In California, there’s an assembly bill proposing that mapping apps not be allowed to suggest cut-through navigation (I get all my news from Yahoo! News !). You know what I’m talking about? When there’s a bunch of traffic and Google Maps is like, hey buddy, if you get off here, run over a few children, hit a dog, and get back onto the “free” way over here, then you’ll make it home in time to read one more Substack note or, I suppose, gaze into the eyes of your beloved before night night.

Just kidding. I mean, kids don’t play in the street and it’s insane to walk a dog without a leash. And lets not forget, for those of you believe in a soul, it’ll be sucked right out of you by sitting in that stop ‘n go traffic too long! How great is the damage done by drivers who opt to slightly elevate traffic levels in a neighborhood? Maybe by diffusing congestion, they’re preventing some imminent road rage! A study must be conducted!

(Ok, I actually glanced at the bill and it actually proposes just a study, haha)

Ok ok ok ok ok.

Ok, but let’s suppose the bill is to ban apps from suggesting shortcuts through neighborhoods and you support that.

I’m guessing you wouldn’t justify this because you think the average person shouldn’t be allowed to decide how to get from A to B. You probably say to yourself that our transit system is poorly designed and our economic system is poorly designed. Therefore, we’ve ended up with mega corporations that have gotten really good at exploiting these systems and they don’t care about the general welfare, especially the poor neighborhoods that abut against these “free” ways. (Although, I bet the way this bill actually got sponsored was because there were some wealthy neighborhoods that were having to deal with this issue, but…these are just my hunches of oats.)

Yet what’s this bill’s success depending on? That the same system that made our transit system, that upholds our economic system, does a good job here? This time?

I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m sounding just like the right wing authority figures of my childhood who might have mocked me, “Oh, do you think there should be a law that your big sister lets you win in Monopoly?”

Actually, 30 years later, I do believe there is a law that should make my big sister share the spoils of nature with me (read: Henry George’s Land Value Tax).

So I do believe the government should make laws! I’m growing! I mean, the government runs our transit system and so it is their responsibilty to make it fair and efficient for all of society, right? (Do we dare ask how/why/when/where did we consent to the government running our transit system?)

Yet, here’s what I’m saying: how can you not despair, ye who believe in elections?

We have a system that props up monopoly and then we seek refuge in that same system to save us from it. Some plantation owners cared for their slaves tenderly. Some did not. Well-fed slaves worked harder, some say. Well-fed slaves run away faster, others say.

I think sortition (which is using randomly selected people to legislate) would lead us toward (a) a better transit system, (b) a better economic system, and (c) minimally distortive regulations, which probably wouldn’t have to include any kind of ban, or study about banning, software tools for routing our personal vehicles en masse.

What do you suggest? We keep electing aristocrats and giving 2 minute speeches at city hall to beg for some pooridge? Oh, if only we would stop elect freaking aristocrats so much. What’s our problem?

Or we embrace sortition and give power to the people.

Alright, I know, I’m a radical and this is a false binary. We can do and we are doing both. Let’s just…so some more soritioning. If you don’t know what sortition is really, join Sortition USA free: sortitionusa.org (and tell them I sentcha, there’s referral competition happening!)

JOIN SORTITIONUSA
JOIN SORTITIONUSA
JOIN SORTITIONUSA
JOIN SORTITIONUSA
FREE
FREE
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GRATIS
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P.S. Acknowledgement to the Georgists who wanted to cry out that the land values in the neighborhoods where drivers get rerouted already price that in and were a government action to prevent such patterns, they would be providing a windfall gain to one segment of landowners that ought to be returned to the community!

THE LAND VALUE TAX STRIKES AGAIN!

If sortition is bulletproof against corruption, why not ask the National Rifle Association to fund an assembly on gun control?

Oh, horrified at reading the full name of the NRA?

VOLDEMORT! Voldemort! Voldemort!

Are you afraid you would be sortitioned into an assembly on gun control and come away supporting gun ownership?! All your flaming liberal progressive friends would cast you out! Thank goodness you now own a gun for your personal safety!

We sortitionists claim to be non-partisan and all-inclusive, and yet as long as we’re funded by academia and nonprofits with “democracy” in their title, we will look (and we are in fact) run by leftists.

Given that Equality by Lot just published an article, “The New York Sun Casts Sortition as a Leftist Menace”, well, what have we got to lose? How many more questions can I ask in this blog?

I’m telling you, the Oakland assembly will be dismissed by conservatives as a ploy of Berkeley and the Connecticut assembly will be dismissed by conservatives as a ploy by Yale. And they’re half right! As in, these assemblies are ploys by academic institutions, but since I think Civic Assemblies are strongly immune to capture by academic elites, they are wrong to dismiss them. However, I’m arleady abeliever in sortition. I’ve read about it, I’ve seen it, and I’ve helped organize it. Most people ain’t never heard of it.

Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, Berkeley and Yale are considered evil towers of liberal parasites that don’t do shit for society. And, as much as I don’t think they’re evil, I do think academia has such misaligned incentives that their output is close to worthless. But that’s just like my opinion, man!

