So, I finished the book! Yay. And I will likely take a significant break from research after this, although i do plan on writing a couple articles in the next week or so.
But here, the book wraps it. They go over what they discussed, and what their conclusions are, and I kind of wanted to discuss that. Widerquist and McCall seemed to be on the same page as I am as far as redistribution goes. Because private property is not natural (even if it is, I would still be pro redistribution), it's perfectly fine to change and modify the property rights system in any way we want to. It's probably not wise to radically tear down the system, and thankfully Widerquist is sane enough to recognize that, unlike some other leftists who are tempted to go full on 'revolution" mode after studying history in the same way. We can take the system we have and improve it. And they did make a call for redistribution.
HOWEVER, there does seem to be one logical conclusion with how they framed their arguments to make people pay for the property they own, and the implication seems to be "land value tax". Philosophers do that sometimes and while they didn't mention LVT directly, it seems that the LVT would be the most direct tax that would be justified by their logic.
I want to briefly argue against that. I discussed LVT previously on this blog. I'm not a fan. And I'm not a fan because the pragmatic nature of it goes against the actual goals of independentarianism. Indepentarianism is, IMO, about securing ECSO freedom. Freedom of self ownership, not being coerced into the wage labor system. The land value tax is very attractive to would be indepentarians and social libertarians as a whole, but pragmatically, I do not believe it actually would secure freedom.
This is because we all exist in three dimensional space, and when the two dimensional plan we live on, land, is taxed, it amounts to a tax on existence. UBI is money given for existing, but given how land values for the typical home in the US go, I would expect that large swaths of a UBI would be undermined by the LVT. A 5% LVT could potentially raise $4600 per person a year, but given the typical property is around $300k last I looked, with 30% of that value being land, meaning $90k land value, at 5%, the typical home owner is paying $4500 in taxes. For a $4600 check. Whoopie. Yeah yeah, it scales in a household better, but still, this does not, in any way, guarantee ECSO freedom.
Not only is an LVT needed to fund a UBI much higher, as a fair UBI is around $15k these days, but the tax would increase in line with the UBI increase. If you want to ensure that everyone has enough of an income to live in without being coerced into work, I do not believe that you can do that from a LVT. And that's why I'm not a fan of georgism and the LVT. It seems so attractive on paper, but it's just a feel good policy that comes from philosophical principles, without those principles being checked against reality to make sure that they actually do what they're supposed to do. So many ideologues end up falling into a trap that they tend to think mostly in raw philosophical concepts, without ever checking their philosophies against reality and making sure that they actually do what they are meant to do.
If we want a tax that actually accomplishes the goals og ECSO freedom, you need to tax from income. By taxing from income, you're taxing people based on their means to pay it. People get an income, they pay a certain percentage of that income, and they tend to not be affected as negatively as someone paying a LVT could be, if they lack any additional income streams. I mean, everyone ends up with at least the UBI, and while monetary rewards for work would be reduced by 18%, anyone making under $80k as per last year's UBI plan would benefit. And work would still be encouraged. You would be allowed to work as much or as little as you want, as long as you pay 18%. People think taxes on labor are unjust, but to some extent that's what stems from propertarian thinking. Labor is sacrosanct in these ideologies and shall not be taxed, and it's unjust, but here's the thing, if working is VOLUNTARY, i don't see the problem. Sure, being forced to pay tribute to a feudal lord or dictator like in the olden days of states is unjust, but it was assumed, in those societies, that labor was a fact of life, so you were effectively working for the state and required to pay tribute to an unjust government. Here, government is taking money in order to give it back to you in such a way that you are not forced to do anything. It's one of those things where I mentioned how something that a propertarian would see as restrictive actually gives people more freedom. What is more unjust, being forced to work from a state of propertylessness, or being forced to pay taxes on your work so that people aren't forced to work. What's more unjust, being forced to work, or taxes? I think being forced to work is far more oppressive than taxation, and if taxation provides a policy that liberates me from coercion under the normal operation of the property system without it, taxation is fine.
