The Best Tax is a Tax on Land and Some of that Revenue should be Divided Equally to all Citizens

Pro makes a compelling case for LVT, however I will use my time to show that when you scratch a little deeper there are some unpleasant consequences lurking beneath the surface. The claim that 'Land' should be considered as 'ANY resource used to create wealth that exists regardless of whether labor or capital are applied to it' kind of robs any meaningful distinction from land, labor & capital, but for the sake of this argument I take it Pro meant 'ANY natural resource'. To avoid any confusion I will refer to LVT tax as 'Site tax' as this seems to be in keeping with Pro's argument. To put the argument in perspective I understand Pro to mean that the purpose for which the specific site is employed will not be factored into the calculation of the value of the site, and thus does not contribute to the tax derived from aforementioned value. The problem is this leaves us with one conclusion, we will need to have a flat tax on all land, so that the single mother will pay the same for her site (per square foot) as the multimillion dollar company would. Pro alludes to the difficulty in separating the value of the site from value of the building, but unfortunately holds that this has been done successfully for some time by estate agencies. While it might be true that an agency might value the site it cannot be anything other than an arbitrary assessment when considered in isolation. If you disagree with the conclusion drawn above then you must acknowledge, as does Pro, that valuations will be required to determine value. This brings me to the crux of this problem; valuations of the land cannot be done without considering what the sites are most efficiently being used for. Therefore if the single mother has a small holding on a site which contains gold, platinum or some yet to be adequately valued commodity, she will be forced to knock down the swing set and replace it with a mine shaft. This is admittedly a playful bit of tongue in cheek, but I believe it makes the point that labor (to which I include the most important kind of labor, mental labor), must inevitably be brought into consideration when determining the value of the site, by virtue of what it is being used for, or for it's perceived future potential (mental application of labor). Not only must labor come into the calculation but so must capital. Pro uses the argument that if one had purchased a plot of land in Time Square in 1796 for $100 (of course adjusted for 217 years of inflation) it would be worth over $10M today. Obviously there is nothing special about the soil beneath Time Square, that would otherwise cause us to value the property at that price, except of course it's location to the commercial epicentre of New York. The question is, would this site be valued somewhat more proportionately to its intrinsic potential for being in the said epicentre or for what the community around it is doing on it or to it? This exemplifies the importance of free market economy in land. In the yin and yang of market interplay, wherever there is an artificial (ie. non-market driven) pressure exerted the consequences will squeeze out where you least expect it. In this case the phenomenon of urban sprawl might be curtailed but it's benefits will also be curtailed. The land in Time Square is worth what it is worth because of the free movement of capital. What would be the situation if Time Squares 'rental' had to be determined by the state? I will explain below why I refer to it as a rental but for now let's consider this question. With the very best will in the world the state would never be able to value the sites in Time Square for what they are worth, as each site is worth what it gets sold for, each time they get sold. Each site is sold, is sold for the price the seller is happy to receive foe the site and that the buyer is willing to pay it. The buyer pays for the site an amount that it in proportion to the potential or pleasure the buyer sees himself gaining by owning the site. When the state starts deciding what the value of the site is, it effects that transaction like Schr"dinger's cat. But there is a much more pernicious effect to LVT, and that is the moral one. Pro is quite right when he says all taxes are theft, I argue this tax is not only NOT an exception but seems to reflect the rule. When all sites draw a tax they cannot be said to owned, thus all such sites are effectively rented from the state. When Pro declares that if there is oil on a site it does not belong to anyone, he assumes that the technological process of extraction of the oil is somehow open to us all to intuit. This is the problem, and it is a common Marxian error, to assume that everyone is equal shareholder to everyone else's ideas brings tyranny as personal advantage is thus eliminated. Someone had to come up with the technology for finding and extracting oil first before the site on which it can be found could taxed. But can one say that the innovation becomes public property simply because the land on which it is employed is in fixed supply? I say No, the fact is that by setting any value to a site whether it has a building constructed on it or not cannot be done without taking into consideration the innovative & creative potential envisaged by the individual through their mental and physical labor. Therefore any payment demanded by the state for holding ransom the resources required for human ingenuity is extortionate and coercive. The state is best left to protecting private property and individual liberties, the only ceteris paribus properties required for a functional society. Saying that you have a title deed for a property or site but having never completely paid for it is not owning the property by any means other than name alone, it becomes nothing more than a rental property. When the government gets into the business of land tax it gets into the business of commons and as game theory has made quite clear as has any public facility, the 'Tragedy of the commons' is an inescapable fact. http://en.wikipedia.org... As for the Citizen Dividend I believe that land cannot be owned falls into disrepair and ruin. Then there is the moral case, where any land that is improved by the labor of the land owner or those that freely trade with her, should be kept by the land owner and thus should not be distributed to anyone, lest we call it what it is...theft.