[Lars Doucet won this year’s Book Review Contest with his review of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty. Since then, he’s been researching Georgism in more depth, and wants to follow up with what he’s learned. I’ll be posting three of his Georgism essays here this week, and you can read his other work at Fortress Of Doors]

Hi, my name's Lars Doucet (not Scott Alexander) and this is a guest post in an ongoing series that assesses the empirical basis for the economic philosophy of Georgism.

Part 0 - Book Review: Progress & Poverty
Part I - Is Land Really a Big Deal? 👈 (You are here)
Part II - Can Land Value Tax be Passed on to Tenants?
Part III - Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately from Buildings?

Extremely special thanks to Count Bla and Alexandra Elbakyan

For those of you wondering who this "Lars" guy is, I'm the Astral Codex Ten reader who reviewed Henry George's Progress & Poverty for the book review contest. Henry George is the founder of an economic philosophy known as Georgism which is principally concerned with the deprivations caused by unchecked rentiers. George is famous for promoting two specific policies, the Land Value Tax (LVT) and the Citizen's Dividend (what we would now call a Universal Basic Income).

I was shocked and humbled when this readership selected me as the winner. Even more shocking was how many people from around the world wrote to me about their interest in the article. Family, friends, and acquaintances for sure, but also a lot of total strangers–including business owners, activists, podcasters, online game designers, investors, even government officials from around the world. Scott's blog has way more reach than I realized.

This fills me with a sense of responsibility. If there's a chance people might make policy decisions based on my writing, I need to make sure I haven't been taken in by an argument that's just really persuasive; it had also better be true. What follows therefore is my best attempt at a fair, rigorous, and (where possible) empirical assessment of whether the claims of the Georgist movement stand up to scrutiny.

Let's admit some bias upfront. I'm a Georgist, and I would be happy to find this philosophy true and sad to find it false. But by George, what would make me really sad is to live in a world where Georgism is wrong but where I blissfully continue to believe in it anyway. In t...

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