Former New Mexico Governor and current GOP Presidential candidate Gary Johnson was interviewed recently by AllVoices.com. During the course of the internet, Governor Johnson hinted at where his candidacy might be headed in the coming weeks.
Johnson, who has been excluded from 14 of the 16 Republican debates by what can only be described as “Catch-22” logic, has been the subject of recent speculation that he might end his GOP bid and seek the Libertarian Party’s nomination. Johnson added that by shutting out its libertarian voices, “The Republican Party is abandoning a lot of the electorate. The Libertarian Party is more in tune with the American electorate than any other party at the moment.”
Recent reports from various sources have indicated that Gary Johnson is close to leaving the GOP Presidential race for a Libertarian candidacy.
By “land” I don’t mean dirt. I literally mean a parcel of the geometric surface of the Earth, as bounded by surveying techniques. Ideally, these bounds would be fixed by something like GPS, but in practice the bounds can creep via geologic processes like continental drift. However, the principle is the same: you can move the dirt, but you can’t move the hole you leave in the dirt’s place.
I will concede that if you can assemble a new planet, you can create “land” — but only because you’re creating a whole new coordinate system. But even if you increase the volume of the Earth and thus its surface area, you don’t so much create new sites in Earth’s coordinate system as you’ve made some existing sites more useful/accessible.
I see the site/object distinction as crucial to the geoist position on land ownership. I don’t see a non-ad-hoc way to justify that position if land is just defined as, say, anything that you can stand on and this is really really hard to move.
The Lockean proviso shouldn’t outlaw all resource depletion, any more than it should outlaw all pollution. Rather, extraction of natural resources from a community commons should require a fee to the community proportional to the decrease in the ability of that commons to sustainably support such extraction.
P.S. – I should probably have said @48 that “Your observation that ‘Objects can be created, moved, and destroyed; land is uncreatable, immobile, and indestructible’ seems to be true at our present level of technology”. I haven’t thoroughly examined the question.
Brian @46 – I’m not saying that people deserve equal access to land simply because people need land to exist. In the very next sentence after the language you quoted, I say that people have equal rights to land “since no one produced this land”.
You make an interesting point about including the seabed in the category of land to which the Georgist/geoist approach should apply. In current practical terms, someone reclaiming land from the sea is clearly adding to the existing stock of land rather than simply taking from that stock. However on reflection I agree that allowing such land to fall into a special category and be treated differently than all other land seems dubious. Not only does it immediately add complexity into the system, but could become even more problematic over time, for instance if undersea living becomes practical and widespread.
Unfortunately I don’t think we can solve the problem simply by distinguishing between “whats” and “wheres”. In an absolute sense, land is an “object” that occupies space as surely as any physical object produced by humans. All objects have mass; the arbitrary human assignment of coordinates to some and not others would appear to be more a matter of scale and/or fixity of location than of origin.
Your observation that “Objects can be created, moved, and destroyed; land is uncreatable, immobile, and indestructible” is true at our present level of technology and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future, but like the notion of counting reclaimed seabed as a human-produced good, could cause problems later if relied upon as a foundational precept.
Meanwhile, Locke’s “enough, and as good, left in common for others” formulation also poses problems for the validity of property rights over natural resources mined from the earth such as oil and uranium which exist in finite amounts in the earth that are expected to be eventually depleted.
In short, the geo-libertarian model is not without its philosophical difficulties, but does seem to me like a more just and reasonable approach on the whole than the conventional homesteading-based approach.
Nice GJ TV appearance:
http://www.ny1.com/content/news_beats/inside_city_hall/154721/ny1-online–libertarian-gary-johnson-makes-case-for-white-house
Starchild: all human beings naturally need land on which to exist
Some geoists argue that because land is necessary to live and be free, it should not be owned or must be shared. However, this argument can be applied to many kinds of goods: air, water, food, clothing, shelter, heat, education, tools, employment, health care, child care, etc. The need for land (and other natural resources) is not why persons deserve equal access to them. Rather, it’s because those resources are natural and not produced by other persons.
The geoist perspective on both land and air derives from a careful reading of Locke:
Every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others. [Emphasis added]
The first highlighted part is why land is occupied/used rather than owned: land cannot be “removed out of the state of nature”. Objects are a what; land is a where. Objects can be produced or extracted; land (i.e. sites) always existed. Objects have mass; land has coordinates. Objects occupy space; land is space. Objects can be created, moved, and destroyed; land is uncreatable, immobile, and indestructible. Objects can be stolen, but land can only be emptied or occupied or guarded.
