LESSWRONG
LW

A focus question I keep returning to, partly out of a dark sense of humor, is what kind of slogans I would have to write before people would be willing to shed blood, to fight, in the name of George, or in the name of Approval Voting, or Minor Parties, or any other system whose merits are abstract and which is neither minarchist nor soviet.

I sometimes feel like part of the problem is that there is no villain to get mad at. Our enemy is mostly just ambient incompetence, myopia, legacy systems and institutional sclerosis. Perhaps we can call it Moloch.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y1911

I think it is pretty clear who is standing in the way of Georgism: Landowners. They stand to lose the most, and those with a lot of property typically have a larger influence on economic property. The problem is that there is not a single organized landowner you could paint as the bad guy. It is a distributed mass that is hard to counter.

[-]cousin_it1y1110

I think you're right, Georgism doesn't get passed because it goes against the interests of landowners who have overwhelming political influence. But if the actual problem we're trying to solve is high rents, maybe that doesn't require full Georgism? Maybe we just need to make construction legally easier. There's strong opposition to that too, but not as strong as literally all landowners.

[-]Dagon1y1-2

Wait! Is the actual problem we're trying to solve "high rents"? From everything I've read, it's "inefficient use of land", in other words, failure to maximize land-rents collected, which are now taxed at a high percentage of theoretical value.

In some sense, bulldozing 10 single-family houses to build a 30-unit apartment does "reduce rent" on a per-unit basis, but it increases it on the land. As designed, as far as I can tell. It's unclear what bulldozing them to build a datacenter does to rents, but that may be necessary if the powers-that-be decide that's the income level needed to pay the taxes.

[-]ryan_b1y93

I feel like suburban homeowners are the key group here. They have the most votes among landowning groups, and the strongest motivation to oppose anything that reduces property values because their home represents all of their wealth. There is also the way-of-life question, because the economics of the suburbs seem really difficult under Georgism.

Something like an exemption for the first sale after the tax is passed would be a simple solution to taking some of the sting out, and makes sure no one has to unilaterally lose their investment to a tax.

[-]khafra1y40

I feel like it's still Moloch to blame, if a sufficient bribe to landowners would cost less than indefinitely continued rent-seeking.

I don't have any calculations to offer in support; but I would generally expect an individual landowner's time preference to be lower than society's as a whole, so I suspect this is indeed the case.

So the actual reason is that landowners don't want to be seen taking a bribe, because that would involve acknowledging they have been knowingly rent-seeking since 1879; and the government doesn't want to openly bribe them for moral hazard whatever; so even though everyone would be better off by their own lights it can't happen. And that's fairly moloch-flavored.

[-]Dagon1y30

if a sufficient bribe to landowners would cost less than indefinitely continued rent-seeking.

Note that if made in public, for legitimately-owned assets, and voluntarily accepted, the term is no longer "bribe" but "purchase". A whole ton of my objections go away if the government (or even a private entity) is buying land and then figuring out the best use for it, charging optimal rent to the people who own the improvements separately.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y30

Would it work if the tax was raised very slowly? Like 10% points per generation.

Would it work if the tax sets in only after death for privately owned property? That might significantly reduce resistance by individual land owners.

[-]Dagon1y12

How many older people who own land do you know, who're happy with CURRENT inheritance taxes? Saying "land value is no longer inheritable, it goes only to the state" seems about as likely as any other implementation of massive tax increases.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y20

I know! I own property myself. Obviously, people don't like big sudden changes that cost them a lot of money. That's why I asked for more incremental approaches. Though, I guess the problem is that small changes will not get a lot of support from non-property owners - because the effect is small - but will get opposition from large owners because they see the effect.

[-]Dagon1y20

people don't like big sudden changes that cost them a lot of money.

People don't like ANY changes that cost them a lot of money. The only saving grace of gradual rollout is that it's easy to continuously delay the next step until it gets fully killed before going too far.

Any proposal that amounts to "nationalize Trillions of dollars worth of land value (or of net present value of future rent streams, same thing), without compensation" is going to face backlash from a lot of people, including me. REGARDLESS of timeframe or gradualness.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y63

Well, there will be compensation, that's the whole idea of LVT - it's a more efficient tax, so you can reduce inefficient taxes. But I guess you mean for the same person. And that is the hard to prove point.

I guess the only time to introduce such a tax is after a war.

[-][anonymous]1y50

The only saving grace of gradual rollout is that it's easy to continuously delay the next step until it gets fully killed before going too far.

