The Georgists

[Ron Helwig]

You believe every natural resource on Earth is a "commons" that is owned by everyone.

yes I along with John Locke believe individual property rights are based on mixing one's labor WITH the earth.

This one I don't quite buy. Certainly any PRODUCT of your labor is rightfully your property, but the land is never the product of your labor. The improvements made to the land are rightfully property.

If the "productive use" of the land is the determining factor in deciding ownership, that brings up some interesting questions:

Who decides what is "productive use"? I know some people that would argue that maintaining a view in its natural state is a "productive use".

Would the first "productive use" become the determining factor, or would a "higher productive use" be a factor? If a "higher productive use" is an important factor, then the NLDC is right (which I certainly don't believe). If the "first productive use" is an important factor, we run up against the definition problems of just what is "productive use" again.

I put it like this:
1) No one has original right to any particular piece of land, everyone has the same right to use it.
2) Individual ownership of land is the most efficient way to allocate usage of land, thus we desire a civil right of ownership.
3) If someone is to claim a monopoly on a piece of land, they owe everyone else for that exclusive privelege.
4) The value of the land is owed to each generation. This means that the landowner owes each generation the value of the land without factoring in improvements.
5) Taking a generation as 20 years, this means a tax rate maximum of 5% of the unimproved value of the land. Anything more than that is theft. This total applies to the total of all taxes at all levels of government. For example, if the feds get 1% and the state gets 2%, that leaves 2% for county and town.
6) Correlary: those who aren't landowners pay their fair share for land usage through their landlord.
7) Correlary: the government only needs to know about landowners, not renters.
8 ) Problem: how to determine the unimproved value of the land? (I assume someone with a real estate background can answer this one better than I could)

I know most of us here don't care about this one, but the land tax is the only tax that can't be avoided. Where this should be important to us here is that that means there need be no "compliance enforcement" agencies needing powers that violate individual rights in order to work. The income tax requires the IRS to violate our right to privacy (as well as others). The sales tax violates our right to private contracts (requiring us to include government as a third party to every sale).

[Pat McCotter]

no, since common rights of ownership are individual rights we all have the individual right to enclose the commons to engage in self-generating activity to ATTEMPT to sustain ourselves SO LONG as that private enclosure does not infringe on the INDIVIDUAL equal access opportunity rights of any other person(s).

As soon as you enclose it you are depriving me of equal access to it - unless you allow me the same access you have. But I do not think we can both build a house on the same parcel or create a garden on the same parcel.

I say stop talking about what you want to do and get out there and do it. Arden, DE, and Freehope, AL, are the only two examples I ?have found and they both admit that they are "simulations" of the single tax georgist system and, in the case of Freehope, an admitted failure. They are also both over 100 years old and are only known to a few people.

[Ron Helwig]

I say stop talking about what you want to do and get out there and do it.

Can't talk for others, but for me actually trying to implement it is a low priority. There's a lot of higher priority stuff to do first.

For now I'm mostly interested in talking about it to:
1) test and refine my beliefs, and
2) persuade others to come around to my beliefs.

[BillG]

As soon as you enclose it you are depriving me of equal access to it - unless you allow me the same access you have. But I do not think we can both build a house on the same parcel or create a garden on the same parcel.

all that is required is that there be another location available without economic rent attached to it that provides "enough and as good" for your needs.

and when there is no longer "enough and as good left for others " as subjectively determined by the market in the appearance of economic rent...all that is required for the protection of labor-based property rights is for the economic rent to remain owned in common.

correct - that is why force is always involved in dominion over territories...it is as simple as saying two people can't occupy the same place at the same time.

Arden, DE, and Freehope, AL, are the only two examples I  have found

17 Pennsylvanian towns currently have split their tax rates

legislation pending in  MN, OR, CT, MD, VA

in NH there has been legislation proposed in the past by Rep. Dick Noyes from Salem who is a Georgist

[tracysaboe]

Go to the FSP forum and search for post by Greenbacks and Bill G. and you can read about it for days

and you will also see that I was banned from the FSP forum about 4 months ago.

I did hear from someone that posts there that Jason recently paid me a nice compliment in saying a few people had agreed with me whereas Green had convinced no one.

Actually you were banned because of excessive thread hijacking.

You came back under the name Greenbacks, already in violation of that ban. As far as I'm conserned you were a criminal tresspasser from that 2nd handel.  You should have been banned imediately again after everybody realized it was you as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not the owner of the forum.

Tracy

[tracysaboe]

Oh no. Mike. You've just got sucked into the BillG sinkhole universe.

Come back to us.

