ECOTOPIA
Notes for a talk on the YouTube Ecomodernism Channel March 5, 2023
INTRODUCTION
I’m a retired oceanographer living in coastal California. My wife and I lived in the same house there for 45 years. After my wife died, I made a big untaxed capital gain when I sold the house.
I thought this capital gain was grossly unfair to young people. I got interested in taxes and took online economics classes at the Henry George School of Social Science in New York. I asked Ed Dodson to share this interview with me. Ed is one of the instructors at the Henry George School and is a retired real estate analyst for Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association. I hope Ed will correct me if I say something incorrectly.
I don’t claim to understand all the details of everything that I will mention. There are many excellent talks available on YouTube that can provide details. I’ll post links to these videos on my substack page.
So let’s begin.
I think we all feel that something is wrong with our economies. I don’t want to get into politics here but I think we can all agree that something is wrong. But what is it and how can we fix it?
I think the main problem is that we have huge economic inequality. This leads to our increasing political divisions. We have multibillionaires taking joy rides in space while many people sleep in tents on the sidewalks. We know that historically, such economic inequality has often led to violence.
So how can we fix economic inequality? Taxes and their opposite, subsidies, are powerful incentives and disincentives to drive economic behavior. They are universal and affect many decisions by hitting people in their pocketbooks. If we like something, we subsidize it. If we don’t like it, we tax it.
Taxes encourage efficiency. If we have to pay a tax on something, we conserve it. If there is no tax, we can waste it.
So I think we have the wrong set of incentives and disincentives; the wrong set of taxes and subsidies. For example: We want people to work but we tax them for working. We want the economy to function but we tax sales. We are worried about the climate and resource depletion but we subsidize burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and mining.
Why do we do this? Well, our tax system has been designed to benefit the rich at the expense of everybody else. It’s based on the idea of private property. It’s all about who owns natural resources and who gets the rent from their use. Now most of these returns are privatized and causing economic inequality. But really, we all own this planet in common and we should all share in its bounty. Many indigenous peoples recognize this truth but we Europeans do not.
https://www.progress.org/articles/the-resources-of-nature-belong-to-everybody
Long ago, all land was held in common. You could hunt or fish anywhere. Then some people began to fence-off or ditch-off areas of land and declare their private ownership. You could not hunt or fish or even trespass. The English House of Lords legalized the Enclosures and the British Empire extended the practice globally. The Enclosures continue so that now most land is privately held and large corporations make land grabs in Africa and South America.
So now the privatization of returns from natural resources is a major cause of many of our problems. A British author, Fred Harrison, attributes many of our current problems to privatized rents.

A tax on the use of natural resources with returns to the public would be a universal way to reduce these impacts. It would reduce our environmental impacts; to allow us to be more sustainable on this planet. We can’t rely on individual efforts to make us more sustainable but we can use the tax system to provide a simple, universal set of incentives and disincentives. Such a tax would be preferable to our present system of many specific, arbitrary, complicated laws and regulations.
ECONOMICS
Our present economics is confusing and that’s because it’s designed to be confusing. In Adam Smith’s original “Classical Economics”, there were Three Factors of Production: Land, Labor and Capital.
Now recognize that Labor and Capital are variable quantities but Land is not. Land is unique: there is a fixed amount of it. So an economist would say Labor and Capital are elastic, Land is inelastic. Taxing Labor and Capital affects supply but taxing Land does not. We can tax Land heavily without distorting the economy.
Also long ago, infrastructure like castles and roads were paid for by the landowners; by the king and his nobles. But they didn’t like to pay for everything so over the centuries, they paid lawyers, politicians and economics professors to corrupt Adam Smith’s classical economics by merging land and capital. That left just two factors of production; Labor and Capital. This is called “Neoclassical Economics” which obscured land’s importance and allowed landowners to shift the taxes onto anything else that they could think of. Now most taxes are paid by workers and sales. We have labor and capital fighting while the land owners sit back and collect the rents. Leading to economic inequality, poverty and violence.

Classical economics considered the economy to be part of the environment but neoclassical economics considers the environment somehow to be an external factor, exogenous to the economy. Only now are economists considering the economy to be part of the environment again.
CARBON FEE
Over the centuries, we have learned to burn fossil fuels and have gained unprecedented wealth. But now we are worried about excessive carbon emissions and a globally warming climate. Ecomodernist viewers are probably familiar with James Hansen’s proposal for “fee and dividend”. This is a gradually increasing fee on carbon emissions to reduce carbon emissions and promote alternatives to burning fossil fuels and a companion dividend to distribute the revenue back to the people hurt by carbon emissions and climate change. That is, to everybody.
