that people must abstain from
consumption, and save. Laboriously, these savings
are invested in capital goods. We are further along
the road to a high standard of living than India or
China because we and our ancestors have saved and
invested in capital goods, building up a great
structure of capital. India and China, too, could
achieve our living standards after years of saving
and investment.
The single tax theory is further defective in that it
runs up against a grave practical problem. How will
the annual tax on land be levied? In many cases, the
same person owns both the site and the man-made
improvement, and buys and sells both site and
improvement together, in a single package. How,
then, will the government be able to separate site
value from improvement value? No doubt, the
single taxers would hire an army of tax assessors.
But assessment is purely an arbitrary act and cannot
be anything else. And being under the control of
politics, it becomes purely a political act as well.
Value can only be determined in exchange on the
market. It cannot be determined by outside
observers.
In the case of agricultural land, for instance, it is
clear that you cannot, in practice, separate the value
of the original ground from the value of the cleared,
prepared, and tilled soil. This is obviously
impossible, and even assessors would not attempt
the task.
But the single taxers are also interested in urban
land where the value of the lot is often separable, on
the market, from the value of the building over it.
Even so, the urban lot today is not the site as found
in nature. Man had to find it, clear it, fence it, drain
it, and the like; so the value of an "unimproved" lot
includes the fruits of man-made improvements.
Thus, pure site value could never be found in
practice, and the single tax program could not be
installed except by arbitrary authority. But let us
waive this fatal flaw for the moment and pursue the
rest of the theory. Let us suppose that pure site
value could be found. Would a single tax program
then be wise?
Well, what about idle land? Should the sight of it
alarm us? On the contrary, we should thank our
stars for one of the great economic facts of nature:
that labor is scarce relative to land. It is a fact that
there is more land available in the world, even quite
useful land, than there is labor to keep it employed.
This is a cause for rejoicing, not lament.
Since labor is scarce relative to land, and much land
must therefore remain idle, any attempt to force all
land into production would bring economic disaster.
Forcing all land into use would take labor and
capital away from more productive uses, and
compel their wasteful employment on land, a
disservice to consumers.
The single taxers claim that the tax could not
possibly have any ill effects; that it could not
hamper production because the site is already God-
given, and man does not have to produce it; that,
therefore, taxing the earnings from a site could not
restrict production, as do all other taxes.2 This
claim rests on a fundamental assumption-the hard
core of single tax doctrine: Since the site-owner
performs no productive service he is, therefore, a
parasite and an exploiter, and so taxing 100 percent
of his income could not hamper production.
But this assumption is totally false The owner of
land does perform a very valuable productive
service, a service completely separate from that of
the man who builds on, and improves, the land. The
site owner brings sites into use and allocates them
to the most productive user. He can only earn the
highest ground rents from his land by allocating the
site to those users and uses that will satisfy the
consumers in the best possible way. We have seen
already that the site owner must decide whether or
not to work a plot of land or keep it idle. He must
also decide which use the land will best satisfy. In
doing so, he also insures that each use is situated on
its most productive location. A single tax would
utterly destroy the market's important job of
supplying efficient locations for all man's
productive activities, and the efficient use of
available land.
A 100 percent tax on rent would cause the capital
value of all land to fall promptly to zero. Since
owners could not obtain any net rent, the sites
would become valueless on the market. From that
point on, sites, in short, would be free. Further,
since all rent would be siphoned off to the
government, there would be no incentive for owners
to charge any rent at all. Rent would be zero as
well, and rentals would thus be free.
The first consequence of the single tax, then, is that
no revenue would accrue from it. Far from
supplying all the revenue of government, the single
tax would yield no revenue at all. For if rents are
zero, a 100 percent tax on rents will also yield
nothing.
In our world, the only naturally free goods are those
that are superabundant-like air. Goods that are
scarce, and therefore the object of human action,
command a price on the market. These goods are
the ones that come into individual ownership. Land
generally is abundant in relation to labor, but lands,
particularly the better lands, are scarce relative to
their possible uses.
All productive lands, therefore, command a price
and earn rents. Compelling any economic goods to
be free wreaks economic havoc. Specifically, a 100
percent tax means that land sites pass from
individual ownership into a state of no-ownership as
their price is forced to zero. Since no income can be
earned from the sites, people will treat the sites as if
they were free-as if they were superabundant. But
we know they are not superabundant; they are
highly scarce. The result is to introduce complete
chaos in land sites. Specifically, the very scarce
locations-those in high demand-will no longer
command a higher price than the poorer sites.
