Bitcoin Forum

Here is an idea I have come up to fix Henry Georges book Progress and Poverty.  any comments welcome.

Chapter X - Land Value Tax is a Wrong too - The Problem.

The Land Value Tax (LVT) as proposed by Henry George is a single tax on land, high enough that the value of land would go to zero. If an apartment, a house, a business, and a vacant lot occupy the same amount of land in the same area, they all would pay the same property tax.  The money would go to the city government as the only tax they collect.  The LVT is a major blunder by Mr. George despite a great book overall.  George was from an era when there were no income taxes and small government burden. "We must make land common property." writes George.  LVT does not make land common property, it makes land owned by government.

Murray Rothbard did a review of the land value tax and came up with some good points, it would be extremely hard to find the true site value as even empty land has improvements.  He also claims society does not own the land the State would own the land. It would simply transfer this ownership from producers to bureaucrats.  "A newborn Pakistani baby would have a moral claim to ownership of a piece of Iowa land someone has just transformed into a wheat field" writes Rothbard.

"A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area." says Ayn Rand.  "The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breaches or fraud by the others, to settle disputes". In her book Atlas Shrugged, it depicted Taggert Transcontinental a railroad of massive acreage owned by one family.  This railroad denies other people to use the land for their railroad or the government a highway.

In Hong Kong or areas with a land value tax there are certain tenants that can barely afford the land tax.  They live under massive poverty while the real estate tycoons that own the apartments are the richest people in the country.  The cities with the highest property values in the United States often have the highest level of homelessness, just spend a walk in Santa Barbara or San Diego.  These people can not afford the property tax as is.

If poor had the right to live on rent-free land they would be able to use their income to improving their lives by saving and investing. Instead their money is spent support the city workers, mortgage, and real estate industries.  The city requires permits even to install a water heater and your house has to be built their way and their size to boost the property tax.  They collect tax for libraries and parks you don't even use.

Imagine a person living on 1 acre of desert land and the price per acre might be $500.  Another person lives on a lot in Malibu and the lot might cost $500,000 an acre.  How is that fair when the guy in the deserts kid ends up in Vietnam or Iraq, while the kids of the guy living in Malibu sits on the beach with cool breezes all day. Someone living in an apartment should pay the same tax to the city as a house, they use the same amount of police, fire, and water.  According to George, an apartment dweller would get a tax break. You should pay for the services you use.  The services should be independent of the land rent.

The more improvements that are done, the higher the prices are for land.  The poor are priced out of the market, from their fathers that built the trains and roads.  Their only crime, they did not make much money.  Furthermore, the poor must pay the rent, insurance, and property taxes, before they buy anything else. If not they end up on the street.  All the while the land owner is using the rents to accumulate more and more land, once they reach critical mass where their rents exceed their spending all they do is accumulate land.

George was wrong about assuming government property is common property.  Rand and Rothbard were wrong about allowing individuals to own land.  Land is limited and unlike Rembrants is necessary for life, food, energy, and shelter.  A small percentage of individuals and government are not society.  Land under your feet should be free like air.  The question is what are the logistics to make this happen.

Chapter X - Average Rent - The Solution.

If rents should not be collected for government or individuals, who should collect the rents? The land of a country should be owned as if each person was a shareholder. If you use more land than your fair share, you should pay rent to those that use less land.   All property lots are auctioned and leased to the highest bidder as 10 year and 5 year leases.  All money collected from the land lease auctions is placed in a fund called the land rent pool. The pool should be divided equally to residents as a monthly check.  Every person over 18 would receive the identical check.

People that use more than their fair share of land would be paying more in rent than their land check.  A farmer that leases 500 acres might pay $200 an acre or $100,000 a year to lease the land. A homeowner in the desert might rent 1/4 acre for $1 a year.  A 5 acre oil lease might generate millions for the land rent pool. Fishing licenses might generate more money. 50% of all land would be preserved as wilderness, forests, and to protect wildlife. There would be no land locks like the Nature Conservancy.  The Nature Conservancy might now advocate which 50% is to be preserved.  An apartment dweller might not even own land but receive a land check, as a citizen.  People that use less land than their fair share would receive a land check.  Those that use average rent would receive nothing. If the average rent check is $800 per lot per month, if you lease a lot of $1200 a month, your net fee is $400 per month.

