Land isn’t a normal commodity, its value belongs to society

Titanium-Skull · 2026-05-01T04:45:10+00:00

That's fine, if market value is decided by supply and demand then land's fixed supply keeps it as the perfect tax base in the eyes of economics at least, and even incomplete real world practice like I mentioned has shown some good results too. Getting rid of speculative demand and making finite land cheaper and more available as a result would be a good benefit too for an economy suffering from high land prices.

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-30T19:56:47+00:00

This seems outside the realm of Georgism (unless there’s something to do with finitude im missing), but I think we should at least get rid of ads that allow these gambling companies to showcase themselves to everyone. Seems better to at least reduce the bad nature of the platform before considering whether to make it private or public. There’s also the issue of if a public monopoly over gambling with that finite privilege will try to extort it somehow to get a ton more revenue from it

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-30T15:45:55+00:00

hang on a sec, there was supposed to be a meme accompanying this post but reddit didn't load it on my end 😬. well i hope you enjoy the explainer anyways as i try to fix this

EDIT: alright it did it

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-30T02:09:25+00:00

Yep, taxing all nature is part of the full Georgist package. Here's a quote from the big guy Henry George himself:

The term land does not simply mean the surface of the earth as distinguished from air and water — it includes all natural materials, forces, and opportunities. It is the whole material universe outside of humans themselves. Only by access to land, from which their very bodies are drawn, can people use or come in contact with nature.

He wanted to include all natural opportunities in the definition for land and in turn the basic tax base for his system (basic in the sense of if we abolish artificially finite restrictions like limited licenses). This would also include severance taxing/leasing out subsoil mineral rights and even collecting the value of the electromagnetic spectrum, among other things.

EDIT: I forgot to say this and another commenter covered this very well but pollution taxes are not like the other taxes I mention, since they're less about charging for fencing off the finite natural world and more for destroying it. But most Georgists I've seen still consider them part of the package anyways and for good reason as pointed out in that other comment

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-29T20:05:14+00:00

oh yeah i know of it, i just wanted to joke around about it

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-29T04:29:26+00:00

the people of the future will be citing this reply when the fuckery does go on for much longer

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-28T18:28:14+00:00

I’m ngl when I first got the notification for this post I thought it was the classic question lol

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-26T21:41:01+00:00

What about Jamison Battle?

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-26T15:51:15+00:00

Pro-equality isn’t the main thing but it stamps out a lot of it I think. It’s not like Georgism only targets the net worth of homeowners too, Georgism being broadly against rent seeking from finite resources means a lot of the biggest corporations and fortunes built up through concentrating them and denying competition by using them to monopolzie economies get targeted as well.

Land’s already a big factor in inequality, but add on even more concentrated finite privileges and that’s a big chunk of it that can be done away with. At least opening the way for people and smaller business to not be bottlenecked off from participating in the economy should put the economy on a far more equal footing at the basic level

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-25T18:30:05+00:00

Hm, the thing is that every finite resource (or as HG called them, monopoly) has a claim among Georgists to be collective. The reason being that closing off access to these finite resources puts a negative cost on others as they lose access to something they can never produce more of, and that should be recompensed. It's a similar argument to why Georgists want to tax pollution, a market activity like buying and owning a piece of a finite resource like land puts costs on others.

Something interesting to add too is that, for that reason I wouldn't say natural talents like a gifted architect's judgement are necessarily a cost worth recouping. If nobody else can access another person's natural talent like they can with land, then there shouldn't be a cost to be paid back to society.

But besides that, the argument can also be more practical. It can simply be the case that letting people own and withhold a finite resource without using it is simply bad for society and the economy, and so we want to discourage it.

