Lars Doucet — Progress, poverty, Georgism, & why rent is too damn high

One of my best episodes ever. Lars Doucet is the author of Land is a Big Deal, a book about Georgism which has been praised by Vitalik Buterin, Scott Alexander, and Noah Smith. Sam Altman is the lead investor in his new startup, ValueBase: https://www.valuebase.co/. Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leaches off it. We go deep into the weeds on Georgism: * Why do even the wealthiest places in the world have poverty and homelessness, and why do rents increase as fast as wages? * Why are land-owners able to extract the profits that rightly belong to labor and capital? * How would taxing the value of land alleviate speculation, NIMBYism, and income and sales taxes? 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 * Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3XbdnOI * Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3CyfvbJ * Website + Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/lars-doucet * Follow Lars on Twitter: https://twitter.com/larsiusprime * Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:11 - Georgism 00:03:16 - Metaverse Housing Crises 00:07:10 - Tax Leisure? 00:13:53 - Speculation & Frontiers 00:24:33 - Social Value of Search 00:33:13 - Will Georgism Destroy The Economy? 00:38:51 - The Economics of San Francisco 00:43:31 - Transfer from Landowners to Google? 00:46:47 - Asian Tigers and Land Reform 00:50:53 - Libertarian Georgism 00:55:16 - Crypto 00:56:50 - Transitioning to Georgism 01:02:30 - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment 01:14:46 - Big Tech 01:20:24 - Space 01:22:39 - Copyright 01:24:36 - Politics of Georgism 01:32:44 - Someone Is Always Collecting Rents