this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Cool, so, the government can just turn into bandits if we don't like what private citizens do on their own land. Oh, and if they complain, why not just send them to the gulag?
Yeah it's not cool to seize commercially zoned land when a corporation is idling on it because it doesn't like a policy, that's a communism guys!
However, seizing residential land so that we can build another casino on it... that's just the wonderous free market at work!
Edit: eminent domain isn't communism, pick up a grade school civics book
Eminent domain involves compensation at fair market value, not theft. And typically, we use property taxes to motivate property owners to find economically productive uses for their land/buildings.
a) you'd be surprised how little the "fair market value" often is under eminent domain
b) no we don't, if we did we'd be largely following georgism... The majority of current property taxes tax improvements on the land, not the land itself. It's often cheaper to have an empty lot than a functioning business.
Land value taxes are great. But even without them, it makes little sense to have a potentially functioning, commercially viable plot of land sitting empty. Any rational company is going to sell or lease that land out. Including farmers.
As long as it's commercially viable.
"It makes little sense" and yet it happens all of the time precisely because unlike the fictional policy set you concocted for your argument, we actually don't incentivize people to make the best use of their land through property taxes.
Most localities in the US tax land improvements instead of the land itself, which is the exact opposite of what you were saying we do.
I've never seen a property tax scheme which isn't partly based on the land value. So....
The portion of the tax due to land value in and of itself is paltry compared to the tax collected on land improvements.
People living in condos have no actual land they own and yet are taxed a percentage of the resale value of the improvement (i.e. what they actually own) yearly.
Just because you have no idea how property taxes work doesn't mean that they work the way you dreamed up.
When you get a bill for your taxes it itemizes the amount paid to land value vs the amount paid due to improvements. Want to take a guess which amount is bigger?
I've always seen the same tax rate on land value as improvement value. And yes, I do know how property taxes work. I pay them in three states, you arrogant child.
Even if the rates are identical, the amounts are lower because "unimproved" land has less "fair market value", humble grampy!
In California, the property taxes also don't even rise with the value of property generally. So someone newly buying a condo will pay much, much more in property taxes than say someone that holds a vacant lot for decades....like there are in Oakland...where they had to pass a ballot measure to start taxing people for holding onto vacant lots... Which according to you could never exist....cuz of property taxes.
A society that values an individuals right to profit over the collectives right to eat is not a just or moral society, and it is the collective responsibility of the many to change the society to preclude from such possibilities. If that means sending mentally ill speculators and unethical industrial farmers to prison, then so be it. Better than sending the poor and minorities there for crimes of poverty only necessitated by others greed in the first place.
Speaking of gulags, why does the US have both the highest prison population and highest per capita prison population in the world, if we don’t already send people to the gulag?
You might have a point if communist nations didn't have a history of dismal agricultural failures and capitalist countries didn't have a history of food surplus. Lmao
Also, whataboutism with the US prison population doesn't excuse locking up political prisoners, since you're apparently fine apologizing for that.
Political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Fred Burton, “Xinachitli” Alvaro Hernandez, Reverend Joy Powell, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader and Shukri Abu-Baker, Eric King, Daniel Hale, Alex Saab, Ed Poindexter, Veronza Bowers, Jessica Reznicek, Emmanuel Quinones, or any of the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers illegally detained at the border and held in concentration camps every year? Or lest we forget Edward Snowden, who fled the nation to avoid becoming a political prisoner, or Chelsea Manning who spent 7 years as a political prisoner, or Julian Assange of course?
Look, I’m not defending political prisoners, I’m calling out your random talk of gulag as what it is, a lack of reflection on the most heavily criminalized and incarcerated society in known history and a rabid reactionary whataboutism when faced with the inherent injustice the system we currently have represents.
You couldn't list off the political prisoners of communist regimes in a month if you never stopped typing. And yes, I got your point. It was whataboutism. You want to talk about overuse of prisons in the US, you can, but the US doesn't lock up people because they disagree with the government. Every communist regime has. Brutal authoritarianism is a defining feature of communism.
They literally do. They manufacture crimes with no witnesses nor evidence against prominent dissidents and imprison them for life.
Whatever lies you need to tell yourself, kiddo
Me: provides a list of political prisoners in the US
You: ThE uS dOeSnT hAvE pOlItIcAl PrIsOnErS.
The whataboutism is YOURS. You brought up gulags. I only asked you why the US has the highest population of prisoners in the history of humanity.
Taking the first person on that list, he was convicted of murder. If you think he didn't do it, okay, and he denies it, but he has had his applications for clemency, appeals, and a jury trial to press his case. He's not a political prisoner, he's a convicted murderer. Whether you think he's guilty or not. Dead people aren't invented. That's not a "made up crime."
This is one reason why I have a hard time talking to people like you. You assume a conclusion and deny even the possibility that someone convicted of murder may have done it, then draw a conspiracy about political motives for imprisonment.
Okay, kid. Here's an experiment for you. You say the US locks up political prisoners and is worse than communist nations. Go to the street right outside the White House and hold a sign with your favorite criticism of Joe Biden. Then, go fly to China and go interview people in Tianenmen Square about what precisely happened there in 1989. See what happens.
Jfc. Make an honest fucking argument. You and I could talk about how to reduce the prison population here, but the fact is that however flawed the US justice system is, it is punishing people for crimes, not political thought or agitation. You and I may think some sentences are excessive, or some crimes shouldn't be crimes, or sentences should be committed.
But the Chinese government will lock you up in prison if you disagree with the ruling party. Here, the opposition has multiple fucking TV networks with seats in the White House press room. Fucking clown show.
There is definitive evidence in Peltier’s case that the witnesses were coerced by the FBI, which makes their testimony inadmissible, yet the white supremacist judge still allowed it to be entered and used against him. There’s no evidence, just manufactured consent to placate tubes like you with no critical thinking skills.
I have already been threatened by the government for my ENTIRELY PEACEFUL speech, because they don’t like when you stand on the corner with signs that have the names of murderous police officers. Told that if I continued doing what I did, I’d be put “in the ground.” Totally normal behavior for a non-totalitarian police force.
His lawyers have had lots of time to make that argument in court. I'm not in jail because I haven't gotten into a shootout with the FBI. And I note that you're still here, in our imperfect country, ignoring my entire point and trying to pretend that you don't have free speech. Yet, still speaking.