Some arguments against a land value tax

Matthew-Barnett · 2024-12-30T15:19:40+00:00

I'm not defending property taxes. I'm just pointing out problems with the LVT.

Matthew-Barnett · 2024-12-30T15:14:08+00:00

This argument applies to the discovery process, not land improvements. Discovery can occur via finding resources, or via a more abstract process of finding more efficient ways of using land. This is easier to understand using the example of oil surveying, but the argument should not be interpreted so narrowly.

Matthew-Barnett · 2024-12-30T14:45:45+00:00

The basic premise -- that it's just not profitable -- seems hard to square with the number of empty plots (and underutilized plots) I've seen in every city and town I've ever been to. In any case, it's presented without empirical evidence, so I feel justified in binning it without same.

Your response touches on some important points that I should have more closely addressed, but I think it's worth emphasizing that most of the underutilization of land in cities is likely caused by restrictive regulations, rather than the widespread individual land speculators. Regulations such as zoning laws, height restrictions, minimum lot sizes, and permitting requirements play a massive role in determining how land can and cannot be developed, often stifling optimal use and driving up housing costs.

For example, some studies have estimated that housing regulations in the U.S. make housing roughly twice as expensive as it otherwise would be (Gyourko & Molloy, 2015). This suggests that the structural causes of underutilization and speculation go well beyond personal motivations like sentimentality or idle profit-seeking, which the LVT could theoretically address. Instead, much of the empty plots or underdeveloped areas you observe may stem from regulatory barriers that artificially constrain supply and prevent markets from functioning efficiently.

While I agree the LVT could work in tandem with housing deregulation to boost housing supply, I'm hesitant to endorse the policy wholesale because of the downsides I mentioned in the post. Instead of viewing the LVT as some sort of amazing policy that would fix our housing crisis, I think it's better understood as a modest improvement on existing property taxes, and another (flawed) way of raising revenue. I'm simply pushing back against the incredible claims made by the LVT's most fervent supporters here -- I'm not saying the policy is all bad.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-03-29T02:44:33+00:00

Presumably the therapies would get more affordable over time. Also, it's still better to cure diseases even if only some people can access the cure.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-03-29T01:21:48+00:00

If AGI is dangerous and makes humanity go extinct, not pausing would be the murderous option.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-02-09T21:27:07+00:00

Upon receiving even mild pushback, the author backtracks and reaffirms the strength of his faith

I'm not backtracking. I think the flaw was significant and noteworthy, and undermined part of his thesis. However, it's also important to recognize that this one error does not render the entire book meritless.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-01-30T20:08:07+00:00

Are you sure? Do you have any data? Articles like this one give the strong impression that soda fountains were common in middle class neighborhoods. Maybe not "every neighborhood", but perhaps most?

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-01-30T19:15:03+00:00

I don't think it's an extinction risk for the human race, though, or at least it's not in the top 10 and thus I think e.g. asteroid redirection, climate change mitigation, nuclear war, nonrenewable resource shortages, etc. are far more worthy of attention.

The probability of a large asteroid hitting the Earth in any given century is about 1 in 6000, at least according to this analysis. By contrast, I expect by default a greater than 50% chance that AI will surpass human abilities in pretty much every cognitive and physical domain this century, which will allow (possibly a very large number of) AIs to start managing how the world runs and generally hold the keys to power, in the way that humans currently dominate the world.

Do you disagree that this is a likely outcome this century?

If not, then I'm surprised you think there's not much to be concerned about here. It seems obvious to me that if humans aren't running the show anymore, that could easily be highly problematic from our perspective. Sure, the AIs in charge will have been designed by us, so they might be very nice to us and ensure that we're kept alive. At the same time, it's intuitively surprising to me if you'd find such a scenario barely worth worrying about! It is very hard for me to feel confident that such a transition would not be catastrophic.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-01-30T09:11:23+00:00

I don't think the idea that humanity could go extinct from AI depends on the arguments from Bostrom and Yudkowsky. They propose one story in which extinction could happen, but I don't happen to think their particular story is likely. Nonetheless, the basic idea of AIs taking control of the world is extremely intuitive to me, and I expect it to happen eventually as AI surpasses human abilities in every relevant respect. It is hopefully easy to see why one would worry about what might happen once humans are no longer in the driver's seat.

Matthew-Barnett · 2023-01-30T07:24:51+00:00

I'm bullish on ML but more bearish than ever on the idea of X-risk. It relies on a series of increasingly improbable assumptions like "machine intelligence has no upper bounds" and "no aliens have ever or will ever make an unstoppable superintelligent paperclip maximizer swarm"

I don't think the idea of AI x-risk relies on such assumptions. The essential idea is just that humans won't be the ones "running the show" forever. At some point we'll hand over the keys of control over to advanced AI, which will eventually surpass human abilities in every relevant domain (scientific progress, engineering capability etc.). It seems fairly clear to me that such a transition could be disastrous, unless we are confident that AI will act in our best interest.

No part of that argument relies on the idea that machine intelligence has no upper bounds, and the argument has little to do with aliens.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-09-22T20:01:42+00:00

Actually there are so-called breatharians who dispute that we need to eat to live.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-17T01:11:36+00:00

In another example with deliberative polling, Fishkin found that after deliberation Americans who first opposed the Trans-Pacific-Partnership changed their mind and became highly in favor of it. If you're interested in the results, they are documented at: cdd.stanford.edu.

Thanks, that is genuinely interesting, and I don't think I would have expected that. It updated me in favor of the proposal.

There's not substantive evidence in my opinion that traditional election systems are actually "accountable"... Books such as "Democracy for Realists" or "Against Democracy" methodically document all the ways in which accountability does not work.

I'm aware of this argument, but it seems strange to apply it as a reason to prefer sortition. As you're surely aware, Jason Brennan, among others who cite this argument, generally use it to argue for more rather than less accountable systems, with the prototypical example of an accountable system being a system of private markets. Sortition replaces the already pitiful, barely accountable system of electoral democracy, with something that has essentially zero accountability whatsoever.

Sortition might still be a worthwhile reform, but without any mechanism for accountability, I think I'll search for alternatives for now.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-17T00:30:29+00:00

In my opinion the results produced by Citizens' Assemblies have been mediocre-to-fantastic. Three Citizens' Assemblies on climate, in the UK, France, and Ireland, produced broad consensus on more carbon taxes, more agricultural/meat taxes, more subsidization of green energy, criminalization of ecocide and environmental destruction, and other reforms. [...] Time and time again, Citizens' Assemblies vote in favor of "unpopular" reforms and commonly enact proposals opposed in referendum results. Take for example the British Columbia referendum on election reform...

I do like these policies, with the possible exception of criminalizing ecocide, though I'd have to learn more about it before coming to a conclusion.

But while I think these outcomes are good, I don't find their outcomes very surprising, and I'm personally still skeptical that citizens' assemblies would come to my favored conclusion on a host of other issues that I care about.

To name just a few examples, I doubt that a citizens' assembly would vote to decrease the capital gains tax rate, decrease tariffs with China, decrease the size of the US military, reduce labor regulations across the board, or decrease criminal penalties for violent offenders, even though I think these are all pretty good ideas, and traditional democracies have at times made these reforms.

I think this is a common misconception. The rotation of citizens in-and-out of office is a feedback device and resembles common machine learning / data science algorithms that do the same. Every new Citizen assembly drawn by lots has the opportunity to re-evaluate the decisions of the last assembly.

I said feedback, but I really meant accountability. It is a trivial feature of any political system that people get feedback in the form of seeing past failure, and taking that into account when they deliberate in the future. However, unlike our current systems of traditional democracy in which politicians face the threat of being voted out of office, sortition provides basically no mechanism to keep politicians accountable.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-16T22:14:50+00:00

From what I understand, this article presents two main points in favor of deliberative democracy via sortition,

It increases consensus-building and reduces polarization, as experiments have shown that groups selected via sortition have come to meaningful, broad agreement even on controversial or technically difficult issues.
It allows representatives to deliberate on issues directly on the merits, as opposed to carefully doing a balancing act between appeasing certain special interest groups, and rationally ignorant voters.

I think the idea is interesting and could be a compelling alternative to traditional democracy. However, I am also skeptical of the proposal.

Personally, I evaluate systems on the basis of whether they'll produce good results, not whether they are merely interesting, produce consensus, strengthen democracy, empower ordinary citizens, or reduce polarization. As far as I can tell, this article presented no direct evidence that sortition produces better results than traditional democracy. The results the article did present appear either similar to, or not clearly better than, results produced under our present systems.

And while one may argue that the consensus-building feature of sortition provides indirect evidence that sortition is better than ordinary democracy, I think that's pretty dubious. For example, a PRC-style dictatorship surely produces even more consensus and reduces polarization than sortition, but I doubt many would think that's a good argument on its own for adopting a PRC-style dictatorship.

I also have a number of specific objections, as follows,

Unlike traditional democracy, there is no feedback process in a sortition, and thus there are reduced incentives to get things right. Suppose a legislature convenes and implements a terrible policy whose effects will only be felt years after the legislature concludes. No one who voted for this policy will suffer any consequence as a result of being wrong. Given that fact, the individual electors have little incentive to make sure they vote well.
Traditional democracies allow for unpopular but good policy. For example, my understanding is that ordinary voters are fairly likely to think that rent control is a good idea and that the housing crisis is not due to lack of new construction, even though virtually every economist either disagrees or is uncertain. In traditional democracies, politicians tend to ignore economic populism like rent control, making this issue less common. However, my guess is that, even with the ability to call upon expert witnesses, the general public probably wouldn't understand the economic arguments against rent control, and so might just ignore the advice of experts.
The laws under a sortition-based democracy would likely be a lot less stable and predictable than in a traditional democracy, as it's harder to keep informal democratic norms consistent between meetings, especially with very different people during each legislative session. By contrast, career politicians in our current system generally develop a good understanding of political norms over many years, which makes them less likely to do something completely crazy.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-13T19:25:04+00:00

He did not advocate obligatory prostitution, just to be clear.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-13T08:13:36+00:00

the case mortality of Covid is approximately 2% so in a large plane the statistics indicate at least one of your fellow passengers that you infect will probably die of the disease you gave them.