Let’s look at the LA Charter Reform Assembly, which I helped with. The Broad Foundation gave us (Rewrite LA/PDLA/Healthy Democracy) $25k and we accepted $200,000 from an anonymous an individual donor. Or so I was told! Now I’ve heard that maybe it wasn’t a single individual? I don’t know; I don’t care; I forget if I’m not supposed to say the exact amount, because we decided to spend half of it and save half of it for a future assembly, but we’re waiting to see what LA City Council does, but they’re cowards and we’re not supposed to say things like that publicly which might upset these politicians we hope to work with, and yada yada yada, but I yearn to have the popularity that would actually make uttering such things a risk for me.

Officially, the $200k came from the Berggruen Insititute. That is, the private donor(s) gave the cash to the Berggruen Institute and specified that it only be used for an LA assembly on the charter. What is the Berggruen Institute? “The Berggruen Institute's mission is to develop ideas and shape political, economic and social institutions for the 21st century.” (https://berggruen.org/) It’s just a billionaire named Nick Berggruen who’s paying money to his journalist friend to “develop ideas and shape political, ecopnomic and social insitutions for the 21st century.”

What’s that you say?

You thought all billionaires had names the sounded like tusk, or bozos, or smucker, or eel, or hates?

You didn’t know there’s 3,400+ billionaires?

You’re surprised most of them don’t like publicity?

Are we maybe playing into the hands of billionaires when we only talk about like the 6 who revel in their notoriety? Is it “we” who are playing into their hands or do they own the media that plays into their own hands?

Question: do you think 13 or more questions have been asked in this post so far?

Ok, back to sortition. When you look at the donors for the Connecticut Citizens’ Assembly, there’s several organizations as well as individual. We are naive to think that either the orgs or the individuals do not have agendas. Some probably want to get rid of taxes, some want more taxes, some maybe even want a Land Value Tax (!), while others just want to spread the use of Civic Assemblies, and others just want to try something new.

There an agenda. Here an agenda. Everywhere an agenda.

But agendas aren’t even bad! That’s what I’m saying! Just let it all hang out.

Say it: you hate guns and you think people who own guns are stupid.

Have you ever met any gun owners? Do the laws in Nashville have to match those in Los Angeles?

Do we believe in the deliberations of representative samples of people or not?

We let people sue the government and we trust juries to decide the outcome.

Let the NRA “sue” the government and trust a Civic Assembly decide the outcome.

The Connecticut assembly received $650k in donations and is seeking $200k more. The Oakland assembly also needed about that much funding. Maybe one day society will recognize the value of assemblies (you know, every major US city has about a dozen jury trials ongoing at any time and we seem to think that’s worth the cost). But right now, we need some sortition ammunition!

Disclaimer: I don’t know bro. I just got off a Zoom call talking about getting funding for our respective nonprofits. Do I find having a funder problematic or do I just like not having a boss? Do I like feeling holier-than-thou because I am a volunteer? I don’t know.

FUND ME https://ko-fi.com/maclark

Ahahahaha.

No but for reals. Any assembly that the Christian right would fund and that could be convened in the Bible belt would be…awesome.

Lastly, note that I said “If sortition is bulletproof…” in the first sentence. I’m not sure I would call sortition neccessarily bulletproof against corruption, but it’s the best system I’ve heard of.

Hi everyone. Oakland, CA is about to have a Civic Assembly on its vacant storefronts. Common Ground USA might get a chance to present the LVT to the assembly. Here is more info about the assembly. I am the California chapter president and that presenter may be me! Please, IF there’s a chance to present on Georgism, help me prepare.

What can we gather on Oakland’s vacancy tax?

I’ve done some research already and I’m aware it was a flat tax based on a few categories (residential, commercial) and there were many exceptions. I’d love to compile any/all of the following:

• Media coverage

• Any data about vacancy

• Any data about how the vacancy tax affected Oakland

• Anecdotes from residents

• Politicians who supported it

• Politicians who opposed it

• Economists who promoted it

• Who decided it has “failed”

• What the community’s reaction been

• Etc etc!

Anything generally relevant to Georgism in Oakland would also be great. I will be in contact with Lars Doucet of the Center for Land Economics. Maybe he can Zoom in to present with me, but regardless, I’ll be trying to work with him on assessing Oakland, talking about a Universal Building Exemption in California (bc we have prop 13 to work around), and I will be trying to make 3D prints of the land values of Oakland.

Reply here, DM me, ping me on the Georgism Discord “@Max Clark”, come over to my house if you need to! For progress without poverty!

Are you here because you love taxes?

Ooh, or maybe you hate taxes?

Surely, you don’t just find them boring?

Surely, you don’t go about living your daily life without having studied the 7 million words in the tax code? Surely that boring tax code doesn’t determine who controls most of the wealth of society and the fundamental justice of your economic existence?

Taxes!!!!

While there’s often a lot of rhetoric on the right criticizing most taxes as inefficient or hard to enforce, they never seem to finish their sentence. Okay, so taxes are inefficient and hard to enforce so…what? Should we not tax at all? On the left, the proposals sound something like, “tax anyone who makes or has a lot of money to pay for everyone else”, which implies that either the economic system is not efficient/just or that there’s a signficant proportion of the population that is unproducive that no one will care for, unless the government does. You can hold any of those positions or think I’ve misrepresented them or overlooked other positions. To move forward, you only need to agree the government should be funded somehow. So what’s the best way to tax?

