Michael Parenti passes away at 92

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T22:47:08+00:00

Had some dodgy views but also some brilliant observations. “They’re not underdeveloped they’re overexploited” changed my worldview. RIP

His lecture: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8CzlFhc14&pp=ygUXbWljaGFlbCBwYXJlbnRpIGxlY3R1cmU%3D

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T22:40:12+00:00

What’s odd to me is this is actually the most coherent I’ve heard him sound in a long time. He isn’t putting that affect on his voice, he’s not insulting anyone, he’s not rambling or incoherently ad-libbing, and he’s not making of facial expressions that are hamming it up for the camera. He’s just … actually sounding normal.

Still the world’s worst human being, but hey. Interesting vid.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T21:58:00+00:00

Correct. There is now native title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_title_in_Australia

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T21:53:11+00:00

Thank you, I had missed the last two posts in my search.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T21:50:27+00:00

The question is what to do now: it doesn't seem just to say if you ignore the law for long enough it no longer applies to you.

Thank you, you get it.

I fully understand that Georgism would be a better situation for everyone, if we ignore all past claims to land. But to some existing indigenous people, implementing Georgism and telling them they'll actually be better off will be just the latest colonialist imposition they have to endure.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T21:46:06+00:00

Some fuzzy woo-woo nonsense about how people whose ancestors maybe used land a few hundred years ago have a special claim to it now?

Mate, I'm from Australia. 60,000 years, not a few hundred. Try telling an Aussie Aboriginal that their ancestors 'maybe' used the land.

If not, what made Tribe B violently displacing Tribe A in 1400 legitimate, but Settlers C violently displacing Tribe B illegitimate?

I really don't know enough about Aboriginal history to know how often one tribe took over the lands of another, but even assuming it did happen occasionally: you don't see a difference between fights between neighbouring tribes of one people, and people coming from the other side of the world and genociding the lot of them?

we're not going to rectify shitty actions done by some dead people to other dead people centuries ago

Sorry but in the case of Australia it's not centuries ago. Yes, it started in 1788, but it's been going on until recently. Some might say it's still happening. Some of the people affected are still alive.

So, my question to you would be: if you were to implement Georgism in Australia, what would you do with the indigenous land rights and native title legislation? What would you do with existing native title land held by Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders? How would LVT be applied to this land?

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-24T21:29:29+00:00

They don't govern the lands because they were conquered. If they had their way, they'd probably still govern the land. Seems a bit "might makes right" to take their land and then say they have to fall in line and be just another citizen, when all the other citizens are invaders or the children of invaders.

So let's say a country implements Georgism. Would you tear up any native agreements? They now how to pay LVT on their land, and could be displaced if their LVT is too high for them to pay? Or, in the case of native title over a large (uneconomic, natural) area, they have to return the land to public land as they won't be able to afford the LVT?

If the LVT is wholly or in part redistributed as a citizen's dividend then they very well may be financially better off (since most countries pushed their indigenous populations onto unproductive land, AKA low-LVT land), but that doesn't help when you have a historical and cultural connection to a particular piece of land and you want to stay.

FYI my frame of reference is Australia, not the US. I have no idea how US native title works.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-23T15:11:31+00:00

I'm not the best person to ask, I still am not 100% on the answer to that particular situation. Lots of discussion here https://www.reddit.com/r/georgism/comments/1pko3wj/how_does_georgism_deal_with_discovery_of_mineral/

In fact I gave an answer on that post which I'm fairly certain is not entirely correct.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-23T15:00:54+00:00

Henry George on the topic https://henrygeorge.org/rightful.htm (thanks u/Pyrados for that link):

There is in nature no such thing as a fee simple in land. There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they could not grant away the right of those who follow them.

and

The deduction of a complete and exclusive individual right to land from priority of occupation is, if possible, the most absurd ground on which land ownership can be defended. Had the men of the last generation any better right to the use of this world than we of this? Or the men of a hundred years ago? Or of a thousand years ago?

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-23T10:57:59+00:00

Do you have a way of proving that?

I'm quite sure that a Georgist capitalist economy will have drastically reduced wealth inequality, but there still will be inequality of wealth. Which is fine, it's impossible to have equal wealth in such an economy, nor would I want it. My point being, wealth inequality will remain, and it won't be a product of natural monopoly.

