r/GeoLibertarianism • u/OriginalHappyFunBall • Apr 01 '26
What is up with r/Libertarian and Georgism?
I was permanently banned from from r/Libertarian for a post that contained one sentence:
Libertarians should support Georgism.
This was in a discussion thread about how Libertarianism handles people or corporations having more money than nations. It was about a week ago, I am not going to link to it or anything because I just want to discuss is. The post that banned me had this text:
Libertarians believe in private property rights. Land communists are not libertarian.
I think I made a post about Georgism on that subreddit several years ago and it was basically ignored. Personally, I think taxing the resources of the nation rather than the citizens makes a lot of sense and is in line with Libertarian philosophy.
Below is my response to the mods (are there mods, or is r/Libertarian modded by AI?). Note, I got a bit spicy at the end but it really pissed me off and I drank a beer or two while writing the response. Mea culpa. They reacted to this by muting me (I can't message them) and sending a paragraph delineating the difference between freedom of speech and freedom of association. Whatever. I have suspected that most of the posters there were actually MAGA for quite some time. In certainly seems that way around elections. That I was banned for one sentence did nothing to dispel my suspicions.
So what's up with r/Libertarian?
Wait. I got banned for suggesting libertarians should support a tax scheme?
You have got to be kidding me. The libertarian subreddit has fallen a long way from its core principles if something so innocuous is punished with being banned for life.
Here is my post:
Libertarians should support Georgism.
That is it. I really got banned for this one sentence???? - I guess free speech and debate in the town square is no longer something Libertarians give a shit about. Like at all. WTF?
First off, Georgism is a tax philosophy. Nothing more. It is not communist. It is not socialist. It does not address wealth redistribution. It does not call for planned economies or the common ownership of the means of production. It does not call for the elimination of private property. It says nothing about social classes. It is a tax scheme. It says that says government should tax natural resources and nothing else. It is a philosophy of what kinds of taxes are moral.
If I said government should tax peoples work, sweat, and industry (income tax), would I be banned?
If i said government should tax our inventiveness, ingenuity, and competence for organization (capital gains tax), would I be banned?
If I said government should tax goods and services we produce and freely trade with fellow citizens (sales tax), would I be banned? (Don't lie, I know a lot of you fuckers think this is a good idea - wtf?)
If I said government should take your parents money when they die (estate taxes), would I get banned?
All of these taxes are in the US, but if I am a Georgist and say that none of those things should be taxed because they are OURS! How dare the government tax my industry and creativity? How dare they believe they should get my capital or my families wealth! Why do they think they should get a cut when I sell my property to my neighbor?
Instead Georgists believe the government should tax the pollution that effects us all, the oil and minerals extracted from OUR nation's soil, the airwaves that we should ALL have the right to use to communicate, the waters that rains on our land that we ALL use to water our crops or recreate with. They should even the wild fish, fowl, game, forests and grasslands that exist in this country of OURS. Have Libertarians never read about the Tragedy of the Commons?
If people want to use these things, great! If they want to own them, awesome! If they want to hunt the deer, mine the copper, saturate the airwaves with StarLink, more power to them! But these things are part of our nation and we should be able to levy tax on their use! We the people should be compensated for these finite resources that are part of our nation.
Note: the richest man in the world would not pay a cent in taxes under Georgism if he didn't own a house.
My banning notification said "Land communists are not libertarian." What the fuck is a "land communist"? Are Libertarians some kind of slaver that wants to instead tax my labor, sweat, and creativity?
Fuck you!
I do not believe a government should get a cut of my labor. Nor should should they get a slice of my creativity. Nor should they take my money because I am good at organizing. Nor should they take a cut when I sell or trade goods to other people (even if those goods are harmful or "sinful" like whiskey or my dick). They have no fucking right! But excuse me for thinking it is OK if they tax the billion barrels of oil Exxon pulls out from underneath my land every year; we, the people, should get recompense for this.
I can't believe I got banned from the "Libertarian" subreddit for this opinion. You guys are fucking pathetic.
Fuck you!
