What does /lit/ think of Henry George?

>>24501929 (OP)
Your curve is wrong, it's impossible to become rich without rent seeking.

>>24501929 (OP)
My only enemy is the people who post on 4chan

>>24501974
It really does depend on your definition of “rich.” But I can still rather sympathize with and like the OP’s pic. Because I can take, say, a sufficiently well-paid doctor or lawyer as being “rich”, but still offering genuine goods or services to society. (Where they’re not sufficiently or excessively corrupt bastards, that is, and all the popular hatred of lawyers aside.) They’re not NECESSARILY corrupt rent-seeking bastards or usurers trying to make a profit just from ownership of something, a passive acquisition and development which actually doesn’t offer very much tangible good to society beyond the property/ownership itself. And a totally great and intelligent person, even poor from their upbringing but very devoted and studious, could become a lawyer or doctor and become modestly wealthy in this way, at least $200k a year or whatever, and be caught up in the crossfire
>you’re a fucking rich bougie slaveholder!!! FUCK the rich!!! All your money is from corruption or exploitation of others!
Stuff like that rubs me the wrong way. I can share more sympathy with the struggle between those who actually produce and contribute stuff vs. those who really don’t but are more making profits from, essentially, just the rearrangements of finances, numbers on a screen, siphoning wealth from others but without really giving much value back themselves, or, any value they give is strongly outweighed by all the labor/wealth they siphon for themselves. Loan sharks, as an obvious example. Someone who inherits a massive trust fund and then becomes a speculator, one of the “winners” of the stock market.

>>24501929 (OP)
>produces through capital

>>24501991
Bad example, since doctors and lawyers are chosen based on who's bought the piece of paper from the (((elites))), and not who can actually do the job. Artificial scarcity is just another flavor of rent seeking.

>>24501992
>Using scissors and needle to make clothes
>Using factory machines to make clothes
Clothes are being made from capital. It's only a matter of scale.

>>24501999
kys

>>24501929 (OP)
>Henry George
Anyone who thinks land should be common property is a retard who has never actually built any kind of serious relationship with their surroundings or done serious labor by 'working the land'. I do not care that there are poor people because by degrees of separation my family has had a successful ranch for generations, my family and immediate community's wellbeing is more important to me than poverty of people I do not know in the abstract. This split rate tax bullshit NEVER EVER goes after corporations or actually wealthy fat cat plutocrats.

>>24502001
Are you denying that there's even one person in all the world that could do a lawyer's job who hasn't already been admitted to the bar?

>>24501991
Thought about it a second and realized I rambled away from the point of the pic - the examples I gave still aren’t necessarily exactly people who are just “collecting rent” from land/intellectual property/monopoly power or ownership. I don’t know enough about Henry George and Georgism to be speaking here, to be honest. But that’s much of /lit/ at this point when it comes to many threads, so, fuck it, might as well leave the shitpost up to inspire vaguely-literature-themed discussion, as most of this board is.

>>24502003
whatever you do, DO not look up what land enclosures of common land did in england to the wellbeing of society, otherwise you will feel like a retard for what you just typed

>>24502003
henry george didn't say you split the rent or the land becomes common property? he said landowners pay property tax based on the land itself not what's built on it, so people in san francisco living in a one story ranch house will pay the same tax as a luxury tower with 200 units, so it incentives effective land use. they've actually been using something like that to spur development in detriot. they were taxing people sitting on empty lots at the same rate people with houses on their lots, so ur better off building a house or selling it to someone who will.

that said, georgism would have all kinds of unintended consequences, so i'm not endorsing it, just pointing out how it actually works, since you seemed to have no clue.

>>24501929 (OP)
I don’t like georgism because you can’t just live off the land away from the gov and not get anything from the gov through it. At least with the current system after pulling teeth you could do it to some extent in Alaska or something. But with Georgism you’ll pay taxes on the land no matter what. You can’t opt out the state