All oil leases, timber, fish, and minerals rights meet the George definition of land.  These leases should be added to the total land rent pool, taken from the grips of government.  Today one half of all homes in Palm Springs are built on leased land, farmers rent land in every farm state and most counties, and the government collects oil royalties.  The switch to the new system will be rather painless.  Considering Iowa as a whole, the total amount of bushels per acre and total corn produced in Iowa should increase on a land lease system as the most productive farmers would win bids for farm land.

After the lease is up the property, it is again put up for lease on by auction.  After the new leaser wins the bid, the old leaser has one month to remove their property at the site. The new leaser takes control of the lot.  The cycle is repeated.  You can own as many lots as you want as long as you win the auction and pay the rent.  Movable homes will be the new industry.

Permanent improvements of the land become part of the land as the soil.  To conform to air and water quality laws you most likely would want a septic system.  You could request a grant from the land lease board to install a septic system and water well.  Thus you might get a check of $20,000 to install a well, tank, and septic system, but install it for $19,000 and keep the difference.  If the system is expected to last 100 years you might be billed $40 per month until the lease is up. The goal is the land pool should expect to reap 100% profit on all improvements. You might also request $100,000 to build a house.  If this house has a 50 year lifespan warranty, the expected rent might be $333 monthly.  There are no mortgages, you must meet and pay the rent to live there.  Total improvements are expected to generate profit in the land auctions.  You can put a removable home on the property, to lower your cost of rent. You fail to make rent, you lose your lease.  No problem you move to another area.

The city would still own the streets, the sewers, electric grid, schools, cable lines, possibly even libraries, and the fire department. However, it would be your choice to subscribe to them or not. The only mandatory fee would be for the courts, police, and defense and that would come from sin and income taxes. The streets would be owned as by the people. The roads should be built by volunteer donations. If you decided to do some work on the road it would be legal as long as it met certain standards. In order to get a permit to drive over 10 mph on roads, you might have to be responsible for 500 feet (maybe 50) of road built to ansi standards. Like adopt a road, you can build it yourself, or hire a contractor to build and maintain.  
 
If the people own the land, do the cities, counties, states, or Federal government have any right to it. The only people entitled to free rent are the police, courts, jails, and defense. These are necessary to enforce the law and protect the people. However, when you consider a school or city park it does not meet the criteria for free rent. However schools are a choice. You have the choice to select a $1000 a month school with poor ratings or also have the choice to select a home school for $100 a month. Schools act as businesses and they should collect land rent that goes into the rent pool.  City parks with grass and soccer fields should also pay rent if used for people and picnics. Libraries must pay rent.  City government must bid on parcels for parks, schools, firestations, streets, and libraries. This money goes to the rent pool to be divided among each citizen equally.  However, the government can not force you to use their junk.  They can not put firefighting or school requirements on the property. Dams and water structures must pay a rent as the States, utilities, cities own them to provide water at economy of scale to residents of the city.

Suppose the land causes you injury or the house collapses who do you sue. It would not be possible to seek $1 in damages from the land pool.  The land rent pool is sacred and no scamming or lawsuits can be taken from it.  However, you could sue the homebuilder if the house is defective and causes you damage.

Ayn Rand first jobs when she came to the United States were letter stuffing and waitress. If her books did not sell, she probably would have been doing the same work for the rest of her life. However, there is no reason to live in poverty if you are doing something productive.  You can really start to accumulate wealth not paying rent to government or landlords. Every person in the United States can be wealthy even a letter stuffer.

Apartment buildings, skyscrapers, golf courses, corporations would pay a maximum rent.  It would be high enough such that no one would question the low rent maybe $5000 per acre a year, maybe $1000 an acre a year for golf courses as they offer some wildlife value.  It is the rent where a person could lease the land permanently and the lease could be sold.

