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Re:Self-Enforcing Protocols by frossie on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @05:31PM (#756479)
The property tax model is a deeply flawed idea because it is subject to a kind of DoS attack. If everybody valued their home at 50% of its FMV, the government would not be able to afford to buy everybody's home. Also, if everybody self-valued at say, 90% it would not be worth the government's hassle to buy everybody's home.

The pie model works because there are only 2 players.

The Greek antiquities thing works because there are probably only a few people that own priceless antiquities and the government is actually motivated to acquire more (because they would prefer they were in museums rather than private hands). So if everybody who owns antiquities self-priced them at 50% FMV, the government would probably be happy to snap them up.

The property tax application would not really work because there are 1-to-many players and the 1 player doesn't really want the item - repossession is only used as a threat/punishment.

Re:Self-Enforcing Protocols by run4yourlives on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @05:53PM (#756528)
>kind of DoS attack

DoS requires a single actor with a distributed source. If everyone tomorrow decided that gold was worthless, it would be worthless. People don't work like that though. For every person undervaluing their home, there will be people that will overvalue it to the market. It's in the homeowner's interests to have a low taxation rate but a high assessed value. (Like hell I'm buying your house 30% over what you publicly think it is worth).

There are two players, but only the owner is constant.

Re:Self-Enforcing Protocols by eru on Friday August 14, 2009 @04:00AM (#762584)
Or solve the problem of homes by not only giving the government the right to buy at the nominal price stated for tax reasons --- but the general public.