The Land Café's Open Society Blog

Henry George Hoodoo: Point/counterpoint

2007-01-15T15:53:00.000+01:00

Editor’s note: This splendid exchange on the Single Tax (Land Value Tax) proposal of Henry George took place more than one hundred years ago. It appears here thanks to the eagle eye of Mark Monson who spotted it in the annals of Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/bti1010.txt. My only contrition to this chain has been to clean up the formatting and introduce paragraph

Letting go of left vs. right

2006-12-23T09:43:00.000+01:00

Letting go of left vs. right From: "Dan Sullivan" Date: Sat Dec 23, 2006 9:03 amTo: The Land Café (http://www.landcafe.org) Bernard's post was just fine until the final, gratuitous statement, "All stand in opposition, of course, to 'right-libertarianism', one of the most shallow political philosophies ever." I don't know what's worse -- lefties stereotyping righties out of

User fees & paying for what you take

2006-12-18T17:47:00.000+01:00

On Behalf Of Sean BrooksSent: Monday, December 18, 2006 5:15 PM While economists may debate the existence of true public goods, there is no doubt that there are partial public goods. These goods have high capital and fixed costs in relation to their costs due to individual users. In fact most goods have at least a portion of goods that are

Etymological evolutions - economics and politics

2006-12-17T18:44:00.000+01:00

A mail in from one of the active participants in our Land Café. Reactions? I suggest that you might add them both as Comments here, and copy to Dan via pimann@pobox.com. Eric Britton From: Dan Sullivan [mailto:pimann@pobox.com]Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2006 4:11 PM I am interested in the evolution of English-language words,

Build, Build, Build

2006-09-30T13:46:00.000+02:00

Report by the Green Party...All 33 boroughs will be given targets for more affordable houses and Mayor Ken Livingstone will have the power to intervene if they turn down schemes in designated areas... "affordable housing" has fallen by 38,000 since Mr Livingstone became Mayor, say the Green Party.Mr Livingstone seems to be unaware of the fact that affordability declines because of property price

Land Café comments on UK "planning gain supplement" consultation

2006-03-09T15:20:00.000+01:00

First, we agree on resource depletion. Resources in the ground have an intrinsic value that is diminished by extraction. I wouldn’t tax it. Rather, I would assert the common ownership of the people and put extraction out to bid. The amount that we would get could be very large. My favorite example concerns the City of Long Beach in California. A consortium of oil companies acronymed THUMS (

Proposal: For the Introduction of the Taxation of Land Values

2006-02-09T19:18:00.000+01:00

Editor's note: This "Proposal For the Introduction of the Taxation of Land Values" has been submitted for comment and improvement by David Chester, in responses to Dan Sullivan's call for" a very short, compelling brochure showing why land value tax is a better alternative than the planning gain supplement". Please go to the Cooperative Blog via www.landcafe.org to place your comments there. This

Workpad 1. Strategic Guidelines

2006-01-25T14:03:00.000+01:00

Contributor’s Note: This is the first of our proposed interactive ‘workpad’ discussions, which in each case are intended to be set off by a brief presentation by one of our number or invited guests of a thesis, issue or approach in which the author at least things it might be useful if we put our collective intelligences to work to build a sounder and more complete common base. In all this, we

House Prices

2006-01-24T18:04:00.000+01:00

One of the primary results of the distorted pattern of land ownership in the UK has been that house prices have been much higher than they would otherwise have been. Given that house ownership has been perceived as a source of wealth, it is hardly suprising that politicians have been reluctant to challenge the rigged market.However, as the link above shows, in fact what has happened is an

20.01.06. Some posting guidelines:

2006-01-20T14:15:00.000+01:00

1. Before you dig in, if you are new to blogging, you may want to have a look at http://help.blogger.com/ .2. Since this is a team blog, you may want to check out http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1233. Editing help is available at http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=9224. If you are not sure about how to stay on format, etc. at first, get in touch. We can do it together.5.

19.01.06. Lessons From Geese

2006-01-19T09:06:00.000+01:00

Facilitator’s note: This kind mailing just in from Dave Wetzel is placed here as an example of how our co-blog can be put to work. What is missing is a source? And ideally some kind of permission to use from the author. Next time.*************************************Lessons From GeeseFACT: As each goose flaps its wings it creates an "uplift" for the birds that follows. By flying in a V

17.01.06 The new Land Blog.

2006-01-16T17:01:00.000+01:00

Hang on. This is to be the new Land Café Blog. Give us a few days and we’ll get the working frame up and running for you.This is going to be a Self-Organizing Collaborative Network undertaking by the Café members. Let us know if you want to get involved from the very beginning as we build this one up.As a very quick reminder, here is what was written and shared with the first group of colleagues