Who is Henry George?

A nineteenth-century American political economist known for his worldwide bestseller *Progress and Poverty* (1879). Arguing that rises in land value are created by society, he advocated a "single tax" on land. The book *Plurality* calls George "a founder of ⿻ social science".

When a station opens, or more schools and shops appear nearby, the price of land in the area goes up. But is that because the landowner worked hard? Isn't it thanks to the lives and work of the people around? More than 140 years ago, this economist posed that question and wrote a worldwide bestseller. In the book Plurality he appears again and again as one of the sources of its ideas.

In short

Henry George was an American political economist [1]. He is known for his 1879 book Progress and Poverty [2].

He held that the value of land could never properly belong to an individual owner, and advocated a "single tax" on land [2]. The book Plurality calls George "a founder of ⿻ social science", and portrays him as one of the sources of Taiwan's land taxes and of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People (Tridemism) [1][2].

Connection to Plurality

Chapter 3-2, "Henry George and the networked value". The book opens this section by writing: "We remember Karl Marx and Adam Smith more sharply, but the social thinker that may have had the greatest influence during and immediately following his lifetime was Henry George." For years, Progress and Poverty was the best-selling book in English other than the Bible. According to the book, George inspired or arguably founded the following [2]:

the American center-left (as a nearly successful United Labor candidate for Mayor of New York City)
the Progressive and social gospel movements (which both traced their names to his work)
Tridemism (Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, whose economic leg was founded in Georgism)
the board game Monopoly (which originated as an educational device, "The Landlord's Game", to show how a different set of rules could avoid monopoly and enable common prosperity)

The book also writes that George helped originate the idea of the secret ballot (voting without revealing whom you voted for) [2].

The savannah illustration. The same section introduces George's most famous illustration. A first settler arrives on an open savannah of beautiful but uniform land and claims a large plot. Later settlers choose to live close by, to enjoy company, divide labor and share facilities such as schools and wells. The more people gather, the more the land is worth, and a few generations later the first family's descendants find themselves landlords of the center of a great city, through little effort of their own. George insisted that the value of this land could not justly belong to that family: it was a collective product that should be taxed away [2].

The book explains that such a tax ensures land is used productively, and that its revenue can support the shared infrastructure, like schools and wells, that gives value to the land. This is the idea called the "Henry George Theorem" [2].

The book's critical reading. The book does not simply take George's argument at face value, however. "Simply saying that land does not belong to an individual owner says nothing about who or what it does belong to. The city? The nation state? The world?" [2]

The book also explains that property is a bundle of rights: to access the land ("usus"), to build on or dispose of it ("abusus") and to profit from it ("fructus"). How these should be divided, and among whom, "were hardly even considered in George's writing", the book writes [2]. → Property and contract

The book then rereads the world George invites us to imagine as one of "⿻ value", where entities at different scales, such as universities, municipalities and nation states, all contribute to differing degrees to create value. It concludes: "And for both justice and productivity, property and value should belong, in differing degrees, to these intersecting social circles. In this sense, George was a founder of ⿻ social science." [2][3]

The next section goes on to say that if network thinking was implicit in George's work, it was the German sociologist Georg Simmel who made it explicit [2]. → Intersectional identity

In Taiwan's history. Chapter 2-1 of the book explains that the third of the Three Principles, Minsheng ("civil livelihood"), draws on economic philosophies including the ideas of George [1]. It introduces the philosopher John Dewey, whom Sun Yat-sen met, as "a disciple of Henry George", and notes that a Georgist land value tax was introduced in Taiwan in 1977, and that Article 145 of the ROC Constitution, which encourages cooperative enterprise, was influenced by Georgist ideas [1]. Chapter 2-2 writes that "building on the ideas of Henry George, Taiwan has among the most innovative policies in the world" for land and the radio spectrum, through taxes that include rights of compulsory sale [4]. → Taiwan's digital democracy

In other chapters. Chapter 3-0 writes that ⿻'s normative idea, that diversity is the fuel of social progress, is deeply rooted in a tradition including American thinkers who deeply influenced Taiwan, "such as Henry George and John Dewey" [5]. Chapter 3-3 says that Estonia, like Taiwan, has "a strong history of Georgism and land taxes" [6]. Chapter 5-7, "Social Markets", writes that the desire to combine the dynamism of markets with addressing their limits was a primary motivation for ⿻, "especially the thought of Henry George and his followers", including the Nobel laureate economist William Vickrey. Weyl's earlier book Radical Markets is dedicated to Vickrey [7]. The same chapter explains the Henry George Theorem as stating, roughly, that the taxes raised from correctly designed common ownership taxes can fund all the subsidies required for mutually value-raising (supermodular) investments [7]. → Social Markets, supermodularity, Harberger tax

Main ideas

This section is based not on George's own Progress and Poverty, but on how the book Plurality and people around it explain him.