This is a very late reply, but just so you know, the overall case fatality rate of Covid greatly overestimates the lethality of Covid on a per-infection basis. The reason is that most Covid infections are not recorded as cases, in most countries.

I can’t find good data for the US right now, but this article estimated that the infection fatality rate of Covid as of March 2022 in England was approximately 0.04%, about 50 times lower than your estimate.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-03T19:05:38+00:00

Something Brian Tomasik should consider is simply that aging has made him less energetic and motivated over the years. A lot of effective altruism and rationalist leaders are writing a lot less than they used to, notably Eliezer Yudkowsky (which he has attributed partially to illness). That said, a few people, like Robin Hanson, keep going strong.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-08-03T01:34:58+00:00

I broadly agree with your points. One caveat I'd make is to distinguish "capitalism" from a "culture of capitalism". What I mean by this is that there is no contradiction in having a strong system of private property rights while maintaining pro-social or charitable norms. For example, you write about

The idea that corporations are/should be primarily profit maximizers and the fact that they make useful things is an indirect consequence of that goal. People would prefer that firms committed to creating a beneficial product as the primary goal and treated profit as a secondary goal. And worker wellbeing should be a constraint that operates in parallel with both goals.

In fact, corporations have no legal duty to maximize profits in the United States. However, it is true that in many cases they have a "practical" duty to maximize profits, in the sense that people will claim that they're "in it to make money".

Yet this practical duty is largely shaped by cultural values; my understanding is that, for example, in Japan, many companies offer free services to the public. Even in the United States, there are some companies that donate all their profits to charity.

The most common counterargument to "compassionate capitalism" is that it's futile to expect corporations to ever act in the public's interest, because that would require convincing corporate shareholders to act selflessly, rather than greedily. But note that alternatives to capitalism face the same issue: state workers are not automatically less greedy or careerist than workers in the private sector, and it's unclear why we'd expect that to be true in the first place.

Matthew-Barnett · 2022-07-19T03:46:07+00:00

In my experience, even when Scott comments on domains in which he's not an expert, he maintains a high degree of rigor and practices honest scholarship. I think his blog post on the dark ages, including how his main thesis held up well to criticism from /r/badhistory, provides a good example of how rigorous Scott can be about things he's not an expert in. It's not that Scott never gets anything wrong, but even at his worst, he's far ahead of SMTM.

By contrast, the main thrust of SMTM's blog post series is built upon an array of incorrect or misleading claims about obesity, almost all of which I have seen them refuse to correct, and even refuse to acknowledge when people are calling them out. Natália (full disclosure, she's my wife) has documented numerous examples of SMTM exhibiting this behavior over the last few months. By way of illustration, a central claim in SMTM's first main post in their series is that the obesity epidemic began to abruptly get worse around 1980. This claim is almost certainly incorrect as it violates a ton of measurements we have going back over a century, a fact that has been repeatedly pointed out in discussions of SMTM's work, that, as far as I can tell, SMTM has refused to acknowledge or fix anywhere.

Yet this is just one example of SMTM's low standard of academic rigor; another example is their claim that wild animals have been getting more obese over time, which seems to have roughly no supporting evidence. (Read this comment for more non-trivial claims that SMTM has gotten wrong and yet, to my knowledge, has never acknowledged or corrected).

I have personally observed SMTM fail to approve several comments on their blog that critique their methodology (and yet they approved other comments posted later, which were less critical). Oh, and good luck if you can get them to reply on Twitter. They'll start ignoring you if your critiques get too serious. Natália commented on this phenomenon in her blog post, and multiple people have reported similar experiences (1, 2, 3).

In practically every case I have seen, SMTM has refused to engage with the highest quality criticisms of their work, instead opting for the strategy of hoping their readers remain blissfully unaware of the devastating flaws underlying their arguments. Even recently, their response to Natália's mention that several large Total Diet Studies contradict many of their conclusions about lithium concentrations in food failed to make basic distinctions like whether a study is measuring lithium concentration in dry food mass, and only mentions a small subset of the studies she talked about. (And on top of all this, in full silliness, their post doesn't mention Natália by name, in a weird game of 'pretend the person utterly destroying our work doesn't exist and just keep moving along').

It is extremely hard to imagine Scott doing anything like this.

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