(There is another approach where we argue that collecting the Land Value Tax is the purpose of government, because it is the society’s mechanism for sharing the Earth, but I’m giving away my big ending!)

To make things funner, I’m going to go roughly chronologically in US history.

STAMP TAX (duties)

These were the first taxes the American colonies. Official documents had to be on officially stamped papers from London.

• First instance of deadweight loss! This is the term for when people would conduct economic trade, but because there’s a tax or regulation, they decide it’s not worth the added cost. Society is less productive. (In this case, some people might have wanted to conduct a transaction that required some official papers that would have made both people a little happier, but they decided that the unhappiness from paying London for stamped papers outweighs the transaction, so they don’t do it. Bummer.)

• American colonists didn’t consent to this tax

• Supposedly to pay for British soldiers to be stationed in America to stave off French invasion

IMPORTING SUGAR, LEAD, PAINT, COFFEE, TEA (targeted tariffs)

UNLIKE YOU PROBABLY INFERRED, the Boston Tea Partiers were not anti-tax. They didn’t want the tax to be cut. They liked that foreign tea was taxed really high, because they were smugglers and were undercutting the high price of tea. If they had to compete with untaxed tea, they wouldn’t have made any money (but more people would have gotten cheaper tea).

• Tough to enforce! (As made obvious by how wealthy and prominent American smugglers were, like Mr. John Hancock)

• Deadweight loss (If tea cost $X per lb, then it got taxed, some people would buy less tea. If less tea is being sold, less tea would be made. A new price point would be established at $Y per lb and, overall, people would be unhappier, but maaaybe the government would have made enough money off the tax to restore that lost happiness?)

• Substitutionary consumption (Not clear if this is good or bad, but what it means is that some people will drink less coffee and instead drink milk. Some will drink beer.)

• Targeted taxes are at least pretty transparent. People notice when the price of eggs or something jumps up a lot more than other things. (Transparency is considered a good thing in taxes: taxpayers should know when and how much they’re paying)

• Targeted tariffs infamously switch targets: one day, the lobbyists for Big Auto get their way, another day, Big Ag get their way, another day, Big Textiles get their way

• Not neutral (If the butcher and the baker find out that imported candlesticks are taxed very highly in order to help the candlestick maker, well they will get jealous!)

REVENUE TARIFF (taxing imports to raise money)

While the English government levied a targeted tariff on sugar, lead, paint, coffee, and tea, when the United States came to be, the US government people decided to tax anything imported into America.

• Enforcement is hard (The borders of the US are quite long, expensive things can be quite small and easily hidden.)

• A little bit predictable, because it applies to everything, rather than tea today and tofu tomorrow (But can still be unpredicatble, if, for instance, a president rapidly changes the tax rate)

• Deadweight loss felt by all general consumers, but they may not notice it, because unless they’re involved in international trade, they don’t know what options could have existed

• Substitutionary consumption towards inferior domestically produced goods

PROTECTION TARIFF (taxing imports to help US companies)

At the same time that the US government wanted to generate revenue by tariffs, they also wanted to protect domestic companies. The policy for a protection tariff I would argue was indistinguishable to a revenue tariff.

• (same as above)

• (same as above)

• (same as above)

• (same as above)

These are the same as above, duh, because the reasoning for a tax doesn’t affect how it operates.

On tariffs generally…

A tariff hoping to generate revenue depends on foreign producers importing lots of goods so the tax can be applied many times over. A tariff hoping to provide protection depends on foreign producers importing fewer goods or forcing them to charge a higher price, thereby letting domestic producers out compete them. These are opposed, yet a tariff looks the same either way: imported goods pay a tax.

In the context of early American policy, there was a belief in mercantilism. That is view that when two countries trade goods, the one with more literal gold is the one who comes out ahead. The modern version of this is to incur a trade deficit when you buy more goods than you sell. This is so goofy. When a country sells a bunch of stuff to another country and receives money, it’s not like one country has won and the other has lost. If you sell me a cookie, you didn’t beat me because you now have my $1 and I do not! I HAVE A COOKIE. You probably are sick of cookies, so you’d rather have the cash. Presumably because there’s other things to buy from someone somewhere, not because I want a literal pool of cash to swim in like Scrooge McDuck. It’s the same when a country sells its iron to another country. Those who sell iron would rather have money instead of iron. Those who buy iron would rather have the iron.

If you’re not sure why eliminating tariffs hasn’t historically benefitted the common laborer, I suggest reading Henry George’s book. Start with Chapter XXI. Also, the Wikipedia page has endorsements from both Tyler Cowen and Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman said it was the most rhetorically brilliant work ever written on trade.^[9] Friedman also paraphrased one of George's arguments in favor of free trade: “It’s a very interesting thing that in times of war, we blockade our enemies in order to prevent them from getting goods from us. In time of peace we do to ourselves by tariffs what we do to our enemy in time of war.”^[10]

Finally, there is a modern argument that we need to ensure we are locally producing x, y, or z from a national security standpoint. If we go to war with China, we better not be dependent on them for guns! Ok. Whatever. How about we don’t go to war with them? How about not tightening an economic noose around other countries by sanctioning their trade enforced by our global military?

Members of the US government are the only ones to have dropped a nuclear bomb on other humans.

