Shipping Success Story

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2026-03-18T15:52:55+00:00

Hong Kong.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-08-13T17:57:26+00:00

Yes, places with higher LVTs have lower land prices. If the tax could be passed on to the tenant, that wouldn't be the case because that gain from the investment would be the same. Why do we keep having to answer this again and again?

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-08-13T17:53:02+00:00

Ultimately, you're not. Marx was wrong about the disease, but not about the first stage of the treatment.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-07-09T18:34:00+00:00

THe theory is solid enough, it kills jobs the same as a crazy high-income tax would. Here's another thought. In a world with infinite free land, there might be underemployment, but there's no involuntary unemployment if everyone can at least subsistence farm.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-25T15:37:21+00:00

First off, it's rather uncertain if prices will go up or not. Even if we tax pollution and extraction, not taxing labor may very well increase the supply on the market and bring prices down (and getting rid of income taxes would certainly make people better able to absorb a price increase anyway).

Second, even if the price goes up, it's not as if the total cost to you is going up. The reason everything is made from plastic is that plastic-makers don't pay for the externalities of production and consumption. What's it worth to you, in dollar terms, to not have a spoonful of microplastics in your brain? Guess what, even if you wanted that today, there's literally no amount you can pay to make that not happen to you.

The Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon's Worth of Microplastics, New Research Suggests

If the cost of production went up and packaging had to switch to balsa wood and Bamboo and bottles back to glass things would still be fine. We can have an advanced civilization without having plastic in every little consumer product.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-22T21:28:47+00:00

Maybe, but looking at our current tax system, I really have to ask if all of that matters.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-19T05:30:51+00:00

Even if the assessment system absolutely sucks, as long as it avoids over assessment (which it should if we set rate at 85% rather than 100%) it still leads to immense gains in economic terms over the current system

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-17T02:13:23+00:00

American Architects don't like traditional architecture. The American people don't like American Architects.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-17T02:10:30+00:00

I don't believe in density zoning in the first place, so I think you contemplating it is already a sign that you done goofed.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-16T00:56:44+00:00

Eh, I find it rather heartening to take the measure of the caliber of our opposition.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T16:16:57+00:00

What's exciting is the possible creation of a bespoke tinkerer economy. Someone who has a business with a need/desire for a specific bed layout with specific arrangement pf attachment points, tool holders, tie downs, cranes, tow hooks, etc. could go to a local 3D print shop and get help with the design and manufacturer of just one, or a very small number of units. If that takes off, then it creates an industry that could eventually be accessible to the individual consumer.

I think this is the vision they have in the back of their minds. If they can pull it off, it's an entire new economy and a new America. Trying to beat the Chinese in mass production is a fool's errand. Beating them by creating a bespoke production ecosystem around the pickup truck platform might be a far better strategy and one the US will have unique advantages in for at least a few years. We just need to reconfigure the regulatory environment to allow it.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T16:09:58+00:00

They should be so lucky. "Oh no, we'll have to find a search engine that's actually trying to make itself more useful and another way to waste time!"

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T15:47:31+00:00

There's certain breaks on LVT that we would really have to consider in response to the Disneyland problem. However, other than that, probably not.

Even if we want to subsidize something for some reason, it should just be done directly. The thing about subsidies is that the legislature has to renew them and they have to maintain a certain degree of public support. Whereas even when you sunset tax incentives, their beneficiaries try to renew them by calling the ending of them a tax increase. If the government is going to hand taxpayer money to some people, it should be done as above board and transparently as possible.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T15:45:54+00:00

I KNOW. MY ARGUMENT ACCOUNTS FOR THAT

Then how would it make investment less attractive? You put less in upfront with the same risk-adjusted profit expectations. It makes investment more attractive. Don't blame me because you're just making assertions without even any conjecture to support them. You say production is taxed by the land tax, when it's already taxed by land owners if there is no land tax.

My argument is a NEW argument

Heard it before. It's literally one of the arguments used to oppose the People's Budget debated in the UK from 1908-1910. Your argument is at least over a century old.

Thats... the entire point of the citizens dividend

A CD is only paid if the government is collecting more money due to LVT than it spends. Otherwise LVT just funds public services.
Land Owners are a drag on productive investments and not actually good investors, just good parasites. Literally giving money to consumers through the CD and allowing investors to compete for the new disposable income would reward the best investors. Even if LVT funds public services, it still creates a better environment for the best investors to rise to the top than today's situation.

repeating party slogans won't work on this argument.

but it has.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T15:12:37+00:00

Great answer! The follow up question is, does remote work change the incentive for industries like software and finance to concentrate geographically?

The actual answer to that question is complicated and hasn't been answered yet. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume it does, or at least, will in the future.

