Political Systems
Sep. 23rd, 2003 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslhonest 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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-09 01:59 pm (UTC)Mason Gaffney has a good book on this called "The Corruption of Economics".
The best attack on him is a sort of orthogonal one first raised by Lysander Spooner - that with control of the currency by fractional reserve banking, most of the land ends up in the hands of the banks anyway, so currency reform is the primary reform.