[yaacov]

Georgism makes a distinction between Capital (value produced by labor) and Land (value that existed before humans showed up). Rewarding owners of capital incentives people to make more, but rewarding owners of land benefits nobody other than the landowner.

[Natsu]

> value that existed before humans showed up

I'm not sure that meshes with the way it's actually described in the article. They give examples of a small piece of land worth $2M and then another plot in a different location that's worth far less, purely due to proximity to other improvements on the land (i.e. being prime real estate in a city) rather than something inherent to the land itself (e.g. fertility/use for growing crops).

And even then, something like fertility isn't really all natural any longer, given how it's impacted by so many farming practices (fertilization, tilling/no-till, crop rotation/nitrogen fixing crops, etc.).

Resource extraction (e.g. oil) seems a lot closer, though the actual labor of it vs. the resources of it are another thing. I do see more reason there why the benefit ought to be largely public--and to some extent it is in, e.g., Alaska via the Alaska Permanent Fund.

But I think that labor, improvements and whatever the intrinsic value might be are a lot more tied together than seems to be accounted for by the theory. Otherwise why is the intrinsic value of Manhattan's land not measured in some number of beads, with everything else being due to improvements (including those made by neighbors)? And yes, I do realize that beads actually were money for a time due to a lack of actual currency, but still.

[yonran]

You’re right. When Henry George introduced the land value tax, he made it clear that in urban areas he wished to capture the value which is created by the community while the landowner sits and collects increasing rents, not value that existed naturally (https://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp19.htm):

> All these advantages attach to the land. On this land — and no other — they can be utilized. For here is the center of population: the focus of exchange, the marketplace, the workshop of industry. Density of population has given this land productive power equivalent to multiplying its original fertility a thousandfold.… The most valuable lands on earth, those with the highest rent, are not those with the highest natural fertility. Rather, they are lands given a greater usefulness by population density.

[whakim]

That seems like a bit of a murky distinction, though, right? Taxing land disincentives economic activity a large component of which is in the land value (running a parking garage or hotel in downtown Manhattan, or a farm in a fertile region, etc.) but incentivizes other types of economic activity.

[abathur]

This is roughly the point, though.

It doesn't _absolutely_ disincentivize these things unless they are operating at a loss. It certainly disincentivizes "economic activity" like opening an at-grade parking lot in a bustling city-center in order to minimize the property tax you pay while the land appreciates in value more than it disincentivizes opening a parking garage there (assuming there's actually enough parking demand to pay to build and maintain).

(I don't entirely disagree with you--it seems like this would shunt some investment away from investments that need expensive land. It's less clear to me whether that is good, neutral, or bad.)

[sooheon]

Read this to understand the distinction: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

George goes to great lengths to distinguish these factors of production. They are fundamentally different.

[awakeasleep]

Do you think its murkier than things in life are, usually? Or are you comparing it to an abstraction in code.