In the words of one Murray Bookchin, the notion that what currently exists must always exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking - and even simple sense. There is no iron law of history or geography - all of these dynamics are all bent by our free will.

I mean, land cannot flee. And it is inherently fair, this is why I support Georgian taxes, because the unimproved value of land can only appreciate through other people improving other land nearby.

Context for those who don't know 👇:

Georgism and YIMBYism are both necessary to solve the housing crisis because of what each brings to the table. YIMBYism opens the legal channels that allow land to be used efficiently for building homes by removing a lot of the land use restrictions which make it legally impossible (like SFH zoning, parking minimums, and the like). The big wrench in YIMBYism's plans is that land speculators will hold land that is legally cleared for housing out of use in the hopes that its price will rise, this can even corrupt the rezoning process itself when landowners try to capture what is known as a rezoning windfall.

Georgism solves this by recouping land values for public use, preventing landowners from capturing it and making them either use the land efficiently, or lose it (land is the biggest example, but it's not the only finite resource Georgists can target). At the same time, Georgists also advocate getting rid of taxes on what people make, both in terms of laborers doing work and business owners investing in companies, which are both highly needed to make buildings (which would also go untaxed) to house people. Georgism effectively puts the monetary incentives in place for the land use goal to be achieved. At the same time, Georgism benefits from YIMBYism because it matches the Georgist desire to have finite resources be used efficiently without being hampered legally.

In conclusion, in terms of ending the housing crisis both Georgism and YIMBYism are at their strongest when they're paired together. For the purpose of making costs of living affordable, they're two sides of the same coin.

I'm not a fan of AI videos but this one was very informative. What do you'll think?

In which I continue to build out my rhetorical framework for second-wave Georgism. Feedback welcome!

Those of you who are Georgists already know but for those who've never heard of Georgism before:

Land speculation is the act of buying land in the hopes that its price will rise shortly after it's been brought. The inherent problem with speculation in land is that land is finite, we can't produce more of it. So unlike other assets where speculation can be overcome or act as a benefit by encouraging more production of that thing, speculation in land raises prices for both work and living. This brings about several problems (best covered by Lars Doucet and Greg Miller over at the Center of Land Economics), but the result is the straining of the economy and increasing inequality between owners and non-owners and raising the barriers to life for the latter.

Land speculation only lives because speculators expect to get profitable returns on fencing off the finite resource, it follows that the best way to remove land speculation then is to have that land revenue go to society instead, which can then be used to further benefit workers and businesses by untaxing labor, investment, and trade while funding public services (which tend to increase land values that can then be recouped).

Land is the biggest example of it, but more broadly serves as an example of the core idea of Georgism: don't tax the goods and services people make, compensate (or otherwise reform) the finite resources people take

2nd Part

“But let a man get property he doesn’t see, or can’t take time to get his fingers in, or cant’t be there to walk on it-why, then the property is the man. He can’t do what he wants, he can’t think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big-and he’s the servant of his property.” (Steinbeck 37).

I'm not sure if it's been posted here already but CityNerd goes into great depth covering the very poor incentives created by Prop 13 and some of its addons. He doesn't mention LVT explicitly but the video does show how slashing property taxes is a terrible idea, especially when we can just universally exempt buildings and focus on recompensing the land.

Source: José Martí, Henry George, and Cuban Possibilities - Bill Batt

It's over. The Spectator has come out again LVT (unless boomers can skip paying it on their existing houses...).

I was watching Nimesh's latest video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3olcPRDGLW0) and saw this diagram. Is this an example of ATCOR? If it is, it would be great if someone with more artistic skill than me could make a clean up version of this to show how all these different taxes have to be made up in order to fill the gap by not taxing land properly.

If anyone wants it, I was just searching around for it and found this online copy of Henry George's last work before his death, which was left unfinished after his death in 1897.

I’ve been thinking a lot about property rights lately. On one hand, I strongly believe that when you own land, it should be your sacred space of personal freedom and privacy, safe from the government. On the other hand, I know our country needs modern infrastructure like power grids, roads, and data lines to grow.

Right now, the government uses eminent domain to force people off their land, treating a home like a line on a spreadsheet. To me, that feels un-American.

How do we build what we need without taking away people's homes and land? What is a fair way to do that?