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Nov 7, 2022Liked by Joseph Addington

Thanks - an interesting take on UBI. Also good to hear that brief update from UBI studies.

Where is the best place I can read about how Georgism could be implemented given that houses are a majority of middleclass wealth in many countries?

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I’m glad you at least recognize that there are different audiences for Georgism. I conceive as Georgist policies as useful, which leads more quickly to a just society.

If you start talking about Georgist policy as inherently just, you immediately lose me as a supporter. Georgism is first and foremost a way of critiquing and improving economic policy. It is not a framework for ethics or social justice.

I’m sure I live in my own bubble, but this view is representative of every Georgist that I personally interact with.

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Thanks for writing about this subject. Personally, I tend to think what's useful and what's just are less distinct than you seem to, but I also think people are generally more persuaded my moral arguments, and a potential strength of Georgism is that it can appeal to a variety of moral inclinations.

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Nov 8, 2022·edited Nov 8, 2022

Working at a large company, my observation is that “bullshit” jobs are due to the natural tendency of bureaucracies to perpetuate and self-justify.

I don’t think my job is bullshit, but I have to put up with a lot of bullshit (and bullshitters) as I grind through the corporate processes for authorizing, tracking and approving the work that I do. My assessment is that corporate leadership is aware of the problems but has made the determination that the cost and disruption required to uproot the bureaucrats outweighs the benefits.

Perhaps a silver lining to bureaucratic bullshit inevitability is that it serves as natural check on the dominance of large companies as they trip over themselves trying to respond to smaller, leaner competitors.

I am all for LVT, but I am not sure how it would fix this problem. Would the lure of a UBI encourage people to walk away from cushy, but dull, corporate jobs? Would LVT revenue leave much for UBI after paying all the current expenses of government?

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I vaguely see some interactions with Martha Nussbaum's "Capabilities Approach" applied ethical system, most famously used in Amartya Sen's "Development as Freedom".

The Capabilities Approach is about empowering people to have choices, which means providing healthcare, education, housing, a safety net, public order, and more.

I like the idea of people getting to make choices for themselves, something which is missing from other ethical systems, which all strike me as paternalist or authoritarian or both.

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