Political Systems

[gusl]

honest intelligent socialists do exist:
Cosma Shalizi on Market Socialism


My dreamed-up system: "State Owns Some of the Land - Rent as the Only Tax"
Advantages:

* Unlike other taxes, it does not disincent healthy economic activity, such as trading (sales tax, transaction taxes, income tax), working (income tax), investing in good business (capital gains tax).

* If the state owns the land, it even doesn't infringe on liberty by collecting the rent.

* It must be responsible with its budget, since it has no way of collecting more money.

One possible objection: so if the state is just another real-estate corporation, what is the incentive for them to serve us?

My response: what is the incentive they have to serve us now?

As far as a state is needed, I am (almost) convinced that this would be a good way to finance it.

Comments

[spotboy.livejournal.com]

So the pressure groups that forbid govt investment in cigarette companys or polluters or require "genetically modified foods" to have labels (which hasn't passed yet in this country, but the products themselves are banned in most of europe) would simply be able to prevent land from being leased to them. May be the best system, but sounds pretty scary to me.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

would simply be able to prevent land from being leased to them

I don't understand. They pay rent like everybody else, if they want to live anywhere (or work, etc). In this sense, the govt acts like a normal landlord.

[spotboy.livejournal.com]

Except that if the govt owned all the land, and pressure was brought on them not to rent to gays, or christians or wikkans or competitors of Archers-Daniel-Midland, then there would be no one else to rent from. And even if it weren't expressly forbidden, can you imagine the paperwork nightmares and runarounds that groups without connections or power would face? How would the Greens or Libertarians rent office space? What newspaper would dare criticize the govt if the rent could just go up a bit more next year?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

ha. I did not say "all the land".

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

(Remember, I did not say "all the land".)

Interestingly also, the government would have an incentive for preventing such abuses. If they get a reputation for bullying their tenants like that, people won't want to rent from them as much, so their revenue will go down.