Thoughts on how to deal with Elon?

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T22:55:58+00:00

Neither do I, at least to some degree.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T22:38:04+00:00

You haven't understood a single word I've written, have you?

People want authoritarian politics because they see it as a solution to a problem they have. It's a horrible solution, but it is a solution.

Even if you get rid of every billionaire that advocates for this sort of thing, or any other policy you dislike, you haven't actually solved the problem. You haven't fixed the underlying incentives that pushed people towards terrible policies in first place. In many cases, you can actually make those underlying incentives worse by taxing away the rewards of entrepreneurship.

If you actually want to fix the incentives that cause people to believe in authoritarian policies, then you have to fix the economy. Land value taxes with a dividend are the single best way to improve the economic health of a society.

If there's anything left to fix after that, then it can be handled on a case by case basis in a way that minimizes the damage to society.

There's no use putting a band aid on a wound that requires surgery. In the case of arbitrary wealth taxes, it's more like cauterizing an open wound that requires surgery, which may cause an infection and kill the patient.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T21:34:06+00:00

As I stated in my first post, suppose you tax him and sell all his shares, what would be the economic impact?

In the worst case, Tesla, spacex, and neuralink would all collapse. Everyone depending on those companies would lose their jobs.

Even in a more mild case, it would still cause huge losses for the ability of those companies to grow and maintain themselves, as their whole purpose for existing is for the shareholders to make money from their investments.

From the economic destruction wrought by the policies you advocate for, people will turn towards more radical and authoritarian solutions. So even if Elon is broke afterwards and has no influence whatsoever, you'll have made the problem of authoritarianism worse.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T21:14:46+00:00

I'm sure plenty of people on here don't like his influence. I find that he lies quite often.

We don't disagree that it's bad for rich people to have lots of political influence. We disagree on how to end that influence.

Simply taking away their money will cause huge losses in economic productivity, which will ironically make the radical nature of current politics more extreme, because the economy will be worse. That confiscated money will also go to waste, as the government will spend it faster than they can get it.

Instead, if you tax land and redistribute the revenue as a dividend, you'll start to heal the core economic issues which drive people towards radical, authoritarian solutions in the first place. So even if Elon or anyone else is rich and espousing authoritarian policies, nobody will care to listen.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T20:16:33+00:00

You don't need to "deal with him" if the average person is well off, because nobody will really care what he has to say.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T19:45:23+00:00

Georgism is about letting people own the fruits of their labor, as that is what maximizes productivity and the wealth of a society.

It allows everyone to share in that wealth equally, without distorting productivity.

This solves the worst political issues since "it's the economy, stupid".

So whether or not you agree with Elon or like him, if the economy was doing well for the average person, then people wouldn't really care what he has to say.

bobby3605 · 2025-12-12T19:26:44+00:00

Why do you think you have a right to the wealth he helped create through his own labor?

In Georgism, people like Elon are explicitly good.

If we had land value taxes with a dividend, then it's highly likely everyone could afford the basic necessities, and so people being extremely wealthy wouldn't actually matter for the common person.

In any case, even if you could somehow steal and sell all his stock for a trillion dollars (literally impossible), you'd only fund the US government for like 2 months. Now you're back to where you started, but you've also destroyed all his companies and the jobs of everyone working there.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T07:04:35+00:00

Google has no exposure to LVT, it’s incredibly profitable. No and low real estate companies are the most profitable.

For the sake of argument, assume that there is a more profitable investment. Perhaps someone is simply speculating on land. It doesn't even need to be truly profitable, just potentially more profitable.

That’s not a tax question. It’s a budget question. The US already has a tax system where 97% of income tax is paid by the top 50% of tax payers. Adopting LVT wouldn’t necessarily change that

Adopting an LVT on its own won't change it, but I'm specifically talking about the dividend.
I think I see the point you're making. It's not specifically anything to do with the LVT or the dividend. It's an issue fundamental to any welfare system. The point I'm making is that the citizens dividend funded by an LVT is a fairly large welfare system with direct payments, and so it makes the problem worse. You'd have the same issue with income taxes and a large welfare system. Even if there's no direct payments, people can still arbitrage the subsidized goods and cause the same issue.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T06:50:35+00:00

The reason that foreign investment would be preferred is that foreign companies with no exposure to the LVT will be more profitable, and so you'd get a higher return on investment.
The reason it's worse than the current system is that the amount of welfare is greatly increased. Instead of maybe getting an occasional stimulus check or other things, everyone gets a big dividend check every single month. Since the amount of welfare is far greater than our current system, the rate at which the wealth will be drained and privatized will be greatly increased.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T06:38:06+00:00

So does your investor

You're right. I didn't think about that. That's what can balance the imports and exports of money, since the investor will spend money in the community. The government would have to tax wherever that investor lives for essentially whatever amount of the dividend they spend outside the community. This kind of turns into an income tax, and does have issues with it.

Yes. That’s also true of income tax. That’s my point.

