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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27717 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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This is.... Georgism???

No, it's just regular arbitrage. arbitrage would work the same Georgism or not. The whole point of Georgism, is that, if done perfectly, it only has distributional effects, it doesn't change the economic efficiency of the outcome. It is a pure transfer with no distortionary effects.

Ah, I have a very shallow model of Georgism.

Specifically I got it confused with the argument that it pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).

pushes low-value companies out of high-value land (as a pro).

If by 'value' you mean a market value people are willing to pay for, then that is true. But, this is a distributional effect. It's like how if we had let the plains Indians own all that prime farmland on the prairie, it could just be used by them to hunt buffalo, but if they had to pay a land tax, they could never afford it. Both outcomes are Pareto efficient, under certain extreme, frictionless, assumptions. However, the distributional consequences are very different, with the land owners rents being totally redistributed to the tax collecting government and these distributional consequences determine what is produced, it's just both outcomes are as economically efficient.

But, this is a distributional effect. It's like how if we had let the plains Indians own all that prime farmland on the prairie, it could just be used by them to hunt buffalo, but if they had to pay a land tax, they could never afford it.

You know, I think you just made one of the most powerful arguments against Georgism I've seen. At least for leftists that I've seen that support it.

What would giving native's back their land matter if the land value was all taxed away? I guess if they were their own nations that didn't have to share with white people it would be different, but you can't get to that scenario now without ethnically cleansing white people or allowing minority rule by the natives. Both things allegedly the worst crimes imaginable for the left if white people do them, but somehow righteous if 'indigenous' people do it.

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