[RandomLensman]

Things having a price isn't same as profit maximizing on everything. People don't purely profit maximize.

Are you maximizing profit in your primary residence? You might derive pleasure from having a large garden instead of building an industrial plant of same sort there, for example, or not rent out rooms, or have more shirts than you need instead of investing those monies into a business.

[scld]

When you said generally desirable, I assumed you meant to the general public and society at large. Absent some other very convincing information, the price of a plot of land is going to be the best analogue for how much society values that land.

Obviously the private land owner (in general) would prefer that the cost of owning land was as near zero as possible so that they could use it how they saw fit, regardless of the opportunity cost to society. And that's how it spirals into the mess we have today.

[RandomLensman]

Why would it be most desirable for society if the only thing done with land was to maximize profit? Society also values museums, parks, etc. - but those are not a profit maximization things.

You keep bringing up price, but price and use of the land are not the same. A price (if transacted on) also only really speaks towards the parties involved, not society as a whole.

The mess we have today is not because we don't maximize profits from landownership enough.

[rocqua]

The mess we have is because landowners can squeeze the users of the land for all of their profit. Really what should be maximized is the productivity (in a broad sense) of the land.

Profit is a pretty good stand in for productivity, especially if you can't trivially extract rent.

[RandomLensman]

If landowners already maximize profit, why would you expect any change if you tax landowners in a way that encourages profit maximization from land? Or do you mean things like more industry and less housing? Smaller, high density and expensive housing instead of larger housing?

[rocqua]

Landowners can now maximize profits by renting it out and speculating on land value increase. They are getting value for free, at the expense of the renters and people who can't find land. They are nothing but a drag on society if they take this approach.

Note that a landlord who builds and maintains a nice house isn't freeloading and not part of the problem.

The problem to solve here is vacant lots, land speculation, and, slumlords. Anyone who makes their money off their land from it just being there, rather than by working on improving or using the land. Put differently, anyone who makes their money purely by virtue of people who have no other way to access land.

[RandomLensman]

Being a slumlord might be higher profit that other things - why encourage it in such situations?

Also, having nothing vacant at any moment in time will be quite constraining overall. Not sure pushing towards that is useful.