There have been complaints this system is  Maoism or communism, This system does not confiscate people lands by death, it does not organize communes, it does not tell what to plant or how to plant. The rent rather than going to the land owner or government, would go to the median rent pool to be divided equally among all citizens. This would assure the people the land an the land under their feet is free unless you use too much or take the best land.

Support the median land rent system.  Support a more productive use of land.  Support free land under your feet.

George was a tool.

Your system is marginally better, but still fatally flawed, like all redistributive models.

George was a hypercapitalist - he did not believe in income taxes or giving your money to schools.  He thought unions make people less wealthy and less free.  This is not redistributive, it say the owners of land are the members of society.

 http://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp24.htm

You can listen to his book or read it from above. 

Your plan is redistributive:

The land rents are distributive.  If an Iowa farmer rents farmland about $250 a acre on average.  Why should he get the $250?

Air is distributive too.  If I owned all the air, would in not seem silly for you to pay me $250 a year to breathe?

I am not distributing income which comes from labor or capital, i am distributing air and land.  In the case of air everyone uses about the same.  However, some people use more land than other people.

Some people have more Bitcoins than others. Should we redistribute those, to be more "fair"?

Air is not a "good", because it is not scarce. Land is.

You get ownership of land in the same way you get ownership of any other scarce good:
By original appropriation - being the first one to recognize it as a scarce good and mixing it with your hands`labor, i.e. going to antarctica and building fields or dwellings there.
By your own hands` labor (works rarely with land, except for maybe building an artificial island or so).
Or, the most common way, by voluntary transactions with other people.

How do you justify treating land any different than other property? It is not, it has a stock, a demand, and a price like any other.
Property is not distributed equally because people are different, some have high skills, work hard etc.. and some don`t.
If you would redistribute goods absolutely equal among all humans now (which you`d have to do with force, which makes it unethical from the beginning), the next second the distribution would not be equal anymore - because people are not equal.

Trying to treat them otherwise leads to the kind of violence we see all around us today.
Land taxes of any kind would be a violent crime, as are any other taxes or forceful redistribution of goods.

Do me/us a big favor.  Just state that you are in favor of communism/a more refined version/a better style/etc etc etc.  But don't hide it behind another layer of words and phrases or try to deny that you simply propose communism.  That wastes valuable arguing time.

LOL +1

No.  bitcoins represent your labor and wealth.  Land is free.  Ever see a picture of teepees on the plains, did the indians pay rent to anyone.  What if some indian decided to claim all the best hunting grounds as his?  The tribe would not believe it.  We are not redistributing land, we are saying you can only use your fair share.  If you use more, you pay a fee.

That's exactly what has happened.  Unowned land can be claimed by homesteading (your fair share).  Owned land can be claimed by voluntarily trading for it (pay a fee).

The differences you are advocating are the differences between capitalism and communism.

There have been complaints this is communism, This system does not confiscate people lands by death, it does not organize communes, it does not tell what to plant or how to plant. The rent rather than going to the land owner or government, would go to the median rent pool to be divided equally among all citizens. This would assure the people the land an the land under their feet is free unless you use too much or take the best land.

Russia and China had an extremely bad experience with trying to run farms top down.  Over 100 million people starved to death.  The system proposed is pure capitalism.   There will be more corn produced in Iowa, there will be more more wheat produced in North Dakota.  We probably could eliminate Section 8 housing and food stamps.

Air is scarce too.  There is more water (maybe even freshwater) on earth than air.  The mexican war stole most land in California from Mexico.  Most land was originally stolen from the Indians.

"Property is not distributed equally because people are different, some have high skills, work hard etc.. and some don`t."  Much of the farmland in the United States is leased to farmers.  The farmers that lease land are the most productive in the country, they are doing the hard work on land they don't even own.  Every plot of land could be leased.  The cities understand this that is why in some areas the property tax is so high.

"If you would redistribute goods absolutely equal among all humans now (which you`d have to do with force, which makes it unethical from the beginning), the next second the distribution would not be equal anymore - because people are not equal"  No goods would be redistributed, you have the right to your labor on the land you rent.  You are allowed to keep every kernel of corn you grow.

