This is incredibly interesting and I wish someone made an index of all of these approaches and their nuance.
The tension of the two ideas, 1. that a babbling brook in a field that has been there for a million years and the patent absurdity of saying someone can own it. 2. that a person needs a place to call their own.
This objective fact and the following emotional motivation are under explored in the empirical space, and I really think we should make better strides in trying to measure these things.
over the long run land-leases have proven effective e.g with Shenzhen.
the people that need the land - lease it first - develop it. if you don't develop it - you don't realize any gain from it. thereby removing speculation.
The idea of investing my hard earned money to build on land I don't own sounds incredibly foolish. You're completely at the mercy of the counter-party. You don't own it, they own you!
Eminent domain exists all over the world, you can be kicked off your land even if you own it if the Vogons in government decide they need it for the hyperspace bypass.
It's a fixed long term lease from the state that often comes with a right to renew, not rent you pay to a landlord every month. They can't just decide to take it back and kick you out (unless the government is corrupt, but then it doesn't matter if you fully own it because they will do it anyway).
I don't think you can look at any lease system and claim success until leases have expired and been reissued many times and the system achieved steady state.
In its essence, Geoism is about rents, not about land specifically. Of course they couldn't have known about tech platform monopolies back then, but they are very much about rent extraction and a far greater concern than land is nowadays. I feel like such articles are a distraction and would lead to even bigger problems. Essentially prepping to dispossess middle class land owners.
Real estate is 13.7% GDP, finance and insurance 8.7%, healthcare 7.5%, info/tech 5.7%, utilities and mining 3% - rentier capitalism is roughly 40% of the US economy.
George held land value as the only worthwhile rentierism to tax. The problem is bigger than just land value or platforms.
There is a reason [1] billionaires astroturf [2] support for these half-measures. The "moats" they own (the monopolies and oliogopolies) are where they derive their wealth.
Georgist from the beginning did care about other form of rents, like resources.
Land rent-seeking is still incredibly important. Saying all modern problems are from platforms is silly considering that most people spend far more of their budget on their living situation, compared to paying money to apple or google.
And its much easier to switch from apple to google or other platforms.
> of course there was no talk of Geoism when land rents were the main problem
There was the whole time. Who are you talking about?
Glad to see the article mentions Singapore, which is perhaps a more realistic comparison point to most modern cities than Ethiopia, which is a bit of sui generis mix of desperate poverty, decades of top-down Marxist planning, and an economy that's somehow still sputtering along (at least in Addis) despite all this and several raging civil wars.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 18.1 ms ] threadThe tension of the two ideas, 1. that a babbling brook in a field that has been there for a million years and the patent absurdity of saying someone can own it. 2. that a person needs a place to call their own.
This objective fact and the following emotional motivation are under explored in the empirical space, and I really think we should make better strides in trying to measure these things.
the people that need the land - lease it first - develop it. if you don't develop it - you don't realize any gain from it. thereby removing speculation.
Long term government land leases are a good thing. The only thing that they inhibit is dynastic wealth which seems like a bonus to me!
That isn't the case in Shenzhen.
George held land value as the only worthwhile rentierism to tax. The problem is bigger than just land value or platforms.
There is a reason [1] billionaires astroturf [2] support for these half-measures. The "moats" they own (the monopolies and oliogopolies) are where they derive their wealth.
[1] https://landeconomics.org/reports/california-billionaire-wea...
[2] https://coefficientgiving.org/research/announcing-our-new-12...
Land rent-seeking is still incredibly important. Saying all modern problems are from platforms is silly considering that most people spend far more of their budget on their living situation, compared to paying money to apple or google.
And its much easier to switch from apple to google or other platforms.
> of course there was no talk of Geoism when land rents were the main problem
There was the whole time. Who are you talking about?
Who made discussing georgism illigal?
> lesser evil of land rent-seeking
Its crazy to suggests its a lesser evil.
https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/singapore-economic...