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Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Thursday April 28, 2022 @08:49PM (#31200069)
A shopping center without parking is almost always less valuable than one with parking.

Yet, Georgists think that a shopping center without parking, one with parking, and a parking lot should all be taxed the same.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by colinmhayes on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:33PM (#31200356)
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.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:39PM (#31200399)
My point is that parking lots can easily be the best use.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by imtringued on Friday April 29, 2022 @04:27AM (#31202753)
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!
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Friday April 29, 2022 @07:56PM (#31211959)
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.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by colinmhayes on Thursday April 28, 2022 @09:46PM (#31200439)
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.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Friday April 29, 2022 @07:46PM (#31211894)
> 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.”

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by colinmhayes on Friday April 29, 2022 @08:36PM (#31212229)
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.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Monday May 02, 2022 @02:02PM (#31238562)
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.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by colinmhayes on Monday May 02, 2022 @02:40PM (#31239080)
If a shopping center needs more parking and doesn't want to pay more LVT they can build a parking garage. That way the land next door can be used more productively. If building the garage is too expensive then the land was never that valuable to begin with and they can afford the lvt.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Monday May 02, 2022 @06:15PM (#31241721)
Why would they do that?

You've already stated that an essential part of your plan is eliminating parking lots.

You think that a world without parking lots, a world where people mostly carry stuff and otherwise rely on delivery services, is best. Aren't you going to at least followup with "people buy too much stuff anyway, so shopping centers that sell less are better."?

Surely you can defend your vision instead of just giving up when someone summarizes it.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by colinmhayes on Monday May 02, 2022 @06:31PM (#31241905)
In the end my vision doesn't matter. If you can agree that land speculation is bad you can agree that LVT is good. People should not make money for owning empty land that they do nothing with, it's really that simple.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by anamax on Tuesday May 03, 2022 @09:57PM (#31255936)
> If you can agree that land speculation is bad you can agree that LVT is good.

Why should I agree with something that is so clearly false?

Speculation is betting on a better tomorrow. That's clearly a social good.

> People should not make money for owning empty land that they do nothing with, it's really that simple.

Is it?

Suppose that I like looking at trees. (When a govt does that, it's called greenspace, parkland, etc, and everyone says how great it is. Feel free to argue that Central Park should be covered with high rises.)

Or, I'm waiting for Disneyland to be finished so I can put up a hotel if it pans out.

There are lots of great reasons to "do nothing" with land.

Note that Disneyland is an interesting case that disproves one of your core assumptions, namely that "the public" is responsible for the value of land, therefore it should get all of the "rent". "The public" in all of the nearby cities did just as much as "the public" in Anaheim, yet somehow the area around Disneyland is worth far more than pretty much any place in those cities. The public was, as is often the case, irrelevant.

Disneyland isn't an exception in this respect - I picked it because it's so blatant.

Let's come back to an essential point - why should your preferences regarding other people's property matter? Especially since pretty much every detail that you've used to support your position is wrong.

And it's not just the little details.

For example, you seem to think that efficiency is a goal. It's not. It's a tool. (Of course, your definition of "efficiency" is flawed.)

I get that you want to live in a cramped dysfunctional monoculture, but the rest of us don't. (I brought back monoculture because that's what your policies encourage.) Moreover, such a system is actually less valuable, which is a curious result given your repeated rants about maximizing value.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by imtringued on Friday April 29, 2022 @04:24AM (#31202731)
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.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by throwaway4aday on Friday April 29, 2022 @09:21AM (#31204734)
> 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.

Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by brightly-salty on Friday April 29, 2022 @10:59AM (#31206010)
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.
Re:Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism by throwaway4aday on Friday April 29, 2022 @03:38PM (#31209739)
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.