Now, back to the land value tax...should there be SOME sort of LVT? Uh, yes, and I discussed this previously in my housing policy. While a home up to a reasonable value (say $1 million, or $300k in land value) should be protected from taxation, excessive land ownership, or the ownership of multiple properties, SHOULD be taxed. While I believe it's fair to allow people to have ONE home, and that home to be sacrosanct, and it being their castle, and blah blah blah, uh....land is a fixed resource that is not unlimited, and no one should dominate that resource to the exclusion of others. if your land claim is too big, or you try to control multiple land claims for the purpose of extracting rent from people, yeah, that should be heavily taxed and discouraged, to ensure that there remains enough open land, and homes (I think homes are more important than land in this case, land doesn't mean much if you can't live on it), to ensure that everyone has some place where they can live. And if they want to move, they can divest of their current property and do so, with adequate time windows allowing for a smooth moving process.
I mean, I don't like landlords, they're the scalpers of housing (although some leftists will still see this blog as landlord apologia for pointing out that they are only a small part of the housing crisis), and honestly, I really think that home ownership should be reasonably spread as wide as possible. So tax those who have more than they need, and take the money and spend it on building more housing. And yeah.
I mean, again, already discussed this in other articles, but it feels like it's worth mentioning here. I kind of felt like widerquist's conclusions were kinda going dangerously close to going down the LVT rabbit hole, when I examined that possibility empirically and found it lacking. Taxing income is better at building a functioning system where people aren't coerced into the labor market. Land value tax FEELS good, but it really does just turn the government into a massive landlord, and seems mostly attractive to neoliberal types who want the logic of the market to dictate every aspect of our lives, where you cannot even be entitled to your own home if you do not continually pay taxes on your right to live there.
It's kind of like socialism. Ya know, socialism and siezing the means of production feels good, but in a modern state, socialism just ends up going back to the monarchy system of land ownership where the government controls everything and gives out land titles based on fiat. Heck the whole reason why propertarians get so high and mighty is because of the failures of that system and how they're system as the opposite extreme is better. I feel like georgism kinda does that too. Where it mixes the social with the private, but in a weird way that kind of has the worst of both. So we got a government akin to a feudal lord demanding tribute, along side a largely private market system where human needs are subject to said market. Again, it really doesn't accomplish what it is supposed to do on paper, and I would prefer things done in another way.
Other than that, good book. I really think that this book gave me that final piece of information i needed to complete my worldview exercise. It gave me a coherent view of history through which to base my political worldview on. And it feels very consistent with the rest of my worldview overall. I'm sure I disagree with widerquist on some things, but I'm also largely in agreement with him despite actual policy differences.
That's the thing. I'm not really a philosopher. He is. I'm delving into philosophy because I need a philosophical worldview through which I can properly frame my policy recommendations, like, I need his work and the works of others like him to make the pitch for my policies, but at the end of the day, I'm far more comfortable with the policy end of things. I'm better with getting the actual ideas onto paper and discussing practical policy side. Philosophy alone gets weird, and sometimes doesnt make good policy. While philosophy ultimately, to some extent, guides policy, at the end of the day, you need someone more like me to be able to get the rubber to meet the road and actually accomplish these things well. The problem with every failed policy is, in my opinion, to some extent, due to an overreliance on philosophy, and not enough reliance on actually making things work. It's why communism failed. What do the critics always say? Great on paper, doesn't work in reality. Ignores a lot of oversights. But then the same people who say that wax philosophical on their own, go to the other extreme, and also make dysfunctional systems themselves. Hence why propertarians get criticized, despite their criticisms of authoritarian communism being valid. It's not that any philosophical system has all of the answers on its own. You need to be able to get in there, translate your philosophy to actual worthwhile policies, and go from there. And that's what I am trying to do here. LVT seems like the "philosophically just" tax for widerquist's ideas, but an income tax would actually accomplish the desired results far better. And given my willingness to delve into moral relativism and the fact that all of these rules are made up anyway, I'm going to prioritize rules that work over strict philosophical principles here.
And yeah. That's my opinion. Great book, really brought the most fuzzy aspects of my worldview into focus. The history of statism is violence, propertarian truth is a bunch of crap, and we should make a system where we can live as we want to and truly be free. Right wing capitalism doesn't do that. Neither do a lot of systems honestly. And yeah, we need to design a system that actually gets us there. And that's where I wanna go with my project next.
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