Those of you who read my old blog are probably aware that I was Georgist for many years. I now identify as an anarchist. I'm sure some of you out there might be confused about this, so allow me to explain how I got here.
In a sense, it wasn't as big a transformation as it might have seemed. I remember about eight years ago, when I was going through a right-libertarian phase, I nonetheless said that I was an anarchist at heart. I just didn't have the practical or theoretical knowledge to understand how anarchy might work. I always had anti-authoritarian instincts, but it took me a long time to rid myself of the notion that there needs to be hierarchy in order for any kind of organization to take place. I also had also always had a sense of compassion and even duty to those less fortunate than myself, and the conflict between this and my anti-authoritarianism made both liberalism and right-libertarianism uncomfortable fits. I became a right-libertarian out of shame. In order to justify the welfare programs I was defending, I had to justify the state's power to coerce individuals into giving up money that they earned(or so I thought -- I did not yet understand the concept of rent and interest).
When I discovered the work of Henry George, it was a breath of fresh air for me. The state taking money that people had earned from their own labor was theft, but taking unearned income in the form of land rents and rendering them to the commons seemed more than fair. The fact that doing so would not only fund government, but also reduce the need for government by reducing inequality and thereby eliminating the need for a welfare system appealed to my anti-authoritarian side. Georgism helped teach me about the difference between charity and justice. It also compelled me to learn about economics. While I never pursued a degree in the subject(I was never much of a math person anyway), I read vociferously about economics, particularly heterodox economics, as I had become sickeningly disillusioned by the neoclassical synthesis. As I read about things like Modern Monetary Theory, Silvio Gesell's theory of interest, John Maynard Keynes' prediction of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and so much more, I developed my understanding of Georgism to a level where I found very few Georgists had anything to teach me. I was taking it into new territory. I worked out how land value taxation would not only take the "free lunch" of rent out of the hands of speculators, but would also eliminate artificial scarcities of capital and thereby cause interest to fall to zero as well(I didn't realize it yet, but I had inadvertently stumbled upon Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall). This would mean the end of wage labor, and a new economy based on worker ownership. Suddenly, I found myself in a quasi-socialist position.
In a sense, it wasn't as big a transformation as it might have seemed. I remember about eight years ago, when I was going through a right-libertarian phase, I nonetheless said that I was an anarchist at heart. I just didn't have the practical or theoretical knowledge to understand how anarchy might work. I always had anti-authoritarian instincts, but it took me a long time to rid myself of the notion that there needs to be hierarchy in order for any kind of organization to take place. I also had also always had a sense of compassion and even duty to those less fortunate than myself, and the conflict between this and my anti-authoritarianism made both liberalism and right-libertarianism uncomfortable fits. I became a right-libertarian out of shame. In order to justify the welfare programs I was defending, I had to justify the state's power to coerce individuals into giving up money that they earned(or so I thought -- I did not yet understand the concept of rent and interest).
When I discovered the work of Henry George, it was a breath of fresh air for me. The state taking money that people had earned from their own labor was theft, but taking unearned income in the form of land rents and rendering them to the commons seemed more than fair. The fact that doing so would not only fund government, but also reduce the need for government by reducing inequality and thereby eliminating the need for a welfare system appealed to my anti-authoritarian side. Georgism helped teach me about the difference between charity and justice. It also compelled me to learn about economics. While I never pursued a degree in the subject(I was never much of a math person anyway), I read vociferously about economics, particularly heterodox economics, as I had become sickeningly disillusioned by the neoclassical synthesis. As I read about things like Modern Monetary Theory, Silvio Gesell's theory of interest, John Maynard Keynes' prediction of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and so much more, I developed my understanding of Georgism to a level where I found very few Georgists had anything to teach me. I was taking it into new territory. I worked out how land value taxation would not only take the "free lunch" of rent out of the hands of speculators, but would also eliminate artificial scarcities of capital and thereby cause interest to fall to zero as well(I didn't realize it yet, but I had inadvertently stumbled upon Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall). This would mean the end of wage labor, and a new economy based on worker ownership. Suddenly, I found myself in a quasi-socialist position.