Wendy McElroy had a nice little article about the differences between passive anarchism like Leo Tolstoi's "Christian Anarchy" and individualist anarchism in the west, and the violent bomb-throwing anarchy kind.
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_1/15_1_3.pdf

Tolstoi, being opposed to government, certainly wouldn't support government ENFORCING his Georgist beliefs. Maybe he thought that's how people should volentarily agree to organize their property rights. But using government force to organize land property rights in a state predescribed maner is not sometehing he would have supported.

You also need to look at which Tolstoi. His views changed over the years. I'm no exxpert on Tolstoi, but to site him for support for Georgism is 1) appeal to authority and 2) neglecting to actually study Tolstoi and his life and how his views changed over the years.

Tracy

[BillG]

Tolstoi, being opposed to government, certainly wouldn't support government ENFORCING his Georgist beliefs. Maybe he thought that's how people should volentarily agree to organize their property rights. But using government force to organize land property rights in a state predescribed maner is not sometehing he would have supported.

You also need to look at which Tolstoi. His views changed over the years. I'm no exxpert on Tolstoi, but to site him for support for Georgism is 1) appeal to authority and 2) neglecting to actually study Tolstoi and his life and how his views changed over the years.

so being "no expert" on Tolstoy how can you judge whether his views changed over time?

why would he agree to write the preface to George's book "Social Problems" if he didn't beieve in his prescription of the single tax?

maybe he believed in the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker's possession and use definition of landed property - do you?

it would essentially outlaw landlordism and as a result there would be very little economic rent

[Pat McCotter]

I say stop talking about what you want to do and get out there and do it.

Can't talk for others, but for me actually trying to implement it is a low priority. There's a lot of higher priority stuff to do first.

For now I'm mostly interested in talking about it to:
1) test and refine my beliefs, and
2) persuade others to come around to my beliefs.

Ron,
It's just that I am in the "do" mode these days. Philosophical discussion is behind me. I've pretty much set my goals on getting NH government back into its NH Constitutional bounds.

Georgist, Randist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat - I could care less what they are doing. I will be working issue by issue - judging each by my principles and trying to get the grassroots to see my point of view - and then influencing the movers and shakers to listen.

[Lex]

It's just that I am in the "do" mode these days. Philosophical discussion is behind me. I've pretty much set my goals on getting NH government back into its NH Constitutional bounds.

Georgist, Randist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat - I could care less what they are doing. I will be working issue by issue - judging each by my principles and trying to get the grassroots to see my point of view - and then influencing the movers and shakers to listen.

If you think you can start a campaign to increase property taxes in NH and think you'll get a lot of support I think you are delusional.

[BillG]

If you think you can start a campaign to increase property taxes in NH and think you'll get a lot of support I think you are delusional.

not increase - just shift off of buildings and onto land values.

revenue neutral but many practical benefits that would attract the anti-authoritarian left to the FSP in droves that would push them way over the 20K quickly.

[Lex]

If you think you can start a campaign to increase property taxes in NH and think you'll get a lot of support I think you are delusional.

not increase - just shift off of buildings and onto land values.

revenue neutral but many practical benefits that would attract the anti-authoritarian left to the FSP in droves that would push them way over the 20K quickly.

Why can't you just do what you have shown us in the articles you posted. Namely, buy a couple hundred acres of land and rent it out? Why are you so insistent on it being government controled? It goes contrary to what anti-authoritarians and libertarians believe. Why invovle the government in something you can pretty easily do yourself?

[BillG]

Why are you so insistent on it being government controled?

where is the control?

use, possession, exclusion, transferability all remain in private hands will the economic rent remains owned in common.

ownership in common is an individual right like free speech.

the economic rent goes directly to your neighbors - not to the government.

the purpose of government is to insure everyone's equal rights are protected by no one infringing

[Dreepa]

yawn,,,,,,,,,,, ???

[BillG]

Philosophical discussion is behind me. I've pretty much set my goals on getting NH government back into its NH Constitutional bounds

Pat-

once off the bus the FSP will have to build a MAJORITY party.

just as there are not enough progressives to build an independent MAJORITY party on the left.

there are not enough libertarians in NH who want to get the government back intoit's constitutional bounds and apparently not enough around the country to move.

what to do?

why not take a good LOOK at "left" libertarianism? ?

[Pat McCotter]

It's just that I am in the "do" mode these days. Philosophical discussion is behind me. I've pretty much set my goals on getting NH government back into its NH Constitutional bounds.

Georgist, Randist, Libertarian, Republican, Democrat - I could care less what they are doing. I will be working issue by issue - judging each by my principles and trying to get the grassroots to see my point of view - and then influencing the movers and shakers to listen.

If you think you can start a campaign to increase property taxes in NH and think you'll get a lot of support I think you are delusional.

???

Not me! I want to decrease all taxes!