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".

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

ever read Henry George?

Your land system is pretty good. The bureaucratic aspects would be problematic, but could be overcome if it was implemented properly.
I think a tax on land site values might work better, for reasons of allocation, as pointed out above. The government tends to get "politicized", for obvious reasons.

that article on "market socialism" got me thinking that what we have in the US is essentially the opposite - "centrally planned capitalism" - the worst of both worlds... unless you are one of the planners. (banks, large land holding families, etc... the true elite)

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

You say that they must be responsible with their budget as they have no way of collecting more money.

Can't they just increase the rent?

[mathemajician.livejournal.com]

Ops, I too thought that the state owned all the land... in which case they can't just randomly increase the rent.

So, my question then is. Would the government make enough money? I think not.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reference to Henry George. What do mainstream economists think of his theories?

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

...most have tried to bury him for over 100 years, because no one has ever found a way to counter him successfully.

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.

[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.