Geoism
The economic system in which economic rents of every kind — land, resources, carbon, spectrum, road space, monopoly privilege, finance, platforms, IP — are captured for public good rather than privatized. Georgism generalized: this wiki's full scope, with the rent gradient kept honest.
Definition
Geoism is the economic system in which economic rents — returns to what nobody produced, or to privileges the community itself creates — are captured for public good rather than left as private windfalls, while returns to labor and genuine capital investment go untaxed or lightly taxed. It is Georgism generalized: Henry George built the case on land, and land remains the founding and best-evidenced application, but the principle — tax what is taken from the commons, not what is made — extends to every rent-bearing asset (economic rent is the unifying concept).
The Rent Domains and Their Capture Instruments
Each domain has its own instrument and its own evidence base:
| Rent domain | Capture instrument | Wiki anchor |
|---|---|---|
| Land & location | Land value tax; public land leasing; land value capture | The core corpus: 15 evidence outcomes |
| Natural resources | Royalties, severance taxes, sovereign wealth funds | Capture works where institutions are strong (Norway: 78% tax → >$2tn fund); resource rents · dividends work |
| Atmosphere & ecology | Carbon pricing + per-capita dividends | Carbon pricing cuts emissions (BC −19% per-capita fuel use; EU ETS −3.8%) — modestly, without wrecking growth; Ecological Georgism · Green Georgism narrative |
| Spectrum & orbits | Spectrum auctions; recurring license fees | Coase 1959 → FCC auctions since 1994 (>$200bn raised; C-band 2021 ~$81bn) capture the airwaves' scarcity rent for the public — a clean non-land case, with a "sell-once vs lease" caveat |
| Road space & congestion | Congestion pricing | Reduces traffic & congestion: Singapore 1975 (~76% zone-traffic drop), London 2003 (~30% congestion cut), Stockholm 2006 (~20% cordon reduction, ~4-yr social payback) — the strongest non-land quasi-experimental record |
| Monopoly & regulatory privilege | Antitrust; license auctions; rent-seeking reform | Corporate profits increasingly rents — carried WITH its counter-position |
| Finance & credit | The contested frontier: FIRE-sector analysis | Rentier · the rentier-economy narrative |
| Platforms & data | The open design problem — rent-targeting corporate taxes (ACE/cash-flow), ad taxes, data dividends, COST designs; dedicated workstream in BACKLOG (WS-TECH-RENTS) | Mazzucato's rent map · superstar firms |
| Intellectual property | Term/scope reform; prizes vs patents | Queued: the IP-rents literature |
The Rent Gradient — Read This Before Citing
The domains are not equally settled, and the wiki's credibility depends on never flattening the gradient (EDITORIAL §0):
- Land is the clean case. Fixed supply, no production to discourage, a century of incidence evidence (landlords cannot pass LVT to tenants).
- Resources and carbon are nearly as clean in principle, but capture designs interact with extraction incentives and cap-setting (Martinez's resource-curse evidence).
- Monopoly and platform "rents" are actively disputed: what one literature calls market power, another calls returns to scale and intangible investment — the wiki carries both sides at strength (Crouzet & Eberly; superstar firms).
- Innovation profits are largely quasi-rents that ARE the incentive. Taxing a location windfall costs nothing; taxing the return that motivated an invention is not free. The steelman: Objection: Taxing quasi-rents kills innovation — every non-land capture claim on this wiki links it.
See Also
- Georgism — the land core · Economic Rent — the unifying concept
- Geolibertarianism · Ecological Georgism
- Citizen's Dividend — the distribution side of capture
- Mapping Modern Economic Rents (Mazzucato et al.) — the modern framework
Sources
- Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879) — used for the founding principle (A-claims; public domain). wiki summary
- Mariana Mazzucato, Josh Ryan-Collins & Giorgos Gouzoulis, "Mapping modern economic rents," Cambridge Journal of Economics (2023) — used for the modern multi-domain rent framework (C-claims; framework, not finding). wiki summary
- Karl Fitzgerald, Total Resource Rents of Australia (2013) — used as the advocacy-side attempt to total rents across domains (D-claims, attributed). PDF