Please go easy on the downvotes—the point here is to try to understand a perspective that many of you probably won’t share.

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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    18 hours ago

    My proposal is to destroy the market completely with a land value tax. How does that have anything to do with being stuck in the status quo? It’s incredibly radical by the standards of the average person right now.

    If something is an investment, by necessity it must increase in price faster than inflation. If you tax the ability for that to happen completely away, it’s no longer an investment vehicle. That’s not economics, it’s not science, it’s basic math.

    • DandomRude@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 hours ago

      This strikes me as similar to the ideas of Lizzy Magie, arguably one of the most absurdly exploited individuals with noble goals that history has to offer. She invented Monopoly to illustrate the absurdity of land ownership—today, Monopoly is the game that teaches children cutthroat capitalism.

      Magie received a ridiculous low sum for her Monopoly patent, while others became millionaires off her idea (the Parker brothers, whose empire still exists today, benefited the most).

      Edit: Please don’t get me wrong—I completely agree with you. I just don’t think it’s effective to focus solely on the one area where the world’s wealthy accumulate their wealth. This is simply a realistic view, since no billion-dollar company operates in just one sector (for example, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is involved in real estate deals worth billions, even though it is, at its core, a tech company). So what I’m trying to say is: Regulations targeting only the real estate market cannot possibly solve the problem.

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        14 hours ago

        It’s because that game (or more specifically The Landlord Game which she made) was meant to teach on Henry George’s work (the guy that came up with the idea of Land Value taxes and explained why they were needed)