The average acre of land in Iowa is leased land were $252 in 2012. If all land was owned by the people the hard working farmer could lease the same land for far less than $252 an acre.  There would be more supply.  the worker gets more benefits.

Using the average land rent system, imho would not be a violent crime.  In fact the opposite, it is the only system that is fair to the workers and labor.  It does not redistribute goods.  There are 300,000,000 million citizens in the country, you are allowed to use your fair share of land, if you use more you can expect to pay a fee to compensate the other people that a force by violence to use less.

Land is no more free than bitcoins are. You have two means of acquiring bitcoins: mining, or buying. You have two means of acquiring land: first appropriation, or buying.

The means of first appropriation are analogous to mining bitcoins: You use your property (your body, tools, etc) to mark out the land as yours. This proves that you are the first appropriator, much like using your hashpower to form a block before the other miners do proves that you mined those coins first.

I just don't understand homesteading.  We start from the axiom that each individual owns himself, and therefore his labor, and therefore the products thereof.  This seems to lead clearly to the conclusion that land is  not ownable.

The homesteading idea would say if you "mix your labor with land" by mining 0.1% of an ore vein, you not only own the ore you mine, but also the 99.9% of the ore you didn't mine.  That makes no sense to me.  It's giving the someone control of not only the labor he's done there, but any future labor that's done there by anyone.

The reason we own anything is not because of fundamental axioms or any other crazy stefan juju. It's because sometimes certain objects can not be used by two different people at the same time. If there is a single apple you and i can not both eat it. So assuming we would both like to eat it we must find a way of determining who gets to eat it and who does not. We could use violence but this tends to be costly so inorder to economize we invent rules. These rules comprise what we think of as property. So for example with the apple we may create a rule that says the person who planted the apple tree gets to decide who gets to eat it.

there is nothing philosophical about this, property is just a tool. if you have a bolt that needs to be loosened you use a tool called a wrench, if you have resources that need to be distributed equitably and non violently you use a tool called a property rule.

so then making land into property is the same thing. We all need a place to stand, we cant both stand in the same place at the same time so we need a way to determine who gets to stand in a given spot. If we dont want to be forced to rely on violence to settle the dispute than we ought to invent a property rule.

So what makes homesteading a better rule than Georgism?

You can't own labor. Thankfully, you don't have to in order to homestead something. You just have to be there first, and do something to mark your claim. It's the fact that you were there first that establishes your first, best claim.

Georgism is the flawed concept that everyone has a claim to all land, and therefore, when someone stakes a personal claim, they are taking from everyone else. The problem is, they don't have a claim to that land, because they were never there, they're not losing anything, because they never had it.

I don't know anything about all that complicated talk, but I do know something I like about communism. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_qm3Ym8-k

She could talk me into doing some redistributing...

You know Russia's not communist anymore, right? ;)

Sounds okay with me.

Exactly.  If one lived on a lunar colony or orbital station one better believe someone would be charging for air.  Maybe it would be rolled in with your rent, maybe it would be simplified to a standard fee per person but air would be scarce and the delivery of air a service.

Or it might be priced into your veggies - farming would produce a lot of O₂, and suck up a lot of CO₂.

But with Bitcoin they are just imaginary tokens like pokemon cards.  Land is what is required for life, food, and shelter.  Those that control the land can control ones life.  If you owned 1000 acres of Iowan farmland, you could lease the land for about $250 per acre.  Thus, you could be on the beach in California with $250,000 a year stipend.  Since land is scarce, you can survive by solely owning land.

I like this explanation much better.  Simple, pragmatic, easy to understand and matches the physical world we live in.

If someone does not voluntarily pay, what should happen to them?

From wikipedia:
"Georgism (also called Geoism[1] or Geonomics[2]) is an economic philosophy and ideology which holds that people own what they create, but that things found in nature, most importantly land, belong equally to all."