A single tax on land. The idea that the value of land is a collective product created by society, and so should be returned to society through tax [2].

The Henry George Theorem. The result that the revenue of a suitable land value tax can pay for the public investments that raise land values [2][7].

⿻ value. In the book's rereading, value is created jointly, to differing degrees, by social circles of many different scales [2].

What the authors and those around them have said

Weyl and Tang (2018). At a meeting in Taipei, Glen Weyl said that many of the ideas in Radical Markets came from Vickrey, and that Vickrey's ideas were based on George. He said: "George inspired the ideas of Sun Yat-sen almost as much as Karl Marx inspired the ideas of Lenin." When Audrey Tang replied that the "citizen's dividend" was also George's idea, Weyl added: "The secret ballot was introduced into the United States by Henry George." [8]
Weyl (2022). On a podcast, Weyl said that George was the best-selling author in English after the Bible for some thirty years, gave the Progressive movement and the social gospel their names and inspired Monopoly, yet has been almost forgotten [9].
RadicalxChange (2019). Weyl's "The Political Philosophy Of RadicalxChange" traces to the Georgist tradition the idea that social institutions must be worthy of the trust that goes with the power entrusted to them, and lists in that lineage the measures against monopoly and the taxation of rents created by urbanization that George advocated [10]. → Radical Markets
Vitalik Buterin (2018). In a review of Radical Markets, he explained George's land value tax, which falls on the value of the land itself rather than on improvements to it, as part of the prehistory of the Harberger tax [11].
Sam Altman (2021). In "Moore's Law for Everything", Altman cites George's land value tax, writing that since rises in land value come from the work of the society around it, it is fair to share that value with society [12]. → Sam Altman
Peter Thiel (2024). In a conversation, Thiel spoke of always having been drawn to Georgist theories of real estate, and described George as a late-nineteenth-century economist who seemed socialist in his own time and seems libertarian today [13]. → Peter Thiel
Sunji Lee (2025). In a conversation with Yuko Tanaka, Sunji Lee explained that the idea of owning property partly in common was put forward by George and carried on as Georgism, and that in Taiwan Sun Yat-sen proposed a system close to it [14].
Kei Wakabayashi (2024). An article in WORKSIGHT introduces George, Simmel, Dewey and Wiener as the four thinkers who form the foundation of the vision of PLURALITY [15].

Sources

Plurality, 2-1 "A View from Yushan" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-2 "Connected Society" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, Japanese edition, 3-2 "つながった社会" (Connected Society) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-2/jpn/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-0 "What is ⿻?" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-7 "Social Markets" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/ ［CC0］
Audrey Tang, "Meeting with Glen Weyl" (2018-11-21) — https://archive.tw/2018-11-21-meeting-with-glen-weyl ［CC0］
Hear This Idea, "Glen Weyl on Pluralism, Radical Markets, and Social Technology" (2022-03-15) — https://hearthisidea.com/episodes/glen/
E. Glen Weyl, "The Political Philosophy Of RadicalxChange" (2019-12-30) — https://www.radicalxchange.org/updates/blog/2019-12-30-gqx4th/
Vitalik Buterin, "On Radical Markets" (2018-04-20) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2018/04/20/radical_markets.html
Sam Altman, "Moore's Law for Everything" (2021-03-16) — https://moores.samaltman.com/
Conversations with Tyler, "Peter Thiel on Political Theology" (2024-04-17) — https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel-political-theology/
Yuko Tanaka × Sunji Lee, "「分断と対立のSNS文化」を終わらせる新技術とは？" (What is the new technology that will end the social media culture of division and conflict?) (Shueisha Shinsho Plus, 2025-06-17, in Japanese) — https://shinsho-plus.shueisha.co.jp/interview/tanaka_lee/30700
Kei Wakabayashi, "デジタル時代に必要な社会思想" (WORKSIGHT, 2024-10-21, in Japanese) — https://worksight.substack.com/p/118

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