You can pull on those heartstrings in either direction, as it were.
In economic terms what you're arguing is that investment efficiency should always outweigh allocative efficiency.
> pay [...] much more than your neighbor, who objectively speaking may have a lot of equal value.
All land is unique, so I don't think adjacent land of equal value exists. The difference may be trivial, or it may be substantial.
But yes, it's all a tradeoff. Some might prefer a centralized government authority decreeing a given value, others might prefer market-based price discovery.
I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else either way, just pointing out that fair price discovery for a self-assessment LVT isn't an unsolved problem.
> All land is unique, so I don't think adjacent land of equal value exists. The difference may be trivial, or it may be substantial.
I don't understand how this relates. My point would stand even if the neighboring lots were slightly different in value.
> just pointing out that fair price discovery for a self-assessment LVT isn't an unsolved problem.
Yeah okay I'll give you that. It's just that we can't ignore how tax policy must match a society's values in a democratic society, else it'll be voted out. I'm saying this probably wouldn't work out since voters put value on the idea that at least some people will be able to get a good enough job to afford to bring up their kids in a stable home.
I'm agreeing with you (along with the "heartstrings" comment) that all land is going to have both objective and intangible value, e.g. the view, and that someone grew up in that house.
But I think you're imagining that any intangible interests in the land are going to favor the incumbent.
I think for residential lots that's probably more true than not on average.
But we can easily come up with examples where a prospective buyer has a stronger intangible interest.
E.g. maybe you own it, and don't really care about the land or house per-se, but it saves you 1 minute on your commute v.s. the next lot.
Whereas I used to live there, and was forced to sell the house during the last recession. I've got a deep emotional connection to the lot and house, and my dog's buried in the backyard.
I'd like to buy the house back. You don't want to sell.
Does my interest outweigh yours? Maybe, maybe not.
All I'm saying is that a self-assessed LVT with an auction mechanism (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37909570) will enable both of us to set a price on those intangibles.
I agree that probably nobody's willing to try this out any time soon, for what it's worth the authors of "Radical Markets" suggest phasing in such a system by starting with commercial lots (and perhaps it would never go beyond that).
In economic terms what you're arguing is that investment efficiency should always outweigh allocative efficiency.
> pay [...] much more than your neighbor, who objectively speaking may have a lot of equal value.
All land is unique, so I don't think adjacent land of equal value exists. The difference may be trivial, or it may be substantial.
But yes, it's all a tradeoff. Some might prefer a centralized government authority decreeing a given value, others might prefer market-based price discovery.
I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else either way, just pointing out that fair price discovery for a self-assessment LVT isn't an unsolved problem.