Therefore, the market will no longer be able to
insure that these locations will go to the most
efficient bidders. Instead, everyone will rush to grab
the best locations. A wild stampede will ensue for
the choice downtown urban locations, which will
now be no more expensive than lots in the most
dilapidated suburbs. There will be great
overcrowding in the downtown areas and underuse
of outlying areas. As in other types of price ceilings,
favoritism and "queuing up" will settle allocation,
instead of economic efficiency. In short, there will
be land waste on a huge scale. Not only will there
be no incentive for those in power to allocate the
sites efficiently; there will also be no market rents
and therefore no way that anyone could find out
how to allocate sites properly.
In brief, the inevitable result of a single tax would
be nothing less than locational chaos. And since
location-land-must enter into the production of
every good, chaos would be injected into every
aspect of economic calculation. Waste in location
leads to waste and misallocation of all productive
resources.
The government, of course, might try to combat the
disappearance of market rentals by levying an
arbitrary assessment, declaring by fiat that every
rent is "really" such and such, and taxing the site
owner 100 percent of that amount. Such arbitrary
decrees would bring in revenue, but they would
only compound chaos further. Since the rental
market would no longer exist, the government could
never guess what the rent would be on the free
market. Some users would be paying a tax of more
than 100 percent of the true rent, and the use of
these sites would be discouraged. Finally, private
owners would still have no incentive to manage and
allocate their sites efficiently. An arbitrary tax in the
face of zero rentals is a long step toward replacing a
state of no-ownership by government ownership.
In this situation, the government would undoubtedly
try to bring order out of chaos by nationalizing (or
municipalizing) land outright. For in any economy,
a useful resource cannot go unowned without chaos
setting in; somebody must manage and own-either
private individuals or the government.
George himself expected that the single tax would
"accomplish the same thing (as land nationalization)
in a simpler, easier, and quieter way."3 The hollow
form of private ownership in land would remain,
but the substance would have been drained away.
-----------------------------
1 Phil Grant, The Wonderful Wealth Machine (New
York: Devin-Adair, 1953), pp. 105-7.
2 Unfortunately, most economists have accepted
this claim uncritically and only dispute the
practicality of the single tax program.
3 Henry George, Progress and Poverty (New York:
Modern Library, 1916), p. 404.
--------------------------------
End of Part 1, to be continued in Part 2.
ro...@telus.net
has already been comprehensively demolished many times, so I'll just
hit the lowlights here.
On 29 Mar 2007 08:59:13 -0700, w_b_...@yahoo.com wrote:
>Rather than nationalize land outright, the single
>taxers would levy a 100 percent tax on the annual
>land rent-the annual income from the site-which
>amounts to the same thing as outright
>nationalization.
That is of course a lie. Nationalization does not recognize the
individual right to use land, does not imply market allocation of
land, and does not imply recovery of all the rent for public purposes.
Historically, nationalization has resulted in at best bureaucratic and
at worst corrupt land allocation, vast amounts of rent being left
unrecovered in the hands of political favorites, and political ends
taking precedence over individual rights to use land.
>Georgists anticipate that the revenue from such tax
>on land would suffice to conduct all the operations
>of government-hence the name "single tax." As
>population increases and civilization develops, land
>values (especially urban site values) increase, and
>single taxers expect that confiscation of this
>"unearned increment" will keep public coffers
>overflowing far into the future. The increment is
>said to be "unearned" because it stems from the
>growth of civilization rather than from any
>productive activities of the site owner.
That is correct.
>Almost everyone would agree that the abolition of
>all the other taxes would lift a great blight from the
>energies of the people. But Georgists generally go
>beyond this to contend that their single tax would
>not harm production-since the tax is only levied
>on the basic site and not on the man-made
>improvements. In fact, they assert the single tax will
>spur production; it will penalize idle land and force
>landowners to develop their property in order to
>lower their tax burden.
That is not correct. The whole point of LVT is that it is the same
whether the site is developed or not. The tax burden is not lowered
by developing the site; rather, the means to pay it is enhanced.
Rothbard certainly did not take long to start lying about LVT.
>Idle land, indeed, plays a large part in single tax
>theory, which contends that wicked speculators,
>holding out for their unearned increment, keep sites
>off the market, and cause a scarcity of land; that this
>speculation even causes depressions.
It is not that speculators keep land off the market, but that they
keep it idle, hoping for a windfall -- and rarely being disappointed
for long.