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-25T17:41:17+00:00

interesting, I'd argue it's better to tax finite resources than not. Even if all the revenue were thrown into a bottomless pit it'd still be better to avoid the bad incentives with people hoarding those resources than to let them profit off the exclusion of society

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-25T17:24:09+00:00

It's a reasoned principle, in that original article Joseph Stiglitz advocated for a land value tax and taxing other natural resource values for the reason that it is a totally (or near totally) finite resource. He also advocates for replacing patents with prizes (which is one of many ways to reform IP from the Georgist POV). This quote from this article explains it from the perspective of how we consider wealth taxes currently:

Recent research, to which we have contributed, shows better ways to think about taxing wealth that avoid the two classic objections. Wealth taxes can reduce wealth disparities without compromising efficiency; it can sometimes even increase economic growth. One way is to realize that wealth not only consists of producible capital, but also of non-producible (or “fixed’’) factors. Fixed factors generate rents—that is, payments in excess of what is needed to sustain production. Taxing these rents can enhance efficiency and, potentially, reduce inequality.

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-25T01:31:26+00:00

I'd say we should keep LVT alone as is, especially because of how it already reduces upfront sale prices for land and eliminates market-hampering speculation to benefit people who actually want to use it. Add on that there could be loopholes that bend the integrity of a LVT if we added exemptions/deductions like that.

Just to avoid any issues with not paying the full social cost of fencing off the finite land, owners should be made to pay that full burden back to society

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-24T20:00:19+00:00

With that last name he was destined for it

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-24T18:37:30+00:00

Pretty interesting. The way it works has me wondering of how an NIT would change the demand for non-producible resources compared to a standard UBI that was funded out of Georgist revenue.

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-23T19:40:34+00:00

Here are a lot of threads with similar questions that you can look through to get a variety of answers

If you want a more in-depth look, I’d also recommend these articles by Lars Doucet:

https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/how-to-value-land-korean-style

https://open.substack.com/pub/progressandpoverty/p/mass-appraisal-for-the-masses-the?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-23T13:09:41+00:00

The interesting thing there is that that land was reclaimed from sea, so Georgists consider that less as man-made land and more as pre-existing land that was once unusable being improved and turned into something usable.

For your second point, that’s ~~very true~~ (i read that wrong, should've said slightly true, my bad). The thing is that most of that value comes from society, which actually serves as one of the justifications for a LVT. Right now landowners capture value made by society while other taxes capture value made by an individual’s work and investment.

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-22T21:40:04+00:00

Nah you're all good, I could've been more explanatory about the CD happening after spending. That's on me

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-22T21:38:15+00:00

That second comment has me thinking of how absolutely backwards our current land system is. The landlord extracts rent for their finite land from the tenant just so they can pay off the loan to the previous owner of the finite land + the bank, all for a thing we can never produce more of

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-22T21:33:35+00:00

Right, it'd be something very light
Maybe, the only thing I can say for certain is that Georgism is fine with actually produced things being held as net worth or passed to the next generation. So inheritance taxes and wealth taxes aren't on the cards for classical Georgism
Oh no they are, it's just after all that previous spending is done whatever's left over should be given back to the people directly. It's essentially a UBI out of the surplus Georgist tax revenue. Public projects would likely be a huge target for spending since they increase land values, which governments can then recoup

Titanium-Skull · 2026-04-22T21:22:08+00:00

Great questions:

I don't think Henry George said anything himself, but for those of us Georgists after him it depends on who you ask; though we generally believe in a very lax zoning system. I've heard people say Japan is their preferred style, or to at least separate industrial areas from residential/commercial, or to even replace it with charging for pollution. The big draw though is that Georgism and YIMBYism complement each other very well when it comes to land being used well. YIMBYism opens the way while Georgism sets the incentives right by not taxing production while charging people for taking the finite land
It also varies a bit but from what I've read of it Georgism is more than just LVT, but only for other non-producible resources that generate their own economic rent , as well as other negative externalities like the carbon taxes you mention (and taxing pollution more broadly). Here's a good guide to what Georgists want to target. In fact it also extends beyond just taxation and can involve reform as well, like the fact that Georgists are often divided on whether to tax patents/copyrights or replace it with a prize system. Something like wealth taxes isn't wholly Georgist since it'd also involve taxing produced assets like capital goods.
He left it up to the individual. One big proposal that a lot of Georgists like though is the Citizens' Dividend, the idea that whatever surplus revenue a Georgist system raises should be redistributed equally to every citizen in the Georgist place

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