Georgist Education Association

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What is Georgism?

Georgism ('Geoism', or 'Geonomics') is a social philosophy that is concerned with "the big issues": poverty, pollution, crime and violence, general health and happiness; and proposes rational and radical changes to address these issues. Georgism is named after Henry George, philosopher and economist at the end of the 19th century, but it has been further developed and renewed by many other thinkers. It should be considered as a progressive and sane alternative to the two main-stream political systems: capitalism and socialism. While it has some things in common with both, it is not merely a hybrid mixture of the two, as exists today in many countries. Georgism seeks to solve problems in society by addressing their root causes rather than their symptoms.

Reclaiming The Commons

So what exactly are the commons and how do we reclaim them? Reclaiming the commons has nothing to do with increasing government control on our work or our lives, it has nothing to do with increasing regulation or centralized economic planning. On the contrary, reclaiming the commons is the necessary measure that is needed to stimulate maximised spontaneous initiative and cooperation, decentralise wealth and power and allow people to become more independent individuals, more independent from governments and big powerful corporations to provide them with work and consumption.

Common resources are all things that are not created by individual effort but raise value from the forces of nature and/or the community as a whole, through our advancing ways of cooperating and common body of knowledge.

The inability to properly distinguish between our common resources and those that have been created by private human effort, and our common resources is the biggest failure of our current social scientists. This is the case for people from both sides of the political spectrum. Seeing the commons is thus the first step to reclaiming the commons.

Our Practical Policies

Many people dream of a better world: with less poverty, less violence, a cleaner environment, and a value system that is less money-oriented and more people-oriented. We need to create financial-economic frameworks that help us accomplishing these goals. The financial-economic frameworks as they exist today, are designed to transfer money from the poor to the wealthy, protect the privileged and keep things the way they are. As long as people's financial interests fundamentally contradict their ethical interests, there will be no fundamental changes in our ways of life.

We must consider the money system thus as a value system, that rewards certain actions and penalises other actions in the every day life of everyone. In this way its effects every aspect of everyone's life. Money and finance are of course only a small portion of what makes us tick as an individual and a society, but if we want it to work for us rather than control us, we must make it comply better with moral values. We must particularly carefully consider the role of the government : how the government raises its revenue, how it distributes this revenue and how money itself is initially created and distributed. These are not just practical issues that should be left to bookkeepers, but ethical questions in the heart of our society.