>How can the single taxers give such importance to
>their program? How can they offer it as a panacea to
>end poverty? A clue may be found in the following
>comments about the plight of the undeveloped
>countries:
>
>"Most of us have learned to believe that the people
>of...so-called backward nations are poor because
>they lack capital. Since...capital is nothing more
>than...human energy combined with land in one
>form or another, the absence of capital too often
>suggests that there is a shortage of land or of labor
>in backward countries like India or China. But that
>isn't true. For these 'poor' countries have many
>times more land and labor than they can use...they
>have everything it takes-both land and labor-to
>produce as much capital as people anywhere."1
>
>And since these countries have plenty of land and
>labor, the trouble must be idle land withheld from
>production by speculative landlords!
That is a strawman. The lack of land rent recovery in poor countries
has many pernicious economic effects in addition to land being kept
idle for speculation:
1. Land is underutilized, as the landowner's incentive to invest in
capital improvements or use the land for its most produtive purpose is
attenuated, not least by taxation of production, income, sales,
capital improvements themselves, etc.
2. Economically inefficient taxes damage the economy by burdening
production.
3. The resulting poverty magnifies misfortunes such as famines and
epidemics, wiping out vast investments in physical and human capital,
and depressing production for years or decades afterwards.
4. The privileged position of landowners stimulates intense
competition to hold land, which, as the supply of land is fixed,
usually means going to war over it.
5. Leaving land rent in landowners' hands encourages them to just
extract land rent and minimize investment in improvements. Inferior
improvements are then more likely to be damaged or destroyed by
extreme weather, earthquake, etc., leading to loss of life as well as
of wealth.
6. Land is badly allocated because less productive people who happen
to own land will not yield it to more productive people who could
profitably use more, because land ownership is (accurately) seen as
guaranteeing a large and growing unearned income.
7. Etc.
>The deficiency in that argument is the neglect of the
>time factor in production. Capital is the product of
>human energy and land...and time. The time-block
>is the reason that people must abstain from
>consumption, and save. Laboriously, these savings
>are invested in capital goods. We are further along
>the road to a high standard of living than India or
>China because we and our ancestors have saved and
>invested in capital goods, building up a great
>structure of capital. India and China, too, could
>achieve our living standards after years of saving
>and investment.
Rothbard is simply ignorant. India and China were already stuffed
with capital goods when Europe and North America were still mostly
wilderness. In the early 19th C, India's industrial production was
double Great Britain's! But the Indians and Chinese (and Henry
George) were smart enough to figure out the fact that Rothbard refuses
to know: when land rent is left in the hands of landowners, capital
investment just increases the rent they pocket for doing nothing.
>The single tax theory is further defective in that it
>runs up against a grave practical problem. How will
>the annual tax on land be levied? In many cases, the
>same person owns both the site and the man-made
>improvement, and buys and sells both site and
>improvement together, in a single package. How,
>then, will the government be able to separate site
>value from improvement value? No doubt, the
>single taxers would hire an army of tax assessors.
Here, Rothbard proves that he is just stupid. All the assessments are
_already_ being done for property tax purposes. No more assessors are
needed. And even if some jurisdictions need more assessors because
they are currently letting assessments get out of date, the number of
them would be dwarfed by the _current_ tax bureaucracy "army."
>But assessment is purely an arbitrary act and cannot
>be anything else.
Lie. If it was arbitrary, would there be certifications for
assessors, and shelves of technical books on the subject? Rothbard is
just a stupid, evil liar.
>And being under the control of
>politics, it becomes purely a political act as well.
Lie. While politicians may try to corrupt the process, as they may
try to corrupt any process, it is not inherently political.
>Value can only be determined in exchange on the
>market. It cannot be determined by outside
>observers.
Stupid lie. It is _price_ that is determined by actual exchange.
Value still exists in the absence of exchange, as the valuations of
artworks that have not traded for decades proves.
>In the case of agricultural land, for instance, it is
>clear that you cannot, in practice, separate the value
>of the original ground from the value of the cleared,
>prepared, and tilled soil. This is obviously
>impossible, and even assessors would not attempt
>the task.
That is another lie. Any experienced assessor of farmland can do so.
>But the single taxers are also interested in urban
>land where the value of the lot is often separable, on
>the market, from the value of the building over it.
>Even so, the urban lot today is not the site as found
>in nature. Man had to find it, clear it, fence it, drain
>it, and the like; so the value of an "unimproved" lot
>includes the fruits of man-made improvements.