EXCISE TAXES (taxes on making shit)

These taxes are enforced on producing something. Like gasoline or whiskey.

• Might cause a rebellion (like the Whiskey Rebellion)

• The usual: deadweight, enforcement costs/practicability, substitionary consumption

INHERITANCE TAX (estate and gift taxes)

• Enforcement is hard (You know, people hide their money!)

• Deadweight loss (I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that people will choose to produce less, if it isn’t going to be passed to their heirs directly, but will instead just go towards taxes. Again, with all deadweight taxes, just because it’s not perfectly efficient, that doesn’t mean it should not therefore be taxed.)

• Substitutionary consumption (People will just spend all their wealth in ways they actually aren’t that excited about rather than let it go to the government when they die.)

POLL TAXES (taxed to vote)

• Less voting (could be good, could be bad, depends on what kind of campaign you’re running! Ahahah, maybe I quite like the idea of taxing voting in mass elections…SEEK YE SORTITION!)

CORPORATE INCOME TAX

First started in 1909ish as a replacement for tariffs.

• Enforcement is extremely hard (Any taxation will cost money to collect, but the need to track income has been used to justify a massive surveillance state and an army of IRS employees to chase after those shell companies, foreign accounts, laundering schemes, etc.)

• Favors big coporations over little

• Pretty transparent/noticeable to the taxpayers (Early Single Taxers thought that moving from tariffs to income tax was just a stepping stone from income tax to Land Value Tax, because it would be obvious how costly income tax was)

• Deadweight loss (At some point, it’s worth producing more goods. If your profit for making one more batch of cookies is $X and the tax is $Y, at some point you’ll stop making cookies because $(X-Y) is not worth it, but if Y were 0, then you would have made some more cookies, and some more people would have been happy to get some more cookies.)

• Has been a flat tax typically, so it’s like the same 21% applied to the biggest and smallest companies

PERSONAL INCOME TAX

Basically see above. Note that tax avoidance, of course, is much easier for the wealthy.

• Enforcement is extremely hard

• Annoying to report, unless you’re rich (This is just part of enforcement, but I want to particularly point out the US appraoch of self-reporting has led to a massive legal and accounting arms in coporations to work around it as well as paving the way to an entire industry of tax fulfillment that is not economically productive and is incentivized to lobby the government for further bloat of the tax code)

• Very transparent/noticeable to Americans, although Milton Friedman famously regrets suggesting employers withold earnings on behalf of workers, this obscures what is happening to workers

• Deadweight loss

Example of deadweight loss: Take me. When I was 17, I worked at a coffee shop for minimum wage in California, which was $7.50/hour. Suppose I had 16 waking hours a day. Suppose I valued my first hour of leisure at $800.
the 2nd hour at $400,
the 3rd hour at $200,
the 4th hour at $100,
the 5th hour at $50,
the 6th hour at $25,
the 7th hour at $12.50,
the 8th hour at $6.25,
and the 9th hour at $3.12½

At $7.50/hour, I would have been happy to work 8 hours/day and have 8 hours of lesiure. If I got taxed at 20%, that would have reduced my take home pay to $6 (we are ignoring tips, which, as someone who always worked the night shift, I got very little anyway.) At that rate, I would have preferred to only work 7 hours/day and had less money and produced less for society. In fact, as is true in most coffee shops, shifts were only 6 hours and you weren’t allowed to work over 30 hours/week, because then It’s a Grind Coffee House would be legally bound to provide healthcare.

• At some point became a progressive tax when the USG defined tax income brackets and charged a higher % to people in higher brackets. (This amplifies deadweight loss when a worker is approaching a cutoff for a higher bracket. Some say this tax is fair, because people who produce more should pay more increasingly, not just in absolute terms.) (Does progressivity violate neutrality?)

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

• Pretty much same as all the shit above

But this did create a job for one my big-hearted friends. A tree of a man, at 6’5”. He grew up the son of a pastor who also worked as an HVAC repairman. My buddy’s mom was a stay-at-home mom. At one time or another, I had a crush on both of his sisters. They rented an apartment in Orange County, California, where I have a million fond memories and a few uncomfortable ones. After graduating from Biola University, a Christian college in Orange County, California, where he studied theology and internationl cultures and global missions, he got offered a job from a guy he met at Biola at that guy’s dad’s company. My big-hearted friend took on a lot of debt for college. His mom and dad hadn’t been able to help. In fact, I recall sitting next to him in that rental apartment where he sat with his big head in his big heands struggling to decide on whether or not to accept a financial gift from a man in his church to finish his degree. He had accepted it and also took on further debt. Then, with his graduation looming and a fiance he’d met at Biola, he accepted the job at his classmate’s dad’s company. This company charged investors to teach them how to avoid capital gains taxes on their investment by taking advantage of the 1031 exchange tax rule…….…how I remember standing on the curb of a Biola parking lot when I was a freshman at a nearby community college and having having my big-hearted, tall friend, wearing a button down shirt, mock the coporate lingo he was picking up and describe the sophistication of 1031 tax echange.

I laughed so hard and I shrugged. I didn’t get it, really, but he was tall, good at chess, and he was a senior and I was taking micro economics at community college.