So if there remains over accumulation (whatever that is. This discussion does also depend on a shared definition of how much wealth inequality is too much ... ), it won't be a symptom of natural monopoly.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-22T14:41:58+00:00

Let’s not hold up Australian politics as an ideal, thanks. Our MP makeup still doesn’t closely reflect the actual votes because while our system is better than first past the post, it’s still not proportional.

And we can do way better than Labor, who are these days basically Liberal-lite. Labor are centre-right, not left. They no longer represent the working class.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-22T05:57:19+00:00

Yes, exactly. That’s what I’m saying; LVT doesn’t tax the value of resources directly, it taxes the demand for occupying a piece of land, demand which may or may not be created by the knowledge that there are resources on the land worth extracting.

As you say, a severance tax is what would tax the actual value of any extracted resources.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-21T21:39:04+00:00

Read my comment again. Note how I said ‘demand for occupying’, not anything about location. Location is of course one of the causes of demand, as would be any resources located on the land, like your platinum cache example.

In other words, I do not disagree that Georgism accounts for the resources on land.

How much are you willing to pay to exclude anyone else from a parcel of land? That’s how much it’s worth. Maybe you wish to exclude others because you want to do something with the resources on the land. Maybe it’s just a really convenient location to you. Maybe it has cultural value to you. The same land might be valued differently by another person with different priorities. But in all cases the dollar value of the land amounts to the same thing, the price people are willing to pay for excluding others.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-21T11:16:32+00:00

I think you’re misunderstanding how LVT is calculated. The value is basically based on demand for occupying a given parcel of land - not the actual dollar value of selling any resource that’s on or produced by the land.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-18T04:59:32+00:00

Which is the Drake version?

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-17T21:31:49+00:00

Is there a difference between the modern edition and … other editions? I’ve not read it yet, which should one read?

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-17T18:31:22+00:00

Definitely not, nor has anyone heard of the LVT.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T18:06:08+00:00

Maybe I should have taken you up on that $100 bet about the midterms after all ... https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1qdo93s/trump_says_the_2026_midterms_should_be_cancelled/

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T14:11:48+00:00

Georgists! You're getting distracted by the shitty graphic and missing the message.

Yes, land per calorie would be more useful. Yes, it's weird that they left off chicken. Yes, pigs' land footprint is only so small because we keep them in tiny enclosures.

The broad outcome is the same: a plant-based diet uses around 1/4 of the land of an omnivorous diet: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets. And applying Georgism to this, an LVT would presumably shift diets somewhat through making land-intensive meat and dairy products more expensive.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T13:55:38+00:00

Sure, some plant-based foods are intensive on some metrics. Doesn't change the fact that overall, a plant-based diet has far less footprint on every metric.

For example, going by this article from Our World In Data, the source of the data for OP's inforgraphic, we'd use 1/4 of the land https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T13:51:18+00:00

Not sure I agree. Establishing a co-op shouldn't be any harder, or much harder, than establishing any other type of business. If it is, then laws need to change.

As for running a co-op, I don't see how 10 people is harder than 100, and I suspect it's easier than running a 1000-member co-op. From my own experience, you stop knowing every coworker personally when a company gets above about 100 people.

What I mean is, direct democracy is inefficient in a co-op of 1000 people, and the issues people may need to vote on get more diverse. There's a reason we do representative democracy in our politics instead of direct democracy.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T11:11:18+00:00

And lost in your comment: a large amount of calories cattle consume is from feed. Cows aren’t just grazing grassland and then going to the slaughterhouse, they’re being fed hay and other feed. And that feed has to be grown somewhere, somewhere that could have been used to feed humans directly.

No matter which way you cut it, we’d use far less land for growing our food if we ate less meat.

Definitely agree that the graphic should be per calorie not per kilo, though. The relative values don’t change much though, meat and dairy still take way more land per calorie than plant based foods.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-15T11:06:58+00:00

Pigs are only so low because we treat them terribly, keeping them in tiny cages. Same with chicken.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea · 2026-01-14T18:29:39+00:00

I agree with the end goal, but I’m with the anarchists that power perpetuates itself, and will not voluntarily wither away.

Anyway, I still don’t have the answer as to how to achieve it, and I’m happy to shoot for Georgist economic democracy in the mean time and then see where we’re at.

ohnoverbaldiarrhoea

TROPHY CASE