redahs

Because allowing new public legal tender to be created on security of fictitious capital such as speculative land values and deposits of credit created by other banks is accounting fraud, transfers wealth from the poor to the rich, creates speculative bubbles in financial asset markets, promotes disinvestment in the real economy, decreases demand for labor, inflates the price of land relative to wages for unsupervised labor, and worsens inequality.

The traditional american school of thought on money is that

1) the optimal supply of money is externally determined by the needs of commerce for liquidity,

2) new money can be created to meet the needs of commerce through public loans secured by real property pledged as collateral without any fixed artificial limits on supply

3) money may be circulated with an expiration date to discourage long term hoarding,

4) general governments should retain the ability to suppress the private issuance of bank notes and regain public control of the circulating medium of exchange in order to emit unsecured notes to pay for defensive war expenditures in the event that it cannot obtain loans from private banks and it is existentially necessary to do so

So some of the ideals espoused by blockchain activists may clash a bit with that.

In order for money to be both real and useful it should be secured by unencumbered interest in durable real property.

The simplest way to circulate commercial paper for daily transactions is the Benjamin Franklin paper money system which involves appointing public loan officers throughout a nation to issue equity loans to anyone in possession of unencumbered interest in durable real property which they are willing to pledge as collateral which the public can auction in the event of non-payment.

This way money is placed in circulation so that the interest paid for the first use of legal tender is publicly collected and immediately spent back into the economy and so that the total quantity of money expands dynamically in proportion to the aggregate quantity of physical durable capital.

Which is rational. The annual product of lunar soil is zero. Extending the margin of production to the moon will lower wages and increase poverty. The only way to get the general public behind the idea of settling other planets is through remote terraforming. If there were robots, domes, mirrors, and synthetic organisms put there first to provide free soil, air, and water to settlers, then the annual product of lunar soil be above zero, and off-planet workers could actually receive wages.

There's not much reason to settle the moon and mars prior to the remote establishment of an independent food supply. Aggressive remote terraforming through domes, mirrors, foreign microorganisms, explosives, and robots should come first. Establishing automated synthetic systems on these rocks to mimic what nature provides for free on Earth is the hard problem to be solving. Without such systems already place, wages will be extremely low and no one will want to live there.

A population decline is certainly not necessary to continue growing GDP/capita. What kind of neo-Malthusian nonsense is that? The economy is operating nowhere near peak performance... at least 1/3 of GDP is lost annually due to private capture of economic rent.

If the desire is to make online content more readable, it might be worth starting with the assumption that all content downloaded from the network will be read on a black-and-white ereader device with no persistent internet connection.

This assumption might require substantially reworking the hyperlink model of the internet, so that external references to content delivered by third-parties is sharply distinguished from internal references to other pages within the same work.

The U.S. lost Vietnam because rural farmers thought U.S. troops were working for land lords. Land lords would take control of rural areas and start charging farmers rent after it was cleared of Viet Cong. There is a similar problem in Afghanistan: the Afghan government raises most of its revenues from sales and excise taxes, and doesn't tax land owners on property privately seized from rural residents. Since it doesn't tax land and has not centrally issued titles to rural residents, it doesn't have good records on land ownership and can't prevent private land seizures effectively.

These are not inevitable problems. Our politicians just don't understand the difference between land and capital and have undermined U.S. efforts to promote land reform in Asia after it worked so well in Japan.

The ownership of land by value is more unequally distributed than the ownership of capital. Capital depreciates and needs to be regularly replaced each generation. The wealthy have never needed robots to live a life of plenty; they can extract as much labor power as they need through rent.

Compact urban settlement is a direct market substitute for the hydrocarbons which would otherwise be required to transport goods and people across longer distances.

The most important thing we can do to transition off of oil and fossil fuels is to maximize the intensity at which we utilize renewable resources which directly substitute for them.

We maximize the intensity at which urban land is utilized by phasing in a 100-1200% national or global land value tax over the next century on the appraised market price which all land is expected to sell for if cleared of improvements.

We can also promote the development of a national, inter-state, zero-emission, passenger & freight rapid-transit market several times faster than automobile highways by allowing private rail and hyper-loop operators to deduct qualified ticket sales from their land value tax liabilities.

