--- Kevin Carson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I know Georgists support land taxes (or community collection of rent, if > you prefer) to fund services. That is one of my central points of > disagreement. > > Ideally, taxes should be eliminated altogether.
In which case you yourself are 80% Georgist, because if taxes there be not, then landowners will bear the major cost of infrastructure now paid for by the taxation of labor and capital. That will deflate their land value, now puffed up by the capitalization of neighborhood benefits they don't pay for. The rent would be collected by the private providers, but such rent-based public finance is Georgist nonetheless. This is how condominiums, homeowner associations, hotels, and other real-estate complexes operate today, so this is not just hypothetical. > I suspect that there are very > few (if any) true "public goods," that cannot be "internalized" and paid > for entirely by those who use them. Agreed. Everything, including government itself, can be privatized or voluntarized. A purely privatized world would be much closer to Georgism than today's world. Indeed, the most feasible reform towards Georgism is the privatization of civic governance. Presumably you do not disagree with the central aim of Georgism, free trade. Fred Foldvary ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED]