>>24501999
I’m the anon you responded to. Honestly, at worst, something like this might be true. But again I don’t pin it on every doctor and lawyer. There are qualified, intelligent, competent and ethical ones, even ones who are principled enough to get themselves in trouble or say the controversial things that need saying, at risk to their career. And they were at least intelligent to get through law/med school, pass the bar exam or go through residency, and maybe on top of that they’re specifically doctors, or lawyers, genuinely interested in and passionate about their field of study, and hence become very knowledgeable on it, while still remaining openminded, not becoming authoritarian and closeminded about their perceived knowledge; a doctor who genuinely keeps up with the latest studies and research, and also is aware of issues and corruption in the modern medical and pharmaceutical industries, and hence also takes things with a grain of salt and is open to changes, when needed; or, say, a lawyer who’s genuinely principled, also intelligent and studious, has looked deeply into, say, the history of law, the philosophy of law, ethics, whatever, and all this informs them.
For instance, there were doctors and nurses who, at risk to their career, brought up that they didn’t trust the COVID vaccines, weren’t sure the benefits outweighed the risks in all cases, especially for healthy young adults, and in fact that there were even studies and case reports showing significant harm for some of them. There were lawyers like Dr. Francis Boyle (also a professor, hence “Dr.”) who publicly claimed the mandates went against the Nuremberg Code, specifically against nonconsensual or unethical human experimentation, besides being deeply involved with human rights and calling out the Zionist control of the judiciary and various atrocities, war crimes, and human rights abuses of theirs and other state actors, over his decades-long career. You could paint him as just another leftist for the latter, but he was a uniquely qualified and principled one, today, for also being against things like Covid vax mandates, once again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Boyle

These are just SOME examples though. I concede that, tragically, it indeed seems to be the case that the whole system overall selects and filters for those who follow authority and obediently acquiesce to various dogmas; so corruption and rot can, in that way, easily spread down to many doctors and lawyers, through the way the whole education and accreditation system is (tautologically) set up for those who acquiesce to the system.

>>24502051
Your argument seems to be based on your idea that doctors and lawyers are honest, hardworking people while landlords and IP holders are leeches draining society. The reality is that there are lots of honest, hardworking landlords out there that don't charge unconscionable amounts and break their backs keeping their modest handful of properties maintained, I happen to know some of them. Likewise, there's lots of honest, hardworking IP holders. I'm not aware of any author that immediately consigns his or her works to the public domain on principle, although I'm sure there's more than none. Would you say that authors that license their IP to publishers are leeches?

The fact of the matter is that there are good people in bad businesses everywhere, and you shouldn't let that fact blind you to the badness of the business. Rent seeking is bad for society even when good people profit from it.

>>24502001
Artificial scarcity of doctors is definitely a thing, at least in the US

>>24501991
>just the rearrangements of finances, numbers on a screen, siphoning wealth from others but without really giving much value back themselves, or, any value they give is strongly outweighed by all the labor/wealth they siphon for themselves. Loan sharks, as an obvious example. Someone who inherits a massive trust fund and then becomes a speculator, one of the “winners” of the stock market.

The financial sector provides value to society by matching savings and investment, it is a legitimate sector of the economy

>>24501929 (OP)
overhated, the problem of "rent-seekers" is not stressed enough.

>>24501929 (OP)
My enemy is the hostile elites that have taken over my society.

>>24502000
>american post
where is capital in spider's web production?
in beaver dumb?
in the anthill?
capital is not are resource but claim of possession

>>24501991
While doctors and lawyers are compensated higher than say a factory worker they are still both proletarians because they work for wages. You can argue that if they went into private practice for themselves that they are the “owners” at that point but in reality they are still subject to selling their labor, however specialized, on the open market. Yes, they own their own means of production whether that be medical tools or legal knowledge but they cannot lease these tools out to others to perform their labor for them. It’s a very weird mix of both proletarian influences and bourgeois influences but it leans closer to proletarian than bourgeois because ultimately the doctor and the lawyer are still locked in a client patron relationship with bourgeois interests. The doctor will always do well but only as long as the factory owner does better.

>>24502363
You're forgetting that both doctors and lawyers possess a scarce resource (bar admission/medical license) that allows them to employ people below them (MAs and EMTs can only practice under a doctor's licensure, paralegals are in more or less the same position under a lawyer), and there's no real limit on how little of their job they're allowed to do themselves.

>>24501999
>t. failed medical or law school

>>24502032
Great, epic comeback.Why don't you turn a Google campus into common land then instead of being smarmy to someone who has a family cemetery?

>>24501974

Lol this. No true wealth is possible without labour exploitation

>>24501999
This is also true. Most successful professionals do belong to a certain class which can afford the right education for that degree. Doesn't mean they don't work hard but many don't have the opportunity at all.

>>24501929 (OP)
Define rent seeking, I'm not rich but my family owns couple of flats they rent out. Investing in property is incredibly middle class

>>24502032
>let's turn everyone back into 16th century peasants
Lol
Lmao

>>24502032
The effect of enclosures were quite variable, I think it benefitted livestock farmers more but profitiability likely declined for arable systems, some of those open land systems were really advanced. The spelsbury records are fascinating.

