| Short answers to common
questions about Geolibertarianism
1) People have raw talents such as a tremendous voice that they use to make money. Should they be allowed to capitalize on this? Or is it a "free gift" hence they cannot make money off of it? Yes, they should be allowed to make money off their great voice without penalty. Someone with a great voice adds value to the world, someone selling land does not. A person who capitalizes on their great voice cannot hurt you, they can only benefit you, their profit is not done at your loss -- the same does not apply to the person "capitalizing" on the value of land. 2) How do you decide how much the rent is? The free market decides. To go into further detail, please refer to anyone who is more interested in the economics of gelibertarianism as opposed to the philosophy that underlies it. 3). Shouldn't other things that are limited like coal or iron have a "rent" on them too? See this 4). So the more people who live on earth, the more I pay? Short answer: yes. Again, it comes down to the moral question -- do the parent on the island have unquestionable right to the land or do new people who come along also have it? 5). How can you call it geo"libertarianism" -- doesn't it fail the initiation of force test? Before you could commit "force" against someone, you had to establish that the person had rights to said thing. If it is decided that land is a free gift of nature and all people should have equal rights to it, then it is not an initation of force. The person who took land, a free gift, is the one who intiated force, not the geolibertarian. 6). This sounds a lot like Marxism. It isn't. Indeed, Marxists and neolibertarians have more in common than Marxists and geolibertarians -- both Marxists and neolibertarians advocate people get profits for nothing. Geolibertarian philosophy simply recognizes the difference between metaphysical and man-made wealth-- something which both Marxists and currently, Objectivists, fail to do. 7). People who own land now already bought it. It's not fair you are not going to let them sell it again. People who owned slaves also bought them with their hard earned money. Was it fair we freed the slaves and wasted the money they invested? Indeed, if you want to get into the logistics of the conversion, I recommend you go study what Max Hirsh, an Austrian (i.e. pro-free market) economist who got the LVT implemented in Australia, did. 8). This system is unfair to farmers who have to use more land. No matter what, farmers are going to have to pay for more land. The question is, do they pay for it right away in a huge lump sum or over a period of time? The sympathy lies more properly with the young aspiring farmer, who, in order to even exist, must pay his ancestors more money as he was a latecomer. 9) Where would the money go? I personally think it should all go towards paying for a military, the protector of land. If you want to talk about this further, email me, and we can chat. 10) What about giving gifts? No one "earned" the gift they are receiving. Should this be outlawed? No. Again, if someone gives you a fruit basket, it doesn't mean someone else had to be without a fruit basket. If I give you $5, it doesn't mean someone else had to go without $5. If nature gives you a free gift, and you make a profit off of it, it means someone will have to suffer without land. People can give gifts, reality cannot. |
"The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on."~Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right." ~Thomas Jefferson
"It is a postition not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.... It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent." ~Thomas Paine
"When the 'sacredness of property' is talked of, it should always be remembered, that any such sacredness dos not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the orginal inheritance of the whole species.. It is no hardship to any one to be excluded from what others have produced ... But it is some hardship to be born into the world and to find all nature's gifts previously engrossed, and no place left for the new-comer ... To me it seems almost an axiom that property in land should be interpreted strictly, and that the balance in all cases of doubt should incline against the properitor."~John Stuart Mill
"To be allowed any exclusive right at all, over a portion of the common inheritance, while there are others who have no portion, is already a *privelage*."~John Stuart Mill.
"Supposing the entire habitable globe to be ... enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers."~Herbert Spencer.
"Undeserved increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit, but they are the principal form of unearned increment, and they are derived from precesses which are not merely not beneficial, but positively detrimental to the general public."~Winston Churchill
"In my opinion, the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument..."~Milton Friedman
"What kind of taxation is least harmful?....My own preference is for a single tax on land, with landholders doing their own valuation."~David Nolan
"A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent."~Adam Smith
And, finally, Austrian economist Max Hirsh also supported the single tax. He even led the implementation of the Single Tax in Australia and New Zealand in the early part of the 20th century.
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