patrick.net

Kakistocracy says

This effect ensures that the poor remain poor; since the poor have no choice but to pay rent when they can

Huh? You do know it's a free country right?
Kaki you seriously need to lose that China/USSR communist mindset. It's for your own benefit.

Reality says

The so-called "study" is laughable and only shows the financial/economic illiteracy of the author, on top of academic dishonesty.

The same can be said:

Supermarkets exploit the poor,
Property Tax exploit the poor
Car insurance comp. exploit the poor
Health costs exploit the poor
Lottery tickets exploit the poor
Cigarette tax exploit the poor
Gas prices exploit the poor
and so on...

Increase in minimum wage effectively only increase income discrepancy.

MisterLearnToCode says

Goran_K says

The United States is one of the few countries where the poor people are obese.

Many countries that swipe a UN EBT card are also obese.

Agree.

Interesting is however, that in car radio I hear almost every day ads asking for donation for hungry poor child. Probably every other child form poor family experience hunger.
When I stop on crossway where children living school and look on children, it looks overwise. My conclusion is : "The more you obese the more hunger you feel."

I see the world as spectrum from Feudalism (Local Tyranny) to Bureaucracy (Centralized Tyranny) with the best case somewhere in between the two. I view rents as a necessary evil, a stage that entities must go through prior to ownership, but one to be kept as limited in time and money as possible.

Absolute NNN puts all the risk and costs in the hands of the tenant, in exchange for use of a monopolized space (a location and building for which there is no perfect and often no imperfect substitute). All the responsibilities and risks of ownership without actual ownership, no thanks. Unfortunately, due to the impossibility of land substitution (unlike nat gas vs. oil. chicken vs. beef), it allows too many Feudal actors that could not exist under more perfect competition. Feudal actors who use their wealth and power to make density and zoning laws, for example.

Should landlords pay increased taxes for generating more traffic and pollution? Why not? Those are externalities.

The Koch Brothers are experts at appearing free market, but happily lobbying government inaction on immigration laws and receiving subsidies and breaks

Throughout history, local landlords monopolized force and created Local Tyranny (Feudalism) and justified it as a kind of "Golden Liberty". The good news is that they were quickly wiped out by more centralized neighbors (ie Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) for the simple reason that Local Tyrants never wanted a central administration to make a national army or consistently tax them for one; nor did they want a powerful central authority to curb their almost unlimited local authority and land control/taxation.

The Common Law system identifies property taxes with ownership, and it makes thing simpler and less bureaucratic. I prefer that whoever pays the tax and occupies the property, owns the property.

Landlordism is the "Ultimate Tax" because all labor requires some where to work. Those who control the land parasite off of productive activity.

America really boomed when the Republicans gave freeland to homesteaders, vs. the Southern Option of selling the land to speculators in lieu of taxation.

But, as we see in the SFBA, Local Tyrant Landlords eventually get so greedy they kill their hosts. Unfortunately, not before inflicting major indirect damage (externalities) on third parties

Marxists and socialist revolutionaries have stigmatized "Feudalism" due to their desire for a big new bureaucracy that would open up many new bureaucratic economic monopolies for their "over-educated" "intellectuals" with little marketable skills. In historical real life, the upside of Feudalism is local responsibility/autonomy (which was why it rose to replace the Roman imperial bureaucracy); the downside of Feudalism was attaching serfs to the land. Private diverse/competitive land ownership (including the right to lease to someone else) is not at all attaching anyone to the land; the situation in today's landlord-tenant relationship is very much akin to the Free Cities of yore: tenant having the freedom to move to a different location at any time. Ironically, attaching serfs to particular land would actually take place when governments own all the land (and pension and healthcare, etc.)

Triple-net lease does not at all place all risk and costs onto the tenant: the landlord would still be shouldering the speculative/land-planning aspect of land value as well as the maintenance/repair of the building. That's the very reason why Marriott split itself into two entities: the hotel-management entity vs. the hotel-owning entity, so as to divest the former of the risk associated with property value ups and downs.