>>24502318
> where is capital in spider's web production?
The silk and skill that the spider possesses
>in beaver
the beaver’s teeth
>in the anthill
The queen’s mass of enslaved ants

Try again.

Henry George is the only person that matters because as long as I know who he is I don't have to think harder

>>24501974
>>24503110
What about artists? Singers? Youtubers/influencers/streamers? Authors?

>>24503236
I've made my position quite clear, I think: >>24502091
>Rent seeking is bad for society even when good people profit from it.
All of those professions would continue to exist without IP, they just wouldn't be nearly as lucrative. But they wouldn't need to be, because without a parasitic overclass, it would be far less expensive for us to sustain ourselves and passion projects would be viable even when they can't turn into millions of dollars.

>>24501980

Each man, his own worst enemy on 4chan.

>>24503286
You have made it quite clear that you are retarded.

>>24503334
>t. Poorfag that wishes he was a parasitic rent-seeker.

If you couldn't rent land, wouldn't that make it much harder for people with little capital to start a business?
For example a café on prime real estate in the city center.
To that you might raise that the government could redistribute land.
But firstly that'd be too cumbersome and bureaucratic. It'd slow the replacement of unviable businesses with viable ones.
Secondly, the government is retarded and the land would flow towards and get locked in by those with political connections

>>24503414
You just come off as having weird resentment issues about "rent-seekers".

I'm going to assume one bullied you, or something like that.

>>24503189
resource is not capital
there's no rent,no employment,no wage
by your own logic: body = capital,therefore by capital = by body = by actual work , not by renting
>The silk and skill that the spider possesses
they do not possess, it is what they are
capital may be transferred, spiders dot not sell their webs
there's no job to make webs for others
there's no capital renter who gives spider it's silk producing glands
there's no capital renter who gives beaver it's teeth
there's no capital renter who gives queen worker ants

>>24501929 (OP)
Thing is middle class interests and politics is based around defending increasing property value and capitalizing on that unearned income. The rich get most of their unearned income off financial instruments besides land values but the average 'murkan has most wealth tied up in their homes. Maybe taxing land would be good in some way but the biggest beneficiaries would be the urban underclass and biggest losers would be middle class property owners and American politics is based around worshiping class mobility and promising the underclass that they can become middle class and tap into that unearned income.
George was a classical liberal harmony of interests guy so those type of class conflicts shouldn't be an issue. Not that Marx was right about class structure or understood modern society much better, Veblen is who you want to read more of.

>>24503623
>>24503623
>If you couldn't rent land, wouldn't that make it much harder for people with little capital to start a business?
Taxing gains on land doesn't make renting harder it makes owning land financially worse.

>>24501974
Is owning a patent rent seeking?

>>24502003
>my family and immediate community's wellbeing is more important to me than poverty of people I do not know in the abstract
whooaaaa deep mannnn

>>24503889
>The rich get most of their unearned income off financial instruments
call it what it is, gambling with the bank-casinos

>>24503889
>Taxing gains on land doesn't make renting harder it makes owning land financially worse.
You know they can just increase the price of rent, right?

>>24501929 (OP)
how do you implement theory into practice?
In conflict, truth is a scarce resource. The rich have taken control. Idk a viable strategy other than blunt instruments.

That little sliver of red poor will get all the attention

>>24503889
>Taxing gains on land doesn't make renting harder it makes owning land financially worse.
A tax is more reasonable, but as per >>24503999 why wouldn't it increase rents? Just like how a VAT decreases purchasing power of consumers because it isn't 100% absorbed by profit margins
If you are a property developer with land you might choose to develop housing/plots for sale instead of renting the housing and paying the land tax. (this also happens if you have stringent protections for tenants)
This benefits those that can get a mortage while shafting the least credit worthy

>>24503914
Yes.

>>24504027
the point of the land tax is so that you use the land more efficiently since there is a limited amount of land, so if the tax is always say $100,000 dollars you can have an empty lot and pay the 100k for nothing, you can build a single family home and one family can pay the 100k or you can build a condo tower with 100 units and each person pays $1000, obv working with simplified numbers here for an example. with "property tax" you pay taxes based on the value of whatever is build on the land, so if you just leave some shitty old house on the lot, the taxes are low, if you develop it, the taxes go high. that's why detriot was using this to get the ppl sitting on derelict lots to do sth with it or sell.

>>24504042
yeah you should let apple corporation use your innovation without paying you anything otherwise you are rent seeking!