The second highlighted part is why the atmosphere could not morally be homesteaded tomorrow if a mad scientist at the Von Mises Institute invented a wormhole-powered scuba tank that could suck in the entire atmosphere and store it in a pocket universe.
SC: no one produced this land (with a few notable exceptions, like land in Holland reclaimed from the sea)
Nobody in Holland ever added even a single hectare to the surface of the Earth. The sites you’re talking about already existed as seabed or tidal wetland; they weren’t created but merely were improved (by drainage, dikes, etc). The geoist concept of “land” means any naturally-occurring space that can be useful for production — surface land, seabed, water surfaces, airways, orbits, and electromagnetic spectrum. If it has coordinates instead of mass, then it counts as “land”.
Examples of “created land” would be floating islands or orbiting O’Neill cylinders or Bernal spheres, but they wouldn’t really be land. The only problematic example I can think of would be an artificial cave, like in Cheyenne mountain. By denying allodial title to the excavated space, geoist policies might lead to underproduction of new caves. Oh well.
@43 it’s Daniel Imperato. You heard it here first.
Tom @41, Fred’s statement was about the impact of LVT on the price paid by those who use the good being taxed. LVT itself doesn’t provide a service, it just provides a potential revenue source for the community services whose value gets capitalized into ground rents. Geolibertarians indeed claim that it’s more efficient to finance such community services by collecting ground rent than to just let landholders appropriate that ground rent as a naked subsidy. But that claim is not built into Fred’s statement @21 that led you to question his grasp on reality.
I see the basic geoist position on property in land (i.e. spatial territory) as not so much a theorem provable from ethical axioms, but rather as simply a rejection of an extraneous ethical axiom positing a right to acquire eternal title to spatial territory e.g. through first use. Since we are a territorial species, such an axiom naturally has a lot of instinctive appeal. I just think that usufruct is an arguably better match for this instinct than allodial title. A usufruct notion also has the advantage of deriving more straightforwardly from Lockean material-property-acquisition rules than does the notion of allodial title to space (as distinct from matter).
Starchild @31 From what I understand Johnson has a yet to be named wealthy person he would like to see as VP.
I have also heard that Wayne wants to go for VP again.
Both are unconfirmed rumors at this stage but I have more than one source for both. Not sure whether it’s OK to name any of those sources.
BH 25
That cat kind of looks like Knapp, LOL
Starchild @34,
I agree in general. That is, personally, I’ve yet to see a successful attack on the basic Georgist/geoist position on property in land.
On the details of what that implies, less so but still some.
BH@38,
Nice to see you’re finally learning English.
Of course, we could also argue over whether imposing LVT would affect the cost of goods.
Assuming it doesn’t requires an assumption that LVT is neither more nor less efficient, but precisely, exactly, identically efficient with any other method of providing for the services it provides. In which case, there’s no particular reason to adopt it versus any of those other methods, is there?
NewFederalist @35 and Darryl Perry @37 — thanks, guys!
Brian @38 – Given how dangerous the law enforcement/protection function obviously is in the hands of government (or anyone for that matter), I believe it would be a big mistake to set up a guaranteed stream of revenue for this function.
I am convinced that all legitimate government operations could and should be funded completely independently of land rents, and entirely via voluntary donations.
Failure to keep government at arm’s length from the entire geo-libertarian project could well doom it.
Re: “I think the opt-out provision for LVT would go a long way toward making the state accountable to its customers”
— Not nearly as far toward that accountability as would a system of completely voluntary funding and no land rent money going to the State!
It might be that the diversion of rent into “LVT does not change the effect of rent on the cost of goods,” but that’s a completely different claim than “LVT does not affect the cost of goods.”
LVT is defined as the diversion of rent from one recipient to another. The amount of rent remains the same with or without the diversion.
I will now note in my Knapptionary that these two statements are somehow different:
1) LVT does not affect the cost of goods.
2) Imposing LVT does not affect the cost of goods.
Starchild, I agree that the institution that collects land rents need not be the state (i.e. the institution responsible for enforcing the standards for protection of rights). However, if rights protection (police and courts) is the one of the biggest of the few local government services that create land rent, then the corresponding part of the land rent should in some way finance that service. I think the opt-out provision for LVT would go a long way toward making the state accountable to its customers.
@33 – well said!
I forgot to add that a geo-libertarian approach should not require land rents to be collected by government. I would want government kept as far away from the money as possible.
An alternate approach would be for people to be required to deposit land rent payments with private banks, from which those owning less than the determined per-person share of land value would be entitled to make withdrawals on a proportional basis.
