Any London-based people - Fred Harrison, Carlo Nero, and I are doing a panel talk and screening of Carlo's new 'Georgist ' movie if you fancy a night out - I don't often come to London! 7.30pm Thu, Oct 29, 2026 www.chiswickcinema.co.uk/movie/the-estate-panel-discussion/


In my mind, income derived from financial chicanery does not produce real economic productivity for the majority of the working population - why are we not talking about taxing this economic industry (which has ballooned since the 90's) to incentivize real economic activity?

I noticed that some people use this flair, but I'm not sure how it's supposed to be different from socialism given land would already be owned by the state under such a system.

Income tax for corporations, government management of natural monopolies, small business welfare programs to allow small businesses to not fail. Basically just modern Georgism. I hope that an improved version with more welfare will be better adapted to solve modern issues. The government should also fund developments in science and technology. Resources should go to more useful tech rather than unnecessary tech like entertainment. It will also instate heavy product taxes on products that cause harm to our health. The government should fund developments in renewable energy to allow us to phase out oil and gas. Laws will be allowed to be made to bring more social equality even if it goes against cultural, traditional, or religious ideas. For example: shrines don't allow women for cultural reasons, laws can be passed to make them allow women. Culture, tradition, and religion will not be suppressed though, they will simply be forced to adjust to modern society and social equality.

I meme about this, but Twain and George actually interacted with each other and Twain might've been supportive of Georgist ideas; especially since Georgist ideas were booming in popularity from the publishing of P&P to the end of Twain's lifetime.

Our worldview must change. What you can do.

What say we heal the planet and spread prosperity, eliminating want as a cause for war and oppression. Sound good? Ironically, people who want to change society ignore how society changes.

There is a reform powerful enough to deliver “eco-librium” and abundance. It follows from understanding property better. What’s yours, what’s mine, what’s ours?

Historically, owing is what legitimized ownership. Conversely, society has no legitimate claim to one’s labor or output.

A COMPASS OF SUCCESS

Policies based on those axioms—property non-taxed and owners compensating those displaced—succeed:

✅ Quit subsidies, particularly corporate welfare. When Germany defunded coal somewhat, it cleansed some atmosphere.

✅ Quit taxing work and investment. When Denmark briefly did that, efficiency skyrocketed.

✅ Instead, recover the rental value of land, oil, patents, corporate charters, etc—assets not created by anyone’s labor or capital. When Taiwan taxed land, it ended hunger and became an Asian Tiger.

✅ With that annual largesse, pay a Citizens Dividend, a la Alaska or Singapore.

For a majority to accept “geonomic” policies, first a handful of visionaries mobilizes, then grows into a critical mass, which shifts the property paradigm—a tough row to hoe. But feasible. Almost everybody favors “eco-librium”, widespread prosperity, and user-friendly government.

ON YOUR OWN

You can get the ball rolling. Socialize. Even in the era of social media, change begins, continues, and wins face to face, aided by mass marketing.

1, Host a potluck. 2, Start a MeetUp. 3, Speak up at collegial groups’ meetings. 4, Table events like Earth Day and farmers’ markets. Those first steps are the hardest, but leave your comfort zone anyway.

LISTEN to people’s responses. They’ll sharpen your talking points. Keep your eyes on the prize—sharing “rents” not taxing earnings.

5, Hand out half pages with one visual, one statistic, no argument, but a story’s log-line(a dozen words) addressing a popular problem and an invitation to a meeting. The resultant core group (6) meets regularly.

COLLABORATE

Together, (7) massage the message with humor, catchy slogans, visuals, intriguing questions, logic based on popular premises, quotes of the famous, and cite the successes.

Use such on (8) buttons, (9) T-shirts, slides for showing (10) service clubs, (11) churches, (12) schools, and in (13) podcasts and (14) videos. Post fresh ones weekly.

15, Organize concerts starring your semi-pro musician friends;

16, host speakers interesting or controversial; research and

17, lead a walking tour of relevant sites with a spiel for the guide.

18, Pass the hat or charge admission.

