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0 pointsbufordsharkley9y ago0 comments

It's a reminder that we have a prisoner's dilemma on our hands: if one city fixes things, they share an disproportionate burden of the load that will follow. Real success will only happen if everybody coordinates on better land-use policy.

The likely outcome is that they won't, and here we are.

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Agustus9y ago· 2 in thread

What kind of land-use policy are you proposing and how will it be kept out of the hands of politicians who abuse it for their own personal gain?

bufordsharkleyOP9y ago

My ideal reform would be the Land Value Tax[0], which admittedly has run into problems in execution with poor implementations.

It depends upon assessments on land value that reflect current market value of that land. In one notable case of the LVT in practice (Pittsburgh), assessors made a real hash of it, with assessments well out of proportion to market demand.

I would like to see a proof of concept to fix this, mainly an automated algorithmic assessment map of land values, based off of public sales records. It's a fun project to attempt; I should start up a repo some time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

dragonwriter9y ago

The problem with using sales records for LVT is the central concept of LVT is that it's based on unimproved value, and actual sales of land usually include improvements and separating out there unimproved value is non-trivial and hard to validate.

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