The supply of land is not at all fixed in the context of market utilization of land. Transportation technology has a huge impact on the supply of land in any given market: the suburbs only came into being a little over half a century ago with the popularization of private automobile ownership, and drastically shifted the housing supply-demand balance in cities. The overwhelming majority of land supply in every metropolitan area today is in fact results of substitution effect: cars making living in the suburbs possible, so families bought cheaper houses in the suburbs instead of the urban core. In fact, the substitution effect is so strong that the Leftist political monopolists have tried to stigmatize the phenomenon by calling it "sprawling" and try to ban it!

Feudal actors who use their wealth and power to make density and zoning laws, for example. Should landlords pay increased taxes for generating more traffic and pollution? Why not? Those are externalities.

These two sentences seem to contradict each other. If landlords prefer limiting housing supply, then that limitation also limit traffic and pollution in the local area. Housing supply/traffic/pollution going together on one hand vs. housing price on the other hand, do involve a delicate balancing act, and landlords are not the only voters but only a tiny minority of voters.

Einstein is quoted to have said: Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. Formal school "education" does poison the mind. Here in the West, we are taught in school the greatness of Roman Empire, which in reality was little more than imperial fascism (the original Fascists, as symbolized by a bundle of sticks and axe) built on top of the economic prosperity and inventiveness of earlier people living in ancient Greek and Phoenecian city states. Former soviet public education likewise glorified "Russian Empire," especially in relation to neighboring states outside the USSR. Out of the 3 powers that eventually carved up Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it's hard to argue any of the far more totalitarian/autocratic Russian, Prussian or Austrian states was more pleasant for the individual human being living in them than the parliamentarian Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with remarkable degree of liberty for its time. Autocratic Czarism wasn't even native to Russia per se, but an ideological import/imprint from Mongol invaders; before then, even Russians enjoyed higher degree of liberty among city states such as the Novgrod principality. BTW, the decline of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was largely economic: the export of farm products from there to Western Europe was replaced by the new farm lands in the New World, so the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ran out of money and became unprofitable to manage the lands further east like in Ukraine.

Landlordism is the "Ultimate Tax" because all labor requires some where to work. Those who control the land parasite off of productive activity.

That would be the case if land ownership/management rights were concentrated into the hands of bureaucrats, either via outright "public" land ownership (aka Communism) or tax so high as to strip away all benefit of sound decision-making on land utilization (aka Georgism). Sometimes I wonder, do Communists and Georgists advocate government paying all losses that Detroit property owners have incurred since the 1950's? inflation adjusted? They seem to be focusing their jealousy only on the successes, a little like those decrying stock investment returns are unjust due to the investors only speculating not "working." Making a profit is not "tax" on others when there is robust competition. The bureaucratic solutions dreamed up / taught at schools however do tend to result in "ultimate taxes." Ancient Greeks enjoyed liberty until Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (and their schools) came along; despite Aristotle being less of an advocate for socialism/fascism/totalitarianism than Plato was, one of his student was Alexander, the man who ended Greek Liberty in pursuit of some sort of "well-educated" egomaniac map fantasy.

America really boomed when the Republicans gave freeland to homesteaders, vs. the Southern Option of selling the land to speculators in lieu of taxation.

Good point. The homesteading of Oklahoma shows that the benefit to the east coast farm product buyers can be best realized by giving free land to homesteaders (at a miniscule $5 registration fee): the competition among homesteaders would bring cheap farm products to the east coast and benefit the vast majority of the population who do not own land in Oklahoma directly. The Southern selling of land to speculators in lieu of taxation is almost identical to the Georgist solution practiced in Hongkong: the result is in effect a regressive tax on the overwhelming majority of the population and massive concentration of wealth, due to government policy.

But, as we see in the SFBA, Local Tyrant Landlords eventually get so greedy they kill their hosts. Unfortunately, not before inflicting major indirect damage (externalities) on third parties

I don't think landlords are the problem in SFBA: the rental yield in SFBA is lower than 3% and often cash-flow negative! The landlords there are literally subsidizing their tenants by shifting money from expected/hoped-for future capital gains. Goes to show how competitive the local rental market is. The high housing cost in SFBA is the result of centralized bureaucratic cap on housing supply via zoning laws (combined with geography), plus high property taxes and high regulation cost (squatter risk) deterring more supply.