Appear on (19) local radio and (20) TV, (21) interview academics and (22) politicians, (23) perform a flash mob, (24) issue press releases to all media. (25) Balance work meetings with play meetings, 50/50: a meal, an outing, a game, whatever.

AGENTS OF CHANGE ARRIVE

Do all the above and you’ll attract people with the talents to do all the above.

Once your group has a track record and presence in the community, aim higher. (26) Host a bigger event with a name-draw an plenty of press coverage. Launch a (27) letter-writing campaign and (28) editorials to newspapers. (29) Lobby lawmakers to shift taxes and subsides. (30) Link up with like-minded groups locally, regionally, nationally, and abroad.

With a little help from your friends, shift the prevailing property paradigm. So humanity can live in paradise, as much as humanly possible.

In this list of 30, how far along are you? Don’t forget to listen to learn.

A 100% land value would basically mean that you are renting land from the government. People rent land all the time with and without improvements and the rent price isn't zero. All a 100% LVT rent means is that you can't profit from land appreciation. There is in most cases still some demand to for land for just using it.

Would the purchase price of the land be zero in a 100% society? Basically yes, but that doesn't mean that someone wouldn't pay to use the land.

(Just for the record, a 100% LVT society is a Georgist theoretical reference and thought experiment. In our wildest dreams we would stop at 85-90% or so to avoid the risk of over-assessment and perhaps to preserve some reference prices for land purchases.)

Kyla Scanlon is landpilled?!

Last week’s TSMC threads changed my thinking, so I wrote it up with a focus on how community-created value, not just natural value, gets captured. You all convinced me TSMC is quasi-rent, not the real problem. What I took from it is that the money doesn’t disappear when a bottleneck gets competed away, it moves to the next thing that can’t be built, and that a lot of the value worth worrying about isn’t a natural resource at all. Thanks to everyone who pushed back, a few of your comments ended up in the essay. Looking for people to poke holes in it.

The main claims:

• Rent is value the community creates that gets captured at a point of exclusion. Nature can create the exclusion (land, spectrum, harbours), so can law (patents, licences, medallions), and so can networks (Windows, Facebook).
• Land passes two tests: nature made it, and the community creates its value. Lots of rent only passes the second one.
• TSMC is quasi-rent, competition will handle it. When a bottleneck clears, the money moves to the next thing that can’t be built, which in AI is power, water and land.
• Most land value is a network effect with an address. Facebook’s network moves with its users, not its servers, so LVT can’t reach it.
• The drive to collect unearned income comes from us, not from land. Boehm and terror management theory are why I think that. Close one channel and it looks for the next.
• Gate new channels before an owner class forms. Vancouver shows what happens after.

Full essay here: https://identitythreshold.substack.com/p/rent-finds-a-way

Where’s it wrong? What is it missing?

Don't know if this has been discussed before, but the thought hit me and I found it interesting. Obviously it would be a good way to maximize government income. I also like the idea of zoning trying to be objective since I feel like it can be very arbitrary (at least where I live).

ideologically, I don't love the idea of the government telling me what I can or can't build on my property, but I think it's quite obvious that some kind of zoning is needed. It also help me explain why you should not be allowed to build a loud data center or smelly junkyard in the middle of a neighborhood but should be allowed to build an apartment complex. At the end of the day these disturbances are just different senses that I value very differently. (noice/smell vs sight)

A big problem would probably be the bureaucracy needed to decide this properly, but I assume this would get easier by technological advances. I have no idea how this would turn out in practice, but I assume it would be quite YIMBY.

Ideolicly

First draft of this meme. Will make a better one later

Here's the source article this image came from: High land prices to blame for California’s extreme home values.

While the article doesn’t explicitly address LVT (though there are comments from the Lincoln Institute of Land Economics), I think it’s relevant to the burgeoning Georgist movement in the US as a major roadblock to land tax reform.

Also, imo, the article provides a good argument for pushing to co-opting the Democratic Party as the vehicle for Georgism, rather than the Republican Party

I noticed that a lot of humor here (myself included) relies on an analytical understanding of the subject to find humorous. Is this really an inherent of our subject or do you think we can make better?