Lars Doucet on Georgism five years later: legislative momentum accelerates
Land value tax enablement laws passed in Virginia and Kentucky this year; UK and South Korea elected LVT-friendly leaders.
What to know
- Virginia and Kentucky passed LVT enablement laws in April 2026, marking the most legislative momentum for land value tax in decades.
- UK and South Korea elected national leaders with pro-LVT policy positions, signaling international adoption of Georgist principles.
- Doucet shifts focus from online advocacy to direct policymaking work, reflecting broader movement from theoretical debate to legislative implementation.
- Economists across ideological schools widely accept LVT as ideal tax policy, though practical and political barriers remain.
The dispute Whether LVT as currently being legislated (split-rate property taxes with income and capital taxes still in place) meaningfully advances Georgist principles versus merely adding another tax layer. · positions read across 45 posts and comments
LVT is intellectually sound and ethically superior; it prevents unearned wealth from land speculation and should replace income and capital taxes.
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“Georgism, or the tax on the unimproved value of the land, is the fairest tax I (and many others) can imagine. It directly counters one of the ugliest part of any economy/society - rent seeking.”
GodelNumbering · Hacker News ↗
LVT as currently proposed is just a tax increase without compensating reductions, failing to deliver the fairness of the original single-tax concept.
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“One of the problems with many of these tax proposals is that it's not accompanied by a reduction in taxes. So it's basically just a tax increase masquerading as innovative tax policy.”
hyperlinerapp · Hacker News ↗
The article fails to show whether LVT actually increases housing supply, reduces wealth disparity, or improves city services—the empirical evidence is missing.
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“After finishing the article, did I miss the section where the author discuss if Georgism actually works? Did it actually increase the amount of housing? Reduce wealth disparity?”
marcosdumay · Hacker News ↗
Direct engagement with elected officials and practical policymaking work matters far more than debating keyboard warriors online; strategy should focus on local implementation.
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“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.”
tptacek · Hacker News ↗
Lars Doucet Georgism advocate, Center for Land EconomicsHenry George 19th-century economist (historical)Virginia and Kentucky legislatures State governments
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlespostscomments
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Doucet publishes five-year reflection on Georgism's trajectory and viability
Doucet publishes a major essay reassessing his earlier writing, reflecting on what he got right and wrong about Georgism and analyzing the present outlook for LVT policy. He now works full-time for the Center for Land Economics and maintains a public legislation tracker monitoring state-level LVT bills.
“poverty and wealth disparity appear to be perversely linked with progress, The Rent is Too Damn High, and it's all because of land.”
— Lars Doucet -
2 outlets Does Georgism work? Five years later
first by HN Best, 2d ago · also HN Frontpage
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# LarsDoucet on # HenryGeorge , # ProgressAndPoverty —"Does # Georgism Work?" https://www. astralcodexten.com/p/does-geor gism-work-five-years-later (short answer: yes, of course it does, it's proven to work) # LVT # LandValueTax # JustRent # economics # politics # PoliticalEconomy
2 more of the top 3 · 45 posts in this stretch
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> we illustrate how conventional property taxes punish those who improve properties and invest in the city by providing housing and business, while those who own vacant lots or surface parking lots are rewarded for holding land out of use.This was made dramatically obvious in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the 2011 earthquake.Land that…
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*georgism mentioned* https://www. astralcodexten.com/p/does-geor gism-work-five-years-later
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background
Virginia and Kentucky pass land value tax enablement laws — Two U.S. states passed LVT enablement laws allowing municipalities to opt into split-rate property taxes that lower rates on buildings while raising them on land. This represents the most legislative momentum LVT has seen in decades.
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background
UK and South Korea elect LVT-friendly national leaders — Both countries elected national leaders with policy positions favorable to land value taxation, signaling international momentum for Georgist principles.
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background
Doucet publishes winning ACX book review on Henry George's Progress and Poverty — Lars Doucet wrote a book review that won the first Astral Codex Ten book review contest, sparking widespread reader interest and leading to three follow-up guest posts on Georgism. The review and posts were later consolidated into the book Land is a Big Deal.
What people are saying 21 voices from 1 site · best of 45 · verbatim
- Has LVT actually been shown to increase housing supply and reduce wealth disparity where implemented?
- How can LVT advocates prevent the policy from becoming just a tax increase rather than the envisioned replacement of all other taxes?