I don't think landlords are the problem in SFBA: the rental yield in SFBA is lower than 3% and often cash-flow negative! The landlords there are literally subsidizing their tenants by shifting money from expected/hoped-for future capital gains.

This was my philosophy over the 20 years or so I bought and rented single family homes. The homes were cash flow negative per month, but over time I would pay them off. And being a landlord is not "passive" investment, it is like a moonlighting job. You still have to find good tenants, insure collection of rents, plus do repairs and preventative maintenance. And no matter how careful you are in selecting tenants, you will likely have to take one or two to court. I have been to court 3 times, and each time the judge gave me more than I asked for. However, I know the laws and follow them religiously.

Hugolas_Madurez says

In California the limit is 21 days, but after that all you can do is file a small claims suit.

And win easily.

You mean because they didn't return the deposit in time? Do you have a section of law that confirms this, or a case? I thought you still had to show up and prove your case, or let your landlord disprove theirs(burden of proof is on landlord).

jazz_music says

laws that you are breaking by being broke

Example?

Study also finds that Sun rises in East, that Earth is not flat, and reveals many other ground-breaking discoveries.

Reality says

Marxists and socialist revolutionaries have stigmatized "Feudalism" due to their desire for a big new bureaucracy that would open up many new bureaucratic economic monopolies for their "over-educated" "intellectuals" with little marketable skills

Feudalism was marked by having fortresses - most of which were not made with stone and thus do not survive - every few miles, with a petty tyrant lording over people.

This is secretly what many of the Hans Hermann-Hoppe variety want but are very bad at concealing.

Reality says

Ironically, attaching serfs to particular land would actually take place when governments own all the land (and pension and healthcare, etc.)

Feudal lords had personal ownership of the land, and it was inherited just like any other family wealth. It was better described as private government. They also frequently fought each other over boundaries. One of the reasons for the very slow drive towards centralization is that violence was so endemic, even the Feudal Lords themselves wanted a higher power to appeal to.

Reality says

The supply of land is not at all fixed in the context of market utilization of land.

A land, rather than property tax, is the best way to drive best use. It also compels Density when Density is the best use, rather than a cabal of landlords manipulating the system for their benefit by restricting density, since the land value and thus tax would rise higher than the current inefficient use (say, one SFH instead of a triplex).

Reality says

. Formal school "education" does poison the mind. Here in the West, we are taught in school the greatness of Roman Empire, which in reality was little more than imperial fascism (the original Fascists, as symbolized by a bundle of sticks and axe) built on top of the economic prosperity and inventiveness of earlier people living in ancient Greek and Phoenecian city states.

Please do an analysis of the standard of living between the Roman Republic/Empire and the Dark Ages. You'll be shocked. It's not remotely comparable: The Dark Ages were a massive step backward, to the point the saw aqueducts and thought Giants had built them. One could go hundreds of miles unarmed on Roman Roads and not see a single walled town or fortification; Middle Ages travel in the same territories of France, Italy, etc. were chock full of bandits, Raubritter, and everywhere it was remotely feasible, walled against violence.

Saxon kings are buried with ancient Roman Amphorae - mass produced Tarraco Pottery - imported all the way from what is modern Catalonia; Pottery that a slave wouldn't even be whipped for breaking a few centuries earlier because it was as common as dirt.

HonklerCodeStudent says

Please do an analysis of the standard of living between the Roman Republic/Empire and the Dark Ages. You'll be shocked. It's not remotely comparable: The Dark Ages were a massive step backward, to the point the saw aqueducts and thought Giants had built them. One could go hundreds of miles unarmed on Roman Roads and not see a single walled town or fortification; Middle Ages travel in the same territories of France, Italy, etc. were chock full of bandits, Raubritter, and everywhere it was remotely feasible, walled against violence.

Saxon kings are buried with ancient Roman Amphorae - mass produced Tarraco Pottery - imported all the way from what is modern Catalonia; Pottery that a slave wouldn't even be whipped for breaking a few centuries earlier because it was as common as dirt.

