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Does Georgism work? Five years later

514 points · 522 comments · silveraxe93

  1. noduerme · · focus · HN ↗
    It's freakishly weird to see this at the top of HN. I had never heard or read anything about Georgism until last week, when I stumbled onto it after randomly seeing a photo of a 100-year-old billboard on the Wikipedia page for the term "speculation". I spent a few days researching it on and off. In fact, I just navigated to HN from the last page I was reading about it. It seems like a clever way to address a number of very pressing modern issues.

    Serendipity, I guess.

    1. EA-3167 · · focus · HN ↗
      This place has always had a soft spot for Scott Alexander, and in turn he loves to talk about Big Systemic Fixes.

      It never ends.

      1. epistasis · · focus · HN ↗
        This piece was not written by Scott Alexander.

        I think it's better to say that HN readers have a soft spot for clever solutions that seem like hacks. And the LVT is really a huge societal hack to unlock a lot of prosperity and eliminate a lot of poverty.

        1. EA-3167 · · focus · HN ↗
          So… a big systemic fix in other words.

          Allow to me cite another beloved HN blog by way of explanation for why this mostly appeals to people without a strong understanding of the systems they want to “fix”.

          <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnsalvatier.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;johnsalvatier.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;reality-has-a-surprising...

          1. psd1 · · focus · HN ↗
            I directionally agree! I grew out of Big Systemic Fixes in my 20s. The great thing about LVT is that it can be implemented piecemeal at the small scale. I think we should do that; have some tolerance while we thrash out the bugs; then let matters progress as they will.

            While i don&#x27;t agree with Big Systemic Fixes, i certainly agree with - or rather, acknowledge the existence of - Big Systemic Problems. We should tackle those when we can, with appropriate caution. LVT&#x27;s viability, IMO, is predicated on gradual rollout and low cost of reversal.

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