Economic Rent Party forming

[Caleb]

I am pleased to announce my candidacy for President of the Underground under the Economic Rent Party. I hereby join the party, and establish the following rules:

1)  Anyone may run for office in the primary for our party. Only members of the party may join, however, and vote to elect the candidates. Our party is a closed party - therefore, all members must forsake allegiance to all other parties.

2) A member declares his membership in the party by posting in this thread. If it is discovered that he has allegiance to another party, I will delete his post.

3) All voting in the primaries of our party is open. You must declare the person you are voting for openly, by voting in this thread.

4) Voting for president in our primary opens today and closes tomorrow at seven pm.

Thanks

[Caleb]

I, Caleb, hereby register to vote in the Economic Rent Party.

[Caleb]

I am pleased to announce my candidacy for President of the Underground here in the Economic Rent Party.  My platform is as follows.

I believe that all individuals should be forced to pay economic rent for the bandwidth that they enclose while reading and responding on this forum.  With the exception of people who can prove that they are here in the country illegally. These people should have their economic rent subsidized by the proceeds that we get from seizing CNHT's well, and returning it to the commons.

I also strongly support, nay demand, the immediate deification of Bill Grennon forthwith.

[Rocketman]

Caleb, I've already been granted the official charter from ERPI (Economic Rent Party International).  Hell, I invented economic rent.  And besides, you can't start deleting posts and such until you win the ERP primary.  There is nothing, repeat nothing, in any of the bylaws that says I can't run on four different tickets.

[Caleb]

No, there is nothing that keeps you from running in this party. The issue is registering to vote.  This is a closed party, and I can make the rules because I created it.  You must have us confused with the Economic Rent Party, International. We are simply the Economic Rent Party. The similarities in names must have thrown you off.

[Kevin Bean]

Georgist on My Mind registers to vote in the Economic Rent Party

[Kevin Bean]

Is anyone else running in this primary? I was hoping to see BG run. His status as chairman of the DFC NH would surely make us the stongest of the third parties.  Rocketman, are you running in this Party?

[CNHT]

What's this about my well?

Lock and load, kaching!

[PowerPenguin]

What, exactly, is this "rent-seeking behavior"? It's a term that's thrown around like everyone is just supposed to know what it means. I had an explanation once in a political economy class but it wasn't very clear.

[Caleb]

Reminder to everyone:  You need to vote openly in this primary. You do this by casting your vote here, in this thread, for all the world to see.  Also, a reminder that this primary closes at 7 pm, so as to allow our primary workers to eat dinner with their families.  We are a family oriented party.

I, Caleb, hereby vote for ... Caleb for Underground President in this primary.

[Kevin Bean]

Oh. I didn't know that we had to vote here in this thread.  Well, since you are the only one running, I guess I, Georgist on my mind, will vote for Caleb too.

[EthanAllen]

What, exactly, is this "rent-seeking behavior"? It's a term that's thrown around like everyone is just supposed to know what it means. I had an explanation once in a political economy class but it wasn't very clear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

excerpt:

"Rent seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity [via labor], such as by gaining control of land and other pre-existing natural resources, or by imposing burdensome regulations or other government decisions that may affect consumers or businesses. While there may be few people in modern industrialized countries who do not gain something, directly or indirectly, through some form or another of rent seeking, rent seeking in the aggregate may impose substantial losses on society.

Most studies of rent seeking focus on efforts to capture special monopoly privileges, such as government regulation of free enterprise competition, though the term itself is derived from the far older and more established practise of appropriating a portion of production by gaining ownership or control of land. The term "monopoly privilege rent seeking" is an often-used label for the former type of rent seeking. Often-cited examples include a farm lobby that seeks tariff protection or an entertainment lobby that seeks expansion of the scope of copyright. Other rent seeking is held to be associated with efforts to cause a redistribution of wealth by, for example, shifting the government tax burden or government spending allocation. An example is an organization that seeks different tax liabilities for married couples than for cohabiting siblings with the same incomes and spending and investment decisions."