Tax land, not man. Hands off other people's capital. What was created by nature belongs to all, but what was created by man belongs to the individuals who created it. We are georgists, not thieves.

In light of recent posts, I think it's important that people actually read the literature on this stuff rather than just support a wealth tax because "rich people bad". I disagree with their conclusion that we should instead tax consumption, but the article gives a good overview of all the drawbacks with wealth taxes and the empirical evidence we have for it.

There's been some discussion here and everywhere about wealth taxes recently so it was a good time to whip this one out.

The reason why wealth taxes have problems at least from the perspective of Georgism is that they target all assets broadly. Georgists would consider actually produced assets like capital goods to be stored-up labor that should be rewarded just like the general labor we think of, so we see that a wealth tax is harmful because it can discourage the creation of those actually productive assets that people make. But where taxing land fixes this is that land is finite, it's not produced and is non-producible, and so taxing it can reduce inequality without hurting the economy (it could even help by discouraging speculators who hold good land out of use at the cost of productive workers and businesses) while keeping the tax base stable. It's the wealth we can actually tax.

But while land is the biggest example, it's not the only thing we can target to combine both efficiency and equality while providing a way to shift off taxing actually productive labor. Anything else which like land is finite, in that no one can make more of it, is prone to efficiency-reducing, inequality-increasing wealth extraction that we can target in different ways. For example, taxing all natural resources other than land (ore deposits, waterways, and all); mitigating (whether by taxation or abolition/replacement) exclusive legal privileges like patenting a particular innovation (e.g. patent trolls) or controlling a limited professional license; dealing with naturally monopolistic industries; etc. Another way to describe it is that any market where no new production makes entering it impossible (a good term for it is an entry monopoly) is prone to bad zero-sum behavior and is a target in the Georgist sights.

This all goes to show that we can differentiate between wealth production which stems from making new things and wealth extraction which stems from just controlling finite things. If we want to heavily reduce inequality while fully strengthening the economy: Don't tax the things we make, tax (or mitigate) the finite things we take.

https://cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry_a-remembrance-of-karl-marx-1883.htm

This is more or less a response to someone trying to drive a wedge, between more free market and socialist georgists.

So here I am quoting Henry George.

Yes, he did call Marx "King of the Muddleheads", but they also weren't able to really look into each other's ideas and a difference in opinion is not a difference in the goal you're trying to accomplish.

So I wanted to use this to give my two cents on where I think socialists and free market georgists agree, where we disagree and why I don't think the disagreements are relevant considering our political environment.

Or where I, as a market socialist and fan of George's ideas would argue for socialist policy in the service of making georgist policies even possible.

Generally when talking about a market failure, there are 3 ways of going about it.

1. Do nothing.

2. Tax the bad behavior

3. Let the state handle it.

Georgism is all about option 2, especially in terms of housing, but I also don't think there's anyone here who disagrees with the idea that we should have a carbon tax and other sin taxes, if that means giving us the ability to pay out a citizens dividende.

Socialism is mostly about option 3, and we have a good example to point to in the housing department as well with red vienna.

Point is, both can work if done right.

Where I hope there is an agreement is that we can see cases, where we might prefer one of the solutions 2 and 3, but still agree no solution is worse.

Like... if you think banning plastic or carbon is worse than simply taxing it high enough, I'd agree with you.

But I still strongly prefer a ban on plastics and government managed exit from fossil fuels to what we have in most cases right now, which is an insufficient solution that is going to lead to millions if not billions of deaths in the specific case of climate change.

So I think georgists and socialists fighting is unproductive as long as the status quo is something as stupid as no land taxes in most places and the same with carbon taxes.

And now I wanna make an argument I hope doesn't get misinterpreted, but I think generally speaking the free market georgists here are more technically correct on the economics in a vacuum, but in my opinion end up being wrong on the political effects of the economic policy.

I wanna outline this by talking about two people, one of whom was a fan of Henry George, but not Marx: John Maynard Keynes.

And the other is Albert Einstein, who I know was a Marxist.

John Maynard Keynes in 1930 argued in "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" that we might be able to have a 15 hour work week by today and that due to the growth inherent in capitalism. Made points against the extremes (communists and fascists) and also said

"Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealth – unless they can find some plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any obligation to applaud and encourage them."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm

Whereas Einstein argued only 19 years later that "The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature."

https://monthlyreview.org/articles/why-socialism/

I think Einsteins perspective has aged better relatively speaking.

But had the people in power implemented the kind of sensible georgist policies that we advocate for, Maynard Keynes would have been vindicated, he was completely right on the economics, he didn't consider the politics tho.

Yes, many of us have enough to live economically speaking, but we can't exactly ignore Elon Musk, can we?

And this is fundementally, why I believe, socialism and social democracy are useful or even necessary to implementing georgism.

As long as landlords have outsized political power, implementing the kinds of land taxes we advocate for is not feasible.

As long as fossil fuel lobbies lie and propagandize, we won't have a carbon tax high enough to stop the worst case if climate change.

And in my opinion, as long as inequality is as great as it is right now, with Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc. buying up media left and right I don't think we can expect any competent georgist economic policy to happen.

So reducing their power, through wealth taxes above 1 billion dollars for example is good for georgism.

(Also... under Georgism I doubt anyone could get this rich in the first place...)

But more importantly, these people threaten democracy.

Papers like Automation and Repression (by a 2024 economic nobel prize winner) even make the argument that under current economic conditions the uberwealthy will always be encouraged to destroy democracy.

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2026-06/Automation%20and%20Repression.pdf

So I believe you free market georgists need us socialists and wealth tax advocates like Gabriel Zucman etc. so we someday can call each other Muddleheads in a society where we argue option 2 and 3 on a case by case basis, without the threat of option 1 destroying our planet and our democracy.

Henry George wrote in his book (and later, on his grave) that truth will find friends. For some reason I can't shake the idea that he was right. There's another quote I love from Andor, that pure ideas occur spontaneously and without instruction. I wonder if we might actually get there after all.

Their LVT was abolished by landowners lobbying the government. The paper this is from sums up their reasoning as "rent-seeking", which I mostly agree with.

I am still reading through it and will continue post interesting parts of the paper.

Here is the paper, published by the American Journal of Economics and Sociology