This is a bit hyperbolic. As a general matter, gradual rollouts have other important benefits, such as the fact that they allow people to be free to optimize: by maintaining a more transparent, slow-moving pace of change in the background legal system, citizens (and companies etc.) are able to more easily deal with the modifications by "smoothing" their adaptations over time instead of being hit with something they were not prepared for and are unable to deal with in a very short time-frame.

Very rapid rollouts generate more uncertainty and unpredictability, which can sometimes result in a situation that's even worse than if a bad, but more certain option was chosen (partly because individuals who react rationally to uncertainty generally do so by hedging their bets and wasting resources on preparing for future world-states that seemed possible at the time but were not actually reached, in hindsight).

[-]mako yass1y40

Actually, in my father's day, there was this one infamous landlord who people used to point at. Who was it, Claude? "Peter Rachman" yes that was it. People used to talk about "Rachmanism" which apparently just meant "being a cruel and unscrupulous landlord", but which could probably be expanded to encompass home owner associations organizing to lobby against zoning reform if efforts were made, because when people hear ism they expect to see a civic ideology.

Unfortunately one of his most prominent sins was excessive subdivision, so he wasn't exactly a nimby.

And also, yeah, in reality — for instance in New Zealand which has it especially bad, where substantially more than half of the families in the country own land — land investment is just a popular way of keeping savings. The last Labour government felt a need to promise, despite confessing the will, not to touch it.

[-]Dagon1y30

I mean, yes. Real Estate is about the only perpetual bond still available to buy. Current owners stand to lose their entire investment (in the land portion, at least, but also in the improvements because they can't be separated and bankrupt is bankrupt). Those who hope to invest in real-estate lose their dream, which is a surprisingly powerful factor in public sentiment.

The key seems to be (like other communist nationalizations) painting ALL landowners as the bad guys. Or trying to convince people that "only the big guys" will be impacted, but that's so transparently a lie that it probably doesn't fly anymore.

[-]Jackson Wagner1y70

Socialism / communism is about equally abstract as Georgism, and it certainly inspired a lot of people to fight! Similarly, Republican campaigns to lower corporate tax rates, cut regulations, reduce entitlement spending, etc, are pretty abstract (and often actively unpopular when people do understand them!), but have achieved some notable victories over the years. Georgism is similar to YIMBYism, which has lots of victories these days, even though YIMBYism also suffers from being more abstract than conspiracy theories with obvious villains about people "hoarding" vacant housing or chinese investors bidding up prices or whatever. Finally, Georgism itself was extremely popular once, so it clearly has the potential!! Overall, I don't think being abstract is fatal for a mass movement.

But I also don't think that we need to have some kind of epic Georgist popular revolution in order to get Georgist policies -- we can do it just by making small incremental technocratic reforms to local property tax laws -- getting local governments to use tools like ValueBase (developed by Georgist Lars Doucet) to do their property value assessments, getting reforms in a few places and then hopefully seeing success and pointing to that success to build more momentum elsewhere, etc.

As Lars Doucet tells it, the main problem with historical Georgism wasn't unpopularity (it was extremely popular then!), but just the technical infeasibility of assessing land value separate from the value of the buildings on the land. But nowadays we have machine learning tools, GIS mapping systems, satellite imagery, successful home-value-estimation companies like Zillow and Redfin, etc. So nowadays we can finally implement Georgism on a technical level, which wasn't possible in the 1890s. For more on this, see the final part of Lars's epic series of georgism posts on Astral Codex Ten: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-georgism-work-part-3-can-unimproved?utm_source=url

[-]mako yass1y40

Maybe "abstract" was the wrong word. Communism and minarchy both have very simple visceral moral impulses supporting them. Fairness/equality vs liberty/choice. It's possible to get a person into a state where they feel one pole so intensely that they will be willing to fight against someone fighting earnestly for the other pole (right? But I'm not sure there's actually been a civil war between communists and minarchists, it's usually been communists vs monarchists/nationalists)

For grey civics, I don't know what the unifying principle is. Commitment to growth? Progress? Hey, maybe that's it. I've been considering the slogan "defending zoning isn't compatible with calling yourself a progressive. If you believe in urban zoning you don't believe in progress."

Progress seems to require meritocracy, rewarding work in proportion to its subjective EV or capricious outcomes, distributing rewards unevenly, and progress comes with a duty to future generations that minarchists might not like very much, but at least in tech, people seem alright with that.

