[pytester]

It will discourage hoarding. Unproductively using land in high value locations that are growing is currently rewarded - with asset appreciation.

If it is discouraged - with taxation, that land will be yielded to more productive use.

Nobody creates land but somebody gets to "tax" it. Either we can let that revenue stream fill up government coffers or it can go into private pockets. It's our decision.

[svantana]

> Nobody creates land but somebody gets to "tax" it.

Well put. If I suggested privatising air and that you needed to pay the owner to breathe it, that would be seen as ridiculous, and rightly so. Meanwhile, land is an equally natural resource and equally essential to human life, but private land is just accepted as "the way it is".

[esotericn]

This isn't a reasonable comparison because air is almost completely fungible; it's automatically redistributed throughout Earth by the magic of physics. Not only that, it's not scarce.

People in fact do pay for 'special' air in the form of air purifiers, air conditioning, heating, etc.

Land is both scarce and unsubstitutable.