Georgist thinking, as far as I understand, is that taxing total property value disincentivises investment in a way that is worse for society overall. Empty land is just a subcase of that.

That said, "everybody works but the vacant lot" is a Georgist slogan that has been seen on billboards before now: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47de-036a-a3d9...

I look forward to starving to death as I try to eat a luxury apartment complex

If you were hungry I’d show you compassion and feed you an empty parking lot.

Thank you sir

Huge problem over in the UK, its called land banking. The scarcity of affordable property combined with some silly planning laws mean that you can double your money if you buy land and simply sit on it for a decade.

Not just empty land. The 'little old Lady' who lived happily in her small house for decades, while everything else developed bigger. At one time her house fit in, but now the rest of the block is bigger buildings worth a lot more.

You decide if the above is good or bad.

I'm sure your intent was to express a hypothetical that this might not be a net good, but...

Something like 90% of boomers want to age in place (as opposed to moving in with family, or moving into some assisted living arrangement). This is a problem when that effectively locks up 40% of the housing stock.

Does this "little old lady" need a 1-acre lot for her gardening when she can barely walk to the end of it and back? Or could that lot be parceled up into 4 single-family homes, or dozens of apartment units?

Also: that small house will grow in value (along with the property taxes) until the value of the land almost entirely dominates. My parents are in one such situation -- anyone who would buy their house would assuredly tear it down to build something bigger.

The little old ladies I know keep healthy in their garden. It is a gym program for them. Yes, they are slower than younger adults, but they are still active in that garden.

How dare she live in a house she's been in her whole life when the government knows what's best!

I get that you’re basically right in technical terms. A nice condo development could meet all their physical needs in far less space. And we would all be better off as a society if that is what happened, if it could just spontaneously, voluntarily happen.

However it’s just not compatible with any concept of freedom, as understood by those people themselves. A lot of people have an expectation of fairness that they ought to be able to own a home of their choosing and stay in it until they’re ready to move (or dead). And they are sentimentally attached to their homes where they raised their children.

We in the West have a society whose framework is roughly aligned with that idea. We could change it, but it would require lots of other “the government knows best” policies, and ultimately the massive empowerment of police to enforce those “best practices” when people object. Even one would agree with the outcomes in housing policy, it would be pretty risky to create that kind of totalitarian situation in general, because we might not like the other “most efficient best practices.”

The taxes can be delayed until the property is sold. This still disincentivises using land as investment but works fine for people who just don't want to move.

Does little old lady own her house? If yes, what's the problem with taxing the increase in value of her property caused by the environment becoming more desirable? All in all she's neither losing nor gaining anything.

She probably doesn't have much money. She might, but she might only have social security which wouldn't provide enough to pay those taxes

As others have mentioned, it’s quite easy to structure a land value tax to avoid kicking little old ladies out of their homes. You are arguing against a strawman.

Even if a plot of land isn't literally empty, the ideal behind a land value tax is that it incentivizes maximal utilization of land.

In Oakland at 51st and Broadway there was 1/2 a city block that was empty. For almost 40 years (probably more, it was derelict when I got there in in 1980). A few years ago someone built a 5 story apt building on the land.

It always seemed crazy to me that nothing was done on that very valuable corner for so long.

There are other examples.

And if I know the Bay Area, 47 people with pitchforks came to the community meeting where that development was being considered for approval, screaming about how “their neighborhood” was now being “overrun by gentrifiers,” right?

Anecdotally, I live in corktown (a neighborhood right next to downtown), and while it’s overall a nice place to live and somewhat walkable. There are vacant lots everywhere. Some are totally fenced off and some used as free parking.

I’m new to town but everyone else tells me that the area has massively improved in the last 5 years. Those lots are wasted potential.

What’s currently stopping people from developing them though? Detroit is a huge city and its population has largely vacated to the suburbs. Maybe they havent been developed because the current demand is already being met.

Sure, that's possible. Or maybe Mr. Parking Lot Owner just likes the look of parking lots. But the key point is that today, improving the land is disincentivized because it would increase the owner's tax burden. So we don't know exactly what people would do with all those empty lots if improving them wasn't disincentivized.

Yes, downtown Detroit is a wasteland of parking lots. Some incredibly beautiful old buildings have been demolished and turned into vacant lots, it's a real shame. Downtown really needs more development and I think this is a great way to force the issue. When I lived downtown, I had to drive 20 minutes to the suburbs for groceries. And now I have a house in the suburbs instead of Detroit because of that.

Think of that closed-down K-Mart that's been empty for 25 years on the main shopping drag in a medium-sized town. There's probably 25,000 of those across the USA.

it is specifically in Detroit, they have lots of empty lots as businesses fled the city proper for the suburbs, now as the city is bouncing back there is an incentive to just hold onto empty lots so that new buildings around you increase the value of your land.