Competition for land could be structured as 30 year leases (give or take), rather than perpetual ownership. Then A. prices don't reflect an asset premium and B. the surplus accrues to the public, rather than to rich people.
The problem with the 30 year lease idea is that it heavily discourages investment. Why would you build a billion dollar skyscraper when the state will reposes it in 30 years? What we need is perpetual leases that charge the full value of the land. We need LVT
The "give or take" caveat was intended to cover different terms for different zones. 99 year leases might make sense to incentivize green-field development, 45 years might make sense for heavy infrastructure (going by depreciation rules), and 30 years is calibrated more towards families. Lower durations could be sold as extenders or to synchronize move-outs in place of eminent domain.
The exponential decay of net-present-value calculations means that time horizons do not have to be infinite to encourage investment. Making them infinite doesn't even help very much at all. When you compare this against the dramatically higher capital requirements of the perpetual ownership model, it actually has very little to offer. Except ensuring that rich people can get paid for being rich, of course, which one starts to suspect is the actual purpose.
Leases from the public to the person who wants the public to stay off a chunk of land. The perpetual ownership model is actually pretty weird: the public in 2023 agrees to stay off Bill Barnes' land in transferrable perpetuity in exchange for... a railroad built in 1850 that went defunct 100 years ago. And a dribble of property tax. Lol.
Yes, the USA was founded by english nobility for english nobility. Is it really so surprising they upheld one of the most important institutions for ensuring that rich people can get paid for being rich? They also upheld slavery for similar reasons, though thankfully we sorted that one out 150 years ago.
Again, this is in effect what property tax does. You effectively lease the land from the government because the second you can’t or won’t pay your property tax they will take your land and sell it.
Private ownership of land is actually in the governments best interest. Private individuals will improve land creating further tax. And buildings and people are the 2 things of value a government has. With private ownership the people are truly invested in the government and the government with the people.
