marjaerwin

I think it's misleading to portray mutualism and geoism as two opposing philosophies. One ca be either or both. I think it makes more sense to portray occupancy and use and land-tax/compensation as two alternative modes of land ownership, with mutualists most often undecided, and geoists most often favoring land-tax/compensation.

Now as far as I understand it, geoism is a natural rights theory that defends each individual’s access-right to the commons, points out the social costs of the seizure or destruction of the commons, pnd proposes taxes on land value, pollution, and/or resource destruction as a way to defend each individual’s access-right to the commons. Many mutualists and geoists will agree on the first two principles, but may disagree on the last.

1. First of all, that this solution is justified and is immediately practical.

2. Second, that this solution is justified and is not immediately practical. Objections include how to prevent corruption/abuse of land tax and pollution tax assessment, collection, and distribution powers, how to calculate land tax, how to calculate land value differences between continents, how to calculate pollution fines, how to distribute pollution fines when the effects are regional rather than global, etc. Alternatives are that breaking up the larger landholdings would solve most of the problems with the present unjust distribution. Ingalls pointed out that land values changed completely in the Finger Lakes region with the introduction of wine-growing.

3. Third, that this solution is unjust, regardless of whether it is practical. Objections include the [false] idea that it taxes agriculture to benefit industry [price increases cancel this out, though it taxes resource-intensive agriculture relative to resource-conserving agriculture], that it is an instrument of dispossession of indigenous peoples with extensive land-use practices, and that it taxes environmental conservation programs hich cannot or do not monetize themselves [of course, occupancy and use fails the same test, unless modified; one needs to assume that any of these systems can be modified]. Proudhon argued that it taxes agriculture.