A Georgist based third party would kick ass - with housing affordability being a cross party huge issue; Georgist have fact based analysis and solutions that the American cirizen would like, while the duopoly barely understand root causes let alone presenting solutions. Candidate (G) let's make them happen!
New parties only work if you reform the election system first. The Forward Party has been advocating for alternatives like Approval or Ranked Choice. They used an Approval election for a State Senate seat in Utah recently.
As long as most elections are done under the lousy "vote for one, most votes win" plurality system, third parties have a lot of trouble gaining traction, because your preferred third party is a "spoiler" against whichever major party you see as the lesser evil. If you switch to an Approval or Range or Ranked ballot, with a reasonable tabulation system, that changes.
Electing our legislatures using Proportional Representation / multi-member districts also would help a ton.
Yep. Implemented successfully in Saint Louis. Fargo was happy with it too until their state legislature forced them to go back to plurality because Approval was electing moderates instead of MAGA chuds.
I know a state senator here in California who has been interested in running a bill that would ask the Secretary of State to pre-qualify the voting machines to run a variety of systems, and then let localities choose what to use, so we could have more local experimentation. Hasn’t started on it in earnest because the current governor is known to be unfriendly to election method reforms.
Though some types of voting do seem to do better in terms of Bayesian regret, like SCORE and STAR, Approval voting is far simpler and strikes a balance.
True, although _more_ true of Approval, which has been seen in practice (in Fargo and Saint Louis) to strongly incentivize candidates to behave in a more collegial or coalitional manner towards "ideological neighbors". If candidates A and B are fairly similar, and there are some A-supporters and some B-supporters, both A and B have an incentive to persuade the other's supporters "hey, you should also approve me". Similar with Range, on a five-star system, you want to get a five, or at least a four, from your "neighbor's" fans.
Instant Runoff _usually_ works that way, but much more-so when it's obvious which of the neighbors is ultimately going to come out on top. RCV / IRV promises you that you can vote your true favorite over your "lesser evil", and not have a spoiler problem. But it's not true -- if your true favorite _actually becomes competitive_, you can have a situation where you knock out the lesser evil, but you don't win -- you throw the election to your greater evil.
The classic "center squeeze" scenario looks like this: It's Election Day in a town with 100 voters. 98 have voted so far.
31 Left > Center > Right
16 Center > Left > Right
16 Center > Right > Left
35 Right > Center > Left
If you stop now and do the instant runoff tabulation, first Left gets eliminated (31 votes to Center’s 32) and then Center wins with two thirds of the final vote.
But now the last two voters show up. They vote with the Left bloc. Now Left wins in the first round, 33 to 32. The center votes split. Right wins, 51-49.
This is, of course, insane. Center still beats Right by an enormous margin. And those last two voters? They would’ve been happier with the outcome if they’d just stayed home.
The proportional version of ranked choice, STV-PR, is decent, but for single winner elections it’s trash. And has a mismark rate about 10x worse than simple “mark the ones you like” approval ballots. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPIauxbTtI )
Basically ranked ballots cost a lot more, require a lot more voter education, and even after that they don't work terribly well. Meanwhile Approval is _literally free_ to implement on any existing voting equipment, and barely requires voter education at all. People are already accustomed to "vote for up to N" type races, and Yes/No ballot propositions. And to the extent any strategy is required, the strategy is "figure out who you would have voted for under the old system -- your favorite 'frontrunner' -- and then vote for them, plus everyone you like more." It's no harder than what we're doing, and the results are very interpretable to everyone involved. In the "iterative game" context, when you see that your true-favorite party has become viable -- they're actually putting up numbers that would win if you withdrew support for your lesser-evil -- that's when you actually do that.
The center squeeze failure is shockingly common -- we had a near miss in San Francisco a few years ago, it's how Mary Peltola got elected, and we also saw squeeze non-instant primary elections in Louisiana in 1991 (the David Duke race), and the French Presidential election of 2001 (where the center-left candidate SHOULD have won, but got shut out). This kind of thing can lead to voters tossing the whole reform. Alaska very nearly did after the Peltola election ( https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Repeal_Top-Four_Ranked-Choice_Voting_Initiative_(2024) ), and Burlington, VT adopted RCV, had a squeeze election for mayor, and the ~60% of voters who had opposed the outcome immediately rolled back to plurality.
I agree with you, EJ. Georgism is the perfect middle ground, no pun intended. It transcends political left and right.
The problem, however, whenever I mention "land value tax," people universally and reflexively recoil. From there, they stop listening. No matter what I say or write, they hear "tax" and think we are going to tax grandma off her land.
