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The real culprit is land: we don't accumulate any more of that, so it's rates of return don't vanish.

An interesting point to this is the land value tax, advocated by Georgists (whom Einstein was sympathetic to).

It's good: capital competes with capital to lowers its rates of return. We need more capital.

Can you expand on what you mean by this, please? Why does there need to be competition?

Yes, I was hinting at Georgism myself.

Can you expand on what you mean by this, please? Why does there need to be competition?

All of GDP basically gets split between land, labour and capital. As sort-of Georgist libertarian/socialists, we want as much of that to go to labour as possible, but without shrinking the pie. We redirect land's share via an LVT. But we don't want to tax capital: but fortunately, the competition between capital goods will lead to lower rates of return.

The owner of the first factory might make lots of profit. The owner of the second factory less so, and the third might barely break even. The surplus can go to consumers and workers.

(Not sure if that was better explained?)

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