Most economists consider the carbon fee the best way to reduce carbon emissions and promote the transition away from fossil fuels.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/legendary-climate-scientist-likes-a-gop-proposal-on-global-warming/
LAND VALUE TAX
Ecomodernist viewers may not be familiar with Henry George and the Land Value Tax. Land Value Tax is a tax on the use of natural resources, primarily Land, but not just Land. LVT is similar to a property tax but it is a tax on land, not buildings.
LVT is a tax on natural things, not man-made things. Someone built the building so someone can own it. Mother Nature gave us the planet but we can not truly own land. We can occupy a bit of it but not truly own a bit of land, any more than we can own a bit of air or water. And when we occupy a bit of land, we owe a fee or rent to our community for the rights to use the land. So LVT is also called Annual Ground Rent as it’s really a rent, not a tax.
https://slrg.scot/
The terminology gets confusing here as LVT, AGR and natural resource fee are all the same thing. I’ll use LVT and fee as these terms are commonly understood.
Nobody likes to pay taxes but most economists and urban planners consider LVT the best tax. Even Milton Friedman liked it a bit; he called it the “least-bad” tax.
https://www.ft.com/content/fadfbd9e-29ca-4d53-b69a-2497cc3ed95d
And to whom do we owe the rent? We owe it to the owners of this planet; that is, to everybody else. LVT can be a huge, as much as 50% of GDP, and thus can support government, build infrastructure and support a UBI to reduce poverty.
LVT is an old idea, dating back to Thomas Paine in 1797 and Henry George in 1879. So who was Henry George? Henry George was a newspaper publisher in San Francisco in the 1870s and wondered: How can California be so rich and yet have so many poor people? Why is wealth being concentrated in so few? George came to realize that the answer is obvious. Land owners have a monopoly: they own the land and the poor have to pay rent to them. Since there is a fixed supply of land, the price of land and the rents rise as more people move into area and the land owners get rich. George published his ideas in a best-selling book, “Progress and Poverty”, ran for president and died in New York in 1897.
THE CARBON FEE IS A LAND VALUE TAX
The point here is that James’s Hansen’s carbon fee and Henry George’s Land Value Tax are the really same thing but with different names. Both are fees for using natural resources. This may be obvious but I have not seen it pointed out or at least, not strongly enough.
A natural resource fee can help solve many of our problems: climate, poverty, economic inequality, pollution, energy poverty, resource availability, resource depletion, and others. The natural resource fee can replace many other taxes such as income and sales taxes. These taxes are inefficient, fraud-prone and fundamentally unfair. Replacement of these taxes led to the idea of a “Single Tax” which became popular in the early 1900s.
All this is a big claim and is controversial as it challenges our ideas of private property. It’s a question of: Who gets the returns, the rent, from use of natural resources? As I said, most rents from natural resources are now being privatized and cause economic inequality. The point here is that the rents from use of natural resources belong to the public as the public owns the planet and its resources.
Economists talk to other economists about LVT but can’t sell the idea because of opposition by land owners. Climate people talk to other climate people but can’t sell the carbon tax because of opposition by the fossil fuel companies. Since both the economics and climate groups are saying the same thing but with different words, maybe they can win if they cooperate.
NOW WHAT IS ECOMODERNISM?
What are its goals? I suppose they are to:
1. Maximize economic benefits
2. Minimize environmental impacts
These may sound like opposing ideas but a fee for using natural resources can wonderfully do both.
MAXIMIZE ECONOMIC BENEFITS
We know Capitalism leads to unprecedented wealth
But it also leads to economic inequality and extreme poverty.
Communism doesn’t work as they had to kill a lot of people to nationalize the land and it leads to Oligarchy and Dictatorships.
Communism reduces individual initiatives and entrepreneurship and ultimately fails as it can’t compete with Capitalism.
Georgism is a compromise between Capitalism and Communism. Let the landowners keep their land but tax them rent for the use of it.
Many people have been fans of Georgism.
Einstein, Churchill and Tolstoy for example.
But landowners oppose paying taxes and are politically very powerful. Tolstoy, for example, was excommunicated because of his support of Georgism. Whenever a LVT proposal was made, it was quietly squelched.
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
Who gets the revenue? It can support government or be distributed back to everyone as a UBI. Just like James Hansen’s citizen’s dividend.