Another reason why BTR can have greater long-run value is the owners are likely to pursue upzoning in the future. NIMBY homeowners would not. This creates a wedge where the value of the assembled land is higher to developers than splitting it among NIMBYs.
If developers could trust city planners to be YIMBY the wedge wouldn't exist.
Capitalism, in the absence of some force preventing accumulation of claims to land, will eventually devolve into feudalism.
In the twentieth century, the mechanism that cracked up great accumulations of wealth was the World Wars. I would prefer we find some less violent way of handling it. Although our current oligarchs seem to REALLY want a repeat of that.
I’m paying rent I can’t stabilize, watching land appreciate under someone else. They’re angry at landlords, but the system pays them to sit still. Policy trims edges. Incentives don’t move. Ugh!!
Thanks for this. I'm in Ireland where institutional investment in Single Family has been effectively super through planning and tax measures. I have two questions. 1. If your analysis is correct we should expect the majority of house price growth in urban centers to be accounted by Land, is that right? 2. One of the straight forward advantages of the new US Bill seems to be that it will help increase our at least stabilize homeownership levels. Isn't that a worthy goal despite your concerns around supply?
Yes, broadly speaking, in the long run most urban house price growth in constrained cities is driven by land rather than buildings. The structure itself depreciates over time and is relatively easy to replicate, while the land component captures the value of location—things like jobs, infrastructure, schools, and accessibility. As cities become more productive and desirable, that value gets capitalized into land prices. That’s why in places like Dublin or other supply-constrained metros, you often see large price differences between otherwise similar homes depending on zoning, transport links, or neighborhood dynamics. Construction costs explain only a small portion of long-term price divergence; land is usually doing most of the work.
A Georgist based third party would kick ass - with housing affordability being a cross party huge issue; Georgist have fact based analysis and solutions that the American cirizen would like, while the duopoly barely understand root causes let alone presenting solutions. Candidate (G) let's make them happen!
New parties only work if you reform the election system first. The Forward Party has been advocating for alternatives like Approval or Ranked Choice. They used an Approval election for a State Senate seat in Utah recently.
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/12/12/utahs-forward-partys-first-of-its-kind-preference-poll-picks-a-winner-to-replace-sen-thatcher/
https://www.11chooses.com/
As long as most elections are done under the lousy "vote for one, most votes win" plurality system, third parties have a lot of trouble gaining traction, because your preferred third party is a "spoiler" against whichever major party you see as the lesser evil. If you switch to an Approval or Range or Ranked ballot, with a reasonable tabulation system, that changes.
Electing our legislatures using Proportional Representation / multi-member districts also would help a ton.
Approval voting FTW. Has almost all the benefits of Concorcet while being far simpler. It just changes the radio button to a checkbox.
Yep. Implemented successfully in Saint Louis. Fargo was happy with it too until their state legislature forced them to go back to plurality because Approval was electing moderates instead of MAGA chuds.
Correct. The two-party system will never permit a voting system that undermines its base.
I know a state senator here in California who has been interested in running a bill that would ask the Secretary of State to pre-qualify the voting machines to run a variety of systems, and then let localities choose what to use, so we could have more local experimentation. Hasn’t started on it in earnest because the current governor is known to be unfriendly to election method reforms.
100 percent Isaiah.
Though some types of voting do seem to do better in terms of Bayesian regret, like SCORE and STAR, Approval voting is far simpler and strikes a balance.
Approval and ranked choice don’t just change outcomes, they change incentives. Candidates actually have to broaden appeal instead of polarizing.
True, although _more_ true of Approval, which has been seen in practice (in Fargo and Saint Louis) to strongly incentivize candidates to behave in a more collegial or coalitional manner towards "ideological neighbors". If candidates A and B are fairly similar, and there are some A-supporters and some B-supporters, both A and B have an incentive to persuade the other's supporters "hey, you should also approve me". Similar with Range, on a five-star system, you want to get a five, or at least a four, from your "neighbor's" fans.
Instant Runoff _usually_ works that way, but much more-so when it's obvious which of the neighbors is ultimately going to come out on top. RCV / IRV promises you that you can vote your true favorite over your "lesser evil", and not have a spoiler problem. But it's not true -- if your true favorite _actually becomes competitive_, you can have a situation where you knock out the lesser evil, but you don't win -- you throw the election to your greater evil.
The classic "center squeeze" scenario looks like this: It's Election Day in a town with 100 voters. 98 have voted so far.
31 Left > Center > Right
16 Center > Left > Right
16 Center > Right > Left
35 Right > Center > Left
If you stop now and do the instant runoff tabulation, first Left gets eliminated (31 votes to Center’s 32) and then Center wins with two thirds of the final vote.