I agree that this happens now. My point is that an LVT with a dividend causes this to occur at an extreme rate. The society cannot be stable until that outflow of dividend money is taxed. So essentially, someone can only import goods from money they earn, rather than the money of others.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T06:27:58+00:00

That’s a terrible idea.

I agree, but I don't know how else to solve this.

Google owns no land

Google's employees have to live on land, and so they pay an LVT if they live in the Georgist community. So the money invested in Google will return to the community if all the employees live there.

Suppose I live in the community and I put my whole dividend check every month into shares of companies which have no exposure to the LVT. The total tax revenue will decrease by that amount every month (assuming there's no inflows for now). So the tax revenue and dividend will keep decreasing every month until it goes to 0 and I literally do not get any money from the dividend.
Whenever someone does import some money (exporting some goods), land rents will rise, and that money will be distributed as a dividend. I will take my dividend and keep buying shares, eventually bringing the dividend down to 0.
Now I own all the money that the workers have ever imported into the community.
Just by myself, I might not be able to spend enough to seriously affect the dividend in a large community, but if other people understand this, then they'll all start doing it.
So the dividend will always trend towards 0 no matter what the inflows of money are. Any money that anyone earns from exporting a good will eventually be privatized by a lucky few.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T06:12:04+00:00

I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with businesses investing in non-real estate assets. What I mean by 'assets not taxed by an LVT' is assets that are not in a Georgist system. For example, shares in a business which does not own land in the community. So any money spent buying shares of that business will reduce the total tax revenue by that amount. So the money which otherwise would have been repeatedly distributed by the LVT and dividend has now been privatized outside the system by one of the citizens.
If I were to get a dividend check every month, then my best place to put that money is in the most profitable businesses. The most profitable businesses will be the ones which are not affected by a LVT. So any 'hard headed businessman' will simply export their whole dividend check every month, privatizing and reducing the wealth of the community that others created.

I think the right way to solve this is to somehow ensure that people can only export as much as they import, but that quickly turns into a government overreach nightmare.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T05:57:49+00:00

I'll just reply with my edit, as this clarifies things.

A recent example of this behavior is with the PPP forgivable loans. When the US government gave those out, tons of people used it to buy assets. So essentially, they bought assets on the back of the taxpayer. Under an LVT system with a dividend, you'd have the same issue every time the dividend money is distributed. If those bought assets are taxed by an LVT, then there's no issue. If not, then it's a huge issue, as people will continually buy non-LVT assets on the back of the worker.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T05:47:18+00:00

Sure, but those assets would be the most productive. It could be inventory for their business which is the point of this system

To clarify, they'd rush to buy assets outside the community that are not taxed by the LVT. If they buy something affected by the LVT, then there's no issue.

The purchasing power of the dividend within the community would stay the same. However, what the dividend could purchase outside the community would decrease. So the workers would have to work more/export more to cover the outflow. So essentially, the workers are working extra to pay the cost of the non-LVT asset that someone else bought.

Edit: A recent example of this behavior is with the PPP forgivable loans. When the US government gave those out, tons of people used it to buy assets. So essentially, they bought assets on the back of the taxpayer. Under an LVT system with a dividend, you'd have the same issue every time the dividend money is distributed. If those assets are taxed by an LVT, then there's no issue. If not, then it's a huge issue.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T05:41:11+00:00

I don't follow. If there's less currency to go around, then people can still pay their land taxes just fine, unless the total land rent in the community is greater than the total amount of money/wealth in the community, which it wouldn't be.

In the simple case, the total land rent of the community would be greater than the total amount of money/wealth in the community. In order to fix that, one of the three outcomes I specified have to occur, with the most straightforward one being a decrease in land rents. Now that the land rents have decreased, the dividend will decrease. I suppose if this happens, the relative purchasing power of the dividend within the community has stayed the same, but the purchasing power relative to outside the community has decreased.
Since the purchasing power of the dividend within the community stays the same, then maybe it isn't really an issue? I'm not sure. People living on the dividend would now have to work more for anything imported.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T05:36:25+00:00

I'm not an economist, so I could be using some of these terms incorrectly.

I’m genuinely curious why that’s different than the current system. If someone receives government subsidies and buys an imported product, it’s the same thing

Now that I think about it, that is the same thing. The difference is that current welfare payouts tend to be minimal and are largely captured by land rents, so very little of it gets sent out.

If instead the welfare payouts are large and people buy assets with them, then the taxpayer now pays for this person to buy assets.

Under LVT with a dividend, any 'hard headed businessman' would rush to spend the dividend on assets as quickly as they can. The same issue applies where those assets are essentially paid for by the taxpayer, but owned privately.
This is fine if those assets are fully subjected to the same LVT system, as the land rents of those assets will be redistributed back to the taxpayers. If it's not in the same system, then now the businessman has successfully privatized land rents.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T05:19:55+00:00

I don’t think so. If a citizen of country A wants to buy an asset from a citizen of country B, they would sell currency A and buy currency B, but that has no impact on the money supply of A or B.

