An Email Conversation with Mergin About Why Landlords Might Oppose Georgism
And why there is hope if we believe in one another!
Listen. I’m spending like 30 minutes a day making the Henry George Daily Devotional. I attended like 4 hours of Georgist meetings over the weekend. I’ve also spent a lot of time talking to a few soccer buddies, my mom, and some game dev buddies about Georgism in just the last 3 days.
I’m going to just recycle an email conversation I had with a friend about George recently and hope you find it of value. I’m anonymyzing my friend’s name and I’m not asking for their permission, because I’m a horrible human being and Georgism jsutify cracking a few skulls maybe. Fine, I’ll text Mergin right now. Ok. Mergin has responded and granted permission! Please proceed.
General context here is that I sent Mergin some excerpt from Progress and Poverty and then we started a discussion. In general, Mergin is sympathetic to Georgism. We’re picking up in the middle here.
Mergin:
Okay yeah…
So the conquerer would argue that there is something at stake if you take away their earnings. What do you think they would say is at stake?
Basically I want to know the enemy’s arguments before I can wholeheartedly refute them. Most people appear to convince themselves they are doing good. How did Irish landowners, exporters, and tax beneficiaries do that?
Max:
alright.
theoretical arguments landlords make:
(1) i'm providing a service to renters!
(2) i'm providing a service to the market through speculation. i'm taking on risk that this plot of land may go down in value. i'm providing a price signal to society that this land is valuable using my land evaluating expertise. and so when the government builds a subway station nearby later and suddenly the worth of my land is now 10x more valuable, i deserve it, i basically told the government this is where they should build!
(3) you ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land. i can only be free if i own land. and can only be truly happy if i can own land.
(4) ...ummm...land is capital, why shouldn't i be able to own it? THIS IS THE WAY. lots of people owned it before me and my children will after me. tradition! (this includes divine right/blood line/heritage args)
(~1) i agree, but the role of property manager and rent-seeking landlord are being conflated! former is good, latter is bad.
(~2) no, dumb.*
(~3) you think you're free to do whatever you want on your land now? lol. also, georgism still believes in the ability of having exclusive use of a piece of land, so long as you compensate society for taking from them. if you live out in the middle of nowhere, you probably won't have to pay anyone a dime under georgism. if you're near a city, then you may need to pay a bit. if you're on wall street, in the middle where tons of wealth could be created through trade and commerce, then you're going to need to pay society a lot for that exclusivity. (of course, you're probably only willing to pay that price if you're going to run a business on that land, which is what is best for society, yay! land value tax working!)
(~4) land is not capital. no one made it. it's everyone's. not a conqueror's or the first family to claim it.
*admittedly, this is a little lame of me, but talking about the value of speculators within a market is just like…pure econ stuff and you can find that elsewhere. very few people claim this is the biggest, bestest reason for landowners to be able to rent-seek/hoard land.
non theoretical argument:
(1) i worked really hard for years to save enough money to buy this! i paid in! everyone else should have to do that too!
(2) i’m old and i don’t work, i rely on the equity in my home to survive
(~1) yes, the current system is a ponzi scheme. and actually, it super duper enriches the banks! because they're the ones holding on these loands and squeezing all the fresh homeowners with giant mortgages, and simultaneously being bailed out by the government and enabled by the fed!
(~2) kinda a fair point. but also, a granny, living alone on a quarter acre in a nice location is really not the best way for a society to allocate space, if we’re honest. it’s only because we don’t have georgism that her children and grandchildren had to move so far away to afford housing and abandon her to being with. georgism provides financial security, which enables our higher instincts.
karl marx's argument against georgie boy:
(1) it doesn't go far enough! socializing the land is good. we must socialize everything!
(~1) a human deserves the fruit of their labor. no one else. only their use of the commons should be socialized. a central planning authority telling people where to go, what to do, and when, isn't just. other people owning the fruits of my labor isn't fair. only when i take or reduce anyone else's ability to use the commons, that is when i must pay back to society.
