alt Hacker NewsYou bought the land, so it is yours, right?
Yes, I am fine with taxes, but not with any type of tax, not property taxes (it is bought with money already taxed) and not with taxes as punishment or taxes as political games. I am opposed to taxes as a purpose, I am for taxes as a means to pay for some universal services that you cannot pay by consumption.
Land is a category of thing that isn’t always straightforward. All land borders other land. Land has more land underneath it and sky above it. Water runs both into it and out of it, and often that water is crucial to neighbors. It has been there before you and will be there after you. Land as an aggregate defines a nation of laws and men. Land can be on a national border.
This is why there’s so many complicated rules around land, it doesn’t fit neatly into a defined yours-or-mine category.
Georgism allows exclusive use of land—ideally without restriction unless it affects neighbors through pollution—it just asks that landowners pay for that exclusivity on an ongoing basis. If they no longer wish to pay, or no longer can pay, then the market can allocate that land to someone who will pay. It’s a pro-development system that calls for increasingly limited land to be put to economic use, unless that land just isn’t very useful/valuable.