AS CHATTEL SLAVERY, the owning of people, is unjust — so private ownership of land is unjust. Ownership of land always gives ownership of people. To what degree, is measured by the need for land. When starvation is the only alternative, the ownership of people involved in the ownership of land becomes absolute. This is simply the law of rent in different form.

Place one hundred people on an island from which there is no escape. Make one of them the absolute owner of the others — or the absolute owner of the soil. It will make no difference — either to owner or to the others — which one you choose. Either way, one individual will be the absolute master of the other ninety-nine. Denying permission to them to live on the island would force them into the sea.

The same cause must operate, in the same way and to the same end, even on a larger scale and through more complex relations. When people are compelled to live on — and from — land treated as the exclusive property of others, the ultimate result is the enslavement of workers. Though less direct and less obvious, relations will tend to the same state as on our hypothetical island. As population increases and productivity improves, we move toward the same absolute mastery of landlords and the same abject helplessness of labor. Rent will advance; wages will fall. Landowners continually increase their share of the total production, while labor's share constantly declines.

To the extent that moving to cheaper land becomes difficult or impossible, workers will be reduced to a bare living — no matter what they produce. Where land is monopolized, they will live as virtual slaves. Despite enormous increase in productive power, wages in the lower and wider layers of industry tend — everywhere — to the wages of slavery (i.e., just enough to maintain them in working condition).

There is nothing strange in this fact. Owning the land on which — and from which — people must live is virtually the same as owning the people themselves. In accepting the right of some individuals to the exclusive use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn others to slavery. We do this as fully and as completely as though we had formally made them chattel slaves.

In simple societies, production is largely the direct application of labor to the soil. There, slavery is the obvious result of a few having an exclusive right to the soil from which all must live. This is plainly seen in various forms of serfdom. Chattel slavery originated in the capture of prisoners in war. Though it has existed to some extent in every part of the globe, its effects have been trivial compared to the slavery that originates in the appropriation of land.

Wherever society has reached a certain point of development, we see the general subjection of the many by the few — the result of the appropriation of land as individual property. Ownership of land gives absolute power over people who cannot live except by using it. Those who possess the land are masters of the people who dwell upon it.

https://www.henrygeorge.org/pchp27.htm

I've read the total land value of the UK is £6.5-7 trillion, but does anyone have valuations on all the other forms of economic rent that should be taxed in the UK?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/13/the-indiana-jones-fossil-hunters-making-millions/

A dinosaur is a natural resource with a fixed supply, no? Is it right to make a profit on a dinosaur? Or to have a private museum?

You can give the public as much CD/UBI as you like, but landlords, bankers, and shareholders will just keep increasing rents, interest, and prices. It seems to me it makes more sense to use the proceeds of LVT to drive market efficiency. IE, use $100B/year to build millions of hyper-affordable units to drive down rents and house prices.

Basically title. If not what other taxes could be used to shore up revenue?

I've been writing about Georgism.

My first post (linked) focuses on the political moment and why Georgism is the answer.

My second post envisions a world with a land value tax.

My post today explores US cities that have implemented split-rate taxes.

Now that I've laid the foundation for split-rate taxes, I plan to post more nuanced and interesting pieces.

I will also use this as a place to keep readers updated on things happening in the land value tax movement.

Let me know your thoughts!

https://peoplesland.substack.com/p/economic-anxiety-and-the-critical?r=4rhmcp

I got into this long exchange with somebody new to LVT/Georgism and eventually they gave me this response:

I think the simplest solution would be an inverse value assessment for individual properties, so while the entire area would have a low tax rate if it's undeveloped, if your own property is relatively underdeveloped with no plans to do so there would a higher tax rate.

This would be a natural encouragement for efficient land use and densification IMO.

It's not quite nail-on-the-head, but it has a lot of the features we like:

• Lower tax bill in undeveloped/low value areas? Check
• Higher tax bill for underdeveloped properties in developed/high value areas? Check
• Encourages efficient land use and densification? Check

It occurred to me that this could be another way to describe LVT in these terms and in a way that illustrates how LVT operates relative to a property tax:

LVT is like a dynamic property tax that decreases (as a percentage of property value) for properties put to good use, and increases for properties that are underutilized.

The mechanism to accomplish that is just the LVT, but I think this gets at the motivation for LVT, which once people understand is an easier mental leap. I think the commenter just initially missed that connection. Hopefully I got a convert out of it!

Edit: Shoutout to u/EasilyRekt for engaging with me, making this comment, and hopefully joining this cult (jk, sortof).

In my experience:

1. LVT? UBI? Isn't that a communist or libertarian thing?
2. Huh. That's actually kinda clever. I wonder why it never caught on. Oh well.
3. Hmmm, I wonder what Georgism has to say about this!
4. Well, have you ever heard of Georgism? It's a really solid and simple idea that has worked well in places it's been implemented. First, I need to explain the difference between LVT and property tax...
5. Literally any solution that doesn't involve LVT, Citizen's Dividend, mixed-use zoning and bikeable cities is not worth my time and is going to inevitably fail to solve what it was proposed to.
6. "How to start your own city" "Empty parcels for sale" "How to buy a town" "Singapore visas" "Zillow Alaska"

I'm planning to put up some Georgist flyers around my town, to help spread the word. However, I'm not sure about exactly what to put on them, so I thought I would get some input.

Given that most people haven't heard of Georgism before, I want to focus on piquing people's interest, so they'll research it on their own. But, what is the best way to do that? Should I say that landlords should pay rent too? That Georgism could help solve the housing crisis? Something else?

• Justice Party, Social Justice Party, Party of Natural Law, Natural Law & Social Justice Party.

• Landed Tax Reform Movement

• Tenants' Party

• Party for Wealth and The Commons; CommonWealth

• Anti-Monopoly Party

• Anti-Poverty Party

Or the classic:

• Single Tax League

I think that using land trusts for this experimental kind of work could be cool but I don’t know enough about the school of thought to have any meaningful insights on how it would work in practice.

Hi y'all, I'm pretty new to the concept and was wondering where I could find some good books on Georgism? My knowledge on policy/economics is basic-intermediate, I'm looking for something that dives pretty deep into the ideology but doesn't expect an experienced academic reader. Grateful for what the community is doing here

I tried to google but couldn't find answers. Suppose we live in Georgism and you become unable to pay your land value tax. Maybe you are an elderly person who can no longer work. Would you be forced to evict your home by cops? Would they send you to jail? Just curious.

LVT is intended to tax unimproved land value - the opportunity cost of the land itself, not the stuff on it. In theory, 100% LVT eliminates landlords, as property taxes approach rental income. But landlords aren't just leasing land, they're leasing houses and apartments. You can still make a profit by leasing the buildings, it's just that the profit is correlated with the fanciness of the buildings themselves, rather than their location.

Won't LVT incentivize landlords to build ultra-luxury housing? The margins are better, even if the market is smaller. It might not be worth their consideration to build or rent cheap apartments. Georgism is designed to incentivize land improvement, but is it productive to sell McMansions during a housing shortage?

For more context, Fred Harrison is a Georgist who’s published research on an 18 year real-estate boom-bust cycle. He predicted the 2008 financial crisis well before it happened. He says this cycle has been observed for over 100 years all over the globe, with the only thing disrupting this cycle being WWII. Now I don’t think the crash would happen in the same way it did in 2008 with banks intentionally giving out risky loans, but they always say “there was no way anyone could have seen this coming”. What do you all think?

Thanks guys