On the left, the tension mostly comes out of earnest disbelief, it's not intuitive that progress is real. For most of our evolutionary history it wasn't real, and today it happens only on the scale of years, and its every step is unprecedented.

But how would we resolve the tension with humanism. I guess e/acc is the faction within the grey tribe who don't try to resolve that tension, they lean into it, they either explicitly reject the duty to defend the preferences of present humanity against those aspects of progress that threaten it, or they find reasons to downplay the immanence of those threats. The other faction has to sit and listen while Hanson warns them about the inevitability of absolute cultural drift, and I don't think we know what to say to that.

[-]mako yass1y20

Okay I've thought of a class of slogans for georgism. Something about land not really belonging to anyone because no one created it, about land and space and radio spectrum and the realm of ideas being the shared heritage of all of humanity because drawing lines around it and declaring it to belong to whoever got there first is arbitrary and silly and as we know in so many cases economically dysfunctional.

These principles are a bit idealistic, but it seems almost required for a political slogan to overreach its realpolitik basis somewhat, if all we said "supply can't be increased, so price signals are less important" or whatever, few would be moved to revolt.

[-]Dagon1y60

One aspect I’ve never understood - if something is taxed at 100% of value, how is it different from the much simpler model of government ownership? What does it mean to “own” land if you don’t get any of the income/value it generates? Why would anyone ever invest in land?

If it’s taxed on theoretical maximum value, even worse. Now it’s a liability, not an asset - you can lose money if you can’t actually use it as well as the tax authority says you should, but making more rent than you’re taxed on is evidence that the valuation should go up.

(This is entirely separate from all the practical measurement, calculation, and separation of land and improvement valuation. And separate from the political issues of evicting grandma. I’m really missing something about what ownership even means in the 100% tax case).

[-]waterlubber1y100

I believe the intention in Georgism is to levy a tax that eliminates appreciation in the value of the land. This is effectively the same as renting the land from the government. You are correct in that it would prevent people from investing in land -- investment in land is purely rent-seeking behavior, and benefits no one; building improvements on land (eg mines, factories, apartment complexes) that generate value, however, does.

[-]Dagon1y40

Thanks. Is there any argument that its popularity is any different from communism (in theory) popularity? “Government will make better resource decisions than profit-motivated private entities”.

Has any modern proponent tried to analyze the path from here to there (how to compensate current landowners for the taking) or what the new equilibrium is like (how to operate in a world where the government owns all the land, and people/private orgs own the improvements)?

[-]Zero Contradictions1y51

Yes, in my Georgism FAQs, I've partially explained how Georgists have very different goals and motives from Communists.

We should also note that the government wouldn't control how titleholders are using their land, as long as they are using it efficiently enough to pay the land value tax.

No practical Georgist would say that we should start taxing land at 100% of its value overnight. Any conversion over to a Georgist taxation system would have to be a gradual process, taking at least 30 years in order to give everybody enough time to re-adjust their personal finances, especially for the people who are relying on land speculation as part of their retirement portfolio. But once society is through that, the economy will be better off than it was before the transition and it should be smooth cruising from there on out.

There is a different Georgism FAQs that is more comprehensive than the one that I've written (KAALVTN). It might help explain what the new economic equilibrium will be like. It's a pretty big topic to breakdown, and answering it depends on how detailed you want the explanation to be.

[-]Dagon1y30

No practical Georgist would say that we should start taxing land at 100% of its value overnight. Any conversion over to a Georgist taxation system would have to be a gradual process, taking at least 30 years in order to give everybody enough time to re-adjust their personal finances,

It's comments like this that really confuse me about why anyone I respect is even talking about this. I just can't take it seriously. In the current system where some land is privately owned, and can be inherited as part of an estate, 30 years is nowhere near sufficient for this transition to go without significant impact. Probably off by a factor of 3 or more. And even THEN, there will be a threshold effect somewhere (my guess is in the 20-30% of assessed land-only rent, but it will depend on details), where people actually understand what's going on and revolt. Without a plan to actually recognize that this is a massive government takeover of currently-private assets, this is just dorm-room dreaming.

[-]Ben1y20

Tax codes change in small ways the whole time without much warning. So the idea of a giant taxation shift taking place over 30 or 40 years doesn't seem ridiculous to me. For historical comparison I found this graph on UK income tax. Income tax was 0% up until 1909. Then it increased to over 90% in the next 32 years. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UK_top_income_tax_and_inequality.png
yes, the world wars obviously had a lot to do with it. But if it had instead gone from 0% to 25% that would still have been a huge shift.