Because georgism doesnt solve the aforementioned problem. If the same space belongs equally to more than one person how do we determine who gets to occupy that space if more than one person wishes to occupy that space? you are back to needing to invent a property rule to solve this problem.

The idea is the one who occupies the land rents it from those who don't.  People still own land in a sense, but they pay a "land value tax" on it, which goes to compensate those who do not occupy as much or as valuable land.

ah ok then. who ever wrote that wikipedia article has a very different definition for the word ownership than i do.

In principal i quite like this idea. I would be lying if i said that i hadn't explored this line of reasoning myself. It matches with my idea of social justice more than homesteading. (obviously homesteading still applies 100% to things you actually create but its difficult to justify the ownership of 3d space on philosophical grounds)

and i should also add that this would probably work quite well in a small community where individuals could gather togather once a year and conduct some sort of ceremony where the money exchanged hands infront of everyone. So it would be like bitcoin in that way, everyone would be auditing everyone. But as your society becomes larger this would quickly become uneconomical. You would soon find yourself needing an agency to conduct this business. As soon as you did that you would face some serious principal agent problems.

If you could think of a way to allow georgism to work without the need of a central authority. A way where the redistribution could be handled in a distributed fashion, possibly with a technology similar in some ways to bitcoin, than i think i could definitely be convinced to prefer georgism to homesteading.

keep following this path there is a lot of merit to this idea but be very careful. If improperly implemented it would likely lead to the development of a state and it may very well be the case that there is no way to implement it with out leading to the development of a state.

*edit* oh also a better rule than renting from society would be buying from society. This would be just or unjust for the same reasons that georgism is just or unjust but it would lead to much better outcomes. Imagine a person rents a bit of land from society and builds a house on it then a year later he is outbid and he loses his house.

You can survive solely by owning Bitcoins, as well. What you can't buy directly with bitcoins, you can buy with currencies you can buy with Bitcoins. It sounds like your problem is with rent... Fine, don't rent, buy land. Problem solved.

Look, you need to get with the program.  We need to create elaborate groups of words, then build on top of them a secondary layer of words with derived meanings, then build a set of reasonable,just, justifications on top of that for taking peoples' stuff away from them.  You can have some of their stuff, too.  There's a lot of it out there to be taken.

:)

Exactly.  If an acre of this hypothetical land nets $250 per year in rent, then the present value (i.e. purchase price) is something like 20x annual rent cashflow or $5K per acre.  100 acres @ $5K ea = $5M.  If you have $5M in performing assets the reality is you likely don't need to work.  Land isn't special in that respect.

Of course once you redistribute land them people will store more of their wealth in other assets.  So what is next?  Free stocks & bonds for the average person?

I think something like this has been going on for a while in Ethiopia, and they are not, um, doing too well.  Something about not working that hard on land you rent versus land you own.

What could possibly be wrong here?

AnCap is an appealing idea, and I'm extremely open to it, but I take an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude towards it for the time being.  I would say, though, that if it's possible to enforce traditional property rights without a state, I don't see why communal rights would be much different.  Anyways, there are anarchists who seem to think it's possible.

Actually, one tricky part I see would be determining who is and isn't a part of the community for purposes of determining who's owed a share of the rent.  I believe freedom of movement is an important one, and that there would be no such thing as citizenship in a free society.

"Buying from the community" would be a one time thing, and a short time later you're in the same situation you would have been without georgism, so it defeats the purpose.

To others: Land is distinct from capital.  Capital profits are made from creating things for others to use.  If you didn't exist, that capital would not have been made.  Land profits are made by selectively depriving people of something that existed before you were born. 

I actually have considered whether or not this applies to bitcoin, and ultimately I've concluded it doesn't.  Early investors helped bitcoin grow to where it is today, and miners help maintain the network, so in that sense it's created like capital.   Bitcoin is fungible, so holding bitcoin doesn't really deprive anyone of anything.  There is always the possibility of creating new cryptocurrencies.

More importantly, who is and isn't a part of the community for purposes of determining who owes a share of the rent.

Bullshit. If you didn't exist, that land would just have lain fallow and unused. Nobody would have benefited from it. Land profits are made by providing people something that you created on that land.

