What difference does that make?
Good, you’ve come a long way. Now you just need to realize that providing capital is a service. I rented $140k from someone so that I could own my house. I am very appreciative of that, so I am willing to pay 4% per year. The person renting me that money profits, and I’m okay with that because I benefit. That person may actually be doing more “work” than the kid that rented me a surfboard. The two services are the same, and both generate profit.
Keep in mind that if the person renting me money wanted 8% I would have kept renting an apartment instead, in which case he’d make zero profit. What that means is that the two of us have to come to an agreement, by which he gets profit, and I get a house.
What you’ve done is tried to demonize the person that rents cash, while making the kid that rents me a surfboard a hero. It’s entirely possible that kid stole the boards and doesn’t pay any taxes, but for some reason you view that as “earned income” worthy of our respect.
Okay, now realize that owning things is actually a lot of work (look up depreciation). Then realize that what you’re describing is what most people call retirement, but you’re probably okay with that. On a side note, you’d be a lot happier if you stopped worrying about how other people live.
So then taxes are a tax on profits, which means taxes are a tax on labour!!!
It’s a thought experiment: you said the value of land is what the market will bear.
Well, what if I own all the land?
What is the value of land, then?
…
The point is that markets aren’t impersonal, objective measuring devices. They’re created by people. And because they’re created by people, the rules are more fair to some people than to others.
It’s a thought experiment, the point of which is that all taxes are ultimately paid by people doing work. Think of it this way: suppose everyone owned his or her own land, and everyone paid 25% of all income in tax. Then one day William the Space Alien arrives, and claims all the Earth by right of conquest. He charges rent, which comes out to 50% of the world’s income. But being a generous alien, he takes over the payment of all taxes everyone used to have to pay.
So who is really paying the taxes? Aren’t we still paying the taxes, plus the extra 25% that William gets to keep?
But the landlord doesn’t guarantee a place to live. He guarantees you can’t live there, unless you pay him.
I said in order to live, you must live somewhere. Lots of people live without knowing where they’ll sleep at night. But nevertheless, they will sleep somewhere.
I don’t insist on it; it’s just easier.
I don’t believe in a Creator. “Inalienable rights” is too vague a term for me to say whether I believe in them or not. I do prefer to protect the kinds of rights the ACLU fights for, but does that make them “inalienable”? Not so sure about that.
Not necessarily, as I have pointed out upthread. And there is some “work” of dubious value to anyone, and some that is wildly overcompensated.
When you talk about somebody doing something to earn land, what is it they did to earn it? Did they raise it from the sea, or did they seize it, by taking it from the people who were there before?
What is the difference between a pharaoh or an emperor or a king who charges his subjects tax, and one who charges his subjects rent?
Isn’t the end result the same: the subjects/tenants do the work, and the ruler/landlord reaps the benefits?
Double post.
Vast amounts of the USA were settled by homesteaders.
You bet your life you could improve and live on the land for at least 20 years. If you did, it was yours to keep.
Yep, at some point it was just claimed.
I knew this thread would go there: the OP was deeply flawed, whereas the issue of land ownership is actually a debateable topic.
Personally I think it works as fairly as any system could.
If you just dished out the land to every citizen then many would not be happy as not all land/locations are equal. Plus many people would sell their land for the necessities of life. You’d end up with a situation much like today if you let people trade land, and much worse than today otherwise.
And the situation today is not so bad.
I’m sure the vast majority of people that own property now either bought it themselves or are decendants of people who did (or, in the case of the US, land was fairly allocated by the government).
You won’t find many cases of land being passed down since it was last seized (which in the case of the UK was about a millenia ago).
Property falls apart. Land may lose all value as agriculture becomes less popular and former towns become backwaters. There’s the turmoil of the many wars that have taken place.
And, more importantly, eventually there’s always a generation that pisses away the inheritance on wine, women, song and sideburn combs.
That’s why most wealthy families are either self made, or can point to a recent ancestor who came to America / Europe / wherever, with sod all.
And it’s at this point where your thought experiment completely divorces itself from reality. There is no single omnipotent, omnipresent landowner in the real world. Even in the time of kings and pharaohs people could still move to find a more equitable place to live. Also you’re assuming that ALL laborers are renters and ALL non-laborers are owners. There is a middle class that both labors and owns.
And your point is that markets are unfair to a vast majority, which is just plain wrong.
Taxes don’t guarantee you a place to live. I work. I pay taxes. Where’s my free house? You think if we get rid of rich landowners who only own and don’t labor (false) that somehow housing will just miraculously sprout out of the ground? What if I don’t like where I live? What if I want to live by the beach? Does my right to live extend to a right to own my own land extend to where to own that land?
Of course he’s not going to give you a guarantee unless you pay him. That’s because the guarantee has VALUE
They can sleep wherever they want. They’re not GUARANTEED a place to sleep though. That security in knowing is why people pay rent. I can’t believe that you still won’t acknowledge this.
Nobody expresses rent as a % of income. The idea that rent can be expressed as a fix % of income is stupid. Unemployed people the world over would flock to a land that charges 50% of income as rent. Nobody would work. They would just flop for free.