UBI should be universal. Everybody. No means testing. I think means testing means being Mean. There are many unpaid jobs such as mothers, caregivers for the elderly, etc. A UBI would help these workers whereas a minimum wage would not.
LVT is often paired with UBI as the two complement each other. Both are universal, fair and efficient programs that do not require large bureaucracies to administer.
https://medium.com/basic-income/why-land-value-tax-and-universal-basic-income-need-each-other-42ba999f7322
UBI replaces some welfare programs. Welfare has lots of gaps, overlaps, delays and bureaucracy.
UBI does not reduce a worker’s desire to work
It reduces stress and provides a floor under other incomes to eliminate absolute poverty.
How much should UBI be? I think at least half of poverty level. If it’s above poverty level, many people will object, saying that it encourages people not to work.
Poverty level in the US for an individual is about $12,000 per year or $1000 per month. In a recent UBI test in Stockton, CA, just $500 per month was a great help.
Sure, some UBI money was spent on drugs and alcohol but most was used beneficially. Food, a shower, a shave, clean clothes, medicine, tuition, fix the car, etc.
Drugs and alcohol ease the pain of being homeless and living in a tent.
Good book by Rutger Bregman. “Utopia for Realists”
Many tests of UBI now around the world.
https://basicincome.org/history/
https://medium.com/basic-income/why-land-value-tax-and-universal-basic-income-need-each-other-42ba999f7322
http://calmatters.org/california-divide/2023/02/universal-basic-income/
MINIMIZE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
I suggested that the second goal of Ecomodernism is to minimize environmental impacts. How to do that?
Minimize use of land and materials. A fee for using natural resources would encourage efficient use of resources.
IN CONCLUSION
1. Ecomodernism, the carbon fee and LVT all have similar goals.
2. A natural resource fee can maximize economic benefits and minimize environmental impacts and thus make our economies more sustainable on this planet.
BENEFITS OF NATURAL RESOURCES FEE?
So what are some specific benefits of a natural resource fee and citizen’s dividend?
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mitigation of global warming and encourage development of alternatives to burning fossil fuels by taxing carbon emissions.
LAND SPECULATION
Much land is held by speculators undeveloped or underdeveloped, awaiting the price to rise. LVT taxes developed and undeveloped land at the same rate and thus takes the profit out of land speculation. Undeveloped land is developed or sold to someone who will develop it. Thus reducing land prices and house prices.
LVT can reduce homelessness, an increasing problem in many cities where people sleep in tents on the sidewalks, the last remaining bits of the commons.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
I repeat that much of the economic rent of land is being privatized, leading to economic inequality. Now rent from other forms of monopolies, such as electromagnetic spectrum, geostationary orbits and aircraft landing rights are being privatized and could be taxed as they really belong to the public.
POVERTY
The citizen’s dividend or UBI can be large enough to eliminate poverty. It’s better than an increase in minimum wages as it covers everybody, not just workers. So it benefit the very young, the elderly and the disabled.
EFFICIENCY
LVT and UBI are efficient and do not require huge bureaucracies to administer. LVT can be a Single Tax to replace income and sales taxes; taxes that are unfair, inefficient, fraud-prone and distort the economy.
LVT is simple and can simplify our taxes. This is important at this time of year when we all are confused by income tax forms. We have armies of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to avoid paying taxes.
Land Value Tax is much simpler. The government uses a Geographic Information System to map available land sales data and estimate the value of your land. You pay a tax on the value of your land or you lose your land.
ECONOMIC CYCLES
LVT can reduce boom/bust economic cycles as these are primarily caused by land speculation. There is an 18 year property cycle related to land price speculation. The next recession is due in 2026 but is starting early due to Putin’s War. The recession will be severe as there is much more global debt now than there was in 2008.
URBAN LAND
Land values are high in urban areas and highest in downtown areas. LVT encourages owners of undeveloped or under-developed urban property such as parking lots to develop their land or sell it to someone who will develop it. This leads to compact cities, more walkable, lower total costs and better able to support public transit.
We should tax all land, including roads and highways. This would reduce freeways through cities, promote public transit and rail travel and reduce air pollution. We must reduce use of private cars and use more public transit. Promote rail over trucks.
URBANIZATION
LVT promotes urbanization. Land values are highest in cities. City people live in apartments and take the bus, rather than owning a car. So city people have moderate land value per capita and moderate environmental impact per capita. Suburban people have a high land value and high environmental impact per capita. They live in single family houses, drive a car and require lots of roads and parking spaces.