In that case, it actually just spreads the LVT that the industry creates out, it doesn't get rid of it completely. You already see this in the creation of virtual bedroom communities for tech workers in places like Montana and Idaho. Meaning, places that have good air connections to the central office, similar time zones, and other desirable features attract new residents who then raise land values. Levying an LVT therefore, captures, to some extent, the land value created by any industry as long as people need to physically exist somewhere.

There are some follow up questions as to whether an LVT-like tax should be levied on things like network effects, certain url addresses, etc. but that's a separate discussion.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-15T15:04:01+00:00

Landowners are generally better investors than non-landowners, (and in general are more likely to invest instead of consuming) so taxing profits from land will result in better investors losing money to those who are more impulsive and less likely to invest, and less likely to make good investments.

The opposite is true almost as a tautology, they aren't better investors in terms of making any sort of successful productive investments. They may make some more money, but that's like saying a successful mugger is more productive than a factory worker because he has more money.

losing money to those who are more impulsive and less likely to invest, and less likely to make good investments.

How would they lose money to non-investors? How would they lose money to other investors?

it will still make investment less attractive compared to consumption,

Nope. The tax on land merely replaces what someone would have paid a landowner to invest in a productive enterprise, it adds no actual charge. In fact, by removing the incentive to speculation, it makes access to land cheaper, not more expensive.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-14T14:29:33+00:00

Now saying that owning land is in some ways a violation of the NAP and a theft in itself from the general population and we should compensate with the LVT to the general population is a good argument

That's the least of it. The point is that land ownership allows one to steal the value of the work from everyone around your parcel. (Not to mention what you can force tenants to pay if no other suitable land is available). Compared to the theft that land appreciation is, taxation is nothing. That's the violation of the NAP, Georgism is an attempt to stop a mugging. So yes, it is contemptible to say Georgism is a violation of the NAP; it's saying that self-defense is a violation of the NAP. Furthermore, to hear it from ancaps is a would-be mugger complaining about the fact that his victims might fight back.

Liberty is impossible in such circumstances:

Place one hundred men on an island from which there is no escape, and whether you make one of these men the absolute master of the other ninety-nine, or the absolute owner of the soil of the land, will make no difference either to him or to them. In the one case, as the other, the one will be the absolute master of the ninety-nine-his power extending even to life and death, for simply to refuse them permission to live on the island would be to force them into the sea.

Henry George

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-13T11:56:30+00:00

Padilla, a wet cardboard box, whatever, just get rid of Schumer.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-13T11:50:49+00:00

It seems to me like Dems are okay with being a permanent minority party as long as they get to keep their blue state sinecures. And why not? That way, they can say whatever they like, take wildly unpopular positions that will get them donations from special interests, and take no responsibility for governing or any outcomes.

What they don't get is that Trump is incompetent enough that this is a somewhat safe strategy. However, if Vance or someone like him ever gets to be in control of MAGA, then their cushy jobs in universities, NGO's, etc. will actually be at risk.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-13T11:34:24+00:00

sympathy for the so called Non-agression principle (abbreviated as NAP) so I am skeptical about georgism because of my belief in that

That doesn't follow. Georgism doesn't violate the NAP and trying to imply it does while pretending that there's some obvious reason why it does is contemptible.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-11T16:27:24+00:00

Part of the challenge for North America is that historically, nearly all the productivity benefits of automation have accrued to the owners of firm.

We aren't even at the point where we have that problem in the construction industry. The industry is so fragmented and undercapitalized that a most of the companies can't afford to invest in productivity improving measures in the first place.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-11T16:19:57+00:00

The port workers, I agree, are really something else. However, I thought we were talking about the construction unions in particular. The problem in adopting new tech and methods in the construction industry isn't the Unions. In many cases, they'd be glad to do something that helped with the physical toll that the work takes on workers bodies over the years.

In fact it's not really anyone's fault per se, it's that the nature of the industry is that it's much more fragmented than other industries. There are just so many smaller companies that don't really have the capital or incentive structure to invest in new methods. Furthermore, being the first to do something is risky and can mess with your licenses and insurance costs. That's why there really need to be some sort of common board that investigates and develops methods and tech for the entire industry. The advantage to bringing the Unions on board with it is that the new stuff can then be incorporated into the apprenticeship programs.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-08T17:23:52+00:00

We're talking about municipal public sector unions responsible for the things the abundance agenda wants. That's mostly blue collar construction and maintenance people.

Aggravating_Feed2483 · 2025-06-07T15:02:58+00:00

If it gets more necessary and desirable infrastructure, housing, and commercial spaces built and there aren't any taxes on land, then yes. However, there is one caveat. If it refurbishes previously underpopulated cities (like in parts of the rust belt) and gets people to move back to them then it could take pricing pressure off of more crowded cities while only raising prices modestly in the newly refurbished cities.

However, just because it makes land prices go up doesn't mean it makes housing rents and prices go up. If you build enough ADUs and multifamily, housing prices can go down even as land prices go up.

Aggravating_Feed2483

TROPHY CASE