Mergin:
Ty
okay, ive been thinking about this other question re your answer to A-4 and C-1: mankind's general hubris seems to prohibit him from understanding that there are things we will never truly own. i am not sure the construct that something material is not capital is even available to our late stage capitalist 21st century brains.
it makes me wonder what it would be like if the land felt more alive to us. there’s a poem i read once about how kids teach us to love what we cannot own. that's because humans cannot be owned. the soul simply denies possession. i guess the same is simply true about land. and this is how it connects to my tomato plants. people are feebly exerting power over and ownership of something that will always refuse to be possessed. we are essentially always renters of land, and the land is its own landlord. but to really realize this is so humbling that it's kind of terrifying. even taxing for use of land somewhat misses this point.
when i was flying home a few weeks ago, squinting out the window, thinking as hard as i could to make sense of what i was seeing, finally getting low enough to make out cars on pencil thin roads and highways, i felt such pity for us, tiny ants. why do we even try? i guess it's because, tiny and pathetic as we may be, we have big feelings.
did you see the eclipse?
Max:
i've now talked about georgism to maybe 100 close friends and family. all have either wholly accepted it or partially, except maybe jesse's dad who just immediately called me a socialist and got angry and quickly just walked into the house. kinda my fault, because i was pitching it to jesse's brother in a more millenial/informal packaging. not one intended to be a boomer's first introduction to georgism. there's also some homeowning friends who somewhat jokingly, somewhat honestly, say they wno't do it, because they want to be rich. most commonly, all the people i speak to eventually express dismay at the possibility of its coming to pass. so if i can share it with the world, and then, all at once, everyone turns to their neighbor and is like "you're a georgist? i'm a georgist!" then we achieve the georgism singularity.
ofc, waiting for one generation to just die is a powerful technique in cultural domination.
did not see the eclipse.
Mergin:
conquistador!
i bet the christian crusaders + all missionaries ever thought the same thing. and, yeah, now we have a lot of christians in the world. not very many rich young rulers selling all their things, more good samaritans, but most people still ignoring the needs in front of their faces. if only beliefs changed behavior. too bad. ur plan might have worked.
Mergin:
i spent the first part of my morning reflecting on my nay-saying tone. i liked the parallel but not the conclusion. your plan, my friend, is working. i (and I know at least 20% of your hundred, conservatively) are meaningfully impacted by these ideas and will continue to be formed by them in thought, word, and deed.
go george!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So if you’re thinking Georgism is cool, but it’s a bummer no one else thinks so, well, maybe you’re wrong and getting wronger by the day.
Yours truly,
Max
This post is optimistic and it makes me happy and hopeful. It might be the most optimistic post I've read on your blog and I like it. Thank you. And more please.
Mergin, very interesting thoughts about us not being able to fathom land not being possessed. The psychological angle is interesting. Maybe we all need to do mushrooms to be enlightened and shed our self-centeredness and see land for what it is. (I have not done mushrooms.)
Good dialogue between you two. And good explanations using casual emotional terms, it makes these phenomena feel more tangible to me.
Another anti-Georgist viewpoint is the belief that the land should belong to "me" and "people like me" to the exclusion of others; that a social hierarchy is inevitable and just; that common ownership of land is not possible; that "might makes right", and those who fail to acquire or assert a claim to land deserve their fate of wage slavery, poverty, ethnic cleansing, etc. Unequal access to land is the basis of unequal society. Those who benefit will obviously oppose change. But many in the house of want will still view inequality as inevitable, worship great unearned fortunes, imagine the day when they might themselves be rent-seekers at the top, and buy lottery tickets. Consider how widespread belief in the "tragedy of the commons" is. Such tragedies occur only when the commons isn't treated as a true commons: when its value is unjustly appropriated without compensation to the community for its loss. Georgism boils down to the simple idea that "common resources must be rented at their value", but unfortunately this idea isn't obvious enough to easily overcome the self-perpetuation of unequal social structure and the great inertia of existing social belief.