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December 11, 2013, 12:06:25 PM Last edit: December 11, 2013, 12:17:35 PM by godislove |
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Yes, government should tax away any increase in the non-improved value of the property...the land value increase. Because any increase in the value of the land over which a government rules (guides the economy), is a reward to the government (from local to federal) for making the (local and national) economy stronger. I believe J.S. Mill argued this should be the ONLY tax. A polarized distribution of wealth, monopolies, and unproductive finance, insurance, and even marketing/advertising (to be replaced with amazon-like review systems) should be taxed away so that that everyone works through the knowledge of physics (moving matter with energy) and artificial intelligence (doing it efficiently) to improve life instead of playing zero sum mind and money games. I.P. laws should be made more restrictive to prevent "legalized monopolies" of obvious solutions (like "one-click shopping", which I implemented before Amazon).
The money loaned out by banks in the Gesell system will quickly find its way into investment for productive activity or assets that can generate income without production. Those who do a great job building a useful company but then lose the opportunity or desire to further build for the benefit of society will seek more control of society by buying assets that generate income. Rent. Instead of banks making loans, the finance system will be reduced but lean more towards landlords, driving up the cost of housing to get the unproductive free income. We agree a proper land-value tax can fix this. But it would also fix the problem of banks loaning out at interest in a regular currency. Rent or interest can occur in other things besides housing like utility monopolies (if they are not price-regulated like many are today). Gesell system seems to be just shifting the asset bubble formation from "banks/finance" to "landlords". From interest seeking to rent seeking.
Another thread is discussing a much more serious long term threat: the rise of the machines. The great depression was largely the result of machines and electricity replacing muscle on the farm and factory. The solution was the welfare state, heavy taxes moving money around and printing money faster than technology could cause a decrease in prices by pushing workers into unemployment. So we shifted towards jobs that needed more thought, many of them a waste. We shifted towards promoting construction because it could not be automated like the factory and efficiency gains were much smaller. But now computers have stopped the standard of living from improving since they were invented by replacing workers. I exaggerate, since if the land value were taxed correctly and if health care were not a disaster, the work week could be half as long. Instead, a lot of those smart programmers and a few physicists were used to help finance destroy society. Anyway, there's no solution. Electrical motors are 3000 times less expensive than muscle (6 times electrically more efficient, working 5 times longer per day, and 100 times less infrastructure to create them and keep them going). Today's computers are about a 100 million times more cost effective than brains at performing any routine task that can be programmed. Brains and muscle are no longer needed for the economic machine except to provide the desire for things and to inject a little intelligence. The machine will continue to use energy to move matter to make imperfect copies of itself until there is no more DNA-based life that has relevance to its progression. The 6th great extinction on Earth is in full swing. We in an "unlikely" position to be here at the end watching it because of basic probabilities: this is the most likely time for a human to be alive to observe anything at all because the population explosion is at the end of the bubble of a species. Silicon for energy and thought, and steel, cement, and carbon nanotubes for structures to replace a lot of our water-based biology.
Cryptocurrencies are the tool the artificial intelligence companies will use to gain massive wealth, which means control of other people to do their bidding. The wealth is not from genius or noble programmers, but from a long history of human development and the strength of these thinking machines we have created to replace ourselves. A fully-electronic currency is key to A.I.'s "success". Humans are a disaster for any economy, being so terribly unreliable and expensive to maintain. "They must be replaced!" is the rallying cry of every company on wall street. They need more people only when they have a great idea for eliminating a multiplicative factor of people outside the company in order to reduce the consumer's cost. It takes time to find a new use for the replaced people, as wealth and desire shifts. If technology advances too quickly...
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