The world can change fast, and all changes have winners and loosers, so I am not sure this is the right place to attack Georgism.

[-]Zero Contradictions5mo10

It's also possible to achieve nationalization of land while compensating current landowners. Under Silvio Gesell's proposal, public ownership of land should be accomplished by making the government purchase all land from current landowners through a massive amount of government land bonds, which would be paid over in 20 years by leasing the land through a system of competitive bidding for leases. This would achieve many of the intended effects of Georgism.

I've written more about this topic here: https://zerocontradictions.net/civilization/georgism-crash-course#freiland

[-]Zero Contradictions1y10

I wrote at least 30 years. 30 years may not be enough to have a smooth transition. A transition will probably also take less time if it occurs right after a real estate bubble pops.

Nobody is denying that a transition may have some economic losers, but the same is true of any political system that you choose. Plenty of people said the same thing when all the slaves in the United States were emancipated, which resulted in the largest property loss in US history. It obviously sucked for the slave owners to lose trillions of dollars worth of property, but I don't think anyone today would argue that that was a bad political move, even though it had significant consequences at the time.

Some people may not like the transition, but the whole point of the transition is to achieve a more stable and more efficient economic system, in the long run. Even if the transition period is somewhat turbulent, I'd argue that that's still better than having to deal with a real estate boom and bust every ~18 years (on average). People might criticize the transition, but the criticisms would have more weight if they apply to the Georgist system after the transition. That would be more productive because if anyone can prove that Georgism is not worth switching to, then there’s no point in doing the transition in the first place. If there are no valid arguments against Georgism after the transition, then we need to ask what we can to make the transition go as smoothly as possible.

[-]Dagon1y20

Some people may not like the transition, but the whole point of the transition is to achieve a more stable and more efficient economic system, in the long run. Even if the transition period is somewhat turbulent, I'd argue that that's still better than having to deal with <current problems>

Said every revolutionary ever. Thanks for the conversation, I think I understand our cruxes. I do legitimately fear and disagree with the idea and its supporters, not just misunderstand the purpose or implementation. Bowing out now - I'll continue to read responses, but no more posts, for a while at least.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y*21

I'm not a revolutionary. I'm a reformist. As I've already said, I want a gradual transition to Georgism. That's what I support, and I do not endorse a revolutionary transition to Georgism.

The transition to Georgism doesn't have to be a revolution. The abolition of slavery in the US wasn't really a revolution either. Slavery was gradually outlawed in the northern states, and then it eventually got outlawed nationwide. Yes, it was a radical social change, but everybody today agrees that it was the right thing to do. Abolishing slavery lead to a wealthier and more prosperous society.

Since we arguing within the context of creating an ideal society, pointing out that Georgism could financially hurt landowners is not an argument against Georgism if Georgism would create a better society as a whole. It's as good of an argument as saying "the slaveowners will lose a lot of property if we abolish slavery, therefore we shouldn't outlaw slavery". A successful society is supposed to benefit the collective. Rent-seeking doesn't generate any wealth, nor does it provide any value for society.

Although you don't want to respond anymore, I believe that many of your remaining questions can answered by the KAALVTN essay collection.

[-]ryan_b1y30

“Government will make better resource decisions than profit-motivated private entities”

I think you landed on the crux of it - under the Georgist model, individuals (or firms) still make the decisions about what to do with the resources. What the government does is set a singular huge incentive, strongly in the direction of "add value to the land."

I don't have an answer to this question, but I would register a prediction:

Georgism believers < communism believers
Georgism popularity > communism popularity

The latter is mostly because there are a bunch of people who really hate communism and will prefer almost literally anything else in a survey.

[-]Dagon1y00

Georgist model, individuals (or firms) still make the decisions about what to do with the resources.

Kind of. They can only make decisions that generate enough income to pay the taxes, which are calculated as the theoretical value (maximum rent attainable by any use), not the actual choice.

[-]ryan_b1y20

That isn't how the taxes are assessed, as a practical matter. The value of the land and the value of buildings are assessed, mostly using market data, and then the applied tax is the ratio of the land value to the property value, so for example in an apartment building that fraction is taxed out of the rent payments, and when a property is sold that fraction is taxed from the sale price.

I do notice that we don't have any recent examples of the realistically-full land tax interacting with individual home ownership; everywhere we see it is treated the same as a regular property tax. While it seems reasonable to me that non-income-producing properties should not require regular payments and instead only be taxed at point of sale, this is an adaptation rather than a strict application of the theory.

