I have been parking in my neighbor Mara's driveway since June. Mine is empty, but hers is eighteen paces closer to my front door and doesn't sit under the sycamore that drips sap onto my windshield. Mara says the driveway is hers. I agree that the concrete is hers; she paid to resurface it last year. The location of the concrete is another matter, and Henry George was unusually clear about that distinction.
The value of a site is not created by the person holding the deed. Our street became desirable because the city repaired the bridge, a bus route started running every fifteen minutes, and other people planted trees, opened businesses, and agreed not to let their houses fall down. Mara did not manufacture those advantages. What she owns privately is the improvement; what she is trying to exclude me from is the socially produced location rent. I am not proposing to drive onto her patio. I have kept all four tires on the portion attributable to the community.
A land-value tax would collect the unimproved site's economic rent while leaving her free to profit from improvements. We do not have a full land-value tax, which is why I have been conducting a small, decentralized approximation. The city can tax a vacant lot without reducing the supply of land; similarly, my parking there does not cause the driveway to cease existing. On most weekdays Mara leaves at 7:15 and does not return until after six. During those hours an exclusion rule converts a useful parking surface into idle inventory. The deadweight loss is visible from my kitchen window.
Mara asked why I could not use my own driveway. I can, but this is an argument about marginal allocation, not absolute capacity. Putting my car under the sycamore imposes a real cost: last month I spent eleven minutes with rubbing alcohol removing sap from the driver's-side glass. Her driveway has no tree. Given two parking spaces and one car present for most of the day, the efficient assignment is obvious. She seems to think the fact that she paid for a space gives her a claim to leave it empty, which is exactly the kind of speculative withholding Georgists have criticized for a century and a half.
There are externalities, and I have priced them. My tires add perhaps nine cents of wear per weekday to the concrete she purchased, and I offered to settle quarterly at that rate. I initially omitted the inconvenience of moving my car before she gets home, because she had never specified an arrival time and an unspecified cost is difficult to put in a model. She has since specified it repeatedly. On Tuesday I was in the shower at 5:52 when she pulled in with groceries, so she parked on the street for twenty-three minutes. I have entered twenty-three minutes as the upper bound; she says the groceries were melting, but the ice cream was still cold when I helped her carry it in.
Some people distinguish taxing land rent from granting the public a right to occupy someone's driveway. I understand the legal distinction. The moral distinction is less convincing: if an entitlement rests on an unearned location premium, requiring a payment to a city treasury does not magically make every exercise of exclusion just. Mara could establish a credible need for the spot during my parking window, and I would update. So far the evidence she has offered is that it is hers, which is the proposition under examination, and that I am an asshole, which is not a theory of land tenure.
My wife thinks this is about avoiding sap, and she has asked me to stop bringing George into it. I have pointed out that a material incentive to discover an injustice does not make the injustice less real. Plenty of people came to Georgism because they disliked paying rent. Nobody asks them to stand under a tree until their motives are pure. My own contribution has been to identify a highly localized case of inefficient enclosure, offer compensation for the capital improvement, and remain willing to move the car when the social product of the space is demonstrably higher elsewhere.
Mara installed a folding bollard yesterday. It was made by a company three towns over, transported on a road paid for by everyone here, and anchored in a driveway whose location owes its value to the rest of us. I parked under the sycamore while she fitted it. When she finished, she asked if I finally understood what private property meant, and I asked her who paid for the road the installer used. She has not answered, but there is sap on my windshield again.
What you actually want here is a Harberger tax. Mara self-assesses the value of the driveway, pays tax on that number, and has to sell to anyone who offers it. If she values the space less than you do, you buy the parking right at her own valuation and everyone's revealed preferences are on the table.
I proposed this in July. She assessed the driveway at four million dollars.
Then she pays tax on four million dollars, which is the mechanism working. Did she actually agree to the tax part?
She agreed to the number. The rest of the conversation didn't go well.
Georgist here, with a correction that matters. Under an LVT, Mara pays the community for the location value and keeps the right to exclude. George never proposed collecting location rent in the form of somebody else's car. The rent goes to the treasury, and the driveway stays hers.
A land-value tax would send Mara a bill. It wouldn't give you her parking space.
The current arrangement sends her neither a bill nor a signal about underuse. Mine supplies the signal.
Since the Lockeans keep getting summoned on this site. She resurfaced it last year, which is about the cleanest labor-mixing case I've seen posted here. Saying the location is communal doesn't get you around the improvement, and you can't park on the location without parking on the improvement.
I've conceded the concrete. My tires are on the location.
Your tires are on the concrete, though. You'd need a way to park on the location without touching the improvement, and I don't see one.
On the sycamore: what's on your windshield is probably honeydew, insects feeding on the leaves, and not the tree's sap. A lot of street trees drip it in summer. An arborist could tell you in five minutes, and treating the tree would fix the actual problem.
Insect honeydew is still an externality of the tree's location.
Nine cents of wear per weekday seems low for concrete. Where did that come from?
Resurfacing cost divided by expected lifespan, apportioned by axle weight. I can share the spreadsheet. She's declined it twice.
On the road question at the end. Everyone paid for the road, including Mara, so it cuts both ways. If shared contributions to the road give you a claim on her driveway, they give her the same claim on yours, and yours is empty most of the day.