Lars Doucet
Game developer and writer whose 'Does Georgism Work?' series and book 'Land Is a Big Deal' launched the modern Georgism revival in tech and rationalist circles.
Overview
Lars Doucet is an American game developer, writer, and land-assessment entrepreneur who became one of the most influential popularisers of Georgism in the 2020s. His work reframed land value taxation for a technically literate online audience and is widely credited with reviving interest in Henry George's ideas in Silicon Valley, rationalist, and effective-altruist communities.
Contributions
- "Does Georgism Work?" — His three-part Astral Codex Ten series (2021–22) examined the main empirical objections to LVT (magnitude, incidence, assessment). The series grew out of his prize-winning ACX book review of Progress and Poverty (2021), credited with sparking the modern Georgism revival online.
- Land Is a Big Deal (2023) — A book expanding the series into the most accessible modern introduction to Georgism, praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith.
- Center for Land Economics — Doucet co-founded this nonprofit, which works on practical land assessment and LVT research, directly addressing the assessment objection.
Listening & Watching
Doucet is a frequent audio/video presence: his long-form conversation on the Dwarkesh Podcast is a widely recommended single-sitting introduction to Georgism, and he appears in several of the Georgism video explainers circulating on YouTube.
Significance
Doucet represents the contemporary, empirically minded wing of Georgism: less concerned with George's 19th-century rhetoric than with whether the policy survives modern scrutiny on data and implementation. His answer — that it largely does — brought a new generation to the movement.
See Also
- Scott Alexander — host of the 2021 ACX Book Review Contest Doucet's Progress and Poverty review won, the spark for Doucet's Georgism series
- Henry George · Progress and Poverty · Objection: Land value can't be assessed accurately
Sources
- Lars Doucet (2021–22), Does Georgism Work? — used for the ACX series and its reception (A-claims). wiki summary
- Lars Doucet (2022), Land Is a Big Deal — used for the book's scope and arguments (A-claims; Heavy scan on the book page). landisabigdeal.com
- Doucet's collected writing at Game of Rent — used for biographical and project context (A/C-claims).