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0 pointsAurornis5d ago0 comments

> If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc, which are all different jobs sometimes played by the same people)

You need to be specific about what you mean by “remove landlords” because that’s a nonsensical statement by itself.

Some party must be responsible for the investment to produce the property. Some part must own the property.

The most charitable interpretation of what you’re trying to say would be that private rental contracts are forbidden and the government would have a monopoly on renting properties out. So only the government could own properties that are rented and the entire rental market would depend on how much housing the local government decided to build and manage.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

estearum5d ago· 2 in thread

You tax away all the gains generated by the land value, which effectively eliminates the "landlord" component of a rental fee and directs the owner's incentives toward producing value via construction, improvements, or services instead of rent-seeking on an asset they did not create and which would continue to exist if they never set foot on it.

AurornisOP5d ago

> You tax away all the gains generated by the land value, which effectively eliminates the "landlord" component of a rental fee and directs the owner's incentives toward producing value via construction, improvements, or services instead of rent-seeking on an asset they did not create and which would continue to exist if they never set foot on it.

Wishful thinking to imagine that landlords are going to suddenly become homebuilders instead.

That money is going into other investments, like the stock market.

In the process you've destroyed the availability of rental housing.

Better question is: Why are you so focused on punishing landlords instead of getting more housing to market? These conversations always seem to revolve around punitive measures against landlords and rent-seeking, completely forgetting what problem we're trying to solve.

In many cases, the proposals are so backwards that they would disincentivize new rental construction and reduce new housing supply.

estearum5d ago

Huh? Why would I care what landlords decide to do with their time?

Lol, landlords do not create rental stock. Developers do that. Property managers manage it. They should be rewarded for doing so. Instead we reward landowners for holding a piece of paper.

It has nothing to do with “punishing” landlords. It has to do with paying people for behaviors we want to incentivize. Developers and property managers do useful things we want more of. Landlords do not. We should not pay them for doing nothing of value. Why are you so fixated on giving landlords money they did not earn?

It’s simply not true these proposals would disincentivize rental construction or reduce new housing supply. If you think it would, you need to think a bit more.

Go ahead and plug into your favorite LLM: “Does a high land value tax incentivize or disincentivize production of new housing stock?”

Here’s the first line from Claude: “It strongly incentivizes new housing production. Here’s why:…”

You simply don’t understand what’s being proposed if you think that would be the effect.

nathan_compton5d ago

Is this the most charitable interpretation?

You could, for instance, require people who own habitations to actually live in that location. You could tax people who own property they do not actually live in very aggressively until they would be willing to sell for less to avoid the tax burden. You could have a system which taxes aggressively and builds lots of houses and gives it to people who own it as long as they live there.

There are quite a lot of ideas between "government owns everything" and "let vampire landlords do unlimited rent seeking."

As it happens, I think there is quite a lot to be said for the free market solution of just letting supply meet demand more or less freely, but I think your interpretation really is not the most generous one.

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