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Georgism and Excess Inertia

Excess inertia, I think, exists in the economic field directly under the topic of adopting rent as the only source of public revenue. Instead of destroying lives at scale by confiscating the earnings of labour and capital. 

Georgists will say the confiscation of rent must be forced onto people by statute. Those Georgists on the left latently demand this to punish their enemy and protect their constituency. Likewise for those on the right who have their own enemy and constituency.

And never the twain shall meet. This land value taxation(LVT) is the best revenue policy technically possible yet has turned out to be the most failing economic policy in history. Even the Israelites only aspired to it despite being so noisy about it in Leviticus so far as we know.

In 2007, a Cambridge PhD, Dr. Adrian Wrigley, invented a new policy (with significant help from his think tank) called the Location Value Covenant. The only fundamental difference between the LVC and the LVT proposed above by Georgists is that the LVC's only rule was set in stone on day zero:

...that its adoption is voluntary by the owner of the land title. 

Every homeowner(or commercial property owner) can either opt in, or remain within the existing system of mortgages and taxation for revenue. Up to you. Take it or leave it. Your choice. Take whichever way works for you in your own time and place. Opt-in to the LVC and Opt-out of the worse alternative. 

How the economic rents are collected through the LVC are manifest. That is entirely a matter for a policy developer, the lobby, think tank, innovative activist and so on.

Of course, if I can avoid mortgages and as much tax as possible, I will certainly be in a much better position relative to everyone else. I can only maintain this by maximising my investments in real estate. Adoption of either the LVC or LVT means that is no longer an option - sauce for the goose - the odds will be even. And this is exactly why LVT is the most failing economic policy in history - people do not act in a way which desires 'even'.

And politicians across the spectrum are elected on this basis above all else. Sure, we put up other principle values to hide this observation. It's still extant.

But is it fair to blame the rentier for the worlds problems as Georgist tend todo? They are only looking at the systemically broken system of tax and mortgages, working out why it is broken and taking the only rational path a household can take under those conditions to protect themselves from the system. If they were not to do it they would by implication be feckless actors - it would be immoral and irrational not to do it. 

Why do I think that land value taxation and Georgism has excess inertia? Both the left and the right inside and outside the movement are trapping themselves in a system purely on the basis of an unconscious and more dominant political worldview, which they're unwilling to speak openly about, even to their trusted peers. 

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