A high Land Value Tax accomplishes this. It negates the appreciation generated merely by land scarcity and value of surrounding land, which means the only way to get gains from your real estate holdings is indeed to put labor and capital into improving it.
I think annual land value taxes are efficient at resource allocation but unacceptably punitive on owners. You should not be penalized or motivated to sell simply because a 3rd party can get a higher return.
Similarly, value gains from land appreciation are taxed at the time of sale. IF I pay annual taxes on land appreciation, I should be exempt from taxes at the point of sale, otherwise I am paying for that appreciation twice.
Land belongs to society, not whoever has a house on it. If you are using it ineffectively you deserve to be punished by society via taxes because you are directly making the community worse off.
I absolutely believe in property ownership. And that land is such a unique and important asset that it is utterly immoral for anyone except society as a whole to own it and tax those on it at close to its full value.
In this we have similarly strong feelings but opposite conclusion. I also think that land is a fundamental and important asset, but conclude from that it is immoral for an individual possession to be reliant and dependent on society.
I feel it in the same way that I would not want my ability to beath air to depend on some social utilitarian function that could decide it is better used elsewhere.
> it is immoral for an individual possession to be reliant and dependent on society.
Society is what defines the concept of land ownership and actively protects the ownership of land, so it's not possible to remove a dependency of the latter on the former.
Society accepts and protects property ownership of land but is not the only method possible.
Legal rights and social processes are just the most agreeable way to manage it amongst several people.
For example, You can own land if there is no society or other people to contest it. If you are alone on a island, there is no one to say you don't own it
Similarly, you can own land without social dependence if you have the power take or defend it.
If you've ever been mugged or read of nations conquered, it is clear that social consensus and the rule of law is but one mode of arbitrating property ownership. That said, it is one that works out quite well
> If you are alone on a island, there is no one to say you don't own it
Ownership has no meaning unless you can identify who does not have it, which requires at least one other person nearby. If you are alone on an island, you are just occupying it.
> Similarly, you can own land without social dependence if you have the power take or defend it.
This requires an army or militia, or an overwhelming technological advantage over those you are dispossessing. Those imply operating in a societ. Otherwise where does your militia and technology come from?