??? Whoever occupies land that's within the community.

Um, no someone else would have taken it.  Possibly your current tenants.

In what way were the sharecroppers in the post war south better off thanks to their landlords than they would have been if that land was fallow?  They'd still be doing the same work except they'd be able to keep their entire crop.

And who decides what is and is not "within" the community? Can I tell my neighbor that he's now within my community, and therefore owes me rent on the land he owns?

Possibly. But then you would be complaining how they, and not I, had "stolen from the community."
No, if the land was fallow, they'd be doing nothing and keeping 100% of that - which is to say, nothing.

A homesteading system has that problem as well.  Who decides where homesteading is the law of the land and where it isn't?

Why would they be doing nothing?  Is it impossible for them to till the soil without the blessings of a white-suited gentleman?

No, it really doesn't.
Allow me to quote Stephan Kinsella (http://mises.org/document/3582/Against-Intellectual-Property):

Fallow (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define+fallow) means unused. If the land was unused, then by definition, they're not using it. ;)

Any property system is dependent on people accepting your rules.

Sometimes, people cultivate fallow land, and then it's not fallow any more.   :)  Lack of agricultural ability was not the reason sharecroppers were impoverished.

Indeed. But which set of rules is more fair? "You got here first, so it's yours," or, "I live on the other side of the planet, but you're stealing that land from me, so pay up."

Right, but you specified that the land was fallow. Not that they were working it. They would indeed have been better off if they were working land they owned, rather than land someone else owned. But they were working someone else's land. So it was not a lack of agricultural ability, but a lack of economic sense that caused their impoverishment. They should have bought land instead of leasing it in exchange for a portion of their crops.

claiming land as your own does impose a cost on other people who now have been denied the opportunity to claim that same land as their own. And really just saying "well i got there first" really isnt a very good argument either :P Competition of the bad arguments! figure out which one is worse and go with the other.

Missed opportunity is not a cost.

As for the rest, read the Kinsella quote. First appropriation is the only fair way to go about it.

How much start-up capital do you think the average freedman had?  Even if by some miracle they could find someone to lend them the money, the question remains: what value did the landlord provide in exchange for the money that he's demanding?

You said the land would be fallow without the landlord.  I'm saying it could still be cultivated, possibly even by the same people.

Perhaps he cleared it. Perhaps he removed the wild animals that were menacing it. Perhaps he was simply the first to recognize that the land had agricultural value. What value does your Georgeist provide in exchange for the rent he is demanding?

Nope, You did:

And indeed it could have been cultivated, perhaps, in fact, by those same people now working it. That's not the point. The point is, they weren't working their land. They were working his land. You might even say that they were employed by the land owner to work his land.

Meh, we've had this conversation many times.  No point in continuing if nothing new is added.

What a shame. I truly wanted to know what value the Georgeist provides to justify the rent that he is demanding.

If none, and his argument is based simply on the fact that he missed the opportunity to take advantage of the available land, how is that any different than a new bitcoin user being upset about the early adopters having "all the coins"?

A "Georgist" doesn't provide anything, just like an "anarchist" doesn't.  If you mean the surrounding community, chances are they're the real reason the land has value in the first place.  Remote land is worth very little, land located in developed communities is worth considerably more.  Granted, there's no reason to assume that every member of the community contributed equally.

I consider homesteading a completely arbitrary way of determining land ownership.  I recognize that in some ways considering land communal property is just as arbitrary, but when one conception of property rights leads to stratification and systemic poverty and the other doesn't, I'm inclined towards the one that doesn't.  Land ownership can be and is used to enable tyranny and injustice.  I don't see how that can be disputed.

I've already explained the differences between bitcoin and other land.  Currencies like bitcoin are not a zero-sum game.  No one is prevented from using bitcoin as a medium of exchange, or starting their own crypto-currency, and the wealth it can buy is always growing.

I dont think this is a fair criticism. after all in economics speak we do call these this phenomena "opportunity cost" so im pretty sure it is a cost.

