Comments on: Shifting the tax burden from buildings to land

By: Jeffery Smith

Jeffery Smith — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:37:49 +0000

Marcel, you make sense to me. Instead of taxes, what about land dues? (different in that eventually they’d be voluntary). There are positive externalities, society does generate a surplus, and when we fail to share it, we let the more grasping among us enjoy a free ride, which generates class and its attendant evils (not very anarchistic). If we want to be free, we really do have to share the worth of Mother Earth.

By: katie

katie — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 01:29:31 +0000

pardon my curiosity, Marcel Dubois, but would you say anarchism is more a product of age or of intelligence–if we consider only those two factors?

i mean no disrespect, but anarchism seems to me a choice at some distance from the mean of human behavior. so, perhaps i should consider it as a rare affect of personal, individual makeup.

By: Marcel Dubois

Marcel Dubois — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:55:14 +0000

Being an anarchist, I fail to understand why there are legitimate taxes at all. The current taxes are not so much dumb as mandatory; why would they bother being smart when an ounce of smartness will mostly destroy the current system?

By: Jeffery Smith

Jeffery Smith — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:49:10 +0000

Katie makes a lot of sense. It might pay to copy the campaigns where some degree of rent dividend now exists: a la Alaska’s oil dividend, Aspen CO’s housing assistance. PS; Thanks to whomever for posting the above.

By: katie

katie — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:07:49 +0000

Jeffrey Smith’s thesis is droll, almost swiftian and no more than a sketch; but still, it is worth thinking about.

now, i have several immediate objections: first, it still puts mammon at the center in his most innocent form, which is bookkeeping and ledger balancing; and second, it forgets that half the people are below average in intelligence (and in the states more than half are badly educated, mal-informed and medievally ignorant), and they will never ever accept his blithe trains of logic.

now it is easy to hear those libertarian strains of deus ex machina in the service of individualism in Mr. Smith’s thesis, but aside from the possibility that the numbers and the dynamics *might* work out into stable social harmony and equity; and even better, coding the tax machine to value nature, there is not even the barest suggestion of how to implement this utterly radical change in sourcing and flow rates, considering that all these decisions will be made by the ruling plutocrats.

better by far, to abjure logic and organize the masses *where they are and based in the ways they want to believe.*

what they believe in is luck, and in that they have been true to the reality of their class.