Several years later, my other friend had a bunch of debt from Biola and his PhD degree. Our mtual friend, the tall, big-hearted fellow, got my PhD friend a job. My PhD friend was a clever writer and his job was to write things for this company that teaches investors how to avoid taxes by using the 1031 exchange tax rule…..another year or two later, my big-hearted, tall friend got his sister’s friend’s husband a job at this company. His sister’s friend’s husband was good at producing video content, which he produces for this copmany that teaches investors how to take advantage of the 1031 tax exchange law.

………And then my tall, big-hearted friend got fired by that guy he’d met at college who’s dad had this company that taught investors how to avoid capital gains taxes by taking advantage of the 1031 tax echange rule.

He didn’t actually get fired…becuase he agreed to some NDA, in exchange for more money, and so my friend never told me all the details…..his pastor dad died several years ago……he and his wife support his mother now…he and his wife support two biological kids and two adopted kids……he’s not making a lot of money right now….I don’t know how much…do you guys see this? DO YOU FUCKING SEE THIS??? His wife ran for some political position and lost a few years ago. Oh, do I need to tell you that this whole time, from being one of my dearest, best friends, I’ve only seen him from time to time, because he and his wife moved to Idaho to buy a house after college, because affording a house in Orange County, California wasn’t feasible? They swim through a world of bullshit to pay for a house and a minivan and sometimes Saturday trips to the lake to swim and drink beer and laugh and I live rent free with my daddy and read books about taxes and write about taxes all day on the internet.

SIN TAXES

• Black markets arise

• Unclear what is “sinful” (Cigarettes? Vaping? Coca-Cola? Whole milk? Nonfat milk? High fructose corn syrup? Pancake syrup? Pancakes? Cake? Seed oils? Microplastics? Beer? Backyard firepits?)

• Again, substitionary consumption (If a cigarette costs too much, do you buy nicotine patches or marijuana? If marijuana isn’t legal, might as well try meth? Or more legally, alcohol or church? Or video games? Or running marathons?)

PROPERTY TAX—ON STRUCTURES

• Easier to enforce, because buildings can’t run away (But it’s also not easy to assess the value of a 12-year-old roof, 5-year-old washing machine, 20-year-old wood flooring, built-in cabinetry, crown moldings, or even telling the difference between granite/quartz/solid surface/quartzite countertops.)

• Deadweight loss of production and repair of structures (If imporving or repairing a building increases your tax, it’s often a better ROI to do nothing. In some cases, it’s better to leave a dilapadated building on a property as a negative tax credit, evidence of this are old barns across the farmlands, slum housing, vacant storefronts)

• Owners with resources can contest assessments more easily

• Does correlate with those who have been granted land-access privilege by the state and ought to compensate society for that, but not as effective as the LVT (see below!)

PROEPRTY TAX—ON THE UNIMPROVED VALUE OF LAND VALUE (the LVT)

• Easiest to enforce

  • Land can’t run

  • Land is easily quantified

  • Assessments can be easily compared to neighboring lots

  • Doesn’t require entering buildings/homes or assessing materials

• Doesn’t reduce the supply of land (If you want to discuss a the few locations where people have infilled a bay to create more buildable terrain, please comment below)

• Compensates society in proportion to the privilege granted to a landlord (that privilege is the privilege to call the cops to capture people who come onto the parcel of land you hold the deed to)

SALES TAX

• Again, dodgeable

• Again, deadweight loss (you would have bought another cookie, but not if costs too much)

• Also, this is considered to affect low-income individuals more

• Hits the poor the hardeset

We have left out:

HEAD TAXES (tax for having a head!)

VALUE ADDED TAX (VAT)

NET WEALTH TAX

FINANCIAL TRANSATION TAX (trading stocks or whatever)

CARBON TAX

CONGESTION PRICING TAXES

I’ll leave you to investigate those.

We have also left out another revenue model entirely. The US government owned (conquered) a bunch of land in the New World. They sold this land, bit by bit. Who should have owned the “New World”? The first humans to live there? The humans who came there later? The humans who were born to the humans who first lived there? When did the humans who first lived there come there? Is it confusing? Can we share?

Ok, so, if you couldn’t tell, the tax on land values, or a Land Value Tax, is the best tax. Or least bad tax. I grew up in the 2000s and somehow, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Ron/Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Jeffrey Sachs, Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, never really seemed to talk about taxes. In some sense, a lot of anti-tax rhetoric misses the point. Right wingers go on and on about how inefficient/unfair a tax is and, usually, I agree with their critiques. Yet what is their conclusion? We ought not tax at all?

For those you interested in computer intelligence, I asked ChatGPT for kinds of taxes.

Curious how, even though I am logged in and I’ve definitely talked to ChatGPT about Georgism and the Land Value Tax dozens of times, it still only includes “property tax”.

So, what’s it going to be?

And are you bored?

You’re probably bored. You probably should have been playing soccer instead of reading this blog.

Alright

usually i edit these posts a little bit more than this, but this has taken me like all day. you probably get the gist of it all anyway. i did go over the first half, so maybe that will be enough to get you through to the end.

didn’t really even talk about how boredom with taxes is just rational ignorance and the systemic solution seems to be sortition.

nor how the LVT can spur production. i’m a kook! i think we can be rich AND fair.

