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Progress and Poverty
progressandpoverty.substack.com · Group blog · on HN since 2022
A Substack on Georgism and land value tax, covering housing, land policy, and property assessment.
What HN saysCommenters recommend it for housing and land policy, linking posts on land banking, land value tax, and Norway's Georgist policies.
25HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
45stories submitted
817story points
3 months agolast shared
2022people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Land and Liberty to Build: On Georgism and YIMBYism4 people · 13 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Singapore: Economic Prosperity Through Innovative Land Policy: A Georgist Succes3 people · 8 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 3The Land Trap by Mike Bird3 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 4No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis3 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Amateurs Talk Algorithms, Professionals Talk Data Cleaning2 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6Mass Appraisal for the Masses: The Basics2 people · 4 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 7California Is Chasing Wealth That Has Feet2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Georgism Through Land Leasing2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 9Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund2 people · 1 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10Land value tax in online games and virtual worlds (2022)1 people · 352 points · first shared 2022 · 410 comments on HN
- 11How Georgists Valued land in the 1900's1 people · 121 points · first shared 2025 · 171 comments on HN
- 12Letter from a Young Distributist: Georgism and Distributism1 people · 85 points · first shared 2022 · 159 comments on HN
- 13Baltimore Assessments Accidentally Subsidize Blight–and How We Can Fix It1 people · 65 points · first shared 2025 · 103 comments on HN
- 14Modeling land value taxes1 people · 58 points · first shared 2025 · 119 comments on HN
- 15Valuing Land: The Simplest Viable Method1 people · 41 points · first shared 2025 · 53 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Brycee · 2023-10-17
This is well worth a read, as is the Progress and Poverty substack if you're curious about the subject.
https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/
geocon · 2022-12-31
Yeah this is the landbanking problem. The solution is something like a land value tax which penalizes this kind of speculation and development-throttling. In fact there was a great article about that I just posted: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-and-the-liberty-to-buil…
larsiusprime · 2022-08-15
I think video games are massively under-studied, particularly in the realm of behavioral Economics.
One of my favorite seminal pieces is Zachary Booth Simpson's paper 1999 paper on the Economics of Ultima Online:
https://mobiledevmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-In-game-Econo…
In my own field, I keep finding more and more instances of MMO's and online virtual worlds that reproduce the real-world housing crisis.
https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-value-tax-in-online-gam…
robocat · 2026-06-30
> housing has been turned into a zero sum game
Not really. Land has always been zero-sum because there is a limited amount to compete for.
And location is status, even in high density developments (status is often seen as zero-sum).
Book review of Bird's The Land Trap that contains nice detail of unobvious monetary implications: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/book-review-the-land-trap-by…
vages · 2023-07-04
Norway had successfully georgist tax policies in place for hydropower for half a century at that point. He was not fighting as much of an uphill battle as he would almost anywhere else:
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/05/17/norway-the-once-and-future-ge…
https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/norways-sovereign-wealth-fun…
(Update: This is not to detract from his achievement, but to harp on the fact that Georgism is one of the most useful, underrated tools in the economic toolboxt)
rcpt · 2023-03-26
"No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis"
https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/no-silver-bullets-to-the-wer…
ItsMonkk · 2022-08-13
A full land value tax has never been tried.
Currently the closest example is Singapore[0], but they have much more central control than what a Georgist would find ideal. 99 year leases are far to long, and shorter leases would have much more beneficial effects.
Detroit was an example of a city that massively expanded[1] because of it, but eventually lost it's way.
Harrison, PA[2] is an example of a city that 'recently' used a revenue neutral split-rate system to keep from going bankrupt.
[0]: https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/singapore-economic-prosperit…
[1]: https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2013/0813clevelandgaffney.htm…
[2]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-p…
iso1631 · 2023-04-23
> landlords will exit the market until equilibrium is restored
Thus a increasing the supply of properties being sold, and thus lowering the price for those who want to buy, allowing more to buy, reducing the demand for places to rent. Win-Win.
With LVT (or higher interest rate on a variable rate mortgage) the parasitical landlord can't simply stop having a tenant, as they're still liable for the costs. They have to offer something more than the intrinsic cost of land they occupy to make it productive enough for someone to pay them.
> LVT also only applies to commodities, of which software isn’t really.
There's a strong argument that copyright (specifically that used to prevent people from using it) would count as "Land" in the economic sense - it drives rentseeking and monopoly behavior - https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/possibility-space-location-r…
An interesting debate, but somewhat offtopipc