Thought experiment: if all habitable land on the planet is surveyed and transferred to private ownership, all subsequent generations that are born from that point on, will be doomed to rent-based servitude. Forgetting all political theory, it seems that planet-bound species with a positive population growth rate must not rely on socioeconomic systems that exclusively (or heavily) favour private ownership of land.
What I appreciate about Georgism is that it can neatly avoid the difficult issue of justifying exclusive use of land without resorting to ideas like 'First Occupation' or vindicating violent acquisition.
Essentially, you could say that all land starts out as - and remains - common property (because nobody created it) but a land value tax allows an individual to 'purchase' the exclusive rights to a natural resource by compensating the owners (i.e. everyone else) for their exclusion.
In George's terminology 'land' effectively includes all natural resources. This gives us a good analogy that most people might not consider when thinking about private ownership of land. The radio spectrum. We generally do not allow private ownership of a portion of the radio spectrum but instead ask for payment for exclusive use of the resource for a determined amount of time. To allow ownership in perpetuity based on a one-off payment seems simply wrong in this case. Land, water, etc are similar.
> Give me the private ownership of all the land, and will I move the earth? No; but I will do more. I will undertake to make slaves of all the human beings on the face of it.
If the land is taxed then you must find a renter willing to pay more than your tax, otherwise you would sell. Meanwhile renters will search for the lowest rent, which is naturally found in high density areas. So cities would still form, and the vast tracts of unoccupied land would be money-losing assets that must be abandoned, at least until population growth makes some of those plots profitable. The market would fluctuate with supply and demand, just as it does today.
Abolish land "ownership", and limit leases to 99 years. Existing ownership relations can be grandfathered in, but they will of course eventually disappear, in much the same way as how scientific revolutions eventually succeed: via the biological demise of the preceding hegemony.
I don't think we're projected to have positive population growth for much longer. Also what does rent based servitude even mean? I own a house but still have to pay taxes and upkeep. It's really not much different from rent. The tax supposedly goes to pay for services that the govt provides back to the people. If I were to pay rent instead, at least the service I receive in return is provided back to me specifically, and the cost of switching if I don't like the deal being offered is much lower.
Rent, healthcare, and the price of eggs are very popular things to complain about for some reason...