>>24504042
tao lin's dad invented lasik surgery, was he "rent seeking" by patenting it instead of just throwing it in the trash and getting a regular job?

>>24504044
It can work for that purpose, though the market value of an underdeveloped plot would already have increased if it has potential for development. If a town expands, the agricultural land that is best located for the next neighbourhood can massively increase in value. People react to money incentives and this is often enough to get people to sell.

>>24504042
What about selling a patent?

>>24504084
yeah i mean i'm not necessarily endorsing georgism, it does feels like another one of these "one radical trick to solve all the problems" things internet wackos get sucked into, i just didn't want to see it completely misrepresented since it isn't as wacko as some internet hokum out there. oh wait, there is a wacko part, in orthodox georgism ALL government income is supposed to come from the land value tax. that is going to have a lot of unintended consequences. to be fair though, george wrote "progress and poverty" like 40 years before the united states instituted an income tax.

>>24503628
They bully all of society by existing.

>>24504093
Any time you try to do a thing once and charge for it multiple times, that's rent-seeking. If you make a product or perform a service and then charge for it, that's not a rent. If you pay someone to make an object for you and then sell it to someone else, that's not a rent, either. If you buy a property once and then charge for it every month thereafter, that's a rent. If you charge someone a fee every time he makes and sells a thing without your involvement, that's a rent. Likewise, holding a patent, which is a legal threat against someone making and selling a thing without your involvement, is also a rent.

>>24503236
If it's a business then it definitely engages in exploitation. None of what you've mentioned can exist outside of labour that is not the artist's own work. And at some level I disagree with the idea that any kind of labour should be considered less worthy of wealth than another.

>>24504146
>making and selling a thing without your involvement
if he really did it without your involvement he wouldn't be infringing the patent, but since he's just ripping off your research, you are in fact involved.

>>24504156
Research is not a product. At best it's a service, if someone is paying you to develop a product. Once you've performed that service, it's simply knowledge to be applied by anyone who possesses it.

>>24504167
The fruits of research are the designs that are patented so i think its fair to say that the patent is the research unless you beleive in platonic ideals and that anyone who makes a new mousetrap is mearly casting light over an already existing but unknown shape.

>>24501929 (OP)
You will NEVER beat the Elite, btw.

>>24504146
without patents invention crawls to a stop

>>24504027
>why wouldn't it increase rents
You need to make (probably reasonable) assumptions about land use right now. To increase rents the tax would need to have no effect on how land is being used so landlords could freely increase prices. If a bunch of middle class families were forced to sell off their property to mega corporations to be developed into commie blocks rents would probably decrease but it's a stupid decusion because it won't happen in America because most poor Americans want to own a home some day and make a profit on them in the long run.

>Just like how a VAT decreases purchasing power of consumers because it isn't 100% absorbed
Taxing consumption though obviously decreases consumption, taxing financial gains on land doesn't decrease land.

>>24504121
>orthodox georgism ALL government income is supposed to come from the land value tax. that is going to have a lot of unintended consequences. to be fair though, george wrote "progress and poverty" like 40 years before the united states instituted an income tax
That's a funny little thing. If you trace out the intellectual history of modern "libertarianism" in America Georgism was the big anti-income tax idea before it morphed with the influx of European liberal ideas from Mises/Hayek in the 1920s/30s.

>>24504184
Except it's not, because IP is neither intellectual nor property. It's a scam and that's all.

>>24504186
Then I guess we should all be glad that the paleolithic patent office decided to grant a patent for the wheel, or we'd be stuck in 40,000 BC right now.

>>24504195
>Taxing consumption though obviously decreases consumption, taxing financial gains on land doesn't decrease land.
Well yeah land doesn't appear/disappear out of nowhere (except if you are the dutch), someone has to hold the bag and pay the landtax, you can't tax land out of existence
But as someone using land, with a new landtax it'd be more attractive to rent it from someone else and let them pay it instead of lending to buy the land to save yourself the rent but now having to pay the landtax.
I don't see how that doesn't increase rents

>>24502003
>I do not care that there are poor people because by degrees of separation my family has had a successful ranch for generations
Boomer mentality tbqh

>>24504252
Do you own land or employ people?

/lit/ understands that Henry George is based of course.