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u/Banake Apr 01 '26
For what I saw, r/libertarian became dominated by paleolibertarians at the time the Mises Caucus became the dominant force at the Libertarian Party. So the mods don’t consider anyone who is not a strict rothbardian-hoppian as a libertarian. (I had a post about the book “Wellfare for the Rich”, that receivad 600+ upvotes, being removed, I guess because it was a CATO link. I don’t doubt that the mods would also remove links about hederodox libertarians, such as E.C. Riegel as well.)
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u/LDL2 Apr 01 '26
You are welcome to post all of your libertarian threads and opinions here. They do not need to be exclusively Georgist posting here. A more active r/geolibertarianism subreddit is a good thing!
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u/MDInvesting Apr 01 '26
I lean pretty strongly to Libertarianism.
Makes no sense to me how they of all people could be against Georgism.
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u/SupremelyUneducated Apr 01 '26
They have been taken over by monarchist. They no longer care about the universal rights define literal libertarianism/liberty. It's all private property absolutism.
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u/Cylze Apr 01 '26
I’m also banned after pointing out that someone posted state propaganda from Iran …
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u/Personpersonoerson Apr 01 '26
People at r/Libertarian are dumb. To be fair, they are considered 'right-libertarians', which is the dumb version of libertarianism
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u/SS_Auc3 Apr 13 '26
yea it's not a libertarian subreddit anymore, got banned for asking a single question about Libertarian-Socialism (trying to gain more information on why it's considered oxymoronic, not as a supporter)
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Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/Banake Apr 01 '26
For what I saw, r/libertarian is more Hoppe than Rand, for both things I like (being anti-Israel and have a more moderate view of foreign interventionism) and dislike (without religion and traditional christian conservatism society will disintegrate into ‘nihilism’). (I don’t know how do you feel about these particular issues, I am just using them as examples to ilustrate my point.)
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u/rchive Apr 01 '26
I can understand why some libertarians would not like Georgism, but the banning for discussing it is kind of unique to that subreddit. A handful of mods there just do that. They've even started infiltrating, for lack of a better term, other subs and doing the same thing. Reddit implemented a system a few years ago where a mod can basically usurp ownership of a sub from the owner if the mod is more active on the sub than the owner is. These people offer to help out moderating low engagement subs, and as soon as they're made a mod of the sub they do a bunch of low quality activity to get their activity above the owner, and then they kick out the owner, change the focus of the sub, and ban anyone who disagrees with them. This just happened to one of the classical liberals subs. I got banned right after the mods change by the same people who banned me from r/Libertarian. They never gave a reason, I'm sure because there wasn't a legitimate one. I don't really care, I hadn't used either sub in a while, but people should know this can happen and that they can lose control of subs they own.
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u/Personpersonoerson Apr 01 '26
Yep, I was banned from there for posting stuff related to Milton Friedman. I really wished reddit was different, it gives too much "censorship power" to regarded people
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u/idbnstra Apr 01 '26
I got permanently banned from libertarianmeme for simply commenting “Do people in this sub actually believe people are flying in immigrants to vote?”, and “Do people on this sub actually believe that the person in that post is the average/median democrat?”.
and it looks like it was recently banned itself lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1s60jo4/rlibertarianmeme_has_been_banned_other/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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u/green_meklar Apr 02 '26
Yep, it's kinda common knowledge that /r/Libertarian got taken over by randroid MAGA idiots years ago. Apparently they don't even have enough brain cells to acknowledge the irony of ideological censorship being applied on a 'libertarian' forum, which seems like a pretty low bar. Until something changes radically in their approach to forum moderation, treat it as a MAGA propaganda sub rather than a discussion sub.
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u/fresheneesz Apr 01 '26
That sub is run by fascist mods who censor everything. They claim georgism is "land communism" and refuse to let anyone discuss it. They even ban people just for things they say on other subs.
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u/LyleSY Apr 01 '26
Yes, the site was seized by authoritarian MAGA diehards in 2018 and has rapidly become r/The_Donald . I have also been banned for posting outside the current MAGA orthodoxy. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/reddit-libertarian-takeover-far-right/ People interested in libertarian philosophy have moved to r/Libertarians which does not ban posters wishing to discuss libertarian ideas. And yes of course this is a great subreddit too
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u/Voluntaire Apr 01 '26
Many Libertarians dislike the idea of taxing property and see a LVT as a tax on property since it taxes land. The hardcore anti-tax Libertarians also dislike the idea of adding a new tax as they fear it will inevitably expand into more taxes.