Doesn't that stark contrast reveal just how wrong the Marxian historiography about "Progress" (i.e. "Progressivism") is. Phrases such as "It is 21st century" that often used by students from the public school brainwashing to justify their new "progressive" ideas really have no meaning in the historical context. The 23rd century could well be stone age after a thermonuclear war wiping out all existing civilization on this planet. The ancients did it, and did it many times over, without the help of thermonuclear weapons. The flushing toilet was in use in Hrappen Civilization of the Indus Valley circa 2000BC; it wasn't seen again until around 300BC to 300AD in Phoenecia and Rome, before disappearing yet again; humanity would not see the popularization of flushing toilet again until the last century or so (Australians typically built houses with out-houses, i.e. no municipal sewage system or even a plumbed toilet in the main house, till the 1950's).

If people were presented sided-by-side the two choices that you mentioned, obviously nobody would choose the dark ages. It should be quite obvious that the general population was presented with something even worse than the dark ages at the end of the Roman Empire (when scribes stopped being paid so less documents are left behind). Even at the peak of Roman power, at the end of the Republic (before Roman Empire), traveling or even living in France was not safe (thanks to Rome): The Hevetiis (in today's Switzerland) had such a long period of peace and prosperity on their own that they had an over-population problem, so asked for Roman permission to cross a narrow strip of Roman land to relocate to what is today's Southern France (not yet under Roman rule at the time); Caesar didn't reply to the request, waited for the Helvetiis to move then quickly ambushed them killing more than half of their population of hundreds of thousands and sent the rest back to the hills of Switzerland minus their belongings. After the appetite for looting was thus whetted, Caesar advanced his army onto Gaul (in today's France) and Belgica (roughly today's Belgium and northern France), both were not barbarian lands but occupied by highly sophisticated non-Roman societies that had been trading with Rome. Caesar's army proved to be far more effective than the local armies, massacring somewhere between 20-50% of the local population, and looted all their wealth. That is the real story behind Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. With his troops thus gorged on the loot from Gaul (and from Helvets and Belgica), Caesar turned his legions into his private army holding personal fealty to himself, and was ready to march on Rome to overthrow the Republic. With Caesar and Rome as neighbor, it wasn't just unsafe to travel in France (Gaul) but also unsafe just to be alive and prosperous in Gaul.

The Roman armies obviously did not enforce laws along the roads for free. The Appian Way itself was built as a corruption racket to enrich Censor Appius and as a way to loot Samnites (Rome didn't control the entire penninsula yet at the time, a couple centuries before Caesar). All the Roman armies and law enforcement from then on had to be fed by looting more and more outsiders, which was euphemistically called "expanding the empire." Its doubtful even the Aqueduct could pay for itself. When the empire finally reached its eventual geographical limit by around 200AD, literally exhausting external targets to loot as across the border would find real barbarians instead of civilized societies, what followed was run-away inflation and the Crisis of the Third Century. What had been 90+% silver content Roman Dinar (coin about the size of a dime) at the time of the Republic was debased to have less than 2% silver. Obviously, troops and even police wouldn't enforce laws if you try to pay them with such nonsense; they wouldn't even follow orders without real pay. Foreign mercenaries had to be hired in order to reduce cost (and to fill recruitment quota, the birthrates in Rome was way down by then). Taxes raising and currency debasement continued. . . eventually getting to the point where not even the Roman tax-collectors would accept Roman Dinar coins. Starvation became rampant as trade systems broke down. Government armies (and former mercenary armies hired by government but underpaid) would not only not protect the population but loot the population themselves and sack entire cities! Roman citizens sold themselves to big estates as serfs in order to avoid the taxmen and to stay alive. The hell-on-earth produced by the Roman bureaucracy was far worse than the Dark Ages. Feudalism literally came into being by popular demand.

What Rome had in terms of standards of living in prosperous time, the Ancient Greek city states and Phoenecian city states had them all, minus the egregious ostentacious stuff that couldn't pay for themselves without looting from neighbors and eventually looting from its own population. Hrappen and Phoenecian flushing toilets obviously had some kind of municipal water and sewer system connecting them to make them work; they just didn't build giant Stalinistic white elephants like Rome did.