>>24502003
This is what Georgism was up against. LVT might objectively be among the best forms of taxation, but people who own even a sliver of land will go down squealing, howling, crying, and fighting to the death about their status and entitlements when their property is threatened with the slightest obligation to society. I think a lot of people just cannot think about things at a systemic level, so they get overwhelmed by grievances over the negative impacts for them personally. They end up being useful idiots vehemently defending systems of ownership that mostly benefit the wealthiest people and organisations, while largely ignoring the potential personal benefits (e.g. reducing or replacing income taxation entirely) and underestimating the benefits that would generally arise from living in such a society and economy. This sort of reaction from small to mid land owners is probably one of the reasons why progressives ultimately upped the ante and went charging all the way toward communist revolutions... it was the fight they were stirring up anyway. Although today's progressives (especially the professional and educated types) might do well to read Henry George, as he was going after a more abstract injustice that is currently thriving and harming a lot of people (e.g. the land/property bubbles in various developed countries, the tech monopolists) but which many struggle to understand or feel angry enough about compared to the more visceral and personal injustices of labor exploitation.

>>24501929 (OP)
>mask_off.jpg
It's actually in-fighting between extractive and tech capitalists, written by the tech capitalists.

>>24504691
>the tech monopolists
ironically it is the tech bros who revived georgism and push it the most because they all have high incomes but don't own property so have the most to gain from it. if u think georgism is going to stick it to the tech bros, it won't. in the end tho, all these envy schemes to stick it to the successful never really work because smart driven people always find a way to succeed, and resentful ne'er-do-wells never do, no matter how much u try to rig it one way or the other.

>>24502003
The internet will remember you.
And not forgive.

>>24502003
You literally think your family can perpetually isolate yourself from the rest of the universe with money.

Absolutely delusional.

>>24504691
>LVT might objectively be among the best forms of taxation
In real markets, price usually has little to do with labor input. Everyone has agreed on this for the better part of a century.

>>24505006
read it again dude, he said land value tax not labor theory of value

>>24504196
conditions vary with time, easy layups like the wheel are all snatched up

>>24504691
>LVT might objectively be among the best forms of taxation
Was there ever a serious proposal of how to determine the value of land that isn't on the market and hasn't been sold in living memory? Treating all land as being of equal value is a terrible idea, since it's obviously not.

>>24501992
I want to build a factory. I need materials and workers to build it. I also need money to purchase those materials, the land on which it will be situated, the wages of those who will build it, and various other expenses. I do not have, say, the ten million dollars building the factory will require, but I can get that ten million dollars through outside means and make the actual construction of the factory, and the subsequent goods it will produce and employment it will provide, possible in the first place. In this way capital has contributed to the production of goods and services. Now fuck off back to the sharty and consider asking your high school guidance counselor if your school offers an economics course.

>>24501929 (OP)
Like a lot of thinkers, right idea, methods that would lead to widespread poverty and general inefficiency if implemented. The use of otherwise productive land, homes, ect, as a speculative investment is problematic but Mr. George's proposed resolutions are extreme and impractical, and would fuck over "small" landholders and speculators more than big institutional ones, which is where the majority of the problem lies.

>>24501992
Labor is capital.

>>24501929 (OP)
I see images like this and thank God that we live in a Capitalist society. I do not really benefit from it personally but there is an immense pleasure in knowing that there is an entire clade of jealous thieves out there who desperately want to overthrow property rights out of naked envy.

Day by day, year by year these vermin are measured out and ground down. Each cry to eat the rich is met with the back of a hand, and day by day, year by year they continue. They place the whole of their lives, every waking moment on the balance for their cause, and in so doing they guarantee that they can never meet success of any measurable sort, and so will be crushed, slowly, for the entire span of their lives until with their last breath they feel death come for them, and realize--I hope--that they lived entirely in vain. A whole life spent trying to steal, and failing.

There's something sweet about this. Like watching someone remembering their child burning alive, and patting the air, trying to put him out in their memories. Like trying to extinguish a flame by throwing water on the light it casts. So futile, so pointless, they choose to dwell forever in the flame of their own inadequacy, their own inability to affect revolution, and with each moment the fire burns hotter, as surely no Communist or Leftoid can reach 40 without realizing that he is not going to win. The revolution was broken in before he was born, before his father was born, the knife broken off at the hilt in his back by men who made their compromise with power to live comfortably in exchange for selling ineffectual lies to the youth.

I sometimes wonder how much of my life was a waste, and I can say with reasonably surity that very little of it has been, for at least I do not spend my days impotently seething about the fortunes of others.

>>24501929 (OP)
>producers through capital

>>24505786
We're talking about real economics, not Marxian nonsense. Go dig a pit with a spoon or whatever.

>>24505962
>hmm today I will buy a lot of industrial capital and it will just create value for me as if by magic
the ignorance of liberals never seizes to amaze