The splitting and merging thing is a great point. I sense that @Blog Alt is continuing to missing the point about the “everyone else’s improvements” by how they frame it, but once you take splitting and merging into account...
...well, for people who actually live there, hopefully the presence of a new garbage dump would itself be more costly than the decrease in tax. And in principle, if it’s NOT more costly, then it would then be correct to build it! (Maybe it’s not a dump, maybe it’s something else.) So there’s a bringing back in of externalities.
But of course, if someone doesn’t live there… maybe this can be solved by zoning? I’m normally suspicious of zoning but “you can’t put a garbage dump next to a school in a neighborhood” seems pretty basic.
That still doesn’t solve the simple notion of a factory toxic waste pool, but once again, maybe such things should be solved by directly addressing the reason why they’re bad.
Sure but ideally it would raise them an amount that’s worth it. That’s kind of the whole idea. People aren’t infinitely incentivized by money and zero incentivized by anything else.
The splitting and merging thing is a great point. I sense that @Blog Alt is continuing to missing the point about the “everyone else’s improvements” by how they frame it, but once you take splitting and merging into account...
...well, for people who actually live there, hopefully the presence of a new garbage dump would itself be more costly than the decrease in tax. And in principle, if it’s NOT more costly, then it would then be correct to build it! (Maybe it’s not a dump, maybe it’s something else.) So there’s a bringing back in of externalities.
But of course, if someone doesn’t live there… maybe this can be solved by zoning? I’m normally suspicious of zoning but “you can’t put a garbage dump next to a school in a neighborhood” seems pretty basic.
That still doesn’t solve the simple notion of a factory toxic waste pool, but once again, maybe such things should be solved by directly addressing the reason why they’re bad.
Such zoning would itself raise the taxes you pay on your land.
Sure but ideally it would raise them an amount that’s worth it. That’s kind of the whole idea. People aren’t infinitely incentivized by money and zero incentivized by anything else.