3 thoughts on “Progress & Poverty synopsis”

  1. Georges beautiful discription passages of “The Savanna” are not completely satisfactory from the view-point of the basic georgist message because they fail to explain where THE LIMITATION IN PROGRESS LAYS. When the story begins the pioneers are imited in their progress by the lack of LABOR. After the settlement has become a small village with sufficient people the limitation is in CAPITAL (I prefer to call this durable capital goods to distinguish it from money).

    Only when the settlement has become large enough to be a town and the amount of investment in capital goods has been sufficient to stop monopoly in these means (factor) of production does the third limitation LAND begin to be seriously felt.

    For example had LVT been applied to the pioneer settlement, it would have a comparatively small effect. The influence of LVT on social life during the village stage would be of greater significance. But since at this stage no land is being held out of use, the effect is still comparatively small. Only at the city scale with corrupting control of who holds and uses the best sites and when poverty is showing up, do the land speculators and land-owning monopolists become established. Here LVT would have the greatest comparative influence and be most worthwhile to unleash the progress of the community at large.

    Therefore I find the Savanna sequence would be greatly helped by adding this part of the explanation.

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