Georgism isn’t a about seizing land; it’s about socializing rent through taxation while keeping private use and markets intact.
Socialist revolutions “eliminated landlordism” by abolishing private land ownership, but often replaced it with state landlordism and political allocation which equally involves rent seeking behavior.
Georgism aims to eliminate unearned rent, not ownership, by making it unprofitable to hold land. The absence of “Georgist revolutions” isn’t evidence against the idea. It reflects that Georgism works through fiscal reform, not regime change. In both Soviet Union and China land was collectivized, which removed incentives for land use, agricultural output fell and a famine followed. Private landlordism was replaced with regulatory capture and misallocation. Now, China and many east Asian countries have switched to a land lease system, which is essentially a land value tax.
Where land value taxation has been used (e.g., in parts of Australia, Taiwan, Pennsylvania, Denmark, Estonia, South Africa, New Zealand), land appropriation fell without needing a regime change and with less potential for regulatory capture.
No place has fully adopted it though. It remains with very small tax rates. Scholars have argued this is because economists like John Bates Clark (foundational to the still dominant school of economics: the neoclassical school) was paid by landlord lobby to make “land, capital and labor” into “capital and labor”. Land was forgotten, and the legacy still lives on in academia. I studied spatial economics and never heard of Henry George.
replaced it with state landlordism and political allocation which equally involves rent seeking behavior
False. Housing in the Soviet Union was rented at maintenance cost prices, and on average costed 3% of the monthly income. This is not rent-seeking behaviour.
In both Soviet Union and China land was collectivized, which removed incentives for land use, agricultural output fell and a famine followed
Terrible analysis. The 1930-1933 Soviet famine was caused by economic and productive disadjusting due to the need for extremely fast industrialization, combined with drought and retaliation by landlords. After the initial drive for industrialization, agricultural output rose immensely due to usage of modern agricultural techniques and land reform, and hunger was actually eliminated. The big hunger episode in China was similarly not created by lack of incentive to cultivate the land, but by an ecological catastrophe caused by misguided anti-plague campaigns that eliminated a key part of the ecosystem in a time and society before ecological sciences were developed. Similarly, agricultural output rose rapidly after that and hunger was permanently eliminated. You can compare the exponential rises in life expectancy in the USSR and China after those episodes with similarly developed countries like Brazil or India respectively, and you’ll find that this land reform and industrialization drive saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Scholars have argued this is because economists like John Bates Clark (foundational to the still dominant school of economics: the neoclassical school) was paid by landlord lobby to make “land, capital and labor” into “capital and labor”.
That’s the biggest problem with Georgism. Policy is not something you can apply based on which one is ideologically better theoretically (which I don’t even agree Georgism is), and Georgism, not doing any class analysis, doesn’t provide answer to the most basic question: why would the landlords in power allow us to tax them? And if they don’t, how do we force them?
Socialism having had mass movements and success in expropriating the land from landowners is not a coincidence: since Marx and Engels put forward scientific socialism and Lenin advanced the idea of the vanguard party and of revolutionary tactics, the only revolutions in the world have been socialist.
I’m not going to go deeper into the historical discussions here, I am not that much of an expert on those.
I also don’t find it very useful to discuss which “system” is superior. I think we need a mix of ideas from each. And that’s how all countries function anyways. I’m neither a Georgist, socialist or capitalist. I don’t think it’s helpful in deciding on an ideology and work from there. The only reason why I’m bringing forward Henry George’s ideas is because most people are not aware of them and how important they might be.
Socialism: We need unions, public investment in infrastructure and innovation, public ownership of natural monopolies, antitrust regulations, welfare state, workers rights.
Georgism: We need to fund these public investments and innovation, and welfare mostly from land value taxes. For many reasons; they are the most efficient taxes. They avoid the steady increase in inequality from land ownership as populations grow. They help us make better use of land. They help prevent housing bubbles. They incentivize investment in innovation instead of land. They fund public goods fairly via the benefit principle. They are justifiable in all fairness principles an natural law justice principles.
Capitalism: We need decentralized decision making and some freedoms of property rights to harness the potential individuals to come up with new ideas and to unleash their creativity. We need to use the power of competitive businesses to cover the needs of the citizens.
Edit: this is of course just my opinion. I’m not saying it as objective truth
And in general we need to make sure our rights are upheld by making sure elections cannot be bought.
