Geolibertarian Ideology
Limits Political Progress

Mark Monson

[Reprinted from a Land-Cafe discussion group, 19 February, 2007]

US Georgist organizations are dominated by Geo-libertarianism. This offshoot of libertarianism is limiting the Georgist movement. Because they abhor the use of national government in solving problems libertarians will never achieve full implementation of LVT.

Libertarians say you can't trust government; that every time the government gets involved, things get fouled up. Better to do things at the local level where small groups have the most power.

But the power of local government is too limited. The local government can't fix the money system or cancel debts. The power opposed to LVT is the money power, not just the land owning power. The money power is organized, coordinated and operates at the national level and the international level where national governments agree to binding contracts which thereafter give up democratic control. Against these forces local governments can do precious little.

It is true that the local level is where all Georgist progress has hitherto been made. Geolibs say building on that progress will hit critical mass and sweep the nation for LVT.

But local LVT efforts have a serious problem. Local LVT progress tends to hit a wall beyond which further gains are impossible. Look at what the opponents of LVT are doing lately. They call it property tax reform. The media, politicians, and think tanks are all singing the same song: limit, rollback or eliminate the property tax. Where are the Georgists defending existing land taxes as locality after locality are overrun by anti-property tax forces? Property tax opponents hit at the state level and set limits on property taxes. They aren't bound by ideology that says only work at the local level. They immediately go to the state level and cut off our legs. They have an organized propaganda machine which Georgists can counter only weakly. This is because Georgist organizations shy away from state or national politics. They rarely try to explain to average citizens the benefits of land taxes. Geolibs instead prefer to sneak in the back door of City Hall and whisper "LVT" in the mayor's ear.

Geolibs say that if we were to abandon local initiatives and concentrate our extremely modest resources at general education, lobbying, national movements we would accomplish less than nothing. We would hasten to lose what gains we have made at the local level. Our political supporters would be smoked out and personally attacked for helping us, they say.

Geolibs advocate the stealth approach. They say that the accomplished benefit is much easier to defend than the theoretical benefit. The best course is small increases in land tax with time for adjustment between. They say the mass of citizenry in a democracy is a fickle thing. People are motivated by fear of loss rather than hope of gain. Telling them they must give up something good in hope of something better is selling them a risky investment - something the great mass of folks aren't interested in. They are conservative about what they perceive as their property. Threaten their property and lose their support. Shift taxes from one thing to another so their total taxes don't go up and they may go along. But here again they must be led slowly. They must feel the real benefits at each stage before they will take another tenuous step.

Agreed that the average citizen is motivated by fear. Well then perhaps the first order of business is to relieve their security fears of unaffordable health care, bankruptcy, homelessness, nothing for their children's college, indigent retirement, hunger, humiliation, and charity. And how about explaining to them that government entitled health care, retirement, and college can promote a healthy private productive sector. A properly funded social service state is not necessarily destructive to private production of goods and services. We can have risk reducing services by government, high taxes and still high take home pay and a prosperous private sector. We must expose the false choice between high taxes and a healthy economy. If government supplies good pensions and health care, employers won't have to. If easy to collect LVT replaces income and sales taxes, businesses will have less not more trouble with taxes. But these kind of reforms must happen at the national level.

There is a power struggle of the common good against the special interest. The most powerful special interests have made common cause against the people. They control the mainstream media, the universities, the entertainment industry, think tanks, and international organizations, among others. They do this for money, money that is basically reinvested in more schemes for fleecing workers. Make no mistake. There is no room for gradual, sneaky reform in this struggle. In order to liberate the people, the money power must be destroyed. This means the value of speculation money must be destroyed. Victory over the money power must come from a total political power change.

The great accumulations of money must be destroyed and the way to do that is not confiscation, but by destroying the selling price of land through LVT. The repercussions of full LVT will be felt throughout the rentier economy. Fortunes on paper that do not represent real labor will be deleted by a chain reaction that will ruin money fortunes but leave physical wealth intact. This is the key to permanent reform. The opportunities to scam up other people's labor will be gone.

The only game in town will be producing for a living. Let the rich keep their physical wealth. Their paper fortunes will be rendered worthless and gone will be the power of the monied class to bribe, hire, and direct coercive force.