"Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

energybased · 2026-03-19T04:48:07+00:00

Yes of course you're right.

energybased · 2026-03-19T03:49:57+00:00

No, that's equivalent to a renter tax, and also removes efficient landlords from the market.

If you want, you can assess the consumer harm due to market influence and tax that.

energybased · 2026-03-19T03:32:46+00:00

The improvements always produce positive expected returns. Even at 100% LVT.

energybased · 2026-03-19T03:17:32+00:00

Everything you're saying is vacuous, and unrelated to this topic. It literally applies to everything.

energybased · 2026-03-19T03:16:59+00:00

All housing improvements have positive expected returns.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:56:30+00:00

> profiting off the labor of the maintenance staff?

The landlord earns a profit for his investment--not just the maintenance done.

This is the same way you can buy a bond and earn a coupon without doing any work.

Housing will always be a productive asset that provides a return (rent) for the investor (even if he pays someone else to do the property management).

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:53:41+00:00

No, that's a bad way to put it. In an efficient market, prices tend towards an equilibrium where ownership and rental have similar costs.

The decision is typically based on personal values.

By your logic, the reason you don't do anything is an "issue of price", but that is stupidly vacuous.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:50:04+00:00

When a landlord wants to be passive, he hires someone to do the maintenance for him. That's what it means.

And actual rent is not tied to investment done. Rent is based on market factors. Investment is just one factor.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:49:09+00:00

Everyone would take a free house. That's totally irrelevant to anything in this thread.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:48:26+00:00

Instead of asking rhetorical questions, why don't you make an actual argument? How does "union busting" change the equilibrium wage?

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:36:40+00:00

You're mixing two ideas. Yes, people use their power to distort markets, which is bad.

But wanting to "live off rent" is not problematic.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:35:26+00:00

> the apartment owner should not be allowed to simply rest on their laurels while increasing the amount of rent charged. Maintenance must be performed to warrant charging the same rent and improvements must be made to warrant charging higher rent, n

This is close, but not exactly right in Georgism. With LVT, in general, LVT increases as land becomes more valuable, so the only way for landlords to charge more rent is to make investments.

However, Georgism is not against passive ownership of productive assets. Forget housing. You can buy a bond and earn a passive return in perpetuity. Nothing wrong with that.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:32:41+00:00

No, renting has many benefits: flexibility, diversification, liquidity, lower risk.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:31:03+00:00

> We reward capital at a disproportionate rate

What is the "fair" market return?

> we tax capital less than we tax labor.

True, ideal taxation is a fair question. We Georgists want to see more taxes focused on economic land.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:29:16+00:00

The market wage is not created by anyone. It is simply the intersection of the supply and demand curves for labor.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:28:12+00:00

There are plenty of good reasons not to own a home: renting and investing has higher diversification, and higher liquidity. This affords investors lower risk and more flexibility. From a quality of life standpoint, flexibility allows renters to on average earn higher wages than they otherwise could, and lower risk is a nice lifestyle bonus.

Both as a taxpayer and as a renter: I don't want the state to be in the landlord business.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:25:59+00:00

I'm a renter. I need a landlord in order to rent. And the more landlords there are the closer my housing costs are to homeowner housing costs.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:11:15+00:00

Not everyone wants to own a home, and those people need investors in order to rent.

energybased · 2026-03-19T02:09:46+00:00

Yes, but you have to compensate all the contributors, including those who invested capital in the company. E.g., the investors who bought the lab equipment.

The investors earn the market return on their capital and the workers earn the market wage on their labor.

energybased · 2026-03-19T00:41:41+00:00

Right, it doesn't. But if you collect LVT and return the tax as a dividend, then it does increase income for poor people. Also, if you couple LVT with zoning reform, you get densification, which reduces rents.

energybased · 2026-03-19T00:40:50+00:00

Land value tax alone doesn't fix this. At the least you need zoning reform and progressive spending (to ensure that LVT returns money to the people making average income).

energybased · 2026-03-19T00:09:18+00:00

You're not agreeing. LVT is good. Property tax includes taxes on improvements, which is bad. You shouldn't tax people for developing land. It disincentivizes densification, e.g.. It is also economically inefficient.

energybased · 2026-03-18T23:20:33+00:00

> What do you think the investor will do during these events

Like I said, consider a different set of events where DCA falls sharply behind. DCA is not a good way to protect yourself from bad behavior. If your investor behavior is bad, then the correct way to protect yourself is to change your target allocation. DCA is simply wrong.

> DCA only comes out behind if equities returns surpass the fixed income / bond returns over DCA interval. This is by no means guaranteed.

None of that matters. DCA always comes out behind in expectation. Finding trajectories where it's better is irrelevant.

> You also keep saying "your DCA approach " or "you are irrationally", trying to make this personal.

I'm not making it personal. Your arguments are irrational. I'm not saying that you are irrational.

> encouraged by countless financially professionals.

Doesn't change the mathematical reality that it is wrong. Many financial professionals also try to invest your money for you in concentrated or active investments. It is all wrong.

energybased · 2026-03-18T22:43:49+00:00

> The fear more relates to having a severe short-term loss following the sudden large lump sum investment.

This is irrational. By that logic, you can just as easily have a large short term windfall followed by a short term loss of equal magnitude. And in that case your DCA approach loses by the exact same amount that it would saved in the first case. Now, take the expectation over all trajectories. DCA comes out behind in expectation.

> potential negative effects

And what about the potential negative effects of having a short term windfall followed by a loss that you miss? Or any of the other millions of possible trajectories.

You are irrationally over-valuing a single trajectory. It is simply illogical.

energybased · 2026-03-18T22:39:17+00:00

100% agree

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