We have countless authors with many ideas who each built on each other’s ideas. We should not fall into the trap of just relying on one author.
We don’t need to fund anything with taxes, that’s outdated classic economics. Modern monetary theory has proven otherwise. We don’t need taxes to fund things, states can create unlimited amounts of currency, the whole “this is funded by taxes” is simply not true. Taxes work primarily for three purposes: removing money from the economy to prevent inflation, imposing obligations denominated in a certain currency to enforce usage of said currency, and discouraging certain behaviors.
If the whole point of taxing is not to pay for anything, and the whole reason is simply to disincentivize landlordism, georgism simply offers no advantages over collective land ownership and public decisions over land usage. Wanna build housing? Build it. Wanna build schools? Build them. Wanna have a park? Have it. The obsession with taxation is outdated once we’ve found out that taxes aren’t paying for anything and we can have arbitrary amounts of currency created with the purpose of funding whatever projects we collectively decide. In this manner, Georgism is obsolete.
Do you think there are no consequences of creating more currency? Or do you think the consequences don’t matter?
Also the question of “wanna build housing?” seems to simplify the complexity of urban development. How much space should the housing have? How should it be designed? How much garden should it have? How many bedrooms? What about special needs like for handicapped? What about unique design preferences? All of these questions are fundamentally decentralized in nature. They exist in the preferences of the people. No one centralized unit can make sure most people get their preferences met. There are people who don’t care about their house but care a lot about community offerings and there are people who only care about their house. Should they get the same type of house? Where do people get allocated? Who chooses who gets to have what housing and where?
Do you think there are no consequences of creating more currency?
I didnt say “create unlimited money”, I said “states have unlimited potential for expenditure in self-denominated currency, and so taxation is not a way of paying for things”. Creating more public deficit has many consequences, both positive and negative depending on where and how this money is invested, but the response to this should be done by economic simulation, not by hard rules and guesswork as we do in most capitalist countries.
How much space should the housing have? How… […] of these questions are fundamentally decentralized in nature
Yes. But first, most people in capitalism do not get the housing they we want where we want it with the services we want it etc, we get housing where we can find and afford it, so capitalism is clearly not a solution to those questions or to decentralization. Chaos is not sinonym with decentralized decision making. Second, socialism has the highest potential for decentralized economic and urban planning. It seems to me that you believe socialism is when the government does things autonomously, but socialism is actually based on grassroots movements and decisions, and cybernetic decentralized planning could easily, massively improve what we have now. Even the old and outdated soviet model is an improvement: everyone could afford housing, which is much more important than rich people having the power to decide how many square meters they get.
Where do people get allocated? Who chooses who gets to have what housing and where?
Any form of decision would be desirable to the current allocation method: chaos based on wealth. An example would be union-owned housing such as the USSR, in which workers got to enjoy housing generally in close proximity to their workplace. Another example would be region-based lotteries with preference for local workers and local inhabitants. Almost anything would be a more fair allocation method than “poor people get fucked over”.
Henry George saw that land is fixed in supply and because of this any profits in companies and wages from workers get swallowed up by rents. If people start making more money, rents will rise. If businesses start making more profit, rents for them will rise. The beneficiaries of all progress and investment, including public infrastructure, are landlords.
This is not the case for capitalists if there is competition (unless they are also landlords, which many are).
The matter is that all landlords extract rent, but only capitalists with market power or land extract rent.
This doesn’t mean we don’t need antitrust and public ownership of natural monopolies, but it illustrates our severe undermining of land. Land makes up almost 50% of all wealth. It’s much more efficient to tax than capital and much harder to evade. It will likely increase housing affordability, reduce urban sprawl, limit impact of housing bubbles, increase investment in innovation (instead of land), and reduce inequality. It also has support from scholars in both ends of the political spectrum.
Georgism tries to fix the issue of contrived priviliges, which block competition. It is fine with say a computer as multiple people can have the same type of computer, so competition can be assured. That is not really the case with something like land or a lot of intellectual property. Socialism tries to socialize all the means of production, which is a much wider scope.
Shouldn’t be blaming the private landlord for an economic system that leaves homes in a state of such unaffordibilty that you need to split the costs to have one.
How about we see some private landlords start to organize together and work against the corporate hellscape landlording, for the benefit of themselves and their renters, maybe see if that engenders some sympathy for the poor souls stuck landlording, eh?
I can’t think of any better way to express the sheer absurdity of capitalism in a single meme than this.