Any land not properly registered to a person and thereby counted in this system, could be deemed legally non-transferrable, and not entitled to any government protection against trespassers or squatters.
Well said, Starchild. I agree completely with post 33.
Regarding geo-libertarianism (discussed in numerous posts on this thread from Fred Foldvary @20 to Thomas Knapp @32), I think it is a philosophical mistake to think of it as a tax.
As a tax, there would be no justification for it, because all coercive taxation is theft and a form of slavery. Furthermore, experience has shown that governments cannot be trusted with guaranteed streams of revenue.
But understood correctly as compensation that people who are occupying more than an equitable share of a naturally-occurring resource not produced by human effort, owe proportionally to those occupying less than their share of this naturally-occurring resource, a system of land rents make sense.
Unless they are born on a ship or something, and remain there, all human beings naturally need land on which to exist. Since no one produced this land (with a few notable exceptions, like land in Holland reclaimed from the sea), every person born into the world has an equal natural right to a share of it as every other person.
If this idea sounds repugnant, ask yourself whether the traditional libertarian approach to this natural resource (all land should be privately owned) would be desirable in the case of another similarly naturally occurring resource, air.
Imagine that someone discovers a way to claim property rights over air, so that before long all the air in Earth’s atmosphere had been claimed or purchased by someone, and everyone had to either own air, or pay someone else for the air they used by breathing.
Would such an arrangement be more desirable, from a libertarian standpoint, than the current approach of allowing the air to exist as a non-owned resource to which every person is entitled to use a roughly equal “share” of by breathing, without paying anyone, but major uses of air (e.g. factory emissions and other significant forms of pollution) are generally expected to pay in one form or another for the privilege?
I say clearly it would not! Yet this is more or less the situation that exists currently with land. Either you own land on which your residence sits, or you are required to pay rent, or you are the guest of someone who has paid in one of these manners, or you occupy land “illegally” and are subject to being evicted, fined, or jailed by government authorities.
One message I hope Gary Johnson will be getting from Libertarians is that a platform that’s pro-freedom enough to make him worth supporting as a Republican candidate is not necessarily a platform that’s pro-freedom enough to make him worth supporting as a Libertarian candidate.
BH@30,
Rent affects the cost of goods.
Calling part of the rent a Land Value Tax does not magically change that.
It might be that the diversion of rent into “LVT does not change the effect of rent on the cost of goods,” but that’s a completely different claim than “LVT does not affect the cost of goods.”
Greg @5, ctomp @8 — I couldn’t agree more.
While I’m not prepared to go quite as far as George Phillies @6 in labeling misled or misguided Barr/W.A.R. supporters as “enemies of our party”, I do wonder whether those folks who backed Barr or W.A.R. in 2008 have learned from it. I sure hope so!
Admitting that ticket was a mistake would be one good indicator that a former backer is older and wiser. But the crucial question is whether this year’s and future Libertarian delegates will prove any better at recognizing opportunists, ambitious climbers, and conservatives-in-libertarian-clothing, and holding candidates to a higher standard of championing freedom.
I’m not suggesting that Gary Johnson is another Barr or W.A.R. — he seems to have more libertarian stances on some issues than Ron Paul, including strong support for marriage equality which is saying something for a former Republican governor, and I don’t know of any big red flags — but caveat emptor!
No matter how attractive Johnson may appear by the standards of people at his level of visibility, he should not be allowed a cakewalk to our nomination. He needs to make his platform and approach more libertarian, such as dropping support for the misnamed “fair tax”, and talking about not just marijuana, but ending the entire “War on Drugs”, etc. if he wants us to select him over other Libertarians with better positions on these issues.
If Johnson does become the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 2012, which for better or worse seems fairly likely, we must make sure that a solid, principled Libertarian like R. Lee Wrights or John Buttrick gets the VP slot.
Barr’s “I look forward to learning from the master” 2008 running mate has already endorsed Johnson (see http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/endorsements-2 ); I seriously hope that he has not been promised anything in return for this early endorsement, and that he is not trying to position himself to jump into the 2nd place slot again, as he did four years ago.
What Johnson says, if anything, about who he would like on a ticket with him will be a major consideration in terms of whether or not he deserves the support of libertarian radicals. If he were to actively favor W.A.R. or someone of that sort, he would forfeit any chance of getting my vote.
Bottom line: In the long run, we will have a better and stronger party if we show we are unafraid to reject big-name candidates who do not demonstrate a real and convincing commitment to libertarianism and understanding of the Non-Aggression Principle that underlies our approach to public policy.
