Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (448)

Sobers on KLN 447:

[agreeing with the KLN]"The logical progression of land value tax is to enact government control over the whole economy"

And you don't think that has happened already? The history of the 20th century (and continuing today) is that when you give the State power over something at some point they will abuse that power. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after a period of time, but abuse always follows, often of an extreme nature.

Private ownership of land that the State cannot remove is a huge bulwark against tyranny - remove it at your peril.

That's circular and contradictory non-logic, so it's difficult to know where to start. So let's start with the last statement and write down what we know:

1. Land ownership and the existence of a State are synonymous, you can't have one without the other. So the statement is as fatuous as saying "Universal suffrage is a huge bulwark against state tyranny". It was the state (i.e. society as a whole) which decided that we'd have universal suffrage in the first place.

2. Envisage the following scenarios:

- The Normans invade England. "Hey Anglo-Saxons! We are here to liberate you from the tyranny of common ownership of land, we are going to parcel it up and anoint ourselves as land owners. As the defeated country, you can call us Sir and pay us rent! That's your best bulwark against state tyranny!"

- The Europeans invade North America: "Hey Native Americans! we are here to liberate you from the tyranny of sharing nature's bounty, we are going to parcel up the land and decide who owns what. As sub-humans, you can bugger off to ever dwindling reservations! That's your best bulwark against state tyranny!"

- Local councils start large scale council house building in the 1920s and 1930s, offering decent housing to working and middle class families for a fraction of what they are paying private landlords. Working and middle class families: "We want none of your truck! Us paying half our wages in rent is our landlords' best bulwark against state tyranny!"

Doesn't seem very plausible does it?

3. Public spending creates and sustains location values, and some locations benefit a lot and some not at all. So funding public services by levying a charge on those sites which benefit most from public spending is fair as between different landowners and is of course based on the explicit assumption that land is privately owned. LVT and land ownership go hand in hand. To say that LVT negates the existence of private landownership is nonsense.

4. LVT is largely an economic thing. so let's look at economic tyranny. Land owners benefit from public services; public services cost money; so taxes have to be levied to fund them. It is clearly state tyranny if one group (workers, businesses and consumers) are paying all the taxes to fund public services and the benefits all accrue to a different group (land owners). The fact that half the population are in both categories (i.e. working owner-occupiers) detracts nothing from this point - people moan about all the tax they pay but celebrate rising house prices. Far better to cut out the middleman.

5. Implicit in Sobers' claim is the notion that land-owners are protected from 'state tyranny', but what about tenants? Are your children who start their first job and rent somewhere somehow less deserving of protection against state tyranny than you are? Do landlords selflessly pass on the protection from state tyranny to their tenants? Nope, they charge them full whack for the privilege of accessing public services, with the state (courts, bailiffs) acting as enforcers on their behalf.

6. The private/personal right to exclusive occupation of specific land and buildings is of course fundamental to a modern capitalist society. There is a huge net benefit to it. But is that net benefit fairly distributed? Clearly not. Tenants are paying twice; once in tax and again in rent. That is exactly the same tyranny as perpetrated by the Normans, it's the same iron first but in a velvet glove.

7. There is a Laffer Curve of Freedom. When slavery and serfdom (hitherto enforced by the State) were abolished, that reduced the freedom of land/serf owners and slave owners, but increased the freedom of former serfs and slaves. Overall, it was an increase in freedom/reduction in state tyranny.

When the right to vote was extend to non-landowners in the UK in 1918 (about one-third of men and two-thirds of women didn't have the vote until then) that increased the freedom of all the newly enfranchised to take part in democratic decision making. By definition, it reduced the powers/freedom of landowners (mainly men) to decide government policy. Overall, it was an increase in freedom/reduction in state tyranny.

Similarly, while funding public services out of levies on land values instead of taxes on output and earnings reduces the freedom of landowners (the freedom to exploit workers and businesses twice over), it increases the economic freedom of a far larger group. Our median voters - working owner-occupiers - are net winners as their tax bills will fall and disposable incomes will increase. So overall, a win for economic freedom and reduction in state economic tyranny (forced transfers of wealth from a large group of 'hard working families' to a small group of what are effectively welfare claimants).

And so on.
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The first statement shows a complete lack of grasp of history.

- Over the centuries, western European governments have gradually relinquished control. Until the 18th or 19th centuries, minor crimes, primarily those against landowners such as trespass or poaching, were routinely punishable by death. The death penalty is now more or less a thing of the past in developed countries (the USA is an outlier).

- In the 1914-18 war, politicians and generals thought little of sending tens of thousands of men to die in a single machine gun battle. They were a lot less callous in the 1939-45 war, politicians and generals cared a lot about the casualty rate. Conscription and National Service have been phased out in most countries.

- Compared to the horrors of the past, I can live with crap like the ban on smoking in pubs and them spying on our emails. It's not like I say anything in private emails that I don't say publicly on this here blog and the smoking ban is to a large extent tyranny of the non-smoking majority, not tyranny of the State.