The shift of the state and local tax burden off of real estate held by wealthy savers and on to sales and purchases of household expenditures, the shift of the federal tax burden off of property income (most 'capital' gains are land value gains) and on to payroll earned by younger workers.

All of these changes to the tax code have increased the rent which wealthy property owners can extract from younger workers without having to work themselves, at the cost of increasing the tax burden on younger working families, so that they cannot afford to have as many children as early in life.

We should phase in a federal 400% annual land value tax on the appraised price which all land would sell for if clear of improvements over the next 80 years.

A 400% annual tax on the market value means the expect purchase price of an empty lot will approach 3 months worth of tax payments for holding it. A percentage of the gross revenues can be prebated to citizen residents at the beginning of each year to afford taxes due at the end of the year. A large deduction can be granted for land and real estate property tax payments made to state and local governments.

The additional revenues gained from the tax can be used to abolish sales and payroll taxes which fall more heavily on younger working families so it is more affordable for future generations to have a larger number of children earlier in life.

If the thesis of Progress & Poverty is correct, then the cyclic nature of civilization is due primarily to the tendency of the labor cost of acquiring unimproved land for productive workers to increase faster than the rate at which wages can be accumulated to acquire it. If this is the case, then the decline of our present phase of civilization may have begun in the 1930s, when state governments in the United States begun replacing property taxes with sales taxes, as the share of total government revenues raised from property taxes has now fallen from 40-50% to less than 10%, and the share is even lower in other countries.

However while the Roman Republic relied primarily a 1-3% annual property tax on wealth to fund its early expansion from 509BC, it had abandoned public assessed domestic property taxes by 167BC at the latest, yet the the Roman Empire reached its height in 117AD. So the point in time at which a country eliminates domestic property taxes on landed wealth in order to maximize the private capture of rent for its political class is unlikely to represent the peak or maximum of the civilization, but rather an initial inflection point, in which case a peak of our current phase of civilization during the 1960s may have been possible, with the inflection point occurring earlier.

Tax policy has a huge impact on growth. However what matters much more than quantity of tax is the quality of tax.

Money is public credit and varies in quality depending upon what it is secured by. Broad-based sales and payroll taxes are the worst possible quality of tax which undermine their own base. Sales taxes destroy commerce and payroll taxes which shift the tax burden from old savers onto young workers make it harder for families to afford having kids as early.

Land value and property income taxes are the best quality of tax, because the state simply confiscates a portion of the free lunch which would otherwise be privately captured by landlords, without discouraging any productive economic activity.

Louisiana is an example of a state with very poor tax "quality": low property tax, large property tax exemptions for businesses, and high sales taxes. It has negative real GDP growth per capita.

The public is frequently malinformed by experts as to what taxes are the best quality, because many tax 'reform' advocacy organizations actually advocate that the governments use the worst possible quality tax because they hypothesize that it will cause voters to advocate for lower government spending.

Paying for Social Security using payroll taxes as we are currently doing seems like national suicidal, because younger families gain a greater share of their total income from working, rather than from holding land and investments.

Payroll taxes increase the effective tax burden on younger working families in their prime reproductive years, which means they can no longer afford to have the same number of kids, or to have kids as early. When younger workers are taxed, the less affordable it is to create new generations of younger workers, and fertility rates decrease.

The best thing the United States could do to address this would be to eliminate FICA \ self-employment taxes and fund social security out of a general income tax which taxed capital gains and dividends at the same rate as labor income. An even better solution would be fund it via a national real-estate property tax or national land value tax, and not to raise it from taxes on earnings at all, as Thomas Paine originally proposed in Agrarian Justice.

The boom and bust cycle has been driven primarily by land speculation since classical antiquity. The ability of banks to use their credit creation powers to fuel real estate bubbles through mortgage lending can be halted using a frequently reassessed land value tax and land value increment tax. In the early 1900s Germany completely eliminated land speculation in the colony of Kiautschou using a 6% annual tax on assessed unimproved value of land, of what lots would sell for if cleared of improvements, and a 33% land value increment tax on increases in assessed land value. This allowed the colony to develop rapidly and continuously without any period of recession while running a budget surplus.

