Taxing people for doing good things disincentivizes people from doing good things. Taxes shouldn't be a punishment for being successful. Georgists think real estate should be taxes based off the unimproved value of the land, what the owners do with the land is up to them, but if they don't use it well their taxes will put them underwater and someone else will make better use of it.
Okay, let's assume land is expensive and you do need the parking lots. Georgism just tells you, please use the land more efficiently. Underground parking or a multi story garage become profitable as they reduce the amount of land being used and therefore reduces land value taxes you have to pay. Ethical tax avoidance!
You do know that you're substituting expensive parking for cheap, right?
However, you are demonstrating that Georgist "efficient land use" is not particularly desirable. (Moreover, "efficient" land use is rarely that important.)
Georgism does push towards a monoculture and a particularly horrible one at that.
For example, Georgism punishes someone who puts some open space between buildings, even though open-space is clearly a good thing.
As I wrote previous, Georgists confuse having an equation that they can "optimize" with having a useful idea on how to allocate resources in the real world.
Yes, Georgism lets you do some calculations, but that doesn't imply that doing those calculations is worthwhile. (This is a problem with economics as a field.)
And, no, the "witticisms" don't make your case. They actually argue that Georgists are dangerous fools.
If parking lots are the best use the LVT will be low enough to be negligible. If the LVT is causing the owner to not be able to afford parking lots the area needs more buildings and less parking lots, even if that's just a parking structure.
> If the LVT is causing the owner to not be able to afford parking lots the area needs more buildings and less parking lots, even if that's just a parking structure.
In what universe is "fewer parking lots" the solution to "not enough parking lots"?
As Orwell wrote, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
I mean tbh we just have a paradigm difference. IMO there is no such thing as not enough parking lots. They're wasteful eyesores that encourage a horrible externality.
And yet, shopping centers with parking lots do more business than shopping centers without parking.
You may like a life where you're dependent on delivery services for anything you can't carry to where it needs to go but the rest of us aren't willing to wear that hair shirt.
You mean Georgists think that taxes on all of those should be $0? Yes, that is the entire point of Georgism, only the land is taxed because land can be used for anything and if the land value is higher than the shopping center can afford, then it means people want something more valuable than a shopping center there.
I think this is the key issue that gets glossed over. Who decides the land value? How is that decision arrived at? Is it a purely bureaucratic process where the community has no say? Is it set at a federal level where it will likely be completely disconnected from the reality of a particular municipality?
A lot would hinge on the answers to these questions and I'd take a bet that if this were ever implemented it would be done wrong and would result in many unforeseen negative outcomes.
I think we should stop trying to revive outdated 19th century economic theory and actually put in some work to create a modern one that accounts for the age we live in.
Common solutions include appraisal (like property taxes are today) or a Vickrey auction, where we auction off the land, and the first place bidder gets it at the price of the second bid.
Ok, but my question was for more detail on how such an appraisal would work and then what the second order effects would be. For something this big we need to think through several generations worth of downstream consequences. We already have many examples of how such revolutionary economic changes can lead to disaster and mass death when people get caught up with the spirit of the idea and don't sit down and do the hard math to work out all of the details ahead of time.