Topic: Average Land Rent - Free Land for the average person. - page 3. (Read 4350 times)

I like this explanation much better.  Simple, pragmatic, easy to understand and matches the physical world we live in.

But with Bitcoin they are just imaginary tokens like pokemon cards.  Land is what is required for life, food, and shelter.  Those that control the land can control ones life.  If you owned 1000 acres of Iowan farmland, you could lease the land for about $250 per acre.  Thus, you could be on the beach in California with $250,000 a year stipend.  Since land is scarce, you can survive by solely owning land.

Or it might be priced into your veggies - farming would produce a lot of O₂, and suck up a lot of CO₂.

Exactly.  If one lived on a lunar colony or orbital station one better believe someone would be charging for air.  Maybe it would be rolled in with your rent, maybe it would be simplified to a standard fee per person but air would be scarce and the delivery of air a service.

Sounds okay with me.

You know Russia's not communist anymore, right?

I don't know anything about all that complicated talk, but I do know something I like about communism. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_qm3Ym8-k

She could talk me into doing some redistributing...

You can't own labor. Thankfully, you don't have to in order to homestead something. You just have to be there first, and do something to mark your claim. It's the fact that you were there first that establishes your first, best claim.

Georgism is the flawed concept that everyone has a claim to all land, and therefore, when someone stakes a personal claim, they are taking from everyone else. The problem is, they don't have a claim to that land, because they were never there, they're not losing anything, because they never had it.

So what makes homesteading a better rule than Georgism?

The reason we own anything is not because of fundamental axioms or any other crazy stefan juju. It's because sometimes certain objects can not be used by two different people at the same time. If there is a single apple you and i can not both eat it. So assuming we would both like to eat it we must find a way of determining who gets to eat it and who does not. We could use violence but this tends to be costly so inorder to economize we invent rules. These rules comprise what we think of as property. So for example with the apple we may create a rule that says the person who planted the apple tree gets to decide who gets to eat it.

there is nothing philosophical about this, property is just a tool. if you have a bolt that needs to be loosened you use a tool called a wrench, if you have resources that need to be distributed equitably and non violently you use a tool called a property rule.

so then making land into property is the same thing. We all need a place to stand, we cant both stand in the same place at the same time so we need a way to determine who gets to stand in a given spot. If we dont want to be forced to rely on violence to settle the dispute than we ought to invent a property rule.

I just don't understand homesteading.  We start from the axiom that each individual owns himself, and therefore his labor, and therefore the products thereof.  This seems to lead clearly to the conclusion that land is  not ownable.

The homesteading idea would say if you "mix your labor with land" by mining 0.1% of an ore vein, you not only own the ore you mine, but also the 99.9% of the ore you didn't mine.  That makes no sense to me.  It's giving the someone control of not only the labor he's done there, but any future labor that's done there by anyone.

Land is no more free than bitcoins are. You have two means of acquiring bitcoins: mining, or buying. You have two means of acquiring land: first appropriation, or buying.

The means of first appropriation are analogous to mining bitcoins: You use your property (your body, tools, etc) to mark out the land as yours. This proves that you are the first appropriator, much like using your hashpower to form a block before the other miners do proves that you mined those coins first.

Air is scarce too.  There is more water (maybe even freshwater) on earth than air.  The mexican war stole most land in California from Mexico.  Most land was originally stolen from the Indians.

"Property is not distributed equally because people are different, some have high skills, work hard etc.. and some don`t."  Much of the farmland in the United States is leased to farmers.  The farmers that lease land are the most productive in the country, they are doing the hard work on land they don't even own.  Every plot of land could be leased.  The cities understand this that is why in some areas the property tax is so high.

"If you would redistribute goods absolutely equal among all humans now (which you`d have to do with force, which makes it unethical from the beginning), the next second the distribution would not be equal anymore - because people are not equal"  No goods would be redistributed, you have the right to your labor on the land you rent.  You are allowed to keep every kernel of corn you grow.

The average acre of land in Iowa is leased land were $252 in 2012. If all land was owned by the people the hard working farmer could lease the same land for far less than $252 an acre.  There would be more supply.  the worker gets more benefits.

Using the average land rent system, imho would not be a violent crime.  In fact the opposite, it is the only system that is fair to the workers and labor.  It does not redistribute goods.  There are 300,000,000 million citizens in the country, you are allowed to use your fair share of land, if you use more you can expect to pay a fee to compensate the other people that a force by violence to use less.

There have been complaints this is communism, This system does not confiscate people lands by death, it does not organize communes, it does not tell what to plant or how to plant. The rent rather than going to the land owner or government, would go to the median rent pool to be divided equally among all citizens. This would assure the people the land an the land under their feet is free unless you use too much or take the best land.

Russia and China had an extremely bad experience with trying to run farms top down.  Over 100 million people starved to death.  The system proposed is pure capitalism.   There will be more corn produced in Iowa, there will be more more wheat produced in North Dakota.  We probably could eliminate Section 8 housing and food stamps.

That's exactly what has happened.  Unowned land can be claimed by homesteading (your fair share).  Owned land can be claimed by voluntarily trading for it (pay a fee).

The differences you are advocating are the differences between capitalism and communism.

No.  bitcoins represent your labor and wealth.  Land is free.  Ever see a picture of teepees on the plains, did the indians pay rent to anyone.  What if some indian decided to claim all the best hunting grounds as his?  The tribe would not believe it.  We are not redistributing land, we are saying you can only use your fair share.  If you use more, you pay a fee.

LOL +1

Do me/us a big favor.  Just state that you are in favor of communism/a more refined version/a better style/etc etc etc.  But don't hide it behind another layer of words and phrases or try to deny that you simply propose communism.  That wastes valuable arguing time.

Air is not a "good", because it is not scarce. Land is.

You get ownership of land in the same way you get ownership of any other scarce good:
By original appropriation - being the first one to recognize it as a scarce good and mixing it with your hands`labor, i.e. going to antarctica and building fields or dwellings there.
By your own hands` labor (works rarely with land, except for maybe building an artificial island or so).
Or, the most common way, by voluntary transactions with other people.

How do you justify treating land any different than other property? It is not, it has a stock, a demand, and a price like any other.
Property is not distributed equally because people are different, some have high skills, work hard etc.. and some don`t.
If you would redistribute goods absolutely equal among all humans now (which you`d have to do with force, which makes it unethical from the beginning), the next second the distribution would not be equal anymore - because people are not equal.

Trying to treat them otherwise leads to the kind of violence we see all around us today.
Land taxes of any kind would be a violent crime, as are any other taxes or forceful redistribution of goods.

Some people have more Bitcoins than others. Should we redistribute those, to be more "fair"?