I posted in this subreddit a few days ago with what I thought was a clever idea but I don't think I understand Georgism well enough yet. I had 2 questions:

1. If there is no private land ownership, how is the use of the land allocated? How would this work initially when the land is first allocated and later on if the best use of the land changes?

2. How do you calculate the value of the land and separate this from the value of the capital on the land in practice? I understand that in principle you want to extract from the user of the land the rent they get from the land, but how do you measure this? To give an example, suppose I run a business on a plot of land, and nobody else is able to use the land as effectively as I am. How do you discover what the land is worth to me?

A pretty interesting article about the failures of the current tax system, and how taxing the data that tech companies extract could be used as a way to replace some of the revenue of that failed tax system. What are your guys' thoughts?

Taxing Data, by Omri Marian

I'm thinking how Japan, Taiwan, and others had some sort of LVT which didn't prevent their industrial capital to growing to a terrifying degree.

For example in Japan, what we saw in 80s, was that financial capital was absolutely dominated and domesticated by industrial capital. (Financial capital coup happened later, but still)

However, wouldn't this mean that only export oriented industrial states would benefit from Georgism?

For example, how would LVT have affected Russian Empire? Would it "balance" its development horizontally?

I noticed again some confusion about the terminology used among georgists. When georgists talk about land they generally refer to the land/ground/area we walk on, however the Georgist concept of (Economic) Land involves a lot of other things as well.

Economic Land is, basically, every natural resource that exists in this world. Capital, on the other hand, is Land that has been transformed into something that is of use to Man. These goods are in turn used as useful inputs for further production of more Capital.

So, in summary, some examples of Land are:

• A plot of land
• Radio waves
• Iron
• Fossil fuels
• The Moon

While some example of Capital are:

• Railways
• Roads
• Internet addresses
• Houses

I wanted to check the LVT rates of the places that have it, and I know Denmark is one of the major ones, so I checked their official websites.

https://www.vurderingsportalen.dk/ejerbolig/boligskat/nye-regler-fra-2024

If I am reading this right, they lowered the LVT by 2/3 earlier this year - is that right? Was it a big deal? Is it permanent? Are these just localities all updating their tax rates, or is there a centralized change?

Also, the previous rate was on average 2.7% of the land value (depending on locality) - how much do we think that is in terms of land rent?

Edit: Oh they're making the LVT payable monthly from your pay like an income tax - super interesting. Overall it seems like a better system with worse rates?

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is responsible for licensing all forms of broadcasting, including television, radio, and wireless communications like cellular phones, two-day radios, and even air traffic control.

To start a radio or television station, one must hold a FCC license for a given frequency. One could purchase an existing station and its license, which often times is the only way into a given market, especially in radio. These sales can run into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. You can see some recent examples at https://www.insideradio.com/features/deal_digest/deal-digest---march-28-2024/article_e1a416de-ecca-11ee-927b-673292d84233.html

The FCC does not allow bare license sales, so these sales actually include the station equipment and typically include studio facilities.

The electromagnetic spectrum behaves similar to land itself in that there is essentially a fixed supply of available frequencies due to natural interference issues associated with broadcasting. Yet the only fees the FCC charges are some relatively modest application fees. For example, a new FM station, or a major change to an existing one (i.e. to move its location into a new market) will only have a few thousand dollars in application fees:

https://recnet.com/fcc-fees

Should the federal government switch to charging a tax based on the value of the spectrum instead?

What do you all think of the Harberger tax as a way to efficiently allocate land? Owners of a piece of land determine the value of their land and pay taxes accordingly. But, they have to sell the land at whatever price they originally set if a buyer wants to pay that price. I like this idea because the land is likely to be allocated to whoever is willing to pay the most for it, and in principle to its most productive use.

Are there any textbooks you know of that mention Georgism or Land Value Taxation?

https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/members-official-twitter-handles

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In Singapore the Prime Ministers pay in part is variable based on some performance metric. If LVT is generally reflective of how desirable your region is should we incentivize politicians to nudge them towards continuing LVT increasing policy?