This is more of a critique of private landlords than of capitalism. So it’s more of a Georgist than socialist argument.
Number of socialist revolutions that eliminated landlordism: several
Number of georgist revolutions that eliminated landlordism: none
Seems to me like this is more of a socialist argument
Georgism isn’t a about seizing land; it’s about socializing rent through taxation while keeping private use and markets intact.
Socialist revolutions “eliminated landlordism” by abolishing private land ownership, but often replaced it with state landlordism and political allocation which equally involves rent seeking behavior.
Georgism aims to eliminate unearned rent, not ownership, by making it unprofitable to hold land. The absence of “Georgist revolutions” isn’t evidence against the idea. It reflects that Georgism works through fiscal reform, not regime change. In both Soviet Union and China land was collectivized, which removed incentives for land use, agricultural output fell and a famine followed. Private landlordism was replaced with regulatory capture and misallocation. Now, China and many east Asian countries have switched to a land lease system, which is essentially a land value tax.
Where land value taxation has been used (e.g., in parts of Australia, Taiwan, Pennsylvania, Denmark, Estonia, South Africa, New Zealand), land appropriation fell without needing a regime change and with less potential for regulatory capture.
No place has fully adopted it though. It remains with very small tax rates. Scholars have argued this is because economists like John Bates Clark (foundational to the still dominant school of economics: the neoclassical school) was paid by landlord lobby to make “land, capital and labor” into “capital and labor”. Land was forgotten, and the legacy still lives on in academia. I studied spatial economics and never heard of Henry George.
False. Housing in the Soviet Union was rented at maintenance cost prices, and on average costed 3% of the monthly income. This is not rent-seeking behaviour.
Terrible analysis. The 1930-1933 Soviet famine was caused by economic and productive disadjusting due to the need for extremely fast industrialization, combined with drought and retaliation by landlords. After the initial drive for industrialization, agricultural output rose immensely due to usage of modern agricultural techniques and land reform, and hunger was actually eliminated. The big hunger episode in China was similarly not created by lack of incentive to cultivate the land, but by an ecological catastrophe caused by misguided anti-plague campaigns that eliminated a key part of the ecosystem in a time and society before ecological sciences were developed. Similarly, agricultural output rose rapidly after that and hunger was permanently eliminated. You can compare the exponential rises in life expectancy in the USSR and China after those episodes with similarly developed countries like Brazil or India respectively, and you’ll find that this land reform and industrialization drive saved hundreds of millions of lives.
That’s the biggest problem with Georgism. Policy is not something you can apply based on which one is ideologically better theoretically (which I don’t even agree Georgism is), and Georgism, not doing any class analysis, doesn’t provide answer to the most basic question: why would the landlords in power allow us to tax them? And if they don’t, how do we force them?
Socialism having had mass movements and success in expropriating the land from landowners is not a coincidence: since Marx and Engels put forward scientific socialism and Lenin advanced the idea of the vanguard party and of revolutionary tactics, the only revolutions in the world have been socialist.
I’m not going to go deeper into the historical discussions here, I am not that much of an expert on those.
I also don’t find it very useful to discuss which “system” is superior. I think we need a mix of ideas from each. And that’s how all countries function anyways. I’m neither a Georgist, socialist or capitalist. I don’t think it’s helpful in deciding on an ideology and work from there. The only reason why I’m bringing forward Henry George’s ideas is because most people are not aware of them and how important they might be.
Socialism: We need unions, public investment in infrastructure and innovation, public ownership of natural monopolies, antitrust regulations, welfare state, workers rights.
Georgism: We need to fund these public investments and innovation, and welfare mostly from land value taxes. For many reasons; they are the most efficient taxes. They avoid the steady increase in inequality from land ownership as populations grow. They help us make better use of land. They help prevent housing bubbles. They incentivize investment in innovation instead of land. They fund public goods fairly via the benefit principle. They are justifiable in all fairness principles an natural law justice principles.
Capitalism: We need decentralized decision making and some freedoms of property rights to harness the potential individuals to come up with new ideas and to unleash their creativity. We need to use the power of competitive businesses to cover the needs of the citizens.
Edit: this is of course just my opinion. I’m not saying it as objective truth
And in general we need to make sure our rights are upheld by making sure elections cannot be bought.
We have countless authors with many ideas who each built on each other’s ideas. We should not fall into the trap of just relying on one author.