Probably sortition unlocks it all?? Oh, but, you know, if someone promises you a panacea, you should just write them off!

Folarin Balogun, an American from England of Nigerian descent, got a red card and wasn’t going to be allowed to play for the USA tonight against Belgium, but then FIFA changed their mind. This has caused controversy!

It is my opinion that no American should receive a misconduct card of any colour.

That said, perhaps I can imagine myself being not an American. Then maybe if FIFA wanted to rescind a red card, they should randomly select from among all member countries to create a deliberative body. Like creating a global jury. During an international tournament such as the World Cup, they could have multiple juries pre-formed and ready to deal with controversies. This would be a use of sortition.

Sortition is the random selection of decision makers. has a series of articles that thoroughly explore the idea. This one is relevant:

Democracy Creative

Competence of Randomly Selected Groups

Are everyday people competent enough to understand policy implications, or do we actually need superior individuals — an elite — at the helm? As Hélène Landemore puts it…

Read more

2 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Terry Bouricius

If FIFA used sortition for its governance, not only could it handle questions during the World Cup, but it could also overcome its long history of corruption. You may be an American like me, so I forgive you for any unfamiliarity with the history of FIFA’s corruption. Maybe you’ve started to recognize Infantino, given how many times the camera focuses on him. He’s the president of FIFA.

Before Infantino, we had Sepp Blatter, who was impeached.

I was thinking about trying to list all the scandals, but honestly, I can’t really cite many facts and I’m not really interested in doing the research. I’m also sick of looking at images of presidents of any kind…of clubs, of countries, of school boards….on TVs, or coins, or mountainsides. What’s so special about these guys?

Anyway, in my soccer communties across my whole long life, it’s just been accepted that FIFA is corrupt. No one ever takes FIFA’s side. Maybe we are persecuting and mocking them unfairly. Welp, let a sortition body decide, too.

Now, is there a way to use sortition to replace VAR?

This is what I think of you all. You think your articles are about transit and ethics and politics, but it’s just straw wrappers all the way down. I am poisoned by my Substack feed. I know it, but can’t help it. It’s a substitute for a substitute for a substitute for a girlfriend and a brother and a cousin and a neighbor and we all know it. I know I’m wrong. Aren’t you tired of everyone thinking they’re right all the time? I want to be the guy who thinks he’s wrong. I mean, I am a sic [sic] man. You’re right. You write right. I wright wrongs. Righties, wrongies, lefties, longies.

As a child, I wondered why men read the newspaper. As a man, I read the Stacked Subs and I think children are much less moral and much less naive than is commonly thought. Adults are much more moral and much more naive than is commonly thought. I think what we commonly think is commonly right, but not always, but sometimes, but not always, but sometimes. Child is the father of man is the father of child is by no woman born…what do they eat if they can’t get Hobbit? I approximate others by looking inside myself. Then I remind myself how unlike others I am and how unlike each one of the others is from each of the other others. Are you still there? What shall we do then? Shall we continue in Substack that subscribers may abound? May it never be.

There is a woman near me in the coffee shop I’m in right now. She was wearing a white shirt and she has now returned from the bathroom in a black shirt! Why? We will never know. We will never see her again. She, for all intensive [sick] purposes, will be dying to us very soon. Rest-in-peace-it-don’t-matter-if-ur-black-or-white woman. She’s even wearing white on black Adidas. Did you know Adidas stands for “all day I dream about sex?” It doesn’t. It stands for “all day I dream about soccer.” It doesn’t. It doesn’t stand for anything. Possible is nothing [TM].

There’s this sorta sad, sweet guy sitting near me at the coffee shop with a bit of a speech impediment, a nervous smile, in a button down shirt that’s a little baggy—hang on, he’s praying, feels rude to write about him while he’s praying......................can’t wait any longer. He’s on a Zoom call like...giving “today’s lesson” to someone(s). His bible is open on his backpack next to him. He’s just said something about using our lives to serve God. I want to hug him. I want to punch him. I’m 100% sure he’s better off I do not speak to him. One hundred. Never been more certain of anything in my life. Ever. No matter what. Never.

Preachers and politicians…what would you do for a living if you suddenly stopped believing? Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Be kind, rewind.

I thought I was done here. Now they say—…who says they say?

But now the coffee Zoom preacher is saying, “the bible is not a book of science, it’s not a book of knowledge, it’s not—” can’t make out what’s saying….something something…then “just like in the movies—” …other stuff… “if God were—” … “How in the world can someone—” … “God clearly—” … “How confident are we in truly knowing—”

Hard to hear. How confident is he truly? Truly truly truly.

The barista calls out “order for Hannah!?”, this is the second time the barista has called out for Hannah. The barista has managed to be louder and keep any frustration out of her voice. (singing) Damn it, Hannah, there’s no future, there’s no answer. It also took two calls for me to respond to getting my coffee earlier. I’ve just looked up and I do not know the woman getting her drink, but the black & white woman is now, once again, heading to the bathroom!

