I’ve since learned that overly online keyboard warriors are the least important people to convince. The most important people are on your local city council or state legislature. Furthermore, instead of wasting time with hard cases or elected officials who are dead-set against your ideas, you’re much better off finding and working with people who are already interested in your principles. This often means giving up on your own city or state, at least for the time being, and pursuing a “succeed anywhere” strategy instead.
We're about to have a board vote eliminating single-family zoning (I expect us to win) and this rings extremely true about local politics. If you count "votes" in Facebook comments --- Facebook is where all our local politics happen --- you'd think this is the most contentious issue in the world. But in our last mayoral election, you'd draw the same conclusion about the race being tight, and in fact the progressive rinsed the moderate by a huge margin.
The same thing is very true of public meetings; the turnout for comment at those things is almost never representative of the area's median sentiment. "No" turns out for everything; "yes" rarely does.
I spend a lot of time in online arguments with opponents, on the theory that I'm not really writing to the person I'm arguing with but rather to everyone quietly reading comments. But it's almost certainly the case that the only conversations that have really mattered have been with electeds themselves.
I haven't read anything about Georgism that would specifically argue for or against single-family zoning. I own a single-family house, I already pay high property taxes, and I pay high income taxes. I think it would be more fair to me and everyone else to drop both, and tax the land my house is on, even if that came out to the same amount of tax I paid per year. If that tax was used to provide a UBI to people who don't own land, great. And I'm fairly conservative. I don't think this aligns as a modern progressive or conservative issue.
That all being said, I find expropriation to be loathsome, and I think the movement to destroy single-family zoned neighborhoods is a species of evil that borders on satanic.
It really doesn't have much to do with planning or zoning, I imagine it predates that. A lot YIMBYs are also georists but a LVT wouldn't really address issues created by planning.
Zoning and planning distorts land values so georgism alone won't solve land use problems. E.g. Demand for land with fewer property rights (such as single family zoning, or a heritage restriction) will be lower than the site next to it that allowed building a 200 floor residential tower. In turn its land value will be lower.
It might still yield a high rent tho, but maybe not more than a new well maintained apartment.
> A lot YIMBYs are also georists but a LVT wouldn't really address issues created by planning.
It wouldn't directly address those planning issues, but it aligns the financial incentives of the body politic between residential homeowners and the rest of the community. Normally residential homeowners have huge financial incentive to make housing scare and expensive, the LVT removes that financial gain from causing misery.
LVT is a good reform to do, but if the goal is to improve housing affordability through supply it's quite an indirect measure and occur at a glacial pace without proper planning reform.
Many areas where people want to live and where homes should be built, can sometimes have a large portion of home owners like Mosman, Bondi, Croydon or Woollahra in Sydney. A tax on the unimproved value of land just doesn't get home building started here if no one is a renter (I recall increases in rent were tied to LVT in Progress and Poverty). And if its based on valuations the valuations will again be distorted by planning controls.
If you upzone these areas for towers, the moment the first person takes the gazillion dollar offer from a developer suddenly homes get built, and suddenly everyone else want to exit. And besides if you have LV Tax their land value will got up because their land will have fewer development limitations, higher demand, etc, etc.
Georgism is cool, land tax is cool, but it's not a silver bullet.
If your goal is to make homes more affordable, reforms like the ones they did in Auckland (loosening planning controls) is the way to go. <a href="https://onefinaleffort.com/auckland" rel="nofollow">https://onefinaleffort.com/auckland
Similar thing is taking place in Austin Texas right now as well.
<a href="https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/03/18/austins-surge-of-new-housing-construction-drove-down-rents" rel="nofollow">https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/0...
If your goal is to redistribute wealth Georgism is not a bad option, but again planning controls (zoning, Floor space, height limits, heritage controls, parking minimums, upper setbacks, excessive lower setbacks) can suppress the true size of the tax base.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
We're about to have a board vote eliminating single-family zoning (I expect us to win) and this rings extremely true about local politics. If you count "votes" in Facebook comments --- Facebook is where all our local politics happen --- you'd think this is the most contentious issue in the world. But in our last mayoral election, you'd draw the same conclusion about the race being tight, and in fact the progressive rinsed the moderate by a huge margin.
The same thing is very true of public meetings; the turnout for comment at those things is almost never representative of the area's median sentiment. "No" turns out for everything; "yes" rarely does.
I spend a lot of time in online arguments with opponents, on the theory that I'm not really writing to the person I'm arguing with but rather to everyone quietly reading comments. But it's almost certainly the case that the only conversations that have really mattered have been with electeds themselves.
noduerme · · focus · HN ↗
That all being said, I find expropriation to be loathsome, and I think the movement to destroy single-family zoned neighborhoods is a species of evil that borders on satanic.
akst · · focus · HN ↗
Zoning and planning distorts land values so georgism alone won't solve land use problems. E.g. Demand for land with fewer property rights (such as single family zoning, or a heritage restriction) will be lower than the site next to it that allowed building a 200 floor residential tower. In turn its land value will be lower.
It might still yield a high rent tho, but maybe not more than a new well maintained apartment.
epistasis · · focus · HN ↗
It wouldn't directly address those planning issues, but it aligns the financial incentives of the body politic between residential homeowners and the rest of the community. Normally residential homeowners have huge financial incentive to make housing scare and expensive, the LVT removes that financial gain from causing misery.
akst · · focus · HN ↗
Many areas where people want to live and where homes should be built, can sometimes have a large portion of home owners like Mosman, Bondi, Croydon or Woollahra in Sydney. A tax on the unimproved value of land just doesn't get home building started here if no one is a renter (I recall increases in rent were tied to LVT in Progress and Poverty). And if its based on valuations the valuations will again be distorted by planning controls.
If you upzone these areas for towers, the moment the first person takes the gazillion dollar offer from a developer suddenly homes get built, and suddenly everyone else want to exit. And besides if you have LV Tax their land value will got up because their land will have fewer development limitations, higher demand, etc, etc.
Georgism is cool, land tax is cool, but it's not a silver bullet.
If your goal is to make homes more affordable, reforms like the ones they did in Auckland (loosening planning controls) is the way to go. <a href="https://onefinaleffort.com/auckland" rel="nofollow">https://onefinaleffort.com/auckland
Similar thing is taking place in Austin Texas right now as well. <a href="https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/03/18/austins-surge-of-new-housing-construction-drove-down-rents" rel="nofollow">https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/0...
If your goal is to redistribute wealth Georgism is not a bad option, but again planning controls (zoning, Floor space, height limits, heritage controls, parking minimums, upper setbacks, excessive lower setbacks) can suppress the true size of the tax base.