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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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However as the area grows more populous the farmer realizes that his land would be more efficiently used for housing than for growing corn and he begins talking with a local developer to sell the land.

No, he didn't realize it would be more efficient, he realized it was worth more and wanted to cash in. People don't think in terms of efficiencies, they think in terms of values. Your example could have been from an economics textbook, which has a certain POV that is not relevant to the matter at hand, and does not reflect reality well enough to accept.

Taxation is theft. Theft is OK when enough people agree on it.

No, he didn't realize it would be more efficient, he realized it was worth more and wanted to cash in.

This is a distinction without a difference. The farmer might not be thinking in terms of efficiencies but the forces that make the land more efficiently used as housing are the same forces that make the price higher thus making it more attractive for the farmer to sell. You're also ignoring the primary point. It doesn't matter why the farmer wants to sell what matters is that it's his land not anyone else's so other people have no right to tell him how it can be used.

This is a distinction without a difference.

No it's not. The quality of life benefit that the gently-waving fields of corn provide to the local residents is real! It even gets priced in in the value of the neighbor's homes. It just doesn't get directly converted to the farmer's benefit unless he acts to cannibalize the benefit (by selling the cornfield to someone who will build something "worse" there). This is a problem with conflating increased price with higher efficiency/benefit - at least insofar as we want people to be incentivized to provide and/or do things that their neighbors like and/or enjoy.

I've accounted for this. If the current residents are enjoying so much benefit from the farmland that it's actually more efficient to leave it undeveloped then there will be a price at which scenario #2 can be cleared

Our entire system is based on price = efficiency. That’s the American system. While the farmer might not be a trained economists it’s still the entire basis of our system higher price = higher efficient use

(For some good you could say higher marginal efficiency; oxygen is super important but the marginal oxygen is worthless type arguments).

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