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Comment by djschnei | Hacker News Reader

Wow... outstanding haha. So in bringing more business to an area, they need to pay twice? At what point do people actually own the land they own?

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Uh, yeah, they have to cost-share the burden of upsetting the current infrastructure. Say you owned a piece of property adjacent to where all this new building is going on. Is it your responsibility to chip in? Is it your responsibility to shoulder the cost burden of what is effectively a zoning-related issue? I mean, god, when do you really own the property you're standing on? You didn't even ask for all this development, but now you've got to pay for expanding the infrastructure because a new developer wants to reap financial reward by developing up his land?

Yeah. It's not a property freedom issue, it's a cost ecosystem issue. As time goes on and life changes, owning property is going to have fluid costs, and tax assessments on people who come in to develop land is one way to defray those costs from disproportionately hitting people who have lived in an area for a long time. Frankly, those people would never really plan for that kind of thing to happen, so you're avoiding a lot of nasty repercussions by taxing the person upsetting the ecosystem, rather than the members of the ecosystem itself.

1) the developer doesn't "bring" business to the area, they are supported by their clients and are responding to economic incentives, same as anyone else.

2) if you do perceive them as "bringing" business, then it's only right to equally perceive them as bringing congestion, pollution, and all the other undesirable side effects of economic activity.

3) when does one ever "own" land? Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that.

> Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that.

The compensation they extract has nothing to do with the cost of enforcing property rights, because those costs are trivial.

Not trivial at all, just mostly invisible and most of us who've only known modern western societies never give it a second thought.

Try again. Law enforcement was just 9% of the Cupertino municipal budget in 2015.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1222

What fraction of that do you want to bet has anything to do with protecting private property, as opposed to the large revenue generating activities like parking tickets?

Like I said, completely invisible to you.

Try again. That "protection" you're referencing is actually the natural cooperation between rational actors that capitalism and market economies in general foster and perpetuate. Capitalism is the invisible hand, not government.

Go to school, kid: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/property_rights.asp

I've been studying economic theory for the majority of my life, have a PhD, and I am a fellow at one of the most prestigious econ think tanks in the world. I've gone to school. I do appreciate being called a kid though.

Is your point that they need a blank check to protect property rights? Because that's preposterous and would only demonstrate your own misunderstanding of property rights (or rights in general).

Let's see your dissertation then.

for professional reason (i.e. mixing personal social media activity with links to my professional work) I can't post that here. Against our social media policy, and is generally in bad taste. Undoubtedly, you will take that as "I can't since it doesn't exist", but I couldn't really care less.

Are you sure it's not because it's really in sociology?

Are inverted yield curves and business cycles typical sociology dissertation topics?

If you care to educate yourself on the point I was making: https://fee.org/articles/capitalism-and-cooperation/

Ctrl+f "property rights": Phrase not found -- I really don't understand why I'm supposed to slog through such bloviating.

https://fee.org/search/?q=protection%20property%20rights seems pretty clear they understand the government is responsible for protecting property rights, which is a prerequisite for capitalism.

Because you asserted that there is some invisible, omniscient, 'so complicated we couldn't possibly understand it' work being done by the government in order to keep the boat afloat. My claim is that that's largely a ridiculous claim. And the government IS responsible for protecting property rights, I never suggested otherwise. That responsibility doesn't afford them (we the collective) a blank check.

Is the irony seriously eluding you?! You're saying in order to protect our property rights, they need to further violate our property rights! For the love of god...

In one sentence you claim we never own our property, the next you say they're in charge of protecting our rights as property owners... You literally contradict yourself in one sentence...

>So in bringing more business to an area, they need to pay twice?

It's very possible for situation where whatever property tax the city gets isn't enough to cover the actual services a company requires. Fire, EMS, police, road construction, etc. This is especially true when the workers are mostly commuters. Then the workers don't pay local taxes either.

There are positive externalities like nearby restaurants and hotels with increased business.

Its really unfair to blame apple for it since they didn't make the rules.

But I think it would be fair to levy a "worker" tax that tries to raise revenue for teh city to service the thousands of employees who spend 8-12 hours a day in Cupertino but don't pay a cent in taxes.

If failure to pay property taxes means you vacating the property after government seizure, then you don't own the land anyway. Threat of seizure is a serious problem for a business, why not force them to pay twice?

uuuuuh because it's immoral? You're saying "well we already threaten them with violence/guns to pay once, might as well do it twice" - I shouldn't have to explain my objections.

I'm not sure you understand the point of my comment. I was sarcastically agreeing with you.

Never. Land is partly common property.

Real estate is taxed ongoing because the Earth has finite land.

Google "Land Value Tax"

Luckily, we have a totally non coercive, completely voluntary way to regulate the use of finite resources, which automagically allocates resources favoring their most productive uses. It's called a market economy.

How can something that is common property, like you assert (I disagree) be claimed arbitrarily by one group of people and charged for?

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