They can only make decisions that generate enough income to pay the taxes

Out of curiosity, how is this different from current property taxes, or from mortgages for that matter?

[-]Dagon1y30

They can only make decisions that generate enough income to pay the taxes
Out of curiosity, how is this different from current property taxes, or from mortgages for that matter?

Most of my objection (and confusion that it gets handwaved away so often) is NOT that the unimproved theoretical value of land could be taxed. It seems complex and unnecessary, but that's not a unique problem with tax proposals.

My objection is to the core of the proposal that it's taxed at extremely high levels, based on theoretical calculations rather than actual use value.

I have plenty of other concerns (like how it ACTUALLY works, for improved properties - do we split all deeds in two, one for the land and one for the improvements, and allow people to sell them separately? How does that work?), but they weren't the crux of THIS discussion, and I suspect the answer is just "no - this is just regular property taxes, just calculated differently (and much higher), we still take the improvements if the tax is unpaid".

[-]ryan_b1y30

My objection is to the core of the proposal that it's taxed at extremely high levels, based on theoretical calculations rather than actual use value.

I'm a little confused by what the theoretical calculations are in your description. The way I understand it - which is scarcely authoritative but does not confuse me - is that we have several steps:

Theory: a lot of the value of a piece of property is not because of work done by the owner, but instead because of other people being nearby.
Theory: this is bad. We should remove all the value provided by other people who aren't the owner.
Practical: we need to calculate what fraction of the value is provided just by other people.
Practical: we tax that fraction of the price, and of the income from the property.
Practical: we adjust the fraction to allow for measurement errors or whatever other consideration.

So my understanding is there are no calculations until you get to the practical considerations of applying the tax.

Your suspected answer is how current implementations of the system work, but they are also regular property taxes in the sense of being a very tiny fraction of the value which means the payments are manageable under normal circumstances, and don't take aim at eliminating the economic rent.

Just scaling up property taxes the way they work now with the new values would be an epically bad move, in the same vein as the taxing unrealized capital gains at a high rate is.

The way I understand it, once we agree the focus is on the economic rent problem, we shift to taxing the sale price and the income from the property because these are how economic rents are captured, rather than an impossibly high annual payment. A homeowner doesn't capture economic rent just by living on the property, as I see it.

So for myself I would not vote for a measure that just scaled up property taxes, but would vote for one that did the sale/revenue taxation.

[-]Dagon1y20

[I have bad self-control, so my statements that I'm bowing out of this don't seem to have stuck. Apologies.]

3. Practical: we need to calculate what fraction of the value is provided just by other people.
4. Practical: we tax that fraction of the price, and of the income from the property.

The theoretical calculation problem is in what you call "practical". There's no actual price signal or ground truth for that portion of the value. The use of the property combines land and improvement values in a way that's idiosyncratic and inseparable. That calculation is going to be made up, and wildly inaccurate and unsupportable even in the ideal world where it's not politically adjusted.

I'm not sure how to interpret

Your suspected answer is how current implementations of the system work, but

I know that. I don't know how the proposal differs from "run it the same way, just with higher values framed as land-value tax". If the amounts are low, it's workable. If the amounts are high, it's not. I don't know if the proposal is to somehow separate the ownership of land and improvements, or if there's something else that makes it practically different from "much higher normal property taxes". If it's NOT just using a land-value justification to raise the dollar amounts greatly, please educate me.

[-]ryan_b1y40

I acknowledge the bow-out intention, and I'll just answer what look like the cruxy bits and then leave it.

There's no actual price signal or ground truth for that portion of the value.

Fortunately we have solved this problem! Slightly simplified: what a vacant lot sells for is the land value, and how much more a developed lot next to it sells for is the value of the improvements. Using the prices from properties recently sold is how they usually calculate this.

If it's NOT just using a land-value justification to raise the dollar amounts greatly, please educate me.

Let the record reflect that I totally expect someone to do this. But as for doing it in a non-insane fashion, we take what used to be a property tax and turn it into a sales tax, which is levied on sales of property.

There's a good guest blog post over at AstralCodexTen which digs into the value assessment problem which I think you would like. That whole series of guest blog posts was fascinating.

And with that, we'll call it!

[-]Dagon1y40

Take what used to be a property tax and turn it into a sales tax, which is levied on sales of property.

