If we want to reduce human impacts on the planet, why not incentive the opposite and incentive leaving the land natural?
Land value taxes prioritize GDP and profit above all else. Isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place?
There isn't a magic answer to it, but simply saying dense areas use less footprint for shelter ignores all the other necessities and conveniences consumed by the people living there.
Single family homes are often easier to power off-grid with solar if that's on the table, though again with regards to externalities the solar power equipment likely sends those costs to multiple countries on the other side of the planet.
If you replaced property taxes with land value taxes and held revenue equal:
For rural areas, not much would change. Land is cheap and taxes would remain low.
For suburban areas, there would be a moderate shift in tax burden. People with homes on large plots of land would pay more; people with homes on smaller plots of land would pay less.
For urban areas, the changes would be drastic. Because land is limited in urban cores and appreciates in value every year, there's an absurd amount of speculation. An LVT would discourage this by making it costly to hold onto undeveloped or underdeveloped land just for future price gains. As a result, we could expect a surge in the development of vacant or underutilized plots, leading to a potential increase in housing availability and a decrease in rental prices. This would both alleviate housing shortages and reduce the speculative bubbles that can distort urban real estate markets.
The wealth transfer is a feature rather than a bug, in this case. Speculators sitting on unimproved or underutilised land are seen as literal rent-seekers, and taxing them is seen as reclaiming a natural monopoly at the same time as removing the leeches who're sucking up big chunks of a city's growth.
Optimizing for profit in urban land use excludes the production of raw materials almost entirely. Meaning that raw materials have to be grown or raised elsewhere, transported into the city, and the waste has to be removed afterward.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial purely from an environmental angle to produce more food and resources in the urban areas to minimize external costs? And if so, wouldn't the current system disincentivize this in favor of higher profit per square foot businesses, regardless of the environmental impact?
Because otherwise newcomers are stuck paying high rents to people who got there first, causing misery and impoverishing young people to the benefit of the old. And when young people lack opportunity, violence happens.
> why not incentive the opposite and incentive leaving the land natural?
We do. All over the place. But for the cost of a square mile of Central London being natural, we could have a dozen square miles of natural land just 50 miles away. Because way more people want to live in Central London than a commuter town.
Costs can be externalized, but at the environment level they still exist even if outside the city of consumers. It's also often the case that externalizing those costs adds even more impact as the product has to be shipped in and the waste shipped back out.
I don't understand your argument. Are you saying that people that don't live in cities don't consume, or consume less of, food, water, electricity, furniture and clothing?
> It's also often the case that externalizing those costs adds even more impact as the product has to be shipped in and the waste shipped back out.
They have to be shipped to fewer places and thus save resources. The only way what you are saying makes any sense is either if shipping things to more places somehow save resources or if people that don't live in cities don't need anything shipped.
It may be true from a theoretical viewpoint, but in general cities are richer and consume more.