I want to support this; the initial motivation behind Georgism is, in fact, the exact question of why poverty still exists when so much progress has been made—and the answer is that when private actors are allowed to monopolize natural resources (most importantly land), all the gains accruing from productivity increases and technology eventually go to them.
A UBI, as Eliezer suggests, is a band-aid to the problem, addressing the symptom but not the disease, and so long as land rents (economic rent) are monopolized, the disease continues unabated.
I don’t know if the Georgist Paradise doesn’t have any poverty—land taxes don’t magically cure addiction or depression or any of the other reasons someone might become and stay poor. But I’d bet that it has substantially less of the ‘scrabbling in the dirt’ than our current economic equilibrium.
I want to support this; the initial motivation behind Georgism is, in fact, the exact question of why poverty still exists when so much progress has been made—and the answer is that when private actors are allowed to monopolize natural resources (most importantly land), all the gains accruing from productivity increases and technology eventually go to them.
A UBI, as Eliezer suggests, is a band-aid to the problem, addressing the symptom but not the disease, and so long as land rents (economic rent) are monopolized, the disease continues unabated.
I don’t know if the Georgist Paradise doesn’t have any poverty—land taxes don’t magically cure addiction or depression or any of the other reasons someone might become and stay poor. But I’d bet that it has substantially less of the ‘scrabbling in the dirt’ than our current economic equilibrium.