BTW, it's not as if it were safe to be an emperor in Rome either. The top bureaucrats constantly fought each other and hatched conspiracies to kill each other. There were many Roman Emperors who was on the throne for less than a year before being murdered by his guards and replaced by a new emperor. That's why the last head of imperial guard decided not to take the throne after killing the previous emperor and seizing power in Rome, thereby according to mainstream historians putting an end to the West Roman Empire . . . essentially making himself into a local feudal lord in order to live a little longer.

HonkpilledMaster says

A land, rather than property tax, is the best way to drive best use. It also compels Density when Density is the best use, rather than a cabal of landlords manipulating the system for their benefit by restricting density, since the land value and thus tax would rise higher than the current inefficient use (say, one SFH instead of a triplex).

Landlords actually want multi-family buildings, as they are cheaper to build (per unit) and have lower maintenance cost (per unit) due to less surface area. It's the American general population who prefer single family homes. Outside of NYC, Boston and DC, most people in America prefer SFH over apartment buildings. Women have a magical attachment to white picket fences, and men usually buy homes for their wives.

Reality says

humanity would not see the popularization of flushing toilet again until the last century or so (Australians typically built houses with out-houses, i.e. no municipal sewage system or even a plumbed toilet in the main house, till the 1950's).

When you leave out the BC and Medieval times, I was even surprised it went back this far:

"It is a widely-held belief that Thomas Crapper designed the first flush toilet in the 1860s. It was actually 300 years earlier, during the 16th century, that Europe discovered modern sanitation. The credit for inventing the flush toilet goes to Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I, who invented a water closet with a raised cistern and a small downpipe through which water ran to flush the waste in 1592. He built one for himself and one for his godmother; sadly, his invention was ignored for almost 200 years: it was was not until 1775 that Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker, developed the S-shaped pipe under the toilet basin to keep out the foul odours."

I was talking about the "popularization of flushing toilet"; i.e. the engineering feat of municipal water and sewer systems. Hrappens, Phoenecians and Rome all had entire city blocks (of apartment buildings) using flushing toilets and indoor plumbing, connected to municipal water feed and sewer discharge networks. That didn't re-appear in West European (mostly British and Dutch top cities) and North American (mostly NYC, Boston and DC) until the late 19th century; for much of the rest of the modern world, they had to wait till mid-20th century. One of the derogatory jokes told during WWII was that soviet soldiers were so enamored by the flushing toilets when they arrived in Austria and Germany that some of them decided to unseat the toilet and carry it with them. I suspect that joke might be apocryphal but shows that flushing toilet was new to most of the world's population and the key to the flushing toilet is the plumbing network.

Reality says

The Roman armies obviously did not enforce laws along the roads for free. The Appian Way itself was built as a corruption racket to enrich Censor Appius and as a way to loot Samnites (Rome didn't control the entire penninsula yet at the time, a couple centuries before Caesar). All the Roman armies and law enforcement from then on had to be fed by looting more and more outsiders, which was euphemistically called "expanding the empire." Its doubtful even the Aqueduct could pay for itself. When the empire finally reached its eventual geographical limit by around 200AD, literally exhausting external targets to loot as across the border would find real barbarians instead of civilized societies, what followed was run-away inflation and the Crisis of the Third Century. What had been 90+% silver content Roman Dinar (coin about the size of a dime) at the time of the Republic was debased to have less than 2% silver. Obviously, troops and even police wouldn't enforce laws if

The Appian Way was built about centuries before the massive debasement of the coinage by the 4th Century AD.

Rome failed because it depended NOT on bureaucratic state salaried officials, but local nobles running amphitheatres, maintaining roads, etc. Once they realized they could vamoose to the countryside and abandon their historic roles, taxation increased (accerating the process), and desperate measures like debasing coinage.

Most entities fail because the Elites become decadent and no longer want to put in the work while enjoying the luxuries. This was recognized even back in the Classical Era by Greeks, quite aside from Rome.

