Random thought, would be it be good to extend land tax to use of all common public goods. E.g. radio frequencies, mining, water, CO2 pollution. Things you own, licensed or consume that take from the common good. Obviously this need constant tweaking E.g. as new tech makes different things valuable.

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skew-aberration 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, it's been suggested that all scarce inputs to the economy should be taxed. And yes the idea of Georgism is to let market set the prices and tax based off of that.

It does become complicated when the scarce inputs are things like highly specialized labor. Georgism wouldn't tax that monopoly, though our current systems (progressive income taxes) do. Many people would want a system which penalizes businesses for buying up e.g. all the veterinarians in a city and charging monopoly prices.

	▲	marcosdumay 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Many people would want a system which penalizes businesses for buying up e.g. all the veterinarians in a city and charging monopoly prices. As powerful as taxes are to create change, you don't need to use them to solve every problem out there.

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nemomarx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The good news is that as different things become valuable their value changes, I guess? So if radio frequency stops being useful, the LVT put on it also drops pretty hard.

The bad news is now you have to assess the value of a lot more things in order to do this (the value of clean waterways in a certain state, the value of IP taken away from the common culture) that may not have a direct market value.

	▲	BobbyTables2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		How does one even put a direct financial value on clean water, clean air, lack of noise pollution, etc.? These things have different values to different people. While most everyone wants them in some form, there is a huge spectrum between “it won’t kill me this month” and “living in pristine Mt. Fuji”. Should private companies be allowed to pollute sparse remote areas with no population? Does it have a financial value if nobody goes there?

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ro_sharp 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, pricing negative externalities is a good idea. Unfortunately some are more or less expensive to price/enforce

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mcdonje an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Other replies supporting taxing externalities and scarce resources are correct, but it can be generalized as taxing undesirable behavior to disincentivize it.

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notatoad an hour ago | parent [-]

The generalization I would use is that governments should tax any scarce resource based on the amount of revenue it should produce if used effectively, rather than the revenue a given consumer can actually produces. Whether that is land, radio spectrum, or clean air.

“Undesirable behavior” is overly broad to the point of being actively misleading, and gets you into sin taxes. smut or drugs are not the scarce resources anybody is talking about here.

	▲	mcdonje 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not misleading. Rent-seeking is an undesirable behavior, and it's the primary behavior a land value tax targets. Hoarding limited resources is an undesirable behavior. Making products that have negative environmental impacts is an undesirable behavior.