Without a LVT, cities sprawl across the countryside. Sprawl costs the US about a trillion dollars per year.
https://cayimby.org/sprawl-costs-the-u-s-1-trillion-every-year
Pennsylvania allows split-rate property taxes while many other states tax buildings and land at same rate. An example of the power of LVT is the closing of a Sears Roebuck store in Millbourne, PA
https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-land-tax.html
Another example is a comparison of Cleveland and Pittsburg.
http://fleeingvesuvius.org/2011/06/02/why-pittsburgh-real-estate-never-crashes-the-tax-reform-that-stabilised-a-city’s-economy/
STABLE REVENUE
LVT provides stable and predictable income source to cities as land prices change less from year-to-year than income and sales taxes.
BUILDINGS
Buildings are a money pit, always requiring maintenance.
Houses depreciate, land appreciates.
LVT encourages improvement of buildings. If you fix up your building, a normal property tax is a disincentive as the tax might rise. LVT encourages you to fix up the building to get a higher rent as the tax will remain the same.
IMMOBILITY
Land is immobile and LVT is a better tax than a wealth tax. Wealth is mobile, hard to measure and fraud—prone. How do you measure the value of an old painting or an old car?
With LVT, there is less “white flight” such as happened in Detroit when the car industry collapsed. Rich whites moved to the suburbs and left Detroit to burn and decay. But the land remains in Detroit and LVT can help restore the city.
https://www.lincolninst.edu/pt-br/publications/articles/2022-04-report-taxing-land-detroit-homeowners-development
RURAL LAND
LVT would tax land but at a low rate to encourage intensive, efficient farming of productive lands. It would be zero on marginal or unproductive lands to encourage their abandonment for rewilding and use as parks and wildernesses areas.
There is a lot of interest about LVT in Scotland. The Scottish Land Revenue Group describes LVT and its benefits.
https://slrg.scot/
One major reason for interest in LVT in Scotland is that much of the rural land there is held in large estates that date back centuries. Andy Wightman, a Green member of the Scottish Parliament and land reform campaigner, reckons that half of the country's rural land is owned by just 432 landowners.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47963208
Small parcels are expensive and many people who would like to buy a house or own land can not afford it. LVT would tend to break up the large estates and reduce the price of houses and land.
REWILDING
LVT can support wilderness and “rewilding” programs to rewild marginal lands and promote species diversity. Severe over-grazing of uplands by sheep and deer in Scotland keep the land barren, a “wet desert”. The only trees that can reproduce naturally are on islands and in steep canyons where the sheep can’t reach them. So the hills erode and do not absorb much rain water. And as a result, rains cause downstream floods and droughts.
The sheep farming on marginal land is supported by subsidies. The Scots want to reduce the subsidies, introduce LVT and rewild the country, initially with lynx and beavers. Beaver dams would store large volumes of water, moderate floods and droughts, recharge aquifers and increase biodiversity. Hunting does not adequately control the deer populations so many Scots eventually want to reintroduce wolves.
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-wolves-beavers-western-states-habitats.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_(book)
Peter Smith explains how subsidies support uneconomic sheep farms on marginal uplands and how LVT can help solve the problem. He asks: Why does it cost so much money to save nature? The answer is LVT. You don’t have to buy lands to set aside as nature preserves; you just change the taxes so that if the land owner benefits nature, his taxes go down. But if he harms nature, his taxes go up.
Indeed, a Harvard biologist, Edward O. Wilson, said that we should set aside half the earth for rewilding and recovery of biodiversity. How could we do that? I imagine that the combination of a global LVT with elimination of subsidies for farming on marginal land, it would be possible.
https://www.half-earthproject.org/
NUCLEAR POWER
To mitigate climate warming, we must reduce our burning of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. We have two major options: renewables of biomass, hydro, solar and wind or nuclear. A fee for using natural resources leads naturally to nuclear power. Nuclear fuels are extremely energy dense and so using them uses only small amounts of land and materials. Nuclear power has large economic benefits and minimal environmental impacts.
MINING AND MATERIALS
LVT would tax mining and the use of materials. It would promote recycling and thus reduce resource use and pollution.
An example is the current trend to renewables of wind and solar energy that will greatly increase the need for wind turbine towers, access roads and long distance transmission lines. This will require lots of land and materials. LVT will restrict this great increase in mining and land use.
Mark Mills suggests we’d need to 20 to 50 times more mining for copper and other metals for a transition to 100% renewables. This would have impossibly huge costs and environmental impacts.
