Links, various, 2 shillings and threepence farthing

[gothwalk]

A new land contract - thinking on how land is "owned" and by whom.

Sentiers: Digital Gardens - thinking on processing and retaining and using information. I have thoughts about this.

The Commune and the Virus - thinking on COVID and Coronavirus from a rural point of view.

Cozy Games - a thinktank report. This one courtesy of devi

Comments

[alays]

I`m slowly working my way through these (except the last one).
I`d love to discuss/ask questions about the first one especially. I`m trying to play through in my mind how each of the proposed solutions at the end of the article would play out but have difficulties.

[gothwalk]

Discuss and ask as much as you want; I'm always happy to do so!

A new land contract

[alays]

I`m looking at the immediate solutions that the author proposes in the article about the land contract. These are meant to be workable now (if the government wants).
1) Public land buybacks: when the authors says "we" could buy back every private rented property, whom does he mean? The British government? The councils? The author says that would save the taxpayers billions and the renters even more. How is that? The government would buy back private rented property and provide it to the current renters at no cost? Or reduced cost? How would it save taypayers money?
I guess renters would have more money left over if they don`t have to pay rent? Or am I thinking too narrow?

Re: A new land contract

[gothwalk]

So the whole article circles around this concept: "Land is a natural commons — it belongs to everyone, and that land value (rents) should be recaptured by the community, who create the value in the first place." The rest of this is my understanding, and me filling in some gaps from things I know, or think I know, from elsewhere.

In the case of buying every rented property, it's straightforward investment, at the simplest level. The state buys the property, and rents it out to tenants. Once the rent paid has covered the cost of buying the property (which will be ~30 years in most places, but that's fine for a body the size of a state), it's then a revenue source. Because the land is not going to disappear (unless it's coastal; see Gentle Decline, and that's avoided by not including coastal property in this scenario), it's a permanent revenue source, in the same way as it is for private landlords. That means that taxes on people can be reduced in proportion. At a large scale, this could mean that tax paid by most individuals almost disappears, hence the taxpayer benefits enormously, and there's no loss to the state. There isn't even a loss to the landlords who owned the properties, because they got market value for their places, and the only thing taken away is their ability to effectively, tax their tenants. They will probably have to go work for a living instead, and that's probably a net benefit to everyone too.

Since rent will no longer be controlled by landlords who want to get the maximum money out of it, but by the state who are looking only to pay for part of what they spend (commercial taxes, VAT, road taxes, council taxes, gift and inheritance, capital gains, and some income taxes will still remain, so it'll only ever be part), there will be fewer or no increases in rent (states are much happier with long-term guaranteed income than short term gain). Inflation will likely drive rent down in relative terms. Renters will no longer have to deal with the situation where they're evicted when the landlord wants to sell or "renovate" the place. Also, renters' rights will no longer be constrained by the political and lobbying pressures brought to bear by rich landlords (some of whom are actually in the Councils, parliaments, etc, at the moment).