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

For the sake of consistency I will continue to employ Pro's method of rebuttal using quotes from his arguments and mine where a trail is necessary. Pro:"Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. " It's not so much that Pro was not clear enough, it's just that I needed clarification before I set off down a rabbit hole. 'ANY resource' could just as easily be construed as labor or capital. This was not a criticism, just clarification. Pro:"land + labor = capital And capital + labor = capital" The above seems like an arbitrary formulation, as it cannot be meant to be as formulaic as it is presented, it also leaves off an often ignored factor of production; entrepreneurship. Without this labor + land = land + labor. Entrepreneurship is the dynamic which drives the process as together with the concept of ownership regulates the relation between risk and reward. Entrepreneurship provides the impetus and ownership the incentive for thinking beings to apply themselves to the resources. This is what the 'Tragedy of Commons' deals with. I will explore this phenomenon in more detail later as I believe Pro has too quickly dismissed it as being a 'manageable' and thus irrelevant complication. Pro: "land is the fruit of no one's labor, but the value of land is the fruit of the community's labor" Pro arrives at my conclusion here, but in my view uses the wrong word in applying 'community' to his formulation. Land is given commodity and thus I agree it is the fruit of no one's labor, but the value of land is the fruit of the stored up labor (capital) applied by the investor who thus imbues in the land with the potential that his mental labor intended for it. I might be able to move onto a plot of land that is vacant and pay a tax for it at $100 per sq ft, but the moment I convert the property to a sewage farm, I reduce the value of the land to $10 per sq ft for residential purposes, and while I applaud the would-be homeowner for having smelling a rat, it only limits the value of the land for residential purposes. I know of a few heavy industrial plants that have sewage farms on them, are they to get a tax break for sniffing a bargain? Pro:"That's not correct. A flat tax on land is not 'every square foot will be charged $X', it's 'landowners must pay X% of the value of the sites which they own'. " This is meant to point to the fact that if there is no contribution to the value of site to be drawn from it's utility potential, it has no basis for being valued differently to any other piece of land. That is to say that a piece of land must necessarily be valued based on what potential it is estimated to have by it's purchaser, whomever that might be, sewage tycoon or homeowner. As regards the valuation per square foot vs %, I'm not sure Pro and I disagree as a site valued at $100,000 will draw a tax at 10% of $10,000, which if it was 100 square foot would equate to $100 per sq ft. A proportionately smaller holding of say 10 sq ft, valued at the same level would also draw a tax of $100 per sq ft as $100,000 / 100 x 10 = $10,000 in value draws $1,000 in tax which equates to $100 per sq ft. Therefore if gold or platinum is discovered on the lot worth $100,000 and raises the value of the land to $10,000,000 (tax = 1,000,000 = $10,000 per sq ft), the small holder would not have the choice to keep her 10 sq ft holding (say a small farm"very small it seems) to do with as she pleased as she would not be able to afford the $100,000 tax bill. In reality she might decide to sell it to make a profit and engage in some other venture, but in reality due to ownership and no LVT she would still have that choice". and this is truly freedom. Pro:". .. by using her citizen's dividend to pay for the land. LVT encourages the economically efficient use of land- CD protects the right of the individual NOT to have to follow that incentive. " This is of course assuming the CD, which over a large population will smooth out all regional fluctuations, will be enough to cover disproportionately large local value increases, potentially driving low income citizens to live off the CDs while having to migrate to slums where the value will be consistently low, drawing consistently low taxes. Pro:"That's why Adam Smith said that every landowner acts, in his role as a landowner, as a monopolist. Landownership is monopoly. " Pro seems to have misunderstood the context in which Adam Smith speaks of a landowner. Here Smith is dealing with the prickly issue of Land rental as it was applied during the times of stifling regulations regarding such peculiarities as primogeniture and the like, where aristocrats were the only legal landlords. He is referring to land rental: "The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. " Smith seems to be making the point here that when land is not free on the market is becomes a burden to progress as emphasised by "In Europe, the law of primogeniture, and perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of great estates, and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally in- spires, and who upon that account takes pleasure, not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. "" . http://www2.hn.psu.edu... Pro:The problem with this idea is that, in regards to sites, a buyer has no choice. Every being must exist somewhere. One cannot simultaneously believe in the right to exist and not believe in the right to exist in some place because existing requires a place to exist. The buyer may choose to go to some other seller, but ultimately, he/she must accept the offer ofsomeone. I'm not sure what Pro means by having a right to exist, and more particularly that one should have a right to exist somewhere. In a rationally functional society the only right I should expect is the right to the product of my labor, if that is not sufficient to sustain my existence I have no right to demand the surplus required to survive from my neighbour. If he is willing to donate such surplus, all the better for me, but to force my neighbour to surrender any product of his labor to me is forced labor or slavery. We are thinking beings that must be made to shoulder the responsibility for our own actions, that includes finding, acquiring ang holding onto the resources required to survive. Further to this, Pro assumes that the cash used to purchase a piece of land also belongs to the community and was not derived by means of labor. Pro:"Yes and that person would be wholly entitled to sell that oil at whatever price. " Let me provide another example to demonstrate the point a bit better" In the example used above if I 'own' a piece of land subject to LVT and through my own inductive ingenuity I discover that the land I live on can by mined for a new metal I have synthesised. When the world finds out about this once I start taking the metal to the market, the value of the land on which I discovered the metal will increase from $100,000 to $10,000,000, with concomitant increase in tax from $10,000 to $100,000. The increase in the value of the land is solely attributable to my mental labor (in having provided the cause for the revaluation). Thus my mental labor is worth $9,900,000, but the state in its infinite wisdom sees my discovery as having been owned by the community when it confiscates $100,000 from me due to my site having increased in value. Pro:"Yes. That's the goal. I want land not to be owned. I want it to be rented from the community. " This experiment has been tried and has been shown to be a dismal failure. Apart from the example of Russia and North Korea, here is a study that more broadly fits the mould specified above - Land Policy in Vietnam. .. . http://jmk.sagepub.com... Pro:"Further study into the so-called 'Tragedy of the Commons' will show that the man who wrote it, Garrett Hardin lamented not calling it "the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons" because managed commons actually work. Therefore the tragedy of the commons is TOTALLY escapable. " Garrett Hardin does in fact state that he laments not calling it the "Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons" as this is the interpretation which arises out of the formulation of the problem. I argue, as does he, that there is no one who is capable of managing vast resources to the extent to which it will be required to counter the effects of the natural inclination described by the problem. I can only use examples closer to home to make a better case. In the UK, where I live, the abuse of council houses (government owned and rented housing) by those that live in them is rife and costs local governments hundreds of millions in repairs each year. Yet the moment a council estate is provisioned for the resale of the land to the occupant, the land is automatically observed to improve in upkeep and appearance. This should not be a surprise as it makes perfect sense that I will take care of what is my own property much better than that owned by no one. Pro:"It appears that Con has let the CD go through uncontested. Con has made no argument against the distribution of the revenue, which is half of my argument. Pro:"I urge voters to remember that. " I do apologise for not making my position obvious; since I do not believe LVT to be effective in addressing the concerns it is designed to address, and that it is grossly immoral any redistribution of taxes from such a venture would be equally detrimental and probably more immoral. I look forward to Pro's closing remarks"it's been enjoyable!