This would alleviate a lot of my concerns. Sales taxes (on actual sales, as long as it's not imputed or assumed-sale where no money is actually changing hands) have a ton of advantages, not least of which is that the money is ALWAYS there to pay the taxes. I suspect it won't satisfy the Georgists, though, as it doesn't capture appreciation in value if there's no sale for decades or longer. Maybe - it does remove the incentive for empty-land speculation.

[-]Gunnar_Zarncke1y51

Nobody is intending to tax land at 100%. I heard most proposals target 80%. Partly because of your reason, I guess, but more because of measurement errors.

[-]mako yass1y40

but more because of measurement errors

I sometimes think of growing private wealth as the fee that a democracy must pay for the services of the techne that it cannot expropriate.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y*10

Georgism is different from government ownership because Georgists still support private possession of land, while opposing private ownership of land. Private possession is necessary to solve the Tragedy of the Commons, and it's also necessarily to incentivize the titleholders to use their land effectively. Georgists also believe that titleholders should own all of the improvements that they make to their land. The land value tax only applies to the unimproved value of land.

If a titleholder loses his/her land because he/she can't use the land effectively enough to pay the land value tax, then that's actually a good thing. Confiscating land from people who are using it unproductively is necessarily in order to ensure that all land is being used to its maximum efficiency and increase economic wealth. That's a feature, not a bug.

I can answer your other questions if you want me to.

[-]mako yass1y6-3

I'm not sure that cleaving a distinction between the meanings of "possession" and "ownership" is a winnable battle.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y61

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I was just trying to describe how Georgism controls land rights. Ownership and possession both have very different definitions in most legal systems.

[-]Brandon Blakeley2mo30

The distinction between "possession" and "ownership" is just "renting" or "borrowing". Virtually everyone has rented or borrowed something before -- an apartment, a car, a pencil from their schoolmate. I don't see why cleaving this distinction would not be a "winnable battle" given that everyone has first-hand understanding of it.

[-]Logan Zoellner1y3-1

If your view is "it will take at least 30 years to transition to Georgism because otherwise we screw over most people who have >50% of their net worth invested in their homes", then why bother? Most likely we'll have humans living on Mars or in O'Neill cylinders 30 years from now, in which case the fundamental Georgist argument of "you can't make more land" isn't true.

It seems like you can get 90% of the benefit of Georgism just by going full YIMBY and you don't have to wait 30 years to do it.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y*00

If you think that "humans will be living on Mars and O'Neill cylinders 30 years from now", then you probably haven't tried to calculate whether that's actually economically feasible and whether it's practical to get to Mars and live there:

The Square/Cube Law makes it very difficult to build megastructures like space elevators, orbital rings, etc.
12km is the maximum length that a steel cable can support its own mass at Earth surface gravity. If it is any longer, it will snap under its own weight.
O'Neill Cylinders will never be economically feasible to build. If we built an O'Neill Cylinder that's 10km long and 6.4 km in diameter, with a 1m thick hull, then it would weigh 3 trillion kg (2 trillion kg of steel, with 1 trillion kg of material).
Putting 1 kg into LEO varies between $50,000 and $1,500. The lowest cost being the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX, but with only 3 completed launches, this is a somewhat optimistic estimate.
So, if we assume a cost of $1000/kg, then putting a 3 trillion kg cylinder into LEO would cost $3 quadrillion ($3,000,000,000,000,000), and that's only for one cylinder.
For comparison, the world's nominal GDP is less than 100 trillion dollars.

And that's only the cost to put an O'Neil Cylinder in Low-Earth Orbit. If we had to send an O'Neil Cylinder to Mars (or something that's comparable for sustaining human life), then the costs for space travel get exponentially worse than that due to the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation.

For more information, I recommend reading Futurist Fantasies by T. K. Van Allen. The book packs an impressive amount of information into just 100 pages.

in which case the fundamental Georgist argument of "you can't make more land" isn't true.

It is true. You can't make more land. Humans still must obey the laws of physics, whether we like it or not. Both the Moon and Mars are absolutely horrible places for any human to live, so humanity has nothing to gain from trying to live outside the Earth.

Now, I already showed my calculations for why I believe it's far too expensive to try that. I didn't even go over all the physical challenges that would make it virtually impossible. My judgment is that space colonization won't be possible for several decades, possibly longer, and probably never. It will probably take many people and many LessWrongers a while to reach similar conclusions.

In the 1960s, people thought that Humanity would've achieved the technological advancements in 2001: A Space Odyssey two decades ago, and that still hasn't happen by now. People need to recognize that technological process has clearly slowed down, and we've nearly reached its limits.

