u/TheGeorgistCrow

As far as what Ive learned a lot of socialists come from a presumption that the capitalistic behaviour of seeking the most beneficial conditions for themselves on behalf of others and endlessly accumulating wealth is something that vast majority of people wouldnt naturally do and if you just eradicate people that do it and spread ethical system that views it as not okay in any context, then it will naturally sustain itself.

But what if its not true? What if egoistic behaviour is actually most natural and we just seek good feelings whether they might come from empathy or whether they might from time to time be overbeaten by accumulation of wealth and benefits. I especially see it when looking at little children or animals. They all naturally tend to do things that are greedy and egoistic and we have to teach them ti not act like that, children will eventually grasp it but I will be forever taking away my older fat cat after he has eaten all his food to not steal food from the smaller one who eats slower. I had a hard time teaching my dog that I bring plenty of water to the dog park and that he doesnt need to guard it from others yet he is still nervous about other dogs drinking from his bowl and when he sees that other dogs have bowls he happily throws himself in and drinks as much as possible, the same goes with toys. So it kinda comes to me that we have both social and egoistical tendencies and with higher intelectual ability we can additionally calculate the benefits of not acting selfishly with the intention of actually maximalising our own happiness.

I think that this is a big deal because I didnt yet encounter another mechanism in libertarian society that would prevent people to act capitalistically, prevent scarce talents like brain surgeons to take bribes, which can still be in scarce materials if you abolish money, and than accumulate those scarce materials that grow in value with the growth of economy and essentially joining a net of black trade and even building employment, all of which can be done secretly while the person doing it can be popular.

This is not some scifi, in my country which experienced a period of bolshevism it was a well known thing that certain people who operated with scarced goods or did scarce services had a better life, enjoyed more wealth and had secret authority among society around them that wanted to keep as good relations as people sith such person. And that was a system with central authority trying to eradicate capitalistic behaviour as much as possible and its theoretical weakness from natural greed lied somewhere completely else - in the people who formed the government.

So are there people that believe that natural greediness might be more present people than what other socialists assume and what are the mechanisms that you believe will keep it at check, or at least keep it from becoming normalised again in the society?

Also do you think that this position on human nature is what essentially may divide libertarian left between those to be more lib-unity (therefore more willing to unite themselves with libertarian capitalists than authoritarian socialists) or left-unity?

I had a discussion under a meme post with our good old state capitalist Mao about it, a lot of people misunderstood and I couldnt clarify since the post got removed.

I do believe that forcing to pay others for something you didnt make is a robbery.

u/ohnoverbaldiarrhoea suggested that I am not a georgist for believing in such statement.

This statement of course implies the good old (and annyoing) “taxes are theft”. But it actually provides a room for logical separation of the ethical and unethical cases of taxation.

So let me clarify how I can believe in such statement and be a georgist at the same time:

1. Im a georgist because I dont want to tax just *land*. I want to tax the *land value* - the part that is indeed created but not by its owner but the society around the piece of land. An abandoned piece of land without any society has zero value and therefore isnt taxed by LVT although it is still a piece of *land*. Thats why LVT isnt robbery.
2. However, what the statement actually implies is that being a landlord is a robbery or that most of the taxes on work or VAT is a robbery. There is a small share of the society on the fact that you can work and create value peacefully but definitely not in such rates and such uniformity
3. Anyway we dont live in a black and white world and calling stuff the right names doesnt prevent me from approving them as a policy such as taxing the extraction of natural resources or taxes in general or the state in general… its the best what we have, that doesnt mean its automatically sacred without unethical dilemmas.

If anyone of you want to promote georgism to people around you, you will definitely encounter these minarchist arguments and if you try to play their game and argue whether it is or isnt robbery, you wont get anywhere. Instead, rather prove why it is better than the current or any other system.

It is also very important to realise these core values of georgism such as ownership of the fruits of your labour (which is often derived from selfownership) which offer a clear distinction from authoritarian communism such as Maoism while also being the core principle of classical liberalism and todays libertarianism which however has some inconsistencies in its application (such as in the case of land ownership)