You write that “the supply of natural resources is fixed, and so taxes on them do not distort the market at all”. This is entirely incorrect. The land value tax at it’s full theoretical 100% rate is indeed neutral and does not distort the market, however any other rate does in fact distort the market. Lower land taxes or not taxing land at all results in a market distorted to incentivize land speculation, because of the positive externalities conferred on the land by the surrounding area.
Taxing natural resources you’d find on the land, like say unmined minerals or coal or oil or whatever, does distort the market to disincentivize extracting those resources. Those resources have no such positive externality conferred on them like the land itself does, so taxing them anything above 0 is distortionary.
I don’t buy the traditional Georgian rhetoric around the idea that land is morally owned by us all. That’s just nonsense. They’re basically asserting that it’s the most ethical because land wasn’t owned before there were humans. First of all, that itself is debatable given animal territorialism, but also, how nature is or was at some point isn’t fair or just or ethical, its just how shit randomly happened through evolution, not from some moral superiority. What matters is the economic correction of externalities, not some subjective idea of what’s ethical from a state of nature.
You write that “the supply of natural resources is fixed, and so taxes on them do not distort the market at all”. This is entirely incorrect. The land value tax at it’s full theoretical 100% rate is indeed neutral and does not distort the market, however any other rate does in fact distort the market. Lower land taxes or not taxing land at all results in a market distorted to incentivize land speculation, because of the positive externalities conferred on the land by the surrounding area.
Taxing natural resources you’d find on the land, like say unmined minerals or coal or oil or whatever, does distort the market to disincentivize extracting those resources. Those resources have no such positive externality conferred on them like the land itself does, so taxing them anything above 0 is distortionary.
I don’t buy the traditional Georgian rhetoric around the idea that land is morally owned by us all. That’s just nonsense. They’re basically asserting that it’s the most ethical because land wasn’t owned before there were humans. First of all, that itself is debatable given animal territorialism, but also, how nature is or was at some point isn’t fair or just or ethical, its just how shit randomly happened through evolution, not from some moral superiority. What matters is the economic correction of externalities, not some subjective idea of what’s ethical from a state of nature.