Are you arguing that property rights should be based exclusively on calling "dibs" by building something on the land? If I see someone not using their front lawn, should I build my own house in front of theirs and tell them that I'll make better use of the land?
No, land rights (NOT property rights, you should be entitled to all of the value you produce) should be determined by a market system. I'm fine with her keeping that multi-million dollar plot of land for herself, but only if she actually pays society for everything being taken away.
A tax on the value of land - something people didn't produce, but comes from the value of society - is the proper way to raise income. You get rid of speculative leeches like this.
If georgism was implemented here, then the value of the lot would have increased very significantly with a house was on it. With the significant additional value, it's likely that the two parties would have been able to come to an arrangement that didn't result in destroying the house.
The root of the problem here is that the house is worth peanuts compared to the land, so the homeowner has nothing to gain from bargaining with the developer. We end up destroying something of value (housing) in the name of speculative land investment, which is a shame
In today's world, the value of the lot increased significantly when the house was built.
The owner certainly could have sold that property with the house on it, and bought a much nicer empty lot.
That is not however what the existing owner wanted to build on the property, and as a result the building is damage to the property
And why should the landowner here bargain with the developer? The developer did not perform basic due diligence on easily a 200k+ investment
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That being said, georgism plays right into this issue without the developers negligence. With LVT any land with improvements that is not determined to be it's highest and best use will be bulldozed and replaced, which is also a shame.
Yeah, true. But if Georgism was in place I would think you would have less people owning prime property but living 2000 miles away and completely unaware what is happening on the land.
I would disagree with the leech characterization. In an interview I watched, she talked about how she chose the property based on astrological alignment and her feelings when she was on this plot. She may be irrational but I think that's a perfectly valid reason to want to keep your own plot of land.
I don't think any idea that puts more responsibility on centralized government is destined for great success until there are stronger movements to force the governments in question to behave pro-socially. As it stands in the U.S. the federal government spends much more than the biggest 50 companies in the world combined and the benefits we see from that are disgustingly small.
I would love to see people find ways to make centralized government a value add in our lives, but as it stands there are too many people who want to continue to pile onto there responsibility regardless of the outcomes.
I appreciate the sentiment, but territorial boundaries are enforced by violence among almost every species on the planet and we're not that much better than any of them. Law is something we use to put hard limits on violence and sometimes it's inadequate to ensure the obviously right outcome. I do hope that leads to a modulation of where the limits are placed rather than a loss of trust in the whole endeavor.
The house was not worth $5,000,000. Let's be super generous and assume that's $500,000 worth of house. The land itself, the location, that's worth $4,500,000. Why should a $4,500,000 plot of land be kept out of production without anyone paying?
For what it's worth there seems to be a massive fuck up in the linked article. If you look at the original story, it lists the house as $500,000 and not $5 million. The land itself was bought for $22k in 2018
