Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by imtringued 1519 days ago
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.
1 comments

> the land value

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I think we should stop trying to revive outdated 19th century economic theory and actually put in some work to create a modern one that accounts for the age we live in.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.