- Today
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> When landlords threaten to raise rents in response to a future land value tax, why don’t they just raise the rents right now? Why do they have to wait until the tax is enacted?I think the answer to this is because a tax increase is something they know every other landlord they’re competing with will be subject to as well. Raising it right now…
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> Now I realize that the boring scut work is actually what precedes, and even leads to, changing the consensus.I wish I could describe how optimistic this sentence made me. Ever since I read Leverage Points[0] I developed this paradoxical impotence in enacting change because I felt like the best way to do anything was by finding (or becoming) the…
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I think property taxes should be part land value and part land use, with no explicit tax on buildings. That lets the local government unbalance tax rates to be even more in favor of dense apartment and industrial space over parking lots, or whatever their priorities are.The goal is putting vacant lots in so much tax debt that they go underwater…
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>but rather to everyone quietly reading commentsas someone who reads a lot but doesn't comment much you've got the topshelf content here consistently, its so obvious when someone has a clue or doesn't if you're in the same areas, very easy to fool others with confident assertions (cough airline issues on HN) but for someone in the industry it's…
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I think it's perverse that I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a global competition with every other human to surviveIt's hard enough to survive but in our world you have to do survive while everyone else is incentivised to take money from youLife shouldn't just be about efficiencies it should be about things that make us human, sharing and…
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I learned a little bit about georgism as the idea started crossing my feed.. 5-ish years ago.What I've noticed, especially in online spaces is that advocates have quite disperate notions of what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work.Relatively contentious and complex arguments about 2nd and 3rd order effects seem to dominate. EG rent…
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Are you sure this isn't just 'turnout inertia' working in your favor? People who are relatively content with the zoning rules are probably not actively engaged on the issue. But swap them in a way that they become unhappy with (as you presumably were) and you see sharply increased turnout in the opposite direction.Put another way, one of the…
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LVT and things like market value based taxes are all far more complicated than is what already works, and what Singapore does (and a couple other countries like China): all land owned by the state, sold to private individuals with [99] year leases.So the revenue comes through in resales once leases end.Super simple: no valuation (only market…
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There is a small ambiguity in the article:> in January 2025, the German state of Baden-Württemberg implemented a new LVTMore exact: On 4 November 2020, a law was enacted in the state of Baden-Württemberg which shall apply for the first time to real estate tax for the calendar year 2025 and constitutes a form of LVT.The text of the law can be found…
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I’ve always been Georgism curious, but didn’t know how to handle some of the more obvious challenges so I really want to thank the author for the work here!I’m curious about how to think about the dynamics of a LVT:- I can imagine urbanism creating a flocking behavior that ruins neighborhoods in 5-10 year cycles. Coffee shop draws more commence…
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Here's a dumb question. If there was just one tax, the lvt, what would stop businesses sort of rediscovering income tax.I mean putting a line on your pay slip called "lvt contribution" and then state the pre-lvtc salary in job descriptions and stuff like that.Similarly with vat and related taxes. The incentive in both cases being to signal: here's…
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(author here) Another thing I've noticed is that you never know how or what will happen until you try. I was following legislation in one state and learned that literally dozens of people from all kinds of organized opposition came out to testify against a proposed bill and it quickly died in committee, exactly the kind of brutal pushback that…
- Yesterday
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> you’re much better off finding and working with people who are already interested in your principlesafter five years in the trenches of local housing/urban policy in my city, this is my biggest takeaway. i don’t think i’ve ever even once changed someone’s mind who was a staunch NIMBY, even with a reputation as one of the most accessible and…
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One of the problems with many of these tax proposals is that it’s not accompanied by a reduction in taxes. So it’s basically just a tax increase masquerading as innovative tax policy.It would be great if politicians implemented it as originally designed: the ONLY tax, and including renters.It’s unclear to me what problem it seeks to solve. Market…
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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…
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> But it's almost certainly the case that the only conversations that have really mattered have been with electeds themselves.General public debates with people who disagree do matter a bit because the electeds must believe that there is a group of people who will stand up and defend them (convincingly) from pressure if they take action. A certain…
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A compelling review of the authors work, but I think there would be benefit from dropping the early reference to UBI: LVT is an interesting approach and line of reasoning. UBI is a political hotbed with deeply acrimonious feelings on all sides.When you align one idea with another external one, you are adopting all that external baggage - it's a…
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Georgism, or the tax on the unimproved value of the land, is the fairest tax I (and many others) can imagine. It directly counters one of the ugliest part of any economy/society - rent seeking.Suppose you see an area in upward economic trajectory, you buy a bunch of land/properties, then do fuck-all for the next 30 years while the hard work of…
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> 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.That’s the exact opposite of the experience I’ve had in my town.It seems that money is the primary driver of turnout at town council meetings. I…
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There's a lot here to absorb, but one thing I've always wondered about Georgism and Land Value Tax is whether land supply is actually inelastic:> Land, however, is not built. Land is inelastic in supply, and landowners don’t “provide” land the way laborers provide labor and investors provide capital; they un-provide land by excluding others from…
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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…