The unimproved value of a lot does not include the value of
improvements made on that lot, by definition.
>Thus, pure site value could never be found in
>practice, and the single tax program could not be
>installed except by arbitrary authority.
That is just nonsense. There are places where unimproved land value
has been taxed, for God's sake.
>But let us
>waive this fatal flaw for the moment and pursue the
>rest of the theory. Let us suppose that pure site
>value could be found. Would a single tax program
>then be wise?
>
>Well, what about idle land? Should the sight of it
>alarm us? On the contrary, we should thank our
>stars for one of the great economic facts of nature:
>that labor is scarce relative to land. It is a fact that
>there is more land available in the world, even quite
>useful land, than there is labor to keep it employed.
>This is a cause for rejoicing, not lament.
Strawman. Georgists are not concerned about the idleness of
submarginal land. They are concerned that submarginal land is being
forced into production by the idle speculation in supermarginal land.
>Since labor is scarce relative to land, and much land
>must therefore remain idle, any attempt to force all
>land into production would bring economic disaster.
Which is why Georgists have never advocated any such thing.
Rothbard is just lying about what Georgists propose. That is
inevitable, and all anti-Georgist disinformation artists do it,
without exception.
>Forcing all land into use would take labor and
>capital away from more productive uses, and
>compel their wasteful employment on land, a
>disservice to consumers.
That is what the _current_ system of landowner privilege does: by
encouraging speculators to keep good land out of use, it compels
people to waste labor and capital on inferior land.
This is also the practice of all anti-Georgists, without exception:
claiming that land rent recovery would have the ill effects that the
current system of landowner privilege actually has, when it would in
fact eliminate them.
>The single taxers claim that the tax could not
>possibly have any ill effects; that it could not
>hamper production because the site is already God-
>given, and man does not have to produce it; that,
>therefore, taxing the earnings from a site could not
>restrict production, as do all other taxes.2 This
>claim rests on a fundamental assumption-the hard
>core of single tax doctrine: Since the site-owner
>performs no productive service he is, therefore, a
>parasite and an exploiter, and so taxing 100 percent
>of his income could not hamper production.
>But this assumption is totally false The owner of
>land does perform a very valuable productive
>service, a service completely separate from that of
>the man who builds on, and improves, the land. The
>site owner brings sites into use and allocates them
>to the most productive user.
That is a flat-out lie. The owner does no such thing. All he does is
extract rent from the most productive user for doing nothing.
If there were no private owner at all, and the land were simply let to
the high bidder, with the money then taken and thrown into the sea,
the site would still be used, and the allocation would be at least as
efficient as the best a private landowner could do. Rothbard is
therefore simply lying again.
>He can only earn the
>highest ground rents from his land by allocating the
>site to those users and uses that will satisfy the
>consumers in the best possible way.
He cannot earn any rent at all, as land rent is always 100% unearned
by its private recipients. The fact that allocation is more efficient
if _someone_ collects the rent than if _no_one_ does does not mean
that whoever pockets the rent is thereby contributing something to
production, any more than it would mean the sea was contributing
anything to allocation if the rent were thrown into it.
>We have seen
>already that the site owner must decide whether or
>not to work a plot of land or keep it idle.
HAHAHAHA!!
Funny how no site was ever allocated to any use whatever before there
were such things as private landowners to refrain from stopping
others' use of it!!
Rothbard is completely oblivious to how absurd his claims have
inevitably become.
>He must also decide which use the land will best satisfy.
LOL! Utter garbage, as proved above. The market decides which use
will be most productive, not the landowner. The landowner just
pockets the rent payment from the most productive prospective user.
Who allocates the lots at an estate auction, hmmm? Is it the
auctioneer? How about the estate? Maybe even the deceased?
Or could it just possibly be the _bidders_?
ROTFL!!
>In doing so, he also insures that each use is situated on
>its most productive location.
He does no such thing. He does nothing but pocket the rent, as proved
above. Nothing.
>A single tax would
>utterly destroy the market's important job of
>supplying efficient locations for all man's
>productive activities, and the efficient use of
>available land.
Another flat-out lie, as proved above. The market's job of allocation
would be done just as effectively -- indeed, even more effectively --
if the private landowner were eliminated from the equation altogether,
and the rent just thrown into the sea.
>A 100 percent tax on rent would cause the capital
>value of all land to fall promptly to zero.
