deleted by creator

We do keep a couple patches of wildflowers.

Funny you say that as I’m the creator and mod of [email protected]

For others curious about land value taxes:

A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land without regard to buildings, personal property and other improvements.[1] It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation tax, split rate tax, or a site-value rating.

Land value taxes are generally favored by economists as they do not cause economic inefficiency, and reduce inequality.[2] A land value tax is a progressive tax, in that the tax burden falls on land owners, because land ownership is correlated with wealth and income.[3][4] The land value tax has been referred to as “the perfect tax” and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been accepted since the eighteenth century.[1][5][6]

LVT’s efficiency has been observed in practice.[18] Fred Foldvary stated that LVT discourages speculative land holding because the tax reflects changes in land value (up and down), encouraging landowners to develop or sell vacant/underused plots in high demand. Foldvary claimed that LVT increases investment in dilapidated inner city areas because improvements don’t cause tax increases. This in turn reduces the incentive to build on remote sites and so reduces urban sprawl.[19] For example, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s LVT has operated since 1975. This policy was credited by mayor Stephen R. Reed with reducing the number of vacant downtown structures from around 4,200 in 1982 to fewer than 500.[20]

LVT is arguably an ecotax because it discourages the waste of prime locations, which are a finite resource.[21][22][23] Many urban planners claim that LVT is an effective method to promote transit-oriented development.[24][25]

Further, it can’t be passed on to tenants, both in economic theory and in observed practice, and even a milquetoast LVT – such as in the Australian Capital Territory – can have positive impacts:

It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.

Seems like a good way to get a lot of retired folk to lose their property over taxes, as land value rises above their means

It’s like a dystopian future where you can’t own anything or have private space.

That’s our dystopian, low-density present.

Yeah, they’re welcome to go live in a box surrounded by crazy people - personally I’d rather be in a box six feel under than crammed in with them.

I suppose since my country is very low population but very large I don’t really see the problem. Everyone could have a house here and we’d still have plenty of room to space.

Sweden has a population of 10.5 million, ish, and an area of 447k square kilometres. Germany by contrast, has a population of around 80 million, and an area of 357k square kliometres.

That said, I believe low density can work just fine. You don’t need highrises to improve population storage efficiency. Simple two-three story buildings work just fine too.

You could also lower the population, something modern society is managing just fine right now anyway. I personally really don’t believe overpopulation is going to be a significant problem in the long run.

Blame shitty government regulations and capitalism for shitty apartments.

The minimum standard we should expect is that you can pound a punching bag at 3am without your neighbours hearing anything.

100% we need better regulation

This is the shit that exhausts me about NIMBYs. They have cause and effect totally reversed and I don’t know how that myth got so ingrained.

So what should I do in my current situation so that my choices about where to live help to improve the overall situation regarding housing and land use?

Note, my point isn’t Apartments Bad. My point is that my only choice is overpriced shitty apartments.

you do not ever need to see or interact with your neighbors

I’m not sure why you’re trying to tell me this. I’ve got my own experience living in apartments and having neighbours.

The instant I step out my door I’m surrounded by people in an apartment. Sorry but nothing you said is true. I’ll never live in an apartment again.

Since we’re just talking hypotheticals anyway, let’s say in the second image the land is actually owned by the owners of the apartments, like a co-op.

But it should be, that’s the point.

We need the insulation we saw in the Fight Club movie. The entire apartment blew out the window and everyone else was fine.

It’s not luck. Things are built for a reason, the regulations and structures of society are designed, and it artificially dictate s what is built. Perhaps they live in a place where the regulations mean that sensible livable apartments are fairly abundant. Perhaps you don’t. That’s not luck, those places were designed that way.

I think the phrase “lived experience” should automatically disqualify someone from speaking about any topic. They’re just anecdotes, usually in contradiction to actual data.

Well that’s a plain ridiculous fear, you think government thugs are going to go door to door through the suburbs rounding up homeowners and forcing them into apartments?

The idea is to build enough, at a high enough quality, and at a price point, where it’s more appealing to new buyers.

If they built more apartments, apartments with good sound proofing would be more common. I used to live in Taiwan, and every cheap apartment I lived in had excellent sound proofing.

Once there is more competition in the apartment/condo market, quality will go up.

You’re still too close if you can hear all that.

And I rather like the smell of cow shit

I never hear my neighbors in a rural area. This community is so blatantly full of shit it’s laughable. As if you don’t deal with white trash or drunk drivers anywhere else. Instead in an apartment the white trash are banging each other with the windows open and getting arrested at 3 am with 8 cop cars flashing their lights in the parking lot.

No one listens to ideas from fuckcars-type people because they’re gaslighting lies that no one except other niche weirdos sympathizes with. Please do keep trying to tell rural people how much worse their situation is than living in an apartment. You don’t sound like a condescending jerk at all.

You could have just admitted there are pros and cons to both but instead you go on this gaslighting crusade to try prove someone else’s lived experience wrong. Good luck with that approach, no one is listening to you except other weirdos.

iirc, the further away you live from a city then the worse you impact the environment. Unless you’re literally a fully self-sustaining homesteader with no roads or utilities anywhere near you, then living in a city is basically always better for the environment.

I don’t care how much they do, I care about how close they all are to me while they do it.

Agreed. They would just be birthed elsewhere. It has yet to be seen if we can hit a global population cap. It seems like it has to be reached eventually.

We are in a hypothetical plot of tiny land that can be thought of as the entire world. If you have an argument to make based on this rather silly hypothetical world we are talking about then feel free to make it.