I’m supposed to have lunch with a man of God tomorrow to talk about man and woman and God. He’s a nice man. He once carried me off a soccer field when I broke a bone…it’s really a shame it wasn’t beach soccer, because then there would have been only one set of footsteps etc etc, but not true, because it actually took two men to carry me off. The other man’s name was Winnie and he was fat and nice. A year later, I couldn’t remember the man of God’s name. I could only remember Winnie’s name, because Winnie is kind and round like Winnie the Pooh. Winnie was still fat, but less fat, and he said that’s what the stomach flu will do you for you. Discreetly, he answered me that the man of God’s name was Tim. (singing) Tim, wish you were born a girl, wish you were born a girl, then I could have been your booooyfriend.

Frank Lee, I shouldn’t put this on the internet. Normal people read this. My mom reads this. Ex-lovers read this. I really don’t know how novelists can publish anything while they’re still living. Once you realize that an authors characters are all just them and their friends, family, and rivals, it’s like…so embarrassing for everyone. But I have to write, because if I only read, I just can’t. Like. ungh. I just cant. No, no, no, you don’t get it. I must cant. I can’t. And I cant. It’s a word. Look it up. Look up all the words that becames the fleshes and then you have all the knowledges forbiddens.

This is pretty embarrassing. Fudgsicle. But not as emmmbarrrrasssing as Brasil being down 1-0 to Norge right now!

Peace out, girl scout.

Hasta lasagna, don’t get any on ya!

Sorry if you wanted a sensical post about Henry George or sortition. The answers are there. You can find them yourself. I believe in zumanity.

“Chatiry is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice”
— Josep Guardiola

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
— Heather Locklear

“Personal identity is not what matters”
— 1/3^rd of God

Happy 13th of Afterlithe.

Is the Council of Elrond a sortition body?

Well, since you probably know of Elrond, but maybe not of “sortition”, let’s define the latter and then analyze the council of the former.

Sortition is the random selection of a decision maker. A sortition body is a group created by sortition. The defition on Wikipedia includes a clause “[…] in order to obtain a representative sample.” We’ll talk about that l8r.

Sortition bodies are kinda like big juries. It’s a growing movement. Here’s a recent article from The Guardian about a sortition body that I helped organize and moderate in Los Angeles (includes a picture of me!).

Now the Council of Elrond.

One day, a little Hobbit brought a ring to Rivendell, the home of Elrond, an Elf lord.

(What a beautiful venue for an assembly! Talk about a safe space! Wonder what old Elrond charges for event rentals?)

In Rivendell, there is an assembly of folks from across Middle Earth. There are twelve participants plus one eavesdropper and an unnamed number of advisors. Now, you may think our quest today is over before it starts: it’s the Council of Elrond. How’s that random? It’s a bunch of Elrond’s buddies.

Fool, to the book!

The Randomness of the Council

As described by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring, the Council begins with a polite round robin of introductions. Each person gives their name, where they’re from, and what they’re hoping to get out of the event. Some are more forthcoming than others. Then Elrond formally addresses the Council saying, “You are called hither. Called I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem.”

Aha! There you have it! Elrond says it’s “chance”! Let’s not be…hasty.

Elrond continues, “Yet it is not [chance]. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.”

So not chance? This was a Council that was ordered, or so Elrond urges us to believe. Who did this ordering?

During the introductions, we are given the reason each person has come to Rivendell and there’s no evidence of any foreknowledge of the gathering. Elrond did not send out invitations and while Gandalf is know to be pretty sneaky, in this case, we are given a full account of his recent activity: traveling back and forth over the continent, researching historical data, conferring with his colleagues, then rushing back to Rivendell by plane, train, and automobile.

Most Tolkien scholars agree that the Council was ordered according to the will of Erū Ilúvatar, the supreme being of Eä, creator of Middle Earth. No mortal was responsible—well, I shouldn’t say “mortal”, because Elves are immortal, unless killed in battle, and Gandalf is immortalish too, but you know what I mean.

Also, a complaint against Elrond. He chastised Sam for spying on the assembly. By what authority does Elrond presume to admit or exclude participants? The right of the landlord? Oh ho ho! Don’t tempt me, reader, to launch into a justification of the Georgist Land Value Tax…

Returning to randomness. Is a Council that was ordered possibly still random?

We deem dice rolls and dart throws as random, not because the roller or thrower is a fair-minded person, but because nobody controls the results. Consider when someone who’s good at darts throws a dart. Not so random anymore. It is written in the scrolls of Wikipedia, “In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of definite patterns or predictability in information.” If we apply the predictability heuristic to the Council, what then? No one even knew about the Council until it was happening.

When any council is convened (similar to a jury trial), it’s unsurprising to include a plaintiff (Aragorn), defendant (Frodo), witnesses (Bilbo, Sam, Gandalf), and expert testimony (Gandalf, Elrond). The randomness of the other members probably deserves special focus, but we will evaluate the randomness, or predictability, of the full Council. We could take a broader perspective if we treat the topic of the Council as deciding the fate of Third Age of Middle Earth. Then the fluke of Bilbo finding the ring or Gandalf happening to have an affinity for the grass of the little folk becomes relevant. This is a bit of stretch. Elrond provides the assembly’s remit as, “What shall we do with the Ring, the least of rings, the trifle that Sauron fancies? This is the doom that we must deem.” Though…again, by what authority does Elrond speak?

(Note to sortition advocates: this body is definitely single-issue, ephemeral, and deliberative.)