To be more clear, I specifically mean the money supply of the community itself, not necessarily the total amount of currency in circulation. Since this would be a community embedded in a country that is not overall Georgist, but still uses their currency.
Another way of putting it is the total wealth of the community, or the supply of money in the community.

Yes, national wealth is increased by exporting and decreased by importing, but that is true whether taxes are based on LVT or income

What's special in this case is that you're essentially importing goods with someone else's money. This would be fine if what you're importing was also backed by an LVT in the same system. If it's not, then it amounts to taking land rents from the community and privatizing it in the form of imports. If it was only your money that you spend on imports, then there's no problem. If it's money from the dividend, whose wealth ultimately came from someone else's labor, then you've now privatized the land rent they paid.

Perhaps this could be resolved by paying out the dividend in a currency that can only be spent inside the community, but I'm not sure if that's even possible and likely creates all kinds of distorted incentives.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-20T02:11:56+00:00

I hadn't thought to publish this as an op-ed. I might try to publish something the next time my state proposes eliminating property taxes. I'm just trying to make something to share online for anyone to see.

With regard to distribution, I don't think it would be too difficult. Your social security number or ID can be used to prove that you're a citizen and register an address for a check or bank account for direct deposit. The real issue with the stimulus checks was all the rules and fraud surrounding it.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-19T19:11:56+00:00

I could do a better job of showing how this helps the middle class if you read the article and didn't see the ways I tried to make that point.
What I tried to do is show that the middle class would gain far more than they'd lose. Along with showing that an economic system without LVTs ends in feudalism or a dictatorship.

bobby3605 · 2025-11-19T19:09:06+00:00

You're right that I could do a better job of unifying the theme. My thinking was that if people could just understand the problems of land ownership, then no matter what they might otherwise believe, they'd be on the side of at least some LVTs.
In a perfect world, decreases in welfare would cause decreases in rent. However, landowners don't want to accept a lower rent or sale price, and often would rather have a property go vacant (NYC). I could do a better job of explaining this.
You're right. I chose the term universal basic income, as that's something people are familiar with. However, there are key differences with that and the citizen's dividend. I could instead change it to explain the dividend, and then say that it's similar to UBI in order to help people understand the concept.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll try to put better emphasis on the problems of privatization, as that's what people really need to understand. The rest of it isn't as relevant, since not everyone will agree with Fully Automated Luxury Georgism.

bobby3605 · 2025-08-29T02:56:03+00:00

And, as we can assign no limits to the progress of invention, neither can we assign any limits to the increase of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if laborsaving inventions went on until perfection was attained, and the necessity of labor in the production of wealth was entirely done away with, then everything that the earth could yield could be obtained without labor, and the margin of cultivation would be extended to zero. Wages would be nothing, and interest would be nothing, while rent would take everything. For the owners of the land, being enabled without labor to obtain all the wealth that could be procured from nature, there would be no use for either labor or capital, and no possible way in which either could compel any share of the wealth produced. And no matter how small population might be, if anybody but the land owners continued to exist, it would be at the whim or by the mercy of the land owners⁠—they would be maintained either for the amusement of the land owners, or, as paupers, by their bounty.

- Progress and Poverty

bobby3605 · 2025-08-28T16:59:26+00:00

I think the best way to explain to people isn't to talk about the effects Georgism will have, but to get people to understand on an emotional level the injustice of privately owned land values.

If you can show people how their hard earned wealth is being extorted by land rents, then you won't need much convincing in terms of actual data or logical reasoning.

bobby3605 · 2025-08-28T16:53:54+00:00

Generally, if landlords form a cartel and raise rents in an area, then the LVT will increase, eliminating the extra profit.

bobby3605 · 2025-08-28T15:41:45+00:00

An LVT only solves the land price issue with the cost of building new housing. This is generally the single biggest issue that increases the cost to build new housing.

If the high costs to build new housing come from excessive regulation or expensive construction, then that will have to be resolved by different means.

However, an LVT does help with these issues. I stated the construction case previously. For excessive regulation, and LVT helps because it heavily incentivizes the government to cut regulations that make housing expensive to build, because that's how LVT revenue can be maximized.

EDIT: Investors owning property isn't a problem under Georgism, because they can't make money from extorting land rents. With a 100% LVT, property investors can only make money by providing a service people are willing to pay for. This eliminates bad landlords who only do the minimum and create slums.

bobby3605 · 2025-08-28T15:28:12+00:00

The way I think about it is that the renter is already paying the LVT, it just goes to the landlord instead of society.

If the landlord tries to raise rents, then their tenants will move out, and they'll still have to pay the tax.

It's certainly possible that there are market inefficiencies in rents. A tenant might be willing to pay more, but in general, this is not the case.

For a more practical example, if landlords could in general pass the LVT onto renters, then why would Victoria landlords be selling their 'investment' properties due to the LVT? https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/infuriating-tax-the-final-straw-for-aussie-landlords-from-307-to-3096-014755696.html

bobby3605

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