RENEWABLES
A current example of these problems is the arguments over nuclear power and renewables. Basically, nuclear power uses only small amounts of land and materials while wind and solar take large amounts of land and materials. Thus a LVT would favor nuclear power over renewables.
Environmental impacts are minimized by the increasing energy density of fuels. Nuclear fuels are a million times more energy dense than fossil fuels. Wind and solar are quadrillions of times less energy dense than fossil fuels.
https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/nuclear-fuel
https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/greatworks/pdf_sum10/WK8_Layton_EnergyDensities.ashx
Leslie White (1943) related advances in civilization to increasing energy use per capita. From human power to animal power, biomass, fire, wind, hydro, coal, oil, nuclear fission and ultimately nuclear fusion. Renewables are a step backwards in White’s scheme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%27s_law
The basic problem with renewables is unreliability and intermittency. The cost and complexity of the grid rises rapidly as we add renewables to the grid to store electricity and maintain stability. LCOE, the Levelized Cost of Energy, does not measure the full system costs as it measures only the cost of generation, not the full system costs of adding unreliable, intermittent electricity to the grid. The full system costs rise rapidly, the grid becomes more unstable and harder to manage as renewables are added to the grid. Witness low electric rates and carbon emissions of nuclear France with high electric rates and carbon emissions of renewables in Germany.
A fundamental problem with renewables is the impossibility of mining and refining so much stuff. Copper, lithium and other metals prices will go up 10 or 100 times and the environmental impacts of mining would be horrendous if we tried to mine and refine that much stuff.
The availability of copper is particularly important as there is no alternate material for all the generators, transmission lines and motors that 100% renewables would require.
Mark Mills says that we’ve spent some 5 trillion dollars on renewables and they generate only about 3% of our energy demand. So they won’t easily scale up further and a transition to 100% renewables won’t happen. I think we will start phasing out renewables as we phase out the subsidies for renewables.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
To mitigate climate warming, we must reduce our burning of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. We have two major options: renewables of biomass, hydro, solar and wind or nuclear. A tax on the use natural resources leads naturally to nuclear power. Nuclear fuels are extremely energy dense and so using them uses only small amounts of land and materials. Nuclear power has large economic benefits and minimal environmental impacts.
After World War II, AEC needed civilian application of atomic energy, so generate electricity.
The first reactors were graphite piles. CP-1 in Chicago and X-10 at Oak Ridge. These worked but were dangerous as graphite is flammable. Overheating can cause fires, as we learned later at Chernobyl.
The AEC didn’t know which alternative reactor would be best so they built several test systems. A physicist at Oak Ridge, Alvin Weinberg, developed several different types of reactors.
One design was the Pressurized Water Reactor but Weinberg worried that it was complex and fundamentally unsafe. PWRs operate at relatively low temperature with low thermal efficiency and require an expensive pressure vessel. A Navy admiral, Hyman Rickover, liked the PWR however, as it was small and could fit in a submarine. He also liked it because his naval personnel were familiar with steam systems.
As a result of the military applications, the government invested heavily in PWRs. Many were built and over the years, were grossly expanded to become the common type built globally today. But they have become too big, too expensive and take too long to build. They require a huge investment up front to build them before generating any return. Like any construction project, any delays increase interest costs dramatically. Some reactors are one of a kind designs which further increases costs
After the war, atomic energy was a popular idea and since the Navy had nuclear reactors, the Air Force wanted some too. A high temperature “Fireball” reactor was developed to heat air to propel an airplane. The program was cancelled as too dangerous in case of a plane crash
The high temperature reactor was modified to become the Molten Salt Reactor. Weinberg liked it as it was simple, efficient and inherently safe. Just “A pot, a pump and a pipe”. MSRs operate at high temperature for good thermal efficiency and at near atmospheric pressure and so not require an expensive pressure vessel.
A MSR reactor was built at Oak Ridge in the 1960s and ran successfully for several years.
The power of MSRs is seen by comparing the Energy Return on Energy Invested, EROEI, of various energy systems.

Fossil fuels have EROEI of 10 to 50
Renewables have a EROEI of 5 to 10
Pressurized water reactors have an EROEI of 50 to 100
MSRs can have a very high EROEI, 1000 or more.
https://www.daretothink.org/dfr-the-dual-fluid-reactor/
MSRs are thus a game-changer in energy systems. We do not have to wait to develop fusion energy systems. MSRs can help us mitigate climate changes now.
