[TimPC]

I disagree strongly with his fundamental premise. Even if you acknowledge and accept the full moral premise of Georgism you have to assess the degree to which people are morally culpable. Slavery was a heinous violation of human rights and choosing to participate in it justified heavy financial penalties from its abolishment. Participation in slavery was far from mandatory as evidenced by businesses in the north that competed with those in the south despite not having slaves.

The current real estate system on the other hand is a fundamentally different beast. Everyone who doesn’t want to be homeless has to participate as either a renter or purchaser. Years and years of government policy have made the former decision ill advised as the financial benefits to ownership are quite large. Despite this I’d agree with the proposal if all that was being done was the removal of a subsidy.

The government is not merely removing a subsidy in this case though. They are intentionally cratering the housing market. Years of government policy has encouraged over-participation in that market. For those who want to change things to argue the government is 0% morally culpable and the individuals are 100% morally culpable is disingenuous. His argument seems to be that the financial culpability follows from the moral culpability.

He even argues that individuals participating in a system owe backwards subsidies because the government did the morally wrong thing. This amounts to intentionally bankrupting most home owners, including depriving them of funds needed for retirement. This is done in a single sentence hand waving fashion without any sort of impact analysis.

I’d argue there is a substantial problem here that spans the ethical, economic and political categories. But you seem to believe the government is 0% culpable and the individuals responding to incentives are 100% culpable. I’d argue it seems more likely you don’t actually believe that just don’t want to pay for the costs of a fair transition.