#11 Fred Harrison: Georgism, rent-seeking, avoiding anarchy and unleashing our economic potential

What do The Queen's Gambit, L.A. Confidential, The Wire, and Chinatown have in common? The baddies are attempting to free ride on other people's hard work through buying land. For my latest episode, I interviewed Fred Harrison who is an economist of the Georgist School. On a long journey to understanding why living standards are falling in the developed world, to date I've misidentified symptoms as root causes. Such symptoms include overregulation, too much tax and spend, monetary incontinence, and a cultural attitude shifting from frontier-spirited risk taking to declinism. In my conversation with Fred, he outlines how our malaise was predicted and explained by Henry George in 1879 when his book Progress and Poverty was published. What followed was a global movement of progressivism that horrified the landed classes but was smothered by the scorched-earth approach of Karl Marx's socialism. Today, landowners are taking an ever growing cut of economic growth leaving only scraps for wage earners and investors. Fred explains how all taxes on wages and capital should be replaced by a land value tax. This would remove distortions and unleash economic activity whilst raising enough revenue and more for our spending needs. I'm looking for someone to convince me otherwise so please listen and get in touch if you have a better idea.Fred Harrison is a prolific writer (Amazon link) and you can find his latest views on X: https://x.com/geophilosNew intro music courtesy of Loverman (Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6mH930VvONxn76Kqpnixjy)This podcast was produced by https://www.thisismattcooper.com/This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper with music composed by Loverman.