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 . Talking with Lars completely changed how I think about who creates value in the world and who leeches 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? Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here . Follow Lars on Twitter . Follow me on Twitter . 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 (00:51:19) - Libertarian Georgism (00:55:42) - Crypto (00:57:16) - Transitioning to Georgism (01:02:56) - Lars's Startup & Land Assessment (01:15:12) - Big Tech (01:20:50) - Space (01:23:05) - Copyright (01:25:02) - Politics of Georgism (01:33:10) - Someone Is Always Collecting Rents Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe