This is why programmers should work to create social systems, not just computer systems.

No idea if the age thing is a good idea, but I love the way you think. We more people thinking about the long-term and high-level best interests of society.

We should also use the rent to create prizes for the technological commons that can help people live longer and hopefully become wiser.

For inspiration, look into these prizes:

The M Prize
The Gada Prize
The PETA cultured meat prize

Also, unless the full value of the land were recaptured, then the Citizens Dividend, like any other improvement in nominal wages, would be eaten up by increases in rent… if 50% of the rent were recaptured, then only 50% of the dividend would not be eaten up by increases in rent.

Still, I think that having a Citizen’s Dividend makes LVT more politically sustainable. The way to do it is that all surpluses go towards the dividend, and everything else goes towards normal government expenditures. Perhaps the dividend could be averaged out like they do in Alaska.

If you really wanted to promote long term thinking, the dividend could be delayed. You’d only get a dividend from the rent collected 20 years ago.

Greetings! Of course we’re both admins of a related site, Triumph of the Commons, but a little friendly talk is good. I submit that the Citizens Dividend is inherently contradictory of a georgist perspective for it atomizes (privatizes) that which is in its nature a collective/communal substance, namely the economic rent of land.

I cite one example of the corrosive effects of a citizen’s dividend. The Alaskan Citizen’s Dividend leads citizens of that state to seek their individual good, perhaps a new television, through the exploitation of public oil lands, rather than to deliberate a common good application of that exploitation. I believe the individual Alaskan’s contribution to the debate over whether or not to open up ANWAR would be consistently informed by larger than selfish impulses were the outcome of Land Use policy to be an inclusive communal consideration rather than a private benefit consideration. And so, my argument runs, a citizen’s dividend corrupts communal good thinking.

In fact you follow one of the fundamentals of the Relative Money Theory : http://wiki.creationmonetaire.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

And of course the JOHN LOCKE clause : http://www.creationmonetaire.info/2010/10/dividende-universel-john-locke-et.html !

There are other ways to undestand Universal Dividend like EARTH TIME SHARING thru generations : http://www.creationmonetaire.info/2011/05/le-flux-lhomme-la-monnaie.html

And also of course thru understing sharing the FREEDOM values that cannot be sell and be part of the market, but need investments to be created http://www.creationmonetaire.info/2012/02/debian-14-milliards-deuros-valeur-libre.html

We are NOT forced to produce ONLY market values. So true Liberalism MUST include Universal Dividend into a global money system.

That is an important caveat, but everyone’s next best alternative is made worse by a lowering of the margin of production.

People are always wondering how best to improve the lot of workers, especially the worst off. I think my article sufficiently shows why most techniques cannot hope to meet that objective without first considering the margin of production.

Also, why shouldn’t we be concerned with unskilled laborers? Their wellbeing is no less important than ours. Furthermore, by the logic you just used their existence is what allows for the high wages of everyone else. If they weren’t around, everyone’s wages would be lower. So that logic leads to the conclusion that LESS education is better for wages, not more.

My goal is to seek a non-absurd state of affairs where social goods, like education or philanthropy, do not become nullified by systemic injustices. Indeed, any serious examination of the foundations of Political Economy can find no basis by which to grant eternal and exclusive sovereignties over locations on the surface of the planet.

I must disagree strongly with your article.

“Wages are determined by the margin of production.”

No it is not true, the article itself says that it only means they cannot be lower, but they can be higher if there is competition for skilled labor.

I think you make the same pessimistic mistake as Marx did: assuming employers do not compete for the workers. Perhaps this mistake comes from the same deeper mistake: assuming there is such a thing as a unified working class.

In reality there are simply individuals there with various skills, hence employers compete for them to a various amount, hence they get various levels of extra above the margin of production.

I mean this is obvious. A Google programmers is a worker too, but he makes much more than an unskilled cucumber picker.

I think your argument may be valid only for unskilled cucumber pickers. But everybody else surely not.

Both Marx and Ricardo had this old-fashioned view and maybe you too that work is simply muscle-work, human machines, workers are meat robots. In reality most work is about using the brain. This is precisely what the education system is trying to achieve, to make people more than meat robots. And those who are not meat robots always make more than the margin of production. Those few people who really have only muscle and no brain will perhaps suffer and it is a problem but it is not that many people I hope.

I don’t believe that paying to salaries hits landlords twice because that misunderstands the point. It is similar to the misunderstanding promulgated by supporters of income taxation. The reason income taxation is fundamentally flawed is because income flows to holders of privilege, and taxing the flows of income does not change where the income is flowing. Thus, in terms of how rent is pocketed, it doesn’t matter so much where the revenues of land value taxation are spent. Any residual rent that is untaxed will continue to claim a share of the total production that is proportionate to the amount allowed to be pocketed.

Of course I wouldn’t oppose the ideas you mentioned. It could encourage more births, which could get the developed world back to a replacement fertility rate. Though a flat Citizens Dividend for all citizens, including for children (in trust), is probably more fair.

A georgist friend of mine is going to be holding a podcast interview on March 19th with Charles Eisenstein, who promotes Gesell. Tune in!

http://www.3cr.org.au/economists