The Byzantine Empire lasted a lot longer than the original Roman Empire it split from, one of the reasons was it had a professional strata of tax collectors and officials beholden to the Emperor and rationalized collection and army/infrastructure maintenance.

Ironically, the East was less dependent on Slaves, whereas the West, which rose to greatness without Slaves, collapsed in part because of the widespread adoption of Slavery.

When a huge portion of the population becomes landless and unemployable due to concentration of wealth and employment of slaves, they no longer have skin in the game to want to defend the system.

Ancaps don't understand the incredible soft power of skin in the game that happens with broad, roughly equal ownership with few extremes, in a polity.

HonkpilledMaster says

The Appian Way was built about centuries before the massive debasement of the coinage by the 4th Century AD.

Like I wrote in my previous post, the Appian Way was built a couple centuries before the time of Caesar. At that time, public work projects and even wars could be funded by war spoils. When imperial expansion stopped as Rome ran out of targets to loot (as frontiers pushed up against real barbarians that had little wealth to be looted) by about 200AD, currency debasement took off rapidly.

Rome failed because it depended NOT on bureaucratic state salaried officials, but local nobles running amphitheatres, maintaining roads, etc. Once they realized they could vamoose to the countryside and abandon their historic roles, taxation increased (accerating the process), and desperate measures like debasing coinage.

Rome used tax-farming, which is a more efficient way of collecting taxes. Having a fixed layer of bureaucrats on salaries would be even more costly within a couple generations: the pension cost and the need to find placements for bureaucrats' children. Every bureaucratic system appears to be efficient in the first few decades due to favorable working bureaucrat to pensioner ratio (nobody is a pensioner yet in the first few years/decades), but over time both the pension liability and the natural desire of every bureaucrat to have more bureaucrat under his control would quickly doom bureaucratic systems.

Most entities fail because the Elites become decadent and no longer want to put in the work while enjoying the luxuries. This was recognized even back in the Classical Era by Greeks, quite aside from Rome.

Elites and their children growing up in wealth.

The Byzantine Empire lasted a lot longer than the original Roman Empire it split from, one of the reasons was it had a professional strata of tax collectors and officials beholden to the Emperor and rationalized collection and army/infrastructure maintenance.

After the Crisis of the Third Century, Roman Emperor Constantine moved capital to Constantinople (Byzantine), so WRE back in Rome was actually the split-off. The East had more resources and more pliant population to rule over. These two factors were likely the most crucial factors in why ERE lasted longer. In technical details, ERE's use of the Solidus, a gold coin that avoided debasement, for payment to soldiers likely preserved the regime. The continued existence of ERE however was hardly a blessing for the people under its rule. Given the conditions in Western Europe by the mid-5th century, dismembering WRE into a cluster of feudal states was a good thing for the local people: so they don't have to fund their warlords' struggle for emperorship in Rome.

Ironically, the East was less dependent on Slaves, whereas the West, wh...

ERE essentially became a weak re-incarnation of the earlier Persian Empire, with layers of bureaucrats under the autocratic rule of an Imperial family dynasty, essentially reducing all citizens to Helots (a class that are treated even worse than slaves, as slaves are cared for by their owners as you would care for your private car, but Helots are like rental cars in use by the Imperial bureaucrats; the 20th century equivalent would be Soviet Gulag and Nazi labor camp inmates.).

Ancaps don't understand the incredible soft power of skin in the game that happens with broad, roughly equal ownership with few extremes, in a polity.

Government intervention in the economy, now and back then, was the primary reason behind wealth polarization. For example, FED's artificially low interest rate is why asset prices are as high as they are, while stripping less wealthy savers of saving returns. Back then (in Roman time), government handout of dole (imported from Egypt, which was owned by the Emperor personally) reduced market price for grain in Rome and bankrupted farmers in Italy; government contracts enriched men like Appius; tax burden fell more heavily on middle-class while less enforced against large estates. etc. etc. It's just not realistic to expect bureaucrats immune to being bought off, at least after the 2nd generation, so the more bureaucrats the more get bought off by the rich to oppress the poor.