Dark Georgism: a subreddit to discuss and strategize investing in land rent

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkGeorgism/

"In California, state and local government revenues and spending were 60% higher than Texas on a per-resident basis. California has the country’s highest top marginal individual income tax rate, while Texas has no individual income tax (property taxes are higher in Texas though)." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gov-newsom-california-show-why-092613827.html

A major problem with much freight transportation is that if infrastructure:

• With trucking, the infrastructure (roads) are publicly built and maintained, which means the trucking industry is massively subsidized. I'm also pretty sure this is the main reason long-haul trucking even exists as an industry, considering how wildly inefficient it is compared to freight trains and cargo ships.
• With freight rail, the infrastructure (railroads) are generally privately built and maintained, which acts as a truly massive barrier to entry. This is why freight rail is a textbook example of natural monopolies. And a problem with monopolies is they're rent-seeking and economically inefficient.

Thus, a Georgist solution to the infrastructure problem for freight transportation is public infrastructure with private operators, and to charge these private operators along Georgist grounds:

• For trucking, charge them via 1) carbon taxes, 2) vehicle weight tax proportional to the 4th power of axle weight (damage to roads is proportional to the 4th power of axle load), and 3) congestion pricing.
• For freight rail, charge them via 1) carbon taxes, 2) congestion pricing, and 3) electricity consumption (on electrified lines).

In addition, LVT can justify and fund the construction of the infrastructure via the Henry George Theorem.

And you can probably imagine how to apply these principles to ships, barges, cargo ebikes, delivery vans, planes, etc.

I just read this article from the Henry George School of Social Science and they claim “Henry George’s remedies” would be “public housing” and to allocate 10,000 vacant lots to “qualified non-profit” community land trust operators, but I’m not aware of him supporting public housing, especially considering our country's first public housing project was in 1923. And part of the reason he supported a Single Tax is because he didn’t want a bunch of bureaucrats trying to figure out who qualifies for what let alone who qualifies as a “non-profit,” which “non-profits” are in themselves a tax concept.

Here was his actual proposal when he ran for NYC mayor....

But what do we propose to do about it? We propose, in the first place, as our platform indicates, to make the buildings cheaper by taking the tax off buildings. We propose to put that tax on land exclusive of improvements, so that a man who is holding land vacant will have to pay as much for it as if he was using it, just upon the same principle that a man who goes to a hotel and hires a room and takes the key and goes away would have to pay as much for it as if he occupied the room and slept in it. In that way we propose to drive out the dog in the manger who is holding from you what he will not use himself. We propose in that way to remove this barrier and open the land to the use of labor in putting up buildings for the accommodation of the people of the city. (applause) I am called a Socialist. I am really an individualist. I believe that every individual man ought to have an individual wife, and is entitled to an individual home. (applause) I think it is monstrous, such a state of society as exists in this city. Why, the children, thousands and thousands, have no place to play. It is a crime for them to play ball in the only place in which they can play ball. It is an offence for them to fly their kites. The children of the rich can go up to Central Park, or out into the country in the summer time; but the children of the poor, for them there is no playground in the city but the streets; it is some charity excursion which takes them out for a day, only to return them again to the same sweltering condition. There is no good reason whatever why every citizen of New York should not have his own separate house and home; and the aim of this movement is to secure it. We hold that the land belongs to the entire people. We hold that the value of the land of this city, by reason of the presence of this great population, belongs to us to apply to the welfare of the people. Everyone should be entitled to share in it.

It should be for the use of the whole people, and for the beautifying and adornment of the city, for providing public accommodations, playgrounds, schools, and facilities for education and recreation. Why, here is this building in which we are assembled, the Cooper Institute; its superintendent told me only a little while ago they accommodated only about one tenth of the young people who are flocking here to get an education to enable them to make a livelihood. Instead of relying upon the beneficence of individuals, we, the people of New York, ought to furnish the institutions ourselves. We ought to have in this city of New York twenty such institutions as this. What the platform aims at is the taking for the use of the people all that value and benefit which result from social growth. We believe that the railroads of this city ought to be taken properly and legally by the people and run for the benefit of the people of New York. (applause) Why should it not be so? Any individual putting up a big building, such as the Norse building, the Cyrus Field building, the Western Union building, puts in an elevator. But he does not put in that elevator a man with a bell-punch strung around his neck to collect fares. He gains the advantage in the increased value of his building. So we could take their railroads and run them. We could take those railroads and run them free, let everybody ride who would, and we could pay for it - out of the increased value of the people’s property in consequence. These are but steps, but the aim of this movement, and this is its significance, is the assertion of the equal rights of man—the assertion of his equal and inalienable right to life and to all the elements that the Creator has furnished for the maintenance of that life.

I at least quote the man when I critique him rather than pretend to defend him as I distort his views for my own.