Monday, 1 June 2009

There are none so blind as those who don't want to see

See comments over at my Welfare Reform Minister Marksany.

My latest blogpost: There are none so blind as those who don't want to seeTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 23:16

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4 comments:

AntiCitizenOne said...

I agree with your comments.

Are you coming around to more my way of thinking?

i.e. PVT => CD + Core Gov.

I would describe property rights as currently untaxed externalities. It's basically the reason I thought libertarianism is unstable and thus unsustainable.

2 June 2009 at 10:14
Mark Wadsworth said...

AC1, the single-taxers used to strike me as 'way out there' but having thought about this long and hard, they're almost certainly right. But your formula is incorrect, it should read:

CD = LVT receipts minus Core Gov costs; the CD is just a way of distributing the surplus that the government generates in its capacity as a mutually-owned service provider.

2 June 2009 at 10:21
AntiCitizenOne said...

Yep I agree, I also think that the CD (don't like CBI) will keep Core Gov focussed on it's core duties. Also Time based taxes are a moral abomination and inversion of the state being owned by the people.

Property rights (the entitlement to exclude others and have monopoly access to) are the thing that lots of Libertarians have a blind spot on. They seem to think they should get basically subsidised for excluding others.

2 June 2009 at 10:28
Mark Wadsworth said...

AC1; let's focus on your phrase 'time-based taxes' (and we may find another point of agreement here), it is a fact that people pay more for houses that are near the shops, school, station, bus-stop etc.

Why? Because there is a trade off between paying a couple of hundred quid extra on your mortgage and spending more time travelling from A to B.

So the higher price you have to pay to live in a convenient location is in itself a 'time-based tax' (you pay somebody else for the right to spend more of your own time doing something productive and/or enjoyable), only the tax is collected by the landlord (or the vendor) rather than the State, on behalf of society in general.

2 June 2009 at 10:35

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