Who’s George?

Georgism is a straightforward idea: the land should belong to everyone, and people who use land should pay a tax on the value of the land. Not on any property built on the land, just on the land itself. Since nobody created the land, it shouldn't be owned by one person.

This approach would reduce inequality, stop real estate speculation that drives up rents, and promote better use of land. The money collected from tax could be used to lower income taxes significantly, or given to people as a basic income. the main point, however, is that the tax itself creates incentives that lead to better land use, less urban sprawl, more development in desireable areas, and lower housing costs

People won't be able to buy land just to wait for its value to rise due to others efforts. And they won't be able to hold on to valuable land without using it productively.

Any question you have about this, the Georgists have an answer.

Some might worry, "Will this hurt normal homeowners?" Not really. Most homeowners' land isn't super valuable, and any tax increase would likely be balanced out by lower income taxes or the basic income, so it wouldn't hurt regular people.

Another concern is, "Wouldn't this be unfair to people who bought the land before the new land value tax?" This could be managed with a gradual rollout. Plus, the expected profits from land were due to community growth, not individual effort. These land speculators planned to capture value we collectively created for themselves, without doing any productive work.

"But can you even assess the value of the land separately from the properties built on top of it?" We already do this in many areas for normal property taxes. Places like Singapore and Denmark have also already implemented a land value tax successfully.

"Won't this harm farmers?" Not at all. Farmland isn't very valuable compared to downtown lots. People who own parking lots in downtown areas might not be so happy, though.

"Won't landlords pass this tax onto renters, raising rents?" Nope. It would lower rents. Rent prices are determined by supply and demand. Landlords don't just get to set whatever price they want, or nobody would rent from them. Normal taxes raise prices by lowering supply. For example, a tax on pencils causes pencil manufacturers to make fewer pencils, driving prices up. But we have a fixed supply of land, so tax can't reduce the supply. Same supply, same demand, same price. Landlords who increase their prices would drive renters into the arms of their competitors. And since the tax would actually encourage more housing development, rents would be lowered overall.

Many respected figures throughout history have found Georgism appealing. This includes Milton Friedman, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Oppenheimer, Henry Ford, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain -- the list goes on and on, and includes modern names too, like Sam Altman, Noah Smith, and Vitalik Buterin.

The idea feels a bit like an anti-meme, which is an idea which naturally resists spreading, the opposite of memes which are naturally catchy and spread like wildfire. An anti-meme, on the other hand, resists being spread. Some ideas are boring or hard to remember, while others are inconvenient truths people might not want to confront. For whatever reason, some ideas, while true, don't want to spread. I think Georgism is like that.

Maybe Georgism seems complicated in how it's usually presented, or maybe tax laws are inherently unexciting. Similarly complex ideas like alternative voting schemes seem to have a hard time igniting people's interest. People tend to hear about them and agree they sound like a good idea, but then they quickly forget about it and move on. They never begin to prosyletize.

Or maybe the idea that "we all own the land together" sounds a hair too much like communism, so people don't want to share the idea for fear of being misidentified as a communist. (To be clear, Georgism is pro-capitalism and pro-markets.) Maybe Georgism just sounds too good to be true, and people don't want to appear credulous. I don't know. It just doesn't seem to spark passion in people. Sure, yeah, Georgism is probably a good idea -- anyway, have you heard about AI?

I wonder how Georgism could be made more exciting. Here are some thoughts:

• Frame it as a movement against landlords. Maybe throw in an environmental angle. Come up with a new, derogatory name for land speculators, like "land scalpers", "land-leeches", or "land squatters".
• Focus less on the complex logic of the tax and its benefits, and focus more on the principle of the land being everyone's birthright.
• A name change could be the biggest help. "Georgism" isn't very captivating. Who's George? Instead the movement could be called "land liberation", "universal land ownership", or maybe the "common ground movement".

I don't know what the solution is, but without a change, Georgism doesn't look like it's going to get any more adherants in the near future than it has since Henry George proposed it in the 1800s.