But now the last two voters show up. They vote with the Left bloc. Now Left wins in the first round, 33 to 32. The center votes split. Right wins, 51-49.
This is, of course, insane. Center still beats Right by an enormous margin. And those last two voters? They would’ve been happier with the outcome if they’d just stayed home.
The proportional version of ranked choice, STV-PR, is decent, but for single winner elections it’s trash. And has a mismark rate about 10x worse than simple “mark the ones you like” approval ballots. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPIauxbTtI )
Basically ranked ballots cost a lot more, require a lot more voter education, and even after that they don't work terribly well. Meanwhile Approval is _literally free_ to implement on any existing voting equipment, and barely requires voter education at all. People are already accustomed to "vote for up to N" type races, and Yes/No ballot propositions. And to the extent any strategy is required, the strategy is "figure out who you would have voted for under the old system -- your favorite 'frontrunner' -- and then vote for them, plus everyone you like more." It's no harder than what we're doing, and the results are very interpretable to everyone involved. In the "iterative game" context, when you see that your true-favorite party has become viable -- they're actually putting up numbers that would win if you withdrew support for your lesser-evil -- that's when you actually do that.
The center squeeze failure is shockingly common -- we had a near miss in San Francisco a few years ago, it's how Mary Peltola got elected, and we also saw squeeze non-instant primary elections in Louisiana in 1991 (the David Duke race), and the French Presidential election of 2001 (where the center-left candidate SHOULD have won, but got shut out). This kind of thing can lead to voters tossing the whole reform. Alaska very nearly did after the Peltola election ( https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_2,_Repeal_Top-Four_Ranked-Choice_Voting_Initiative_(2024) ), and Burlington, VT adopted RCV, had a squeeze election for mayor, and the ~60% of voters who had opposed the outcome immediately rolled back to plurality.
I agree with you, EJ. Georgism is the perfect middle ground, no pun intended. It transcends political left and right.
The problem, however, whenever I mention "land value tax," people universally and reflexively recoil. From there, they stop listening. No matter what I say or write, they hear "tax" and think we are going to tax grandma off her land.
Hard to disagree that housing is a structural issue first, not just a policy one. The question is whether any party can actually act on that.
Another reason why BTR can have greater long-run value is the owners are likely to pursue upzoning in the future. NIMBY homeowners would not. This creates a wedge where the value of the assembled land is higher to developers than splitting it among NIMBYs.
If developers could trust city planners to be YIMBY the wedge wouldn't exist.
Right, it’s not just current use value—it’s future entitlement potential. Developers can actually underwrite that upside.
Capitalism, in the absence of some force preventing accumulation of claims to land, will eventually devolve into feudalism.
In the twentieth century, the mechanism that cracked up great accumulations of wealth was the World Wars. I would prefer we find some less violent way of handling it. Although our current oligarchs seem to REALLY want a repeat of that.
History does show resets happen, but the key question is whether policy can correct imbalance without crisis-level shocks.
I’m paying rent I can’t stabilize, watching land appreciate under someone else. They’re angry at landlords, but the system pays them to sit still. Policy trims edges. Incentives don’t move. Ugh!!
Yeah, it’s tough watching appreciation accrue elsewhere while your costs stay exposed to the market. The incentives are clearly skewed.
Thanks for this. I'm in Ireland where institutional investment in Single Family has been effectively super through planning and tax measures. I have two questions. 1. If your analysis is correct we should expect the majority of house price growth in urban centers to be accounted by Land, is that right? 2. One of the straight forward advantages of the new US Bill seems to be that it will help increase our at least stabilize homeownership levels. Isn't that a worthy goal despite your concerns around supply?
Yes, broadly speaking, in the long run most urban house price growth in constrained cities is driven by land rather than buildings. The structure itself depreciates over time and is relatively easy to replicate, while the land component captures the value of location—things like jobs, infrastructure, schools, and accessibility. As cities become more productive and desirable, that value gets capitalized into land prices. That’s why in places like Dublin or other supply-constrained metros, you often see large price differences between otherwise similar homes depending on zoning, transport links, or neighborhood dynamics. Construction costs explain only a small portion of long-term price divergence; land is usually doing most of the work.
The “symptom vs system” framing is spot on. Restricting BTR doesn’t fix the land-value dynamics creating it.
"That freeway didn’t just move traffic. It created land value."
Good God, please stop using this type of construction. It's bad writing, cheap and lazy, and it doesn't even convey the point.
And this: . "Sprawl is not just a planning failure. It is a tax policy failure." Another trope that needs to be rewritten!