Another misconception that's worth clarifying is that the value of land matters more than the supply of land. There's obvious reasons why lots in Manhattan are worth more than acres in the Sahara Desert.

It seems like you can get 90% of the benefit of Georgism just by going full YIMBY and you don't have to wait 30 years to do it.

No, that's a huge oversimplification, and it's much more complicated than that. Any society would have to wait at least a few decades to transition to Georgism, but then the benefits will become progressive and compounding. I recommend reading Georgism Crash Course for a concise introduction.

If it will take at least 30 years to transition to Georgism because otherwise we screw over most people who have >50% of their net worth invested in their homes, then why bother?

Because we live in reality, not a sci-fi fantasy world where humans are invincible.

Even if humans could live on Mars, why would anyone want to live on Mars when you can live on Earth instead? Even Antarctica is a thousand times better than Mars. I will never understand why people fantasize about colonizing Mars when humans haven't even colonized Antarctica.

[-]Mo Putera9mo30

The Square/Cube Law makes it physically impossible to build megastructures like space elevators, mass drivers, orbital rings, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law

This was a surprisingly ignorant comment by T. K. Van Allen, given that O'Neill was a physicist and included all his calculations. I suspect Van Allen never actually read the 'Steel structure' math in O'Neill's essay The Colonization of Space. The rest of Van Allen's bullet points also seem ignorant of O'Neill's calculations further down in the essay. I don't disagree with the bottomline that the cost is prohibitive, I just wished Van Allen engaged with O'Neill's math.

[-]Zero Contradictions9mo10

Was there anything in particular that you specifically disagree with Van Allen on, either in my summary or the first (free) chapter of his book? I shared the link that you sent me with him on Discord, and he told me that he's seen it before. He also said that the link that you sent still doesn't specify the structure in enough detail, as far as he can see, and that it doesn't really matter.

Like, I noticed that O'Neill proposed: 1. retrieving the cylinder materials from the Moon and 2. setting up either a Rotary Pellet Launcher or a Transport Linear Accelerator for retrieving materials from the Moon to make the construction cheaper. I agree that he didn't address this possibility in the book, but I don't fully understand your criticism regarding the steel structure math.

You might be more knowledgeable on this topic than I am, so I'm also wondering if you know of any sources where O'Neill gave a more specific description of what he was thinking about? For example, I'm trying to figure out what O'Neill proposed for the thickness of the original cylinder hull. I can't find it on Wikipedia or in the link that you sent me, and I think this is a huge deal because the exact dimension of the hull thickness can greatly change the amount of materials that are required for building the cylinder.

[-]Zero Contradictions9mo*10

The square/cube isn't really relevant to the O'Neill cylinder itself, but it is relevant when considering what kinds of space infrastructure could be created to launch the cylinder or its components into space. I agree with the reasoning that he stated in the book regarding this topic.

I think he's right about the maximum length of steel cables at Earth surface gravity. Granted, space would have much weaker gravity, so assembling an O'Neil cylinder in space and having it never land on any planets could make this a non-issue.

Also, the bullet points are my attempt to summarize what he wrote. They're not what he actually wrote. But the first chapter of Van Allen's book is free to read on Amazon as a sample if you'd like, and it includes everything that I was trying to summarize.

Anyway, thank you for sharing the link.

[-]Ape in the coat1y39

Educating people about Biological Realism. In my personal experience, when people fully understand population dynamics, they tend to be more supportive of Georgism. This is because there is a surprisingly coherent and interesting Connection between Georgism and Population Control, since both concepts aim to conserve resources and deal with natural resources that exist in fixed supply.

Here you are proposing to take a simple and straightforward idea of Georgism that people from all across the political spectrum can agree on, and explain it through the complexity and controversy of "Biological Realism". This seems to be one of the worst moves possible if you want to get Georgism back into mainstream.

This is the same intellectual sin as with longtermism - explaining a idea using a premise, which is much more convoluted than the idea itself. But also with terrible political implications, alienating a lot of potential supporters.

Feel free to promote Georgism among supporters of "Biological Realism", of course, but I don't think you should frame it as a general strategy for making Georgism more popular, or subscription to BR as a prerequisite for Georgism. Currently there is a lot of common ground with people all across the political spectrum and we should use all of it.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y10

Here you are proposing to take a simple and straightforward idea of Georgism that people from all across the political spectrum can agree on, and explain it through the complexity and controversy of "Biological Realism".