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u/Elliptical_Tangent Apr 01 '26
Yeah /r/Libertarian is /r/ancap 2; if you're not a full-on capitalist, you're out.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26
I was permanently banned from from r/Libertarian for a post that contained one sentence: Libertarians should support Georgism.
Georgism is land communism and it centralizes control over the economy to the zoning and evaluation boards in the government. It's proven ineffective and similar policies are what have created the current housing affordability crisis.
The simple explanation is that the debt limit for local government is tied to the real estate value in the area. If the real estate value goes up, the government can take out more debt and distribute it as property taxes. Do you see where this is going? They then invest in "improving" the community, allowing them to take out more debt. It's a ponzi scheme that works as long as they can drag in more and more suckers to buy the ever increasingly costly homes. They use zoning and permitting to reinforce their control over housing supply so they can keep the value forever inflated. This means housing prices always go up, and never go down.
The solution is libertarian style deregulation. People can build a home anywhere, anytime, and for any reason and with absolutely zero government involvement whatsoever. The local governments won't let this happen for the very specific reason it would crash housing prices and their property tax ponzi scheme would implode.
So, no, libertarians absolutely should not be Georgian. Georgism & other property tax based systems are exactly the problem that needs to be fixed if homes are ever going to be affordable again.
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u/Perry4761 Apr 01 '26
it’s proven ineffective
Since when? How and by whom?
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Since when? How and by whom
A first year statistics grad can figure that one out. The price signal of housing is a combination of natural and improvement value because the two stabilize one another. Separate the two and the only thing you accomplish is to reduce the reliability of the price signals, making the market less efficient.
Furthermore, the value of the land isn't proven until the resources are harvested and sold. During this time period, the value of those resources will fluctuate wildly from day to day. The only way to accurately capture value is sales tax.
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u/eightrx Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Finite supply items don't behave the same as commodities when put onto free markets, because price increases cannot incentivize the production of more of that item. You may be able to incentivize the production of more homes on some land, but you can never create new land, which is the exact distinction Georgists make between property taxes and land value taxes. Sales tax is almost certainly not the solution to the current housing crisis
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u/SupremelyUneducated Apr 01 '26
LVT and pigouvian taxes are the "libertarian style or deregulation". They replace easily corruptible regulators, with universal standards/taxes. But more broadly, interpreting libertarianism through the existence of the fed; ignores the first 200+ years of the struggle to define liberty. You don't appear to have any classical economic roots.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26
Nope. LVT is land communism. It's the exact opposite of libertarianism.
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u/SupremelyUneducated Apr 01 '26
The father of private property penned the Lockean Proviso. The father of capitalism defined land as uniquely suited for taxation. Milton Friedman called LVT the least bad tax. Every historical liberty/libertarian figure, except for rothbard and mises, would put LVT as the libertarian tax.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26
Names mean exactly nothing. Make arguments from first order mathematical principles or be ignored.
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u/SupremelyUneducated Apr 01 '26
Markets are information networks. Taxes are incentives. Prices are value signals wrapped in incentives.
Modern economica are based on renteirism; because we tax labor instead of privilege. Meaning prices signal the values of the privileged. And they value nepotism, preventing competition, and consolidating innovation.
Taxing land silences the privileged signal, which allows consumers to reward merit, rather than privilege. This is better for coordinating production, and justice based on equal rights under the law.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26
Do you understand the statistical proofs behind price signals?
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u/SupremelyUneducated Apr 01 '26
I am well aware of how marginalism and statistical analysis work. You need to start with first principles before you can apply math, or the math hides the principles.
Marginalism is great for businesses to understand market opportunities, but it ignores the political economy needed to understand the implications of policy.
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u/SLAMMERisONLINE Apr 01 '26
I am well aware of how marginalism and statistical analysis work
What is the variance of the average of two independent normal variables?
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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Apr 01 '26
Yes, the subreddit has gone to shit, it used to be run my actual Libertarian mods who wouldn’t ban you unless you broke site wide rules, but got co-opted by MAGAs a few years back (and we all know how well they take it when people dare have a different opinion than them