I agree with you about land taxes though — see also Bill’s Georgism remarks (above),

The revenue and spending sides have to be kept separate. A citizens’ dividend could be funded by any sort of tax — it has little to do with Land Value Tax. One way in which they *are* similar is that they both reduce marginal income tax rates. Means-tested benefits are gradually withdrawn as you earn more, functioning as an effective additional income tax, thus discouraging the proles from working. A citizens’ dividend would be an improvement on what we have now. But I’ll stop talking about mainstream policy now.

LVT is a tax on economic rent rather than productivity; it would enable the state to extract rents from the economy without dead-weight loss. Artificial rents are bestowed and can be eliminated by the state, and should be: they are the state granting a portion of its revenues to someone else. In Moldbug’s corporate state, all tax revenues should be paid out as dividends: anything else is corrupt. But location rents are not artificial: they cannot be eliminated. The only question is who gets them. If the state doesn’t collect them, they are collected by property owners: owner-occupiers and landlords. (“Rents are privately-collected taxes”.) If the state chooses to impose an income tax instead, this reduces the value of the country and thus reduces the rents landlords can charge.

The total rent extractable from the economy is far above what is necessary to fund a night-watchman state. It could be distributed as a citizens’ dividend, or as a dividend to a few shareholders. The latter would be better than a small LVT to fund the state and the rest collected as rents by landowners. As Moldbug explained, a city-sized landowning unit is better for coherent city development than lots of smallholders with disagreements. Better for the smallholders to have shares in the state.

Hong Kong sensibly implements LVT through long leases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_rent_in_Hong_Kong

Why do states have income taxes rather than LVT, then? The answer is conflicting interest groups. By not having and LVT, the state allows the landowners to still collect their rents. The landowners have power, but they cannot join together as shareholders in a landowning state? Why not? The poor, ignorant of LVT, call for income taxes on the productive. They have power. The landowners would be better off if the income tax was abolished.

The productive appear to have the least power. I’m not sure why. It doesn’t jibe with what I think happened in 17th-18th century England, where the Whigs, at first representing the elite capitalists against the landowners, triumphed and became the landowners themselves. Their productivity allowed them to buy the land. And I think this was a happy development: the elites owning the land and the capital, thus reducing conflict.

“If Bilderberg is willing to listen to him, how bad can it be?” This is what I was thinking. He’d fume about onw world orders et al if it wasn’t for the fact that it is probably a bunch of fairly dull talks boosted by the great selection of foods and wines at the Grove Hotel.*

*Not a plug!

But personally I love PT and will viciously attack anyone who says anything against him. You haters will feel bad after he donates a whole 1% of his net wealth to establish DEU.

http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants2013.html