Fred wrote: VAT increases the cost of goods, while LVT does not affect the cost of goods.
“Cost” here means consumer price. What Fred’s statement means is the following.
VAT increases the costs of the taxed goods to those who buy them. (This assumes that the supply of the taxed goods is not non-elastic and/or the demand is not perfectly elastic — as is true for most goods. To learn more about tax incidence, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence.)
LVT does not increase the cost of land to those who rent (i.e. use) it, because the inelastic supply of land just means that some of the landlord’s rent is diverted to the government.
LVT does not increase the cost of goods whose production depends on the taxed land, because the cost of the land to those who use it — i.e. its rent — is unchanged.
The same rent of land will be collected either way. The LVT merely shifts how the collected rent is divided between the landholder and the government.
These are non-controversial results in modern economics.
BH@28,
It is a textbook claim.
Not all textbook claims are facts.
If you were claiming that LVT affects the cost of goods exactly as much as procuring the services the LVT pays for through some instrument other than the LVT, that would be arguable, but at least reasonable, just as would be claiming that the LVT affects the cost of goods more, or less, than other methods.
But to claim that a tax does not affect the cost of goods, period, is, in a word, bullshit.
And, in point of fact, the diagram you trotted out doesn’t even mention cost. It mentions price, which is not the same as cost.
That something can be both a particle and a wave is also “absurd on its face”.
It’s also a textbook fact — just like the textbook analysis of the incidence of a tax on a good with inelastic supply.
BH I’ll take this up next week after I finish moving.
BH@25,
There’s no diagram that I need to argue against.
The idea that any tax “does not affect the cost of goods” is absurd on its face.
MW, IPR is asking Libertarians (including our POTUS candidates) for a 2013 federal budget. You can enter your numbers at http://www.editgrid.com/user/brianholtz/Federal_Budget. Show us how it’s done.
Tom, the Econ 101 diagram you need to argue against is this:
Your response @22 seems to be this:
re # 21 Fred I know it violate free trade, but I am tired of people discussing what type of tax is best and ignoring the need to cut spending. I usually use that comment with a bit of sarcasm.
FF 22
The LVT is far worse than any other tax. It, like all taxes on property and especially on land, causes the wrong infrastructure to be developed and the wrong structures to be constructed in the wrong places and at the wrong times. The cost of this resource misallocation is hundreds of times the value of the tax collected. It distorts the choice of which goods and services are to be consumed in the economy which has a greater and more deleterious impact on the economy, liberty and prosperity of the people than any other form of taxation.
FF@22,
“LVT does not affect the cost of goods”
Last time we talked, you seemed to have a pretty good grasp of reality. Sorry to see that you’re losing it.
“Hell why not go all out for a VAT, if the tax issue is so important?”
Because VAT violates free trade, and land value taxation (LVT) does not violate free trade. VAT increases the cost of goods, while LVT does not affect the cost of goods.
Michael H. Wilson // Dec 13, 2011 wrote:
>Libertarians should be focusing on cutting government, not finding new ways to tax the public.< The replacement of all taxes with a tax on land values would cut government: it would cut the millions of hours Americans spend on income tax forms. It would eliminate the IRS and its billions in costs. It would eliminate tax audits. It would eliminate much of welfare aid to the poor, because both wages and spending on goods would be tax free. See "Ultimate Tax Reform."
Hell why not go all out for a VAT, if the tax issue is so important?
hehehehehehehehe…. you said “taint”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=taint
Q2Q,
Vote for Person!!!!!
If you don’t actually have sex with a horse, but frighten it into thinking you are about to, just leave the room immediately!
No one needs to know you were there. Especially if it’s the dean’s office.
And you can take that to the state bank.
tb: If Johnson believes that the LP is more in tune with the American electorate than any other party, why hasn’t he joined the LP?
me: He has. I think you mean why is he pursuing the GOP nomination. If so, really? Isn’t it obvious? He thought he might get the nomination and get elected as a R, I suspect. If he comes over to the LP as a candidate, he likely knows that his odds of getting elected are extremely long.
tb: Does he think that the American electorate realizes that the LP is tune with them?
me: Highly unlikely. His point is that he believes the American people are far more liberty-minded than our politics indicate. “In tune” doesn’t mean “buying into L dogma as expressed, say, in the SoP.” In tune is a directional statement, not about doctrinal adoption. Surely you know this, Brother B!
tb: Does he think that libertarians are in tune with a 30% sales tax?
me: Good question. Presumably he knows that the LP rank and file is largely not supporters of the Fair Tax. This may be a stumbling block for his pursuing and getting the LP nomination.
tb: Finally, where does he stand on having sex with a dead elephant? On a stool?
me: He’s far too savvy a pol to get sucked into such bizarre non-issues. It appears that Carl Person has let go of his campaign manager for allowing this to taint his campaign.
