The Power of Land: Georgism 101

This is the best idea that will never happen.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 The Power of Land
03:00 The Greatest Tax of All
06:44 Benefits
11:08 A Citizen’s Dividend
12:08 Everybody Likes Georgism
15:08 Georgism in the Real World
18:17 In Summary

[BritMonkey]

Might make a 'Georgism 102' sequel next year to address some common questions and rebuttals I'm seeing in the comments...

[RyanGeddie]

This quote is on the back of George’s headstone in New York.

“The truth that I have tried to
make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends — those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of Truth.”
-Henry George, Progress and Poverty

[mfk]

Georgism is incredibly based, but sadly politically extremely difficult - not because it would hurt lots of ordinary people (just the opposite), but because even now, 12000 years after the invention of agriculture in what we think of as a knowledge economy, the correlation between land ownership and political power remains incredibly strong.

[tc]

Ever since I learned about georgism I've got this eerie feeling that it is no coincidence that this theory is so unknown to the public, almost never talked about and not taught in schools….

There isn’t a single person in power that doesn’t own a lot of land. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

[benwoodruff]

Thank you for speaking on Georgist taxes. Some of us finance types love it.

[dickharris]

Problem? The ones who can make this a reality are the same ones who are benefiting from it being the way it is.

[joshuaherbert]

Taiwan, Denmark and Estonia also have LVT and it just works. Estonia for example has an 82% home ownership rate.

[Joshsstro]

it’s crazy how many simple changes to society that could be made to improve everyone’s life but are stopped by the 0.1 percent

[mcbladeunicorn]

Your video on this 4 years ago literally spawned my academic career; I read Progress and Poverty days afterward cause I was so convinced. Now I am starting my masters in political economy focused on land policy. You are a Georgist hero, I think. I have been reading this book called Land Value Taxation Around the World by Robert Andelson, which explores all the attempted implementations throughout the world up until 2000, essentially no one ever took it far enough, even though it was working.

[arcticsentry]

As an Alaskan (and an aspiring urbanist), it was a huge surprise to see the PFD mentioned in a video on LVT! The idea of replacing property taxes in some capacity with LVT has been floated a few times in recent years, most notably by the Organization Strong Towns. This video will be a fantastic resource for groups in Alaska looking to further improve state policy. Hats off to you, friend!

[the_pinkerton]

You somehow look less nerdy that I expected

[erseshe]

Fun fact! At the start of the game 'eve online, ' speculators bought factories- an asset limited in number- and just left them to rot hoping they would gain in value. As a result, the devs implemented an LVT for those factories based on the value that they could potentially create, and sure enough those factories soon began to be of use as they were forced to produce things with them or to sell them off to someone who would.

[Neotenico]

I've been a big fan of Georgism ever since I read/saw some content about it a couple years back. As your video suggests, George and his theories were immensely popular in the 19th century (his treatise _Progress and Poverty_ outsold every other book ever written except for the Bible in the 1890s), yet in the modern day and age, there are very few people who have even heard of the man.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think fading into complete obscurity is an incredibly curious fate for an economic school of thought that quite literally dominated the Western world for a time. We learn about Adam Smith ad nauseum, after all, and he died nearly 50 years before Henry George was born. There is most certainly a vested interest of the landed elites to suppress public knowledge of his writings. Some have argued that many of these elites founded schools of business and filled the economics departments with anti-Georgists for the express purpose of "recasting" Neo-classical economic doctrine to downplay the importance of land.

Thankfully, the internet is making it easier to supplement what we learn about political economy in our formal educations. I'm very hopeful that videos such as this gain significant traction and make the idea more attractive, especially as a way to bridge the gaps in the increasingly polarized political landscape we see today. Kudos for a well-composed video explaining the system, arguing for its consideration, and using your platform to open eyes to alternate systems of economics that aren't just the overplayed "neo-liberal capitalism vs. Marx-inspired socialism/communism."

[attempt]

Sun Yat Sen's principles revolved around this idea and it has made Taiwan one of the most prosperous countries in Asia.

[TimCrinion]

The entire video follows from this:
"You deserve to fully own the fruits of your labour. No one deserves to fully own the fruits of no one's labour, i.e., land."

[shwackedgaming]

Doxxed a pro Putin oligarch in less than 30 seconds, god I love this channel

[chuco]

Another argument in favor: the government has an incentive on improving infrastructure since that would increase the land value and thus the government revenue

[dirty_haute]

Always a fan of spreading the knowledge of Georgism.

[Struckgold]

'Redistributing wealth' should be renamed 'wealth recovery from the unproductive'

[zmcanais]

I like how this video starts by casually doxxing a corrupt oligarch