The value the sunlight provides, like all positive externalities, is capitalized in the value of land.

The benefits of sunlight can only be acquired if one has acquired a place on Earth to stand, suitable places to stand have been enclosed by land titles, and land rent or profits which can be acquired from ownership of these titles without having to produce anything make up at minimum 20% of national GDP.

Land and sunlight are consumed by virtue of occupying a physical space on Earth, and play an extremely large role in the economy, but land and sunlight were never produced by the economy or as a result of economic processes. They are instead the product of natural physical processes which pre-existed the evolution of humans.

All goods are certainly not the result of economic production, as this would create a chicken-and-egg problem where human civilization could not exist unless another human civilization was around to produce it.

Consumption taxes have substantially decreased economic growth in Eurozone in practice. The Neo-classical models of economic growth are inferior to classical models of economic growth, as the exclude Land and natural resources as an independent factor of production.

The primary impetus of the development of neo-classical theories economics excluded was United States government land grants to railroad companies during the westward expansion of the 19th century. The railroad barons took over the economics departments of private universities which were previously controlled by the clergy, began firing professors which held to classical economic theories, as there was no tenure for professors at the time. They instead began funding professors such as John Bates Clarke, who repckaged Marxist economist theory that capital was 'jelly' and land and natural resources no longer exist.

"Neo-Classical Economics as a Strategem against Henry George" documents how land and natural resources were removed from classical economic theories during the development of neo-classical economics in order to promote the interests of wealthy land owners in the United States during the 18th century:

http://www.masongaffney.org/publications/K1Neo-classical_Str...

Humans, animals, plants, and single cell organisms directly consume sunlight as an input factor of production for various biological processes without paying the sun anything for it.

> "But when money is invested it is used to buy capital goods–houses or office buildings or factories or ships or motor trucks or machines. Any one of these projects puts as much money into circulation and gives as much employment as the same amount of money spent directly on consumption.

This is nice in theory but certainly false in practice.

In practice much of the price paid for capital-goods is not for capital at all, but for land and monopoly priviliges. In real estate, the land share of real estate value can be 60% of the total investment.

Payments for land and investment in land purchases are always surplus payments beyond what is necessary to bring land into use as a factor of production, because land is a fixed natural resource which does not have a labor cost of production.

When investment in land increases through land banking, this increases the opportunity cost of investing in businesses which employ labor to produce goods and services, which decreases the demand for labor and lowers wages.

Policies which are designed to increase investment and savings over consumption typically decrease economic output and slow growth, because while increased consumption of labor produced goods and services increases the profits for investing in productive businesses supplying these services and the demand for labor, increased investment does not necessarily increase the demand for labor or the supply of labor produced goods and services at all.

It's possible for policies promoting increased investment and savings to promote nothing more than land banking and investors holding empty parking lots while waiting for a speculative increase in price.

> Maybe housing costs are what's causing the slump (if there is one)?

Yes, that's how the business cycle has worked in western countries since the classical antiquity. The largest component of urban housing costs is the price for access to land, and payments for access to land are surplus payments beyond what is necessary for land to be supplied, because land is a fixed a natural resource with no labor cost of production.

An increase in land banking and the holding of real estate for investment purposes decreases the supply of land available, increases payments for access to it. This increases the market valuations for real estate value based on the increase in the capitalized value of future rent payments. This increases the opportunity cost of investing money in productive businesses which employ labor to produce goods and services relative to putting money into land. This decreases investment in production of non-land goods and services which have a labor cost of production, which decreases the demand for labor, which decreases wages.

Decreased wages then lead to decreased consumption which leads to decreased ability to pay rent, which then results in a drop in property valuations based upon capitalized rent payments. After a sustained period of rents increasing faster than wages, the property bubble usually pops and results in an economic depression.

One solution to avoid this problem is through taxing and redistributing surplus land rents through a land value tax, which countries such as Taiwan have implemented. China has people smart enough to clear this hurdle and find creative solutions to continue rapid growth, but since Xi has consolidated power and gone back to heavily promoting Marxism as the economic model for China's future, the current political situation makes it seem unlikely that they will actually do so.