@ 6 show us the list Mr. Phillies
Gary Johnson’s enthusiastic support for the “Fair Tax” fraud is reason enough for Libertarians to avoid him like the plague.
I tend to agree here.
But there ARE many Libertarians that DO support the “Fairy Tax”…and it makes for a good debate. Even if I am on the other side of this.
I still welcome Gary Johnson into the LP fold. And I hope he stays here, becoming & espousing more libertarian ideas & ideals.
At this point however, he is NOT my first choice to lead the ticket in 2012.
PEACE
“Here’s a radical idea // Dec 13, 2011 at 10:32 am
Welcome aboard Mr. Johnson. More libertarian than Ron Paul or Bob Barr. Not perfect, but close enough. Perfect is probably not possible.”
Gary Johnson is less libertarian than Ron Paul. The fact that Gary Johnson supports replacing the income tax with the so called “Fair Tax” while Ron Paul supports ending the income tax and replacing it with nothing is just one example to support thing.
Gary Johnson’s enthusiastic support for the “Fair Tax” fraud is reason enough for Libertarians to avoid him like the plague.
“That some LP leaders see Johnson as the LP’s ticket into the Big Leagues shows how pathetic and insignificant the LP is.”
I totally agree with this. The fact that so many Libertarian Party members are going ga ga for Gary Johnson shows how out of touch with reality and clueless they are.
Johnson is a whiny loser who can win, and lack the personality to be President. Personally, I would prefer Carl Person for the LP nomination, but at this point anyone s better than either Root or Johnson.
Vote for Person!!!!!
If Johnson believes that the LP is more in tune with the American electorate than any other party, why hasn’t he joined the LP?
Does he think that the American electorate realizes that the LP is tune with them?
Does he think that libertarians are in tune with a 30% sales tax?
Finally, where does he stand on having sex with a dead elephant? On a stool?
No candidate for President will put the Libertarian Party in the big times. People are too afraid of wasting their vote. If a candidate for President can get our ideas out, that is the most we can ask for.
The better campaigns – Ron Paul in 1988 and Harry Browne in 1996 raised the visibility of the Libertarian Party. Something could have been done with that if people concentrated on more local elections.
Over the years of course, Libertarian Parties in some states have achieved serious vote totals in state and Congressional elections – in Texas currently, and to a lesser degree Arizona.
In Massachusetts in the 1990s LP candidates sometimes received 14% to 19% of the vote, but more recent leaders have not been able to maintain ballot status.
6 gp, did these “enemies” narc to the FEC on thed party? Perhaps they made a mistake, as did you?
Barr- supreme opportunist and devoid of any principle. Seriously, no one can continue to contend that it wasn’t a mistake to nominate him in 2008.
I agree with you Greg, but we need to cut government and I don’t read or hear as much emphasis on that issue as I do the flat tax.
There is a list of people who recruited Barr, nominated Barr at NatCon, and organized his campaign effort to get the nomination. I am not counting his paid campaign manager.
They are enemies of our party, and should go away.
He’d be better than the last nominee Bob Barr, who just endorsed the authoritarian nightmare Newt Gingrich for president.
http://blog.4president.org/2012/2011/12/slate-of-georgia-officials-back-newt-gingrich-for-president.html
The emphasis on the flat tax by Johnson and the land tax by Foldvary are unfortunate.
Libertarians should be focusing on cutting government, not finding new ways to tax the public.
Hell why not go all out for a VAT, if the tax issue is so important? We could sell it as just corporations and no people would pay it.
2 teeth (Sipos?), who thinks that? I’m no leader, but I don’t. I do think GJ could break 1MM votes under certain circumstances. He could certainly advocate liberty with more credibility than previous candidates…
Gary Johnson couldn’t get into the GOP debates because he has no support. Few Americans even know who he is.
In today’s dummied-down America, it may even be that most New Mexicans don’t know who Johnson is.
That some LP leaders see Johnson as the LP’s ticket into the Big Leagues shows how pathetic and insignificant the LP is.
Welcome aboard Mr. Johnson. More libertarian than Ron Paul or Bob Barr. Not perfect, but close enough. Perfect is probably not possible.