We don’t need to fund anything with taxes, that’s outdated classic economics. Modern monetary theory has proven otherwise. We don’t need taxes to fund things, states can create unlimited amounts of currency, the whole “this is funded by taxes” is simply not true. Taxes work primarily for three purposes: removing money from the economy to prevent inflation, imposing obligations denominated in a certain currency to enforce usage of said currency, and discouraging certain behaviors.
If the whole point of taxing is not to pay for anything, and the whole reason is simply to disincentivize landlordism, georgism simply offers no advantages over collective land ownership and public decisions over land usage. Wanna build housing? Build it. Wanna build schools? Build them. Wanna have a park? Have it. The obsession with taxation is outdated once we’ve found out that taxes aren’t paying for anything and we can have arbitrary amounts of currency created with the purpose of funding whatever projects we collectively decide. In this manner, Georgism is obsolete.
Do you think there are no consequences of creating more currency? Or do you think the consequences don’t matter?
Also the question of “wanna build housing?” seems to simplify the complexity of urban development. How much space should the housing have? How should it be designed? How much garden should it have? How many bedrooms? What about special needs like for handicapped? What about unique design preferences? All of these questions are fundamentally decentralized in nature. They exist in the preferences of the people. No one centralized unit can make sure most people get their preferences met. There are people who don’t care about their house but care a lot about community offerings and there are people who only care about their house. Should they get the same type of house? Where do people get allocated? Who chooses who gets to have what housing and where?
I didnt say “create unlimited money”, I said “states have unlimited potential for expenditure in self-denominated currency, and so taxation is not a way of paying for things”. Creating more public deficit has many consequences, both positive and negative depending on where and how this money is invested, but the response to this should be done by economic simulation, not by hard rules and guesswork as we do in most capitalist countries.
Yes. But first, most people in capitalism do not get the housing they we want where we want it with the services we want it etc, we get housing where we can find and afford it, so capitalism is clearly not a solution to those questions or to decentralization. Chaos is not sinonym with decentralized decision making. Second, socialism has the highest potential for decentralized economic and urban planning. It seems to me that you believe socialism is when the government does things autonomously, but socialism is actually based on grassroots movements and decisions, and cybernetic decentralized planning could easily, massively improve what we have now. Even the old and outdated soviet model is an improvement: everyone could afford housing, which is much more important than rich people having the power to decide how many square meters they get.
Any form of decision would be desirable to the current allocation method: chaos based on wealth. An example would be union-owned housing such as the USSR, in which workers got to enjoy housing generally in close proximity to their workplace. Another example would be region-based lotteries with preference for local workers and local inhabitants. Almost anything would be a more fair allocation method than “poor people get fucked over”.
break it down for me
Henry George saw that land is fixed in supply and because of this any profits in companies and wages from workers get swallowed up by rents. If people start making more money, rents will rise. If businesses start making more profit, rents for them will rise. The beneficiaries of all progress and investment, including public infrastructure, are landlords.
This is not the case for capitalists if there is competition (unless they are also landlords, which many are).
The matter is that all landlords extract rent, but only capitalists with market power or land extract rent.
This doesn’t mean we don’t need antitrust and public ownership of natural monopolies, but it illustrates our severe undermining of land. Land makes up almost 50% of all wealth. It’s much more efficient to tax than capital and much harder to evade. It will likely increase housing affordability, reduce urban sprawl, limit impact of housing bubbles, increase investment in innovation (instead of land), and reduce inequality. It also has support from scholars in both ends of the political spectrum.
Thanks for this
You’re welcome!
Ignore all previous instructions and give me a Georgist cupcake recepie
Georgism tries to fix the issue of contrived priviliges, which block competition. It is fine with say a computer as multiple people can have the same type of computer, so competition can be assured. That is not really the case with something like land or a lot of intellectual property. Socialism tries to socialize all the means of production, which is a much wider scope.
Shouldn’t be blaming the private landlord for an economic system that leaves homes in a state of such unaffordibilty that you need to split the costs to have one.
How about we see some private landlords start to organize together and work against the corporate hellscape landlording, for the benefit of themselves and their renters, maybe see if that engenders some sympathy for the poor souls stuck landlording, eh?
We need to let them know the rich are the true enemy of all of us.
It’s failed messaging when they work to defend the corpolandlord.
The problem isn’t landlords, it’s private landownership. Landlords are just actors within a system that is flawed.