If I sent you a picture of a vacant piece of land in the middle of New York City's best neighborhood and asked you what it was worth, could you answer me?
You wouldn't be able to until I told you what kind of home you are allowed to build. If I only allow you to build a shack or make it a park you won't be able to extract any money by renting it out and thus you wouldn't buy it at any price, even though the neighborhood should command a steep price. If on the other hand I allow you to build a sky scraper of n storeys high, you will now be able to given other information on rents in the area that people are willing to pay.
What is interesting is that the dynamic actually flips once there is adequate zoning. Take a look at this[0] video on Tokyo zoning and how he talks about living in an industrial zoned area. He talks about how it's cheaper to do so, and if you want to move to a single family zoned area, it's actually more expensive!
Under the current system, landowners want their own land to be zoned as high as possible, while they want everyone else's land to be zoned as low as possible. Since 1 < everyone else, when people vote on zoning it is zoned as low as possible. With a LVT the system flips, everyone wants their land to be zoned as low as they desire, and they want everyone else's land to be zoned as high as possible. They would only accept land zoned restrictively if those people would pay higher taxes for the exclusive use of it.
In either system living in an industrial zone (or on the edge of it) will cost less as it is less desirable to live there (noise, air pollution, smells, further from grocery store, no parks etc) and nobody in their right mind would pay high rent there. Nothing to do with land value taxes.
Zoning changes what people will build there (we assumed it was even legal to have housing in an industrial zone there). If you rezone a residential area industrial and make it illegal to have housing there guess what will happen (assuming there's demand for industrially zoned areas)
Your argument is that places that are zoned lower are worth less, and places that are zoned higher are worth more. That's only true in the existing paradigm.
What would be true in the new paradigm is that places would only allowed to be zoned lower if people are willing to pay for that exclusive access. It's not just industrial areas, all higher zoned areas would be cheaper than lower zoned areas.
Land Value Tax incentivizes proper zoning, as the more scarce the housing is, the higher the tax. Proper zoning(like Tokyo has without a land value tax) flips the structure.
In fact the residential zoned houses at the edge of the industrial zone are worth less potentially than the industrial piece of land on that edge. (maybe not, because residential neighbors will get complainy ;))
I am saying that I don't see how a land value tax does what you propose. I had no idea what that even was until I read these posts and looked it up.
I don't see what you mean by zoned "lower" and "higher" actually. I can zone the land for another New York City in the middle of flyover country and that doesn't mean people will come just like that. The price this will command will be super low because there's nothing there (this is actually part of your land value tax system's reasoning). If I can find someone interested at all.
If instead I zone it agricultural I can sell it depending on vicinity to a small town, how flat it is (mountain side? No thank you for big agri, only small homesteaders will pay you a little at all). Flat and great soil near other agri infrastructure? Now we are talking pricy!
1. The inherit value of the land - rivers, gold or oil being key examples.
2. The nearby infrastructure
3. The zoning policies
4. The community and commercial services
If there is land zoned for another NYC, with the infrastructure of NYC, including the excellent port access, it would very quickly become worth what NYC is worth as people showed up. We see this with the pop-up cities in China after they reach completion. Though no doubt some will stay in ghost status forever.
It is up to the local government to do what they can to make the most of their land, just as much as it is up to the landowner of an individual parcel to do what they can to make the most of their land. The city is incentivized to zone the area so that it is valued highest. If they do a poor job of that, that is on them.
I completely agree with that last post's reasoning for why a pop-up city might stay empty or become another New York.
I don't see why it needs a land value tax and having one causes anything. All the things you are putting into your land value calculation cause that. Not the tax.
Now don't get me wrong. I'd love me a land value tax as it would probably mean I'd pay less for where I live. But that's it so far. Color me unconvinced otherwise.
Yep, this is a very natural way to think and why Georgist policies have not been enacted.
I'm a programmer, as most are on this website. The thing that mostly interests me is when incremental changes don't lead to global maximums. As are most who study AI and say, Agile development. When is it that prisoner's dilemmas occur?
I pay attention to things like programmers who fix the bug they introduced fix the bug at a deeper level[0], I pay attention to Simple Made Easy[1], I pay attention to the systemic effects[2].
I point out that the Land Value Tax is so simple and yet fixes so many things. It fixes an inherit problem with society at a deep level. You need to pay attention to the incentives and how they mold the eventual outcomes. Land value taxation leads to correctly aligned incentives.
You wouldn't be able to until I told you what kind of home you are allowed to build. If I only allow you to build a shack or make it a park you won't be able to extract any money by renting it out and thus you wouldn't buy it at any price, even though the neighborhood should command a steep price. If on the other hand I allow you to build a sky scraper of n storeys high, you will now be able to given other information on rents in the area that people are willing to pay.