But the MSR program was cancelled for political reasons. This was a huge mistake. If the MSR program has not been cancelled, we would be in a much better situation with regards to the climate warming than we are now.
Later, a NASA scientist, Kirk Sorensen, was interested in reactors for use in space. Sorensen scanned many old Oak Ridge MSR documents and put them on the internet.
Sorensen has made some excellent MSR videos. Viewers should watch these to learn about molten salt reactors.
Now lots of interest in MSRs and similar high temperature reactors with molten sodium or lead. A global race is now on to design and build small, cheap, inherently safe reactors. They can be build in series as electrical demand increases and thus will not require a huge investment long before starting to operate and generate funds.
Some will replace coal burners in coal-fired generating plants.
Some built in assembly lines on barges in shipyards. Shipyards can build large systems on budget, on time. Some yards have built nuclear naval ships and submarines and are familiar with the technology.
The Russians have a small reactor on a barge in the Arctic Ocean to support their gas fields there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station
Thorcon has contracted with a shipyard in South Korea to build small reactors on barges for use in Indonesia.
https://thorconpower.com/
Some reactors will be small enough to be transported by a truck.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Mitsubishi-Heavy-aims-to-build-reactor-on-a-truck-by-2030s
Reactors will be located near demand centers so short transmission lines, saving copper and countryside views.
The reactor may be refueled every 10 years or so
Many test reactors are being built now. Bill Gates is building one at an old coal plant in Wyoming.
We will have to build thousands of these reactors to reach net-zero carbon by 2050. Will we build enough of them fast enough? Probably not as we are getting a late start and still have an irrational fear of nuclear radiation. But then, we might be able to. We built Liberty ships faster than one a day in World War II.
https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/henry-j-kaiser-and-the-liberty-ships/
CONCLUSION
A common view is that we will have No Growth and eventual collapse of civilization.
https://sjgenco.medium.com/its-getting-to-look-a-lot-like-degrowth-part-1-5db04fd9e27c
https://sjgenco.medium.com/its-getting-to-look-a-lot-like-degrowth-part-2-1f0c33c718cf
https://sjgenco.medium.com/its-getting-to-look-a-lot-like-degrowth-part-3-e8c746d59e79
I agree that we are starting a long period of recession or even depression as resources are depleted, climate warms and prices rise. But we should not fall for the Malthus arguments that in the long run have always been proven overly pessimistic. James Lovelock was correct when he said that since we humans are such clever bastards, somehow we will muddle through. A resource fee and dividend program combined with the amazingly high EROEI values of MSRs will help us muddle through. With abundant, cheap energy, we will be able to attack many problems.
A fee for the use of natural resources is a redistribution of wealth from users of lots of resources to users of few resources. Basing the redistribution on resources rather than income, sales or financial wealth incentivizes minimum use of resources, thus minimizing environmental impacts and promoting sustainability. It would make us all more wealthy and no one will be no extremely wealthy people as at present. The owners of producing assets will gain and the owners of under-producing assets will take a hit.
Is all this Ecomodernism? Yes, I think so. Georgism is a philosophy that ties together many of the objectives of Ecomodernism. Geoism is a better name for it.
What of the future? Putin’s War is horrible but it might be teaching us some lessons. Every state or country needs its own reliable energy source. My bet is on small molten salt reactors, one or more in every town. Many will replace coal burners in coal fired generating plants, cement plants and other big carbon emitters.
HOW TO START?
To start Geoism, we have to start it gradually. Split the property tax so that we begin to tax land more than buildings. Do it revenue-neutral for several years, gradually increasing tax on land and decreasing on buildings. The rich won’t complain if it’s revenue-neutral.
When buildings are no longer taxed, start increasing the land tax and decreasing sales taxes. Sales taxes are very regressive and land taxes are progressive. Land taxes hit the rich while sales taxes hit the poor. The poor don’t own land and don’t get hurt by land taxes. The rich will complain but the poor may be able to outvote them.
I asked ChatGPT: Where do land value taxes work?
“Land value taxes are implemented in various parts of the world, but the most well-known examples are in
some cities and countries in Europe, such as Denmark, Estonia, and Scotland. In Denmark, for example, land
value tax is used to fund local government services, whereas in Scotland, it is used to support projects
related to economic growth and infrastructure development. Additionally, some cities in the United States, such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, have also implemented land value taxes.”
Also Germany.
https://libdemsalter.org.uk/en/article/2020/1382897/germany-lander-to-introduce-a-land-value-tax
Even California is thinking about it.