With that being said now that i think about it georgism has a regression problem. How is one supposed to acquire the means to bargain with out first appropriating things and how is one supposed to appropriate things if he must first bargain in order to acquire the means to appropriate. I think this sort of chicken and egg problem is the best way to demonstrate the superiority of the homesteading principal.

And undeveloped land in the middle of a community contributes nothing to that community, while developed land in the middle of nowhere will often collect a community.

First appropriation is anything but arbitrary. It does not lead to stratification and systemic poverty. And if you're looking for a justification for tyranny, nothing says "tyrannical use of force" like "pay us all for the privilege of living here."

Land isn't a zero-sum game, either. It's simply a scarce resource, just like bitcoins. Once all 21 million are mined, The only way to get more will be to provide a good or service to the community. In fact, that's the only way to get some now. The block reward is payment for providing the service of securing and enabling transactions.

You're misusing the term "opportunity cost." Opportunity cost is what you "pay" when you use your scarce resources to select the best option from among several (two or more) mutually exclusive options. To the extent that missing out on the chance to grab available land is an "opportunity cost," it is one imposed by the person who chose to use the time they could have been homesteading a patch of land to do something they wanted to do more. The homesteader doesn't impose the "opportunity cost" of not having that land available, it is self-imposed by the lazy ass who sat at home watching TV instead of claiming the land he's now complaining he can't grab.

ok ok even if i grant you all of that. eliminating the opportunity for other people to claim a given piece of land DOES impose a cost on them. We dont need to get into heated debate over it just think about it. Its very very very obvious. I would prefer to have the ability to build new structures next to my house, if someone removes that option for me than that makes me worse off. Like i said though simply because something implies a cost doesn't necessarily mean its a bad thing. We shouldn't not breath because it imposes a cost on other people and we shouldn't seek damages for other peoples breathing just because it imposes a cost on us either.

If someone can remove that option, then you weren't using it. You're no worse off than you were the day before. A cost is something that diminishes you. You are not diminished, you just can not grow in a particular direction. To the minimal extent that it is a cost, as I said, it is self-imposed. If you wanted to grow in that particular direction, you should have done it. You missed that opportunity, he did not take it from you.

maybe im building a structure somewhere else at the moment but fully intended to build a structure on the disputed land as soon as i was finished with my present task.

Then you shouldn't leave that land up for grabs.

a man cant homestead everything. if someone else homesteads a piece of property that you would have otherwise homesteaded yourself at some future date, is it not a fact that this action has imposed a cost on you?

saying x is not a cost because it is only denying an opportunity seems a bit silly. What else is a cost other than a denied opportunity. If i break your arm i am denying you the opportunity to play tennis. If there is a clear line where one thing is a real cost and another is simply a denied opportunity can you as specifically as possible explain how to draw this distinction?

i mean if i was a farmer and i was planning on planting a crop in the next logical location that was as easy to access from my house as possible and i show up only to find that some other farmer has planted the crop that i intended to plant there i would be atleast very annoyed. Now i have to go and plant my crop somewhere less convenient. This is a real cost and it has been created simply by someone homesteading unowned land.

so i hope that at-least in principal i have demonstrated that homesteading unowned land can impose a cost on other people.

Nope, no more than the early adopters have imposed a cost on you by snagging the low-difficulty coins. You imposed that cost on yourself by not homesteading everything you wanted to use, or not getting into Bitcoin sooner.

It's simple. If you are demonstrably diminished - if your wealth has been reduced, and not merely potential wealth, but actual current wealth - then that is a cost imposed upon you. If your potential wealth has been reduced, then that is a missed opportunity. If we are to start punishing people for taking opportunities that others have missed, then should we allow Starbucks to sue Folgers for "stealing" potential sales of their coffee?

