I have always been a searcher of new concepts in technology, politics, economics that may revolutionize the world, and that may help human progress and justice in our world.
Decentralized technologies have not stopped to amaze me since I discovered them. Bitcoin and blockchain technologies made me realize that these technologies would bring a balance in the current state of politics and finance in the world.
Having lived through several economic and political crisis in Mexico at the hands of the PRI government, including some currency devaluations and bank account deposit confiscations, I rapidly understood the value of them.
With bitcoin, use appropriately, you can prevent the state knowing how much you earn, who you transact with, and collecting taxes especially tough. It also becomes a tool to disrupt all sorts of industries where over regulation are a problem for the economy. The case of Uber utilizing bitcoin as a payment method in Buenos Aires, while the authorities tried to ban them to protect the traditional taxi cartels in the city, is a classic positive example.
Once interested in bitcoin, it exposed me to the libertarian and anarcho-capitalist philosophy that it accompanies it. However, I did not become convinced that taxes are theft as most anarcho-capitalist and voluntaryist promote. I do agree that the state should be kept small, but powerful to promote equality.
Moving money has become as easy as a button click. Taxing technology, content, financial or any other companies has already become a problem for governments.
Decentralized technologies are here to stay, no matter how much the financial cartels or governments try to block them. These decentralized technologies are designed to be resilient to censorship and not to be able to stop its use.
If we are going to have governments that promote equality in the future, we need somehow a way to keep them collecting taxes.
The right tax.
The tax has to be in some way a tax that collects income from things in the physical world as taxing in the virtual world has become impossible.
Well, then ¿Why we don't tax land? The government already does it in some way.
After living in some big cities, you at some point have to question, why there is so much wealth accompanied by some much poverty in the same place.
This question brought me to "Henry George" around a decade ago. "Henry George" was a political philosopher of the 1800's. He wrote his biggest work called "Progress and Poverty." He conceptualized "Land Value Taxation" or "LVT".
LVT was purposely designed to tax land speculators. This on the basis that a land speculator does not produce anything. He just sits on it and waits for its price to rise, derived from community and state investment around it, such as roads, hospitals, and any infrastructure.
The community, not the land speculator, is the one that deserves the economic gains derived from infrastructure development, not the land speculator.
Note that the tax has to be levied only on tax and not add-ons such as buildings, to not tax the productive part of building construction.
Land has been the single biggest missing factor on traditional economic currents. Although, land speculation has brought down the economies many times, is completely ignored in economic statistics and models used by the government to predict its cycles.
LVT brings another benefit from taxing solely land, preventing the boom and bust brought by land speculation.
LVT was also conceptualized as a single tax, replacing all other taxes levied by the government. LVT would only tax speculators, but nobody else in the economy.
Software companies, startups, or any productive company or individual that would not "trade" with land or natural resources would not be taxed.
This policy would bring an economic boom of giant proportions, and would solve the issue of sourcing income for governments at the same time.
Such system would also benefit the environment.
Decentralized technologies and Land Value Taxation are a great match.
If you believe in a future of decentralized technologies, you should be a supporter of Land Value Taxation as well.