A little over five years ago, I submitted a book review of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty to a contest run by the popular substack blog, Astral Codex Ten (abbreviated as ACX). To my surprise, I won first place, an event which completely hijacked my life and propelled me into the Land Value Tax movement.
After I wrote the original article, the general sentiment among ACX readers was enthusiastic, tempered with a measure of “cool theory bro, but does it work?” At the time, my honest answer was—“I don’t know!” I spent the next five months researching and responding to the three biggest objections critics had mustered in response to the first article. That was in December of 2021.
A lot has happened since, and readers of my book Land is a Big Deal as well as long time subscribers to Progress and Poverty substack have had a front seat to most of that. Nevertheless, there were many twists and turns along the way, most especially one devastating moment in my personal life where I very nearly walked away from the movement entirely, along with everything else I had done in my public career.
Today, Astral Codex Ten publishes my five-year retrospective, cataloguing the entire journey from start to finish. Making progress sometimes feel like a grinding journey, but putting everything we’ve done together in one place lends new perspective. I encourage you to read it in full:
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to our success, including and especially you readers.
Here’s to the next five years!