My parents own a couple house as as far as I know, they didn’t rape any natives or build it on the back of slaves. They live in a subdivision - none of whom I believe did so either. That subdivision is identical to thousands of other subdivisions, none of the owners did any raping or killing or enslaving to get their land.
You want to know who did? People who DIDN’T respect the idea that land can be owned, and to live there you have to pay rent. Asshole conquerors came over to a land. They wanted that land and didn’t want to pay any rent to the people living there. They killed, and pillaged their way until they became owners because fuck rent. Renting is a tax on their labor. They’ve got all this labor they want to exercise. They want to plant tobacco and corn and the asshole landowners won’t let them do so without paying them. Well these virtuous laborers would rather cast off the yokes of the landowners and take the land that’s rightfully theirs. What an awesome system. That is truly the enlightened ideology.
I’m talking about going to a real estate agent, finding a house, and paying money for that house. I’m talking about going to a plot of land and saying “I’m going to sink millions of dollars into this plot and build an apartment building. Then, instead of just me living on this plot of land, tens, if not hundreds of people can live here. That will increase the value of this plot of land.” I’m talking about a farmer saying “Well I’ve got way too much land here for me to till. I’ll see if anyone wants to pay me rent for this land so they can till the parts that I can’t by myself.” etc.
Are you asking rhetorically or in ernest? What’s the difference between paying taxes to a despot and a democracy? If you can’t tell the difference between a landlord and a government, I don’t know how we can have a resolution to this thread. Conflating the two is intellectually dishonest.
If this is the extent you wish to analogize things without being honest with yourself about the mechanisms and motivations that differentiate the two, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Bwahahahaha…you are hilarious!
Wait…you weren’t joking?
Yet you implicitly recognize their right to own that land and sell it to others because they sold it to someone who sold it to someone who sold it to someone who sold it to your parents. And you consider that legitimate.
You object that this was something that happened before you or your parents were born, and thus we have to just deal with the reality of today. But that goes both ways. No one should be able to live the life of Riley and have people wait on them hand and foot and supply their every need when they don’t work for anything and never have worked for anything. And there certainly are families that directly passed inheritance down from conquering, pillaging, enslaving–and their descendants are still rich today as a direct consequence.
I can’t believe we’re having THIS fucking conversation. :smack:
Why would it go both ways? Time marches forward. What you’re proposing is that the possibilities of the past trump the realities of today. That the house that I live in right now has to be taken from me - to be redistributed for someone else’s ancestor’s crimes. That all transactions if traced back to a single misdeed are null and void. Like I said above - naive, selfish, and dumb.
You seem to misunderstand what I mean by “both ways”. You want the benefits of that conquering to be carried forth to you and your parents, but no negative consequences. Saying it’s water under the bridge, but it was still legitimately theirs to sell to people who sold to people who (etc. down the line) sold to your parents, is inconsistent in the extreme and mighty convenient for you. Why shouldn’t the descendants of the conquered have as much a claim as the descendants of the conquerors? Unless you explicitly recognize the right of conquest, which is what you seem to be doing even if you resist that claim.
I am not saying, just to be clear, that we can or should dig back into time and sort all of this out plot by plot. What I am saying is that the entire concept of private land ownership should be scrapped.
I can’t believe in inalienable rights, because tyrannies, in the past, have actually alienated damn near every one on the list. “Rights” are simply interests, like any others, but which have enough defenders as to be difficult to be infringed upon. The intrinsic “right” to own a gun is the same in the U.S. today as it was in Japan in the 1600’s. Here, the right is actively defended. There…it wasn’t. “Inalienable” is a philosophical term, but has no practical meaning. It’s like the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” It was a declaration, but not in any way “universal.”
Amazing, innit? (But…ah…which way, exactly, are you rejecting it? What’s your viewpoint here? No matter how obvious it may be, someone here is gonna disagree with it.)
Wait a second, what about an African American, or American Indian? Their ancestors obviously didn’t pillage the land from someone, so is your objection only towards white males? A trend I’ve noticed in a lot of your posts.
I’m Canadian and my ancestors are Scottish, would it be okay if I owned land in the US and got rich? Who did my ancestors hurt?
I’m neither a descendent of the conquered nor of the the conquerers. Neither are my parents. Neither are millions of people who currently own land in the US. Should our collective TRILLIONS of dollars invested in real estate be scrapped so you can assuage your white guilt?
You want to scrap it, but not for any practical purposes as it pertains to the here and now though. It’s solely based on an argument founded on actions that happened hundreds of years ago. What I find objectionable is that for justice to be served to the few undeserving trust fund babies, you’re saying that it’s somehow more “fair” that the trillions of innocent homeowners have invested into their land needs to be wiped off the record.
It’s not only for justice or even primarily for justice. That was really more of an illustration that there is no reasonable way to ascribe private ownership to land. It is intrinsically a proposition just as bizarre and wrongheaded as owning sections of the atmosphere, except that we have become used to it.
Why can’t we own sections of the atmosphere? I’d rather my neighbour didn’t build a cantilevered deck that extended over my backyard. You might also reconsider flying your light aircraft over the White House, or in proximity to a nuclear power plant.