They could clear up rents rising faster than savings and consumption by copying Taiwan and implementing a land value tax as Sun Yat Sen and Henry George originally recommended. However Xi has consolidated power, begun promoting Marx more heavily, and claims Marxism is still totally correct for the future of China, so they probably won't. With a greater push for Marxism, if the economy begins to slow we should expect greater nationalization of Chinese industry. Hopefully investors realize that Taiwan is the more sustainable political-economic system in light of current conditions.

The United States is not currently experiencing mass immigration. Its total annual population growth rate including immigration is lower than 1% and has not been this low since the Great Depression. The United States is a relatively lightly populated country per unit of total land area, and many cities in the interior of the country are declining in population despite immigration.

Housing prices are inversely correlated with the property tax rate on real estate and the income tax rate on capital gains. A decline in either real estate property taxes or capital gain income taxes increases housing prices, by making land more attractive as an investment. This effect is independent of the population of the country. If it becomes more attractive to put money into land rather than in businesses which employ workers, and changes to the tax code cause an increase in land banking, then the price of land increases faster than wages and salaries used to buy it regardless of the level of population of the country.

Taxing earned income of younger families via payroll taxes at a much higher rate than unearned increment of land via property taxes and capital gains taxes is basically a very slow moving form of national suicide.

The previous explanation of declining fertility rates is a real effect which should not be ignored. Since the 1970s, increases to payroll taxes and decreases to taxes on property and capital gains have increased the tax burden on younger working families relative to older families and inflated the cost of housing. This has prevented American families to afford having as many children as early in life, and caused native fertility rates to decline below the population replacement rate.

An expanding economy which is increasing in specialization requires additional workers to fill these specialized niches. If native fertility rates are declining, then immigrants are likely to fill these roles.

> Chile’s Water Code was established during the Pinochet dictatorship, and still treats water as a replenishable (rather than increasingly scarce) natural resource. Under the code, companies may trade water rights to the highest bidder

If there's a bidding process already in place, the Chilean government can charge companies the bid value annually as a public natural resource rent, and place the tax revenues in a permanent fund for conversation efforts. Instead of calling a river a legal person, a formal government charted corporation can be created for the river to distribute revenues from taxes on water right holders in a pro-social manner. This would be somewhat similar to 'Cap and Dividend' proposal for climate change.

I assume that once Google has made investments in China which it does not wish to risk losing due to state interference, we can expect the Chinese government to start asking them to censor search results in western countries which indicate that Taiwan is a sovereign nation?

It has already successfully pressured US airlines to do this.

Use regular C, but write the code in literate programming files which can be rendered into a portable design document describing the implementation and interaction of every subsystem in the codebase. 'Standard written English' is the best language available for modeling abstractions.

> our industry's persistent lack of institutional memory that each generation ends up struggling with these problems de novo, without reference to similar systems that came before

This sounds like what Knuth was trying to solve with Literate Programming.

His wanted to ensure that solutions were as easy to read as they were to write.

Inequality in land ownership has been continuously increasing in the United States since the 1930s. Higher property tax rates on land ownership are needed to reverse it, as well as the elimination of property tax exemptions which the owners of non-profits, private forests, golf courses, etc are currently receiving.

> They buy expensive equipment and tags then come out here and work their asses off for a chance.

That's fine as a hobby, but it would create poverty and rapid depletion of wildlife if the majority of people were forced to depend on hunting and game meat for daily meals.

> If we can arrange for more people to harvest their own meat rather than accepting an industrial commodity.

This is a false dilemma. If we want to return to a nation of small farmers rather than a handful of industrial farms, all we need to do is increase property taxes on land ownership, as declining property tax rates are associated with increased rural inequality and a worsening gini coefficient for land ownership, where a greater fraction of land is owned by fewer people. Development of large numbers of intensive and efficient small farms can also be aided by marginal cost public irrigation infrastructure funded out of land tax revenues, which is how California developed its agricultural sector in the early 1900s using its public irrigation districts. Requiring households to devote large fraction of their labor towards traveling to hunting areas is not a realistic alternative.