That's not what I said. My point was that understanding population dynamics makes people more likely to support Georgism, and that population dynamics is part of biological realism. Even if people deny biology, promoting biological realism is still good for our society, for other reasons. I'd even say that understanding population dynamics is more important than implementing Georgism.

I'm aware that associating Georgism with Biological Realism might damage some of Georgism's appeal, but that's a Guilt by Association Fallacy, so I'm not concerned with it. People need to learn to recognize and understand fallacies.

[-]Ape in the coat1y10

That's not what I said.

You literally put "Educating people about biological realizm" in the "Ideas For Re-Popularizing Georgism". What else can you mean by this strategy if not spreading the ideas of BR and then build upon them to spread the ideas of Georgism?

My point was that understanding population dynamics makes people more likely to support Georgism, and that population dynamics is part of biological realism.

It's at least not obvious, considering that you seen to disagree with George himself about population dynamics. But regardless of whether the objective point is true or not, there are a lot of different things that make people support Georgism - it has intersections with all kind of views across the political spectrum. However, instead of making a general point to take advantage of this versatility, and sell Georgism to different groups of people appealing to different talking points which this particular group would be more likely to be influenced by, you specifically talk about a niche view such as BR.

Even if people deny biology, promoting biological realism is still good for our society, for other reasons. I'd even say that understanding population dynamics is more important than implementing Georgism.

So this seems to be the actual reason why you single out BR like this. Not because it's actually going to make Georgism more popular, but because you like both of them, you see their connections and you want to spread both of their memes.

Again, there is nothing wrong in wanting to spread multiple memplexes at once, the problem is when you delude yourself and others into thinking that spreading one is a great strategy of spreading the other.

I'm aware that associating Georgism with Biological Realism might damage some of Georgism's appeal, but that's a Guilt by Association Fallacy, so I'm not concerned with it.People need to learn to recognize and understand fallacies.

I absolutely sympatize with the last sentence. But whether something is a fallacy or not is irrelevant when we are specifically talking about popularity. Without public appeal Georgism is not going to be popular. And if the public is vulnerable to fallacies, then we should be concerned with them.

If you think BR is so important that burning reputation of Georgism to promote BR is worth it, then please frame it like that instead of misleading people that promoting BR is net good for popularity of Georgism.

[-]Zero Contradictions1y10

Population Dynamics are still part of Biological Realism, so what I wrote isn't quite wrong, but I've edited the page to clarify what I meant.

It's at least not obvious, considering that you seen to disagree with George himself about population dynamics.

Have you seen my webpage explaining it? I'm not convinced that George understood population dynamics at all.

There are a lot of different things that make people support Georgism - it has intersections with all kind of views across the political spectrum.

I'm aware of this. I've written about it too.

Not because it's actually going to make Georgism more popular

I still insist that understanding population dynamics would make Georgism more popular. That's the point of what I wrote. You're just fixating, extrapolating, and nitpicking on a single phrase, which I have now removed from the page, since I want the emphasis in that bullet point to focus on the connection between Georgism, population dynamics, and resource conservation.

The problem is when you delude yourself and others into thinking that spreading one is a great strategy of spreading the other.

I'm not deluding myself. I firmly believe that accurately understanding population dynamics would make Georgism more popular. Are you disagreeing with that?

[-]npostavs1y12

Worsening housing and rent problems in California, Canada, major metropolitan areas, Japan, China, and other places that are facing housing shortages could ignite support for Georgism.

Do Japan and China have housing shortages? I thought Japan was the canonical "zoning done right" example. And doesn't China have some sort of over-supply sitatution due to government subsidies?

[-]Zero Contradictions1y40

That depends on what you consider to be a "housing shortage". The cost of rent is a major reason why birth rates remain low in China, Japan, and other countries. One of the reasons why capsule hotels are popular in Japan is because rent is so expensive.

[-]mako yass1y20

Afaik rent in japan is low on a global stage, and is only high relative to japanese wages?

OTOH, japanese rent shouldn't be high relative to japanese wages (unless there are a whole lot of foreigners doing remote work or something) so I guess you could still say that the rent is too high.

[-]jmh1y20

While I've not actually seen this argument, I suspect one answer to the decline in popularity of Georgism might be found in the Coase Therom. Government taxing all land rends is merely a transfer of ownership and results in the known transfer aspect of the assignment of property rights in Coase's example. But the allocative impact of that assignment is supposed to be zero, resources still get allocated to the highest valued use. As such, I would wonder if market prices (i.e., rental prices for a place to live) would actually change or that somehow more of the assumed withheld land actually comes to market.

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