In principle, but not in practice. The fact that pi is an irrational
number in principle does not stop engineers from using rational
approximations with great success in practice. Similarly, for LVT to
reduce land prices to zero would require an infinite tax rate. How
could such a rate be calculated in practice? Moreover, as a tax
payment would obtain tenure for some set time and tax amount, such
land tenure rights would trade routinely, and at non-zero prices.
>Since
>owners could not obtain any net rent, the sites
>would become valueless on the market.
<sigh> No. The sites would be valued at their rental value. The
fact that the payment would be made to the community and not the
nominal owner means that the site would have no value to the owner,
but not that it would have no value to the user and the community.
>From that point on, sites, in short, would be free.
?? Astounding stupidity. It is nothing but the requirement to pay
all the rent to the community that reduces the land's value to its
private owner to zero! Having to pay all the rent to the community
can hardly be called getting land for free.
>Further,
>since all rent would be siphoned off to the
>government, there would be no incentive for owners
>to charge any rent at all.
<yawn> Aside from not wanting pay their own money for someone else's
use of the land, that is....
Rothbard is just proving himself to be infinitely stupid and
dishonest.
>Rent would be zero as
>well, and rentals would thus be free.
Idiocy refuted above.
>The first consequence of the single tax, then, is that
>no revenue would accrue from it.
ROTFL!!!
>Far from
>supplying all the revenue of government, the single
>tax would yield no revenue at all. For if rents are
>zero, a 100 percent tax on rents will also yield
>nothing.
How can rents be zero, if they are sufficient to eliminate the land's
value to its private owner?
Rothbard is just as stupid as a bag of hammers. Mentally defective
hammers.
>In our world, the only naturally free goods are those
>that are superabundant-like air. Goods that are
>scarce, and therefore the object of human action,
>command a price on the market. These goods are
>the ones that come into individual ownership.
How does land "come into" individual ownership, other than via
forcible appropriation?
Blank out.
>Land
>generally is abundant in relation to labor, but lands,
>particularly the better lands, are scarce relative to
>their possible uses.
>All productive lands, therefore, command a price
>and earn rents.
False. Only supermarginal productivity commands any rent. Rothbard
again proves he is comprehensively ignorant of all facts of land
economics.
>Compelling any economic goods to
>be free wreaks economic havoc.
Having to pay the rent to the community does not make land "free."
But claiming that it does certainly makes Rothbard a stupid, lying,
anti-Georgist hate propagandist.
>Specifically, a 100
>percent tax means that land sites pass from
>individual ownership into a state of no-ownership as
>their price is forced to zero. Since no income can be
>earned from the sites, people will treat the sites as if
>they were free-as if they were superabundant.
No, that is just more of Rothbard's stupidity and dishonesty. Not
being able to pocket any rent for doing nothing but own the land is
not the same as not having to pay any rent for use of the land. But
Rothbard would rather shave with a chainsaw than consent to know such
facts.
>But we know they are not superabundant; they are
>highly scarce. The result is to introduce complete
>chaos in land sites.
Only if everyone is as stupid as Murray Rothbard.
>Specifically, the very scarce
>locations-those in high demand-will no longer
>command a higher price than the poorer sites.
How would their value be reduced to zero, then....?
Blank out.
>Therefore, the market will no longer be able to
>insure that these locations will go to the most
>efficient bidders. Instead, everyone will rush to grab
>the best locations.
Inevitably, Rothbard accuses LVT of the very ill effect that is most
noticeable under the system of landowner privilege, and which LVT
would in fact eliminate.
All anti-Georgist hate propagandists do this, without exception.
>A wild stampede will ensue for
>the choice downtown urban locations, which will
>now be no more expensive than lots in the most
>dilapidated suburbs.
Refuted above. Not being able to get any money by just owning land is
not the same as not having to pay any money to use land.
Rothbard went to his grave denying that self-evident and indisputable
fact of objective reality.
>There will be great
>overcrowding in the downtown areas and underuse
>of outlying areas.
ROTFL!! Rothbard is apparently advancing a land-use version of Yogi
Berra's famous claim: "Nobody goes there any more; it's too crowded!"
>As in other types of price ceilings,
Lie. There is no price ceiling.
>favoritism and "queuing up" will settle allocation,
>instead of economic efficiency.
Lie. Willingness and ability to pay the rent will settle allocation.
>In short, there will
>be land waste on a huge scale.
