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.
ah yeah. this is very good. i think a lot of people believe this tacitly. it's quite easy, when you've done some hard work, to think that everything you've got was a result of your own efforts and capabilities.
growing up as religious as i was, i inherited the view that the wealthy are wicked, greedy, immoral, and careless with their wealth. it was sorta eye opening to me when i got a little older and met wealthy people that were smart, hardworking, and kind. why wouldn't they think they deserve what they have? and sorta they do. with the degree of mastery we have over the earth, we should all be living lives of great wealth.
i know george says something about how peasants who acheived some kind of land ownership were the absolute worst in regardes to jacking up their rents as much as possible. this middle class of people, the one's who hvae just climbed from beneath george's wedge to above it, most fiercely defend that wedge.
Some in our generation and in subsequent generations will choose to grind it out under the non-Georgist rules and some will succeed. Others will try to direct their time, energy, and resources toward changing the rules to Georgist rules. If the latter succeeds, the former will be mad that the rules have changed. But hopefully, after some time, the former will come around to experiencing the benefits of Georgism and eventually wonder why it was ever any other way.
> The child of the people, as he grows to manhood in Europe, finds all the best seats at the banquet of life marked “taken,“ and must struggle with his fellows for the crumbs that fall, without one chance in a thousand of forcing or sneaking his way to a seat. In America, whatever his condition, there has always been the consciousness that the public domain lay behind him; and the knowledge of this fact, acting and reacting, has penetrated our whole national life, giving to it generosity and independence, elasticity and ambition. All that we are proud of in the American character; all that makes our conditions and institutions better than those of older countries, we may trace to the fact that land has been cheap in the United States, because new soil has been open to the emigrant.
Surely all anyone has to do is get a good education, work hard, and buy a lottery ticket because eventually they will win the lottery, get on that ownership ladder, climb to a flat part, and pull up the ladder behind them … so they can turn around and show everyone that they have led by example — and if they can do it, surely anyone can.
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.
ah yeah. this is very good. i think a lot of people believe this tacitly. it's quite easy, when you've done some hard work, to think that everything you've got was a result of your own efforts and capabilities.
growing up as religious as i was, i inherited the view that the wealthy are wicked, greedy, immoral, and careless with their wealth. it was sorta eye opening to me when i got a little older and met wealthy people that were smart, hardworking, and kind. why wouldn't they think they deserve what they have? and sorta they do. with the degree of mastery we have over the earth, we should all be living lives of great wealth.
i know george says something about how peasants who acheived some kind of land ownership were the absolute worst in regardes to jacking up their rents as much as possible. this middle class of people, the one's who hvae just climbed from beneath george's wedge to above it, most fiercely defend that wedge.
Some in our generation and in subsequent generations will choose to grind it out under the non-Georgist rules and some will succeed. Others will try to direct their time, energy, and resources toward changing the rules to Georgist rules. If the latter succeeds, the former will be mad that the rules have changed. But hopefully, after some time, the former will come around to experiencing the benefits of Georgism and eventually wonder why it was ever any other way.
Would’ve been geat to have you at the conversation on Sunday. We were trying to think of the most Georgist animal species. 🙃
> The child of the people, as he grows to manhood in Europe, finds all the best seats at the banquet of life marked “taken,“ and must struggle with his fellows for the crumbs that fall, without one chance in a thousand of forcing or sneaking his way to a seat. In America, whatever his condition, there has always been the consciousness that the public domain lay behind him; and the knowledge of this fact, acting and reacting, has penetrated our whole national life, giving to it generosity and independence, elasticity and ambition. All that we are proud of in the American character; all that makes our conditions and institutions better than those of older countries, we may trace to the fact that land has been cheap in the United States, because new soil has been open to the emigrant.
Surely all anyone has to do is get a good education, work hard, and buy a lottery ticket because eventually they will win the lottery, get on that ownership ladder, climb to a flat part, and pull up the ladder behind them … so they can turn around and show everyone that they have led by example — and if they can do it, surely anyone can.