No, it is an opportunity cost, self-imposed by putting off homesteading that land. You valued whatever you were doing instead of homesteading that land more than the value you would have gained by homesteading that land. You took a risk in that leaving that land unowned, someone else could come along and take it. That risk turned out to be the case. Intention is not the deed. It does not establish a claim.

ok then this gets down to the heart of the matter. This is going to be a rather abstract analogy so please bear with me. Lets say i hated you and so i stalked your every move. you were unemployed and looking for a job. so with each interview you went to i would create some elaborate scheme to ensure that you did not get hired. You fail to get a job and die of starvation. Now i never caused any of your existing wealth to be diminished. That was diminished entirely by your needed to eat and drink and pay for shelter and stuff.

So according to you i have imposed no cost on you and according to my definition of the word crime it is when someone imposes a cost on you without your consent. If all of these premises follow than it should be the case that i have not committed any sort of crime against you. Would you say this is accurate, that in the aforementioned example i did not commit a crime or would you say that the premises or conclusions are faulty?

Quite right. These costs were imposed upon myself by my stubborn insistence on finding employment rather than working to provide these needs for myself. Now, if you have lied about me to prevent my employment, that's fraud. Not against me, interestingly enough, but against the employers. You lied to them, and thus denied them the product of my labor.

Do you believe you have a right to your reputation? Slander is similar to the case of lying to the employers to prevent them from hiring me. Or trademark infringement. If I were to sell people a "MacDownalds" burger, I've committed an act of fraud by willfully misrepresenting my product as a McDonalds burger. Not, again, against McDonalds, but against the customers who thought they were getting a McDonalds burger.

Ok lets try again. You happen across a man locked in a prison cell. He was locked there by accident and has done nothing wrong. Additionally his ending up there is not a product of poor choices but rather pure bad luck. He has been there for a long time. You are the first person to come across him since he became imprisoned. Its very easy for you to set him free, there is a large red button that says push here. He can not reach the button but you can.

Lets say you chose not to help him. Now he will be trapped in that cell for ever because of your choice. do you still say that by choosing not to set him free you have not imposed a cost on him? I mean not pushing the button doesnt take anything away from him that he currently has, it just denies him opportunity.

if we accept that you have not imposed a cost on him by not pushing the button than doesnt it follow that not pushing the button could never be considered a crime? It seems to me that it ought to be a crime.

Nope, no crime. Dick move, maybe, but not a crime.

No positive obligation may be imposed upon another person against their will.

That's libertarianism 101. You're not - nor can you be, under any libertarian code of law - legally obligated to act on behalf of another.

Read all of the responses, amazing how threads warp.  George wanted a large property tax going to the city.  I think he made a major mistake, he assumed money going to the city was like money going to people it is not.  He does not realize the city unions retire at 40 and collect $100K pensions with Cadillac insurance.  His system you still are paying $5000-410,000 to the city every year.

My tweak, average land rent, in the average city and average lot $0 is going to the city.  You only pay the city for the sewer water parks libraries that you want to use.  They can't force you to pay for them.  They can't tell you what color to paint your house, what size to make your house.   You don't even need a house.  You don't need a permit to build a house.

If you decide to give the beach or farm up for the desert, you can actually collect a check to use substandard land.  So you work in Silicon Valley.  You won't have the rent seekers trying to tap into your wages.  You pay $0 rent there.  You pay for house not rent.

Imagine if you make $50,000 a year and you don't pay $2,000 monthly rent.

As I said, your plan is marginally better. But it has the same flaw of all redistributive systems:

It punishes efficiency, and rewards waste.

well that does make your definitions consistent ill give you that.

I think you are mistaken.  Today to rent farmland costs over $250 an acre.  Under this system the farmer that actually does all the farming would see their rents go down.  Maybe $100 per acre.  Thus, the farmer will receive more profit from farming the land and overall the productivity of the United States farmland rises.  It rewards efficiency since land rents don't go to the landowners.  The most efficient farmers will win bids.

There is no redistribution, it says land is free like air and owned by the people of the USA.  If you use more, you pay more.  The current land laws of the United States offers dual ownership, the land is owned by the States and private property.  The States get their share in property tax.  The reason why States want you to build big houses as they cost more and they can charge higher property tax. 

Redistribution (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/redistribution):
Or, in your case, paying people for using shit land, and punishing them for using valuable land.