Again, Rothbard is inevitably driven to accuse LVT of the very evil
that landowner privilege most conspicuously inflicts on society, and
that LVT would eliminate.
>Not only will there
>be no incentive for those in power to allocate the
>sites efficiently;
<yawn> Aside from the fact that if they don't charge any rent, they
won't have any revenue, that is....
>there will also be no market rents
>and therefore no way that anyone could find out
>how to allocate sites properly.
Stupid and dishonest beyond the power of mere words to express.
>In brief, the inevitable result of a single tax would
>be nothing less than locational chaos.
And yet, where LVT has been most consistently implemented, as in Arden
DE, Kiaochow China, Meiji Japan, etc., the exact opposite has
invariably been observed.
_Invariably_.
>And since
>location-land-must enter into the production of
>every good, chaos would be injected into every
>aspect of economic calculation. Waste in location
>leads to waste and misallocation of all productive
>resources.
But Rothbard, because he is committed to lying about this subject,
turns a blind eye to the waste currently caused by private landowner
privilege, and, inevitably, accuses LVT of the very evil it would
prevent!
>The government, of course, might try to combat the
>disappearance of market rentals
Which Rothbard has fantasized, but with no relationship to anything
Georgists advocate.
>by levying an
>arbitrary assessment, declaring by fiat that every
>rent is "really" such and such, and taxing the site
>owner 100 percent of that amount.
Yes, the government would certainly do that, but only if it was at
least half as stupid, ignorant and dishonest as Murray Rothbard.
>Such arbitrary
>decrees would bring in revenue, but they would
>only compound chaos further. Since the rental
>market would no longer exist, the government could
>never guess what the rent would be on the free
>market. Some users would be paying a tax of more
>than 100 percent of the true rent, and the use of
>these sites would be discouraged.
Here Rothbard implicitly admits that his entire argument is bull$#!+,
and does not even notice it!
>Finally, private
>owners would still have no incentive to manage and
>allocate their sites efficiently.
They don't do that anyway.
>An arbitrary tax in the
>face of zero rentals is a long step toward replacing a
>state of no-ownership by government ownership.
<sigh> Surely Rothbard can come up with some random, unfounded
accusations more relevant than that one...
>In this situation, the government would undoubtedly
>try to bring order out of chaos by nationalizing (or
>municipalizing) land outright. For in any economy,
>a useful resource cannot go unowned without chaos
>setting in; somebody must manage and own-either
>private individuals or the government.
Yet in fact, people used land productively for eons without such
ownership: they simply recognized each other's rights to use the land,
and used it.
The sad thing is that Rothbard, for all his proved stupidity and
dishonesty above, is not unusual in his failure to make the slightest
dent in Georgist theory. In fact, no one has ever done any better,
and that is the real refutation of Lyin' Ryan's relentless propaganda
campaign: if there were any merit at all in Ryan's claims, someone,
somewhere, would have been able to make a coherent, defensible case
against the teachings of Henry George. And they haven't. Never.
N-E-V-E-R.
For another demolition of a lying anti-Georgist hate propagandist,
see:
http://www.libertarianunderground.com/Forum/index.php/topic,198.0.html
Anyone who thinks anyone has ever done any better than lying filth
like Rothbard and Birch is welcome to post arguments, or URLs.
-- Roy L
sinister
<w_b_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1175183953.9...@d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> Murray Rothbard on Georgism
You really like to embarass yourself, don't you?
It's well known that Rothbard is an economic illiterate, at least as far as
land economics are concerned.
See, for example,
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm#rothbard
Beginning:
"6. Didn't Austrian economist Murray Rothbard refute the LVT?
"No, but not for lack of trying. Rothbard's argument against the LVT is
fatally flawed for at least two reasons -- one moral, the other economic.
From a moral perspective, it completely ignores the unjust interference that
the overextension of law-made property imposes on man-made property. From an
economic perspective, it is based on a false understanding of what
conditions are necessary for land to have rental value."
w_b_...@yahoo.com
genuine is the fact that it is well known to many
thosands of people..."
-------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
As a matter of religious faith, apparently.
On Mar 30, 12:25 pm, "sinister" <sinis...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
sinister
<w_b_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1175398793....@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> "The best evidence that the Gorbachev letter is
> genuine is the fact that it is well known to many
> thosands of people..."
> -------------------------------------------
> --------------------------------------------
>
> As a matter of religious faith, apparently.
Thanks for providing more evidence that you're a spammer with little ability
to actually post on-topic.