Interview, Fireside Chat
Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high
- The sequel "Defenders Quest 2" is scheduled for release next year, building on the original game's legacy.
- Virtual land speculation in new crypto games is projected to replicate real-world housing crises and lead to a disaster, echoing an unresolved housing crisis in Ultima Online from twenty years prior that persists even 25 years later.
- Early adopters of new technologies like flying cars or matter teleporters are expected to capture significant frontier value, whereas subsequent generations will face higher costs as these frontiers close.
- Increased demand for telecommuting has already been priced into suburban home values, effectively closing that specific economic frontier.
- The speaker predicts that if the United States does not implement land reform, the unlanded population will eventually reject income transfers to the landed class, potentially triggering a revolution driven by the rise of leftism among those displaced by high rent.
- Implementing a sudden 100% land value tax is considered unlikely due to banking sector shocks, necessitating an incremental transition rather than an overnight radical change.
- Over a long period, productivity booms in San Francisco are expected to be fully capitalized into land values, forcing lower-productivity residents to migrate to marginal areas.
- Improving property assessment accuracy via mass appraisal technology (such as multiple regression) could shift the tax burden from upper-middle-class homeowners to large commercial speculators holding empty lots in central business districts.
- A revenue-neutral shift to land value taxes that exempts buildings is anticipated to be politically popular, offering savings to most taxpayers and aligning with libertarian principles, while a "citizen's dividend" or UBI is suggested to address regressivity.
- The "Norwegian model" of subsidizing discovery and R&D costs while imposing high severance taxes is expected to prevent the resource curse, proving that high taxes do not destroy discovery incentives if costs are managed.
- If government tracking of income or capital transactions fails due to crypto adoption, land is expected to become the only legible asset for taxation, forcing a shift to land value taxes.
- As private land ownership consolidates, landowners are expected to raise rents to the subsistence level of tenants.
- The next step in property tax reform is predicted to involve legalizing split-rate property taxes (taxing land and buildings separately) in cities such as those in Virginia, Detroit, and Pennsylvania.
- The "Transitional Gains Trap" is identified as a major obstacle that requires gradual, revenue-neutral implementation to avoid unfairly penalizing those who bought assets at inflated values prior to reform.
- Mass appraisal technology using open-source models and open data is expected to update land valuations every six months in real-time, allowing for precise identification of tax disparities and corruption.
- Mineral and land rights are expected to be managed similarly to English treasure laws, where the government captures resource value while rewarding discovery.
- The Outer Space Treaty is predicted to last approximately five minutes once the interplanetary space race begins, with advocates warning that without Georgist principles, early space actors will charge rent and discourage investment.
- Copyright terms are expected to shorten eventually, allowing ideas to enter the background collective commons once they become part of cultural consciousness.
- "Starter Cities" are expected to evolve into private entities where land rents are shared among shareholders, while entities like Disney World function as private city operators that internalize positive externalities.
- A startup named Geoland Solutions is currently developing open-source mass appraisal tools in partnership with municipalities, with funding from Sam Altman expected to enable accurate measurement of American land values.
- The "ATCOR" theory (All Taxes Come Out Of Rent) is expected to hold in a weak form where offsetting other taxes increases land value tax revenue, and in a strong form that could theoretically support a "single tax" system.
- Two-thirds of bank loans chasing real estate are expected to contribute to a constant upward trend in land values rather than providing cyclical dampening.
- The speaker notes that the "cost approach" for property assessment is outdated, with mass appraisal methods used by the majority of offices.
- The frontier of automobile-based expansion is considered closed, with the costs of sprawl now serving as the new burden.
- The "rich list" of billionaires is expected to remain dominated by hedge fund managers and bankers involved in real estate rather than tech founders.
- Investors are expected to prioritize acquiring more land over building improvements if land appreciates at 10% annually, incentivizing the holding of vacant lots.
- The "urban agglomeration effect" creates non-fungible location scarcity, meaning land value is driven by specific geographic desirability rather than total physical area.
- Existing exemptions for property taxes on buildings, such as those for widows with high-value homes but low income, are expected to continue or expand under new assessment models.
- The speaker anticipates that "fudging the numbers" over several years during the transition can help smooth the "Transitional Gains Trap" by gradually adjusting assessments to optimal tax rates.