Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high

... over the last century, we've had this huge conflict, all the oxygen's been sucked up by capitalism and socialism duking it out. We have this assumption that you either have to be pro-worker or pro-business, that you can't be both. I have noticed a lot of crypto people get into Georgism, not the least of which is Vitalik Buterin-

Yes.

... who endorsed my book. If you earn a hundred thousand dollars in San Francisco as a family of four, you are below the poverty line. Let's start with just taxing the things nobody has made and that people are gatekeeping access to. Let's tax, essentially, monopolies and rent-seeking. The income tax needs to do this full anal probe on everyone in the country, and then audits the poor at a higher rate than the rich, and it's just this horrible burden we have.

Okay. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Lars Dousset who developed the highly acclaimed, uh, Defender's Quest game, and part two is coming out next year. But, uh, now he's working on a new startup. But the reason we're talking is that he wrote a review of Henry George's Progress and Poverty that won Scott Alexander's book review contest. And now, it has been turned into, and expanded into this book, Land is a Big Deal. So, Lars, welcome to the podcast.

Great to be here, Dwarkesh.

Okay, so let's just get int- into it. What is Georgism?

Okay, so the book is based off of the philosophy of a, um, 19th century American economist by the name of Henry George, from whence we get Georgism. And basically, George's thesis is kind of the title of my book, that land is a big deal. Um, Georgism is often reduced to its main policy prescription, that, um, we should have a land value tax, which is a tax on the unimproved value of land, but not, um, a tax on any buildings or infrastructure on top of the land, anything humans add. Um, but the basic insight of it is that, um, it's, it's kind of reflected in the aphorisms you hear from real estate agents when they say things like, "The three laws of real estate are location, location, location," and, "Buy land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of." It's basically this insight that, um, land has this hidden role in the economy that is really underrated, but if you look at history through the right lens, um, control over land is the oldest struggle of human history. It goes b- beyond human history. Animals have been fighting over land forever. Um, that's what they're fighting over in Ukraine and Russia right now, right? And, um, basically, the fundamental insight of Georgism is that over the last century, we've had this huge conflict, all the oxygen's been sucked up by capitalism and socialism duking it out. We have this assumption that you either have to be pro-worker or pro-business, that you can't be both. And Georgism is genuinely pro- pro-worker and pro-business. Um, but what it's against is, is, is land speculation. And if we can find a way to share the earth, then we can solve the paradox that is the title of George's book, Progress and Poverty. Why does poverty advance even when progress advances? Why do we have all this industrialized technology and new methods and, you know, in George's time, it was industrial technology, in our time it's computers and everything else. We have all this good stuff, we can make more than we've ever made before, there's enough wealth for everybody, and yet we still have inequality. Where does it come from? And George answers that question in his book, and I, you know, expand on it in mine.