From the perspective of an atheist in Middle Earth, the makeup of the Council is unpredictable. From the perspective of a believer in fate, such as Elrond, is predictable the right word? From the perspective Erū existing in the Timeless Halls and possessing the Flame Imperishable, similar to a reader of The Lord of the Rings, it’s hard to apply the concept of predictability.

A discussion of the Christian concept of election or of the philosophical concept of free will…is not today’s jam.

You know, why do sortitionists value the randomness (or unpredictability) of a decision-making body? I say it’s because we all share a belief in the sanctity of every human. If any human, or a small group of ‘em, has control over the composition of a sortition body, this violates the sanctity of all.

In the case of the Council of Elrond, it is clear that no Middle Earth resident, or a group of ‘em, had control over the composition of the Council. There may be a discernible pattern in the attendees (a preference for male elites), nonetheless, I’m comfortable describing the Council as randomish.

The Representativeness of the Council

Representativeness is tricksy.

Whom do we want to represent? Howm [sic] do we measure it?

Elrond references the Free Peoples of Middle Earth and I think this is a fine target for the representation on the Council. When speaking directly to Frodo, Elrond says that Sam shall go with him on his journey and that the rest of the fellowship will represent “the other Free Peoples of the world: Elves, Dwarves, and Men.” [emphasis added]

The implication is that Hobbit are also Free People. So Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits. Beyond those four though, has Elrond forgotten other others? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? What about the Ents!

Treebeard, an Ent, seems pretty dang justified when he says, “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side”. How haughty for Elrond, an Elf, to forget about the trees! And you betcha that Treebeard would have cried out for female representation (a major fault with the makeup of the Council, but I’m getting ahead of myself). Can you think of other candidate Free Peoples in Middle Earth? Comment below!

Maybe we’ve settled the question of whom, maybe we haven’t, but we got more problems.

What population data do we have? Presumably, data exists: the Hobbits have mayors, but Hobbit elections are ignored on the international stage, pointing to an insignificant population. We are told the Elves were once numerous, but there’s an ongoing racial exodus. Men are growing in number, so maybe they’re the majority-minority. Treebeard reports that they’ve lost the Entwives and not only is that a huge gap in the data, but we also can conclude the Ents’ fertility rate is abysmal. Finally, Appendix A states only one third of Dwarves are female, so their population is likely stagnant.

We could make some inferences army sizes, but I feel safer with a simple ranking of othe population sizes. My best guess: Men > Elves > Dwarves > Hobbits.

What about all the other kinds of representativeness? It’s typical for sortitionists to also seek to match the distribution of ages, geographic distribution, gender, educational levels, and socioeconomic status of a community. While we lack continental data, we do have info about the Councilmembers as presented in Table 1.1 and Table 1.2 below.

*Samwise Gamgee was not officially acknowledged by Elrond at the Council, as he states, “[Frodo was] summoned to a secret council and [Sam was] not” and Sam hid and did not speak in the deliberation.

Representativeness: Race

Score: strong

We have:

• 5 Men*

• 5 Elves*

• 2 Dwarves

• 2 Hobbits

• 1 Maiar*

*We are double counting mixed-race participants

Irrespective of Elrond’s list of Free Peoples, it feels like we’re missing at least one of representative Ent/Eagle/Dragon/Raven/Orc/Troll imo.

Representativeness: Age

Score: fair

We humans have an average lifespan of ~72 years with a median age of ~32. Hobbits’ average lifespan is ~100 years, which is 40% higher, so I reckon the target median age for a Hobbit should be 32 x 1.4 = 45. We’ll use this method for each race.

• Councilhobbits’ avg. age is (128 + 50 + 38) / 3 = 72; target is ~45; skewed old

• Councilmen’s* avg. age is (87 + 41) / 2 = 64; target is ~36; skewed old

• Councildwarves’ avg. age is (139 + 62) / 2 = 101; target is ~122; skewed young

• Councilelves’ avg. age is (6k + ? + 500 + ?) / 4 = ?; target is (NaN); skewed ???

*We are ignoring Gandalf’s fleshly clothes (his old man body) and Elrond, since Elrond chose immortality at the end of the First Age.

Representativeness: Geographic Region (Place of Residence)

Score: strong

These guys are fairly spread out.

Note that Gandalf’s mark appears only in the key in bottom left, as he is itinerant, and cannot be associated with any region. This is a semi-plausible distribution of 13 darts thrown at the map, but without any data on density, hard to know how close to representative.

Representativeness: Gender

Score: FAILED

Alright, the oliphaunt in the room: there’s no female representation. Game over?

I’ve been giggling about writing this post for months, I don’t want to stop my analysis here, but yeah, the Council, we must admit, is flawed.

Is failing representativeness on one demographic enough to discount an assembly as a whole, really? While you and I agree this is one of the most significant demographics, it is a value judgment how much most significant it is. Athens is commonly referred to as the first example of democracy (sortition) and their pool was limited to male citizens. In Florence, Venice, and Lombardy, if I recall correctly, the selection pools were all limited to men from noble families. Middle Earth isn’t the worst, then, but it is flawed.

Representativeness: Education

Score: very poor

All Dwarves probably have something equivalent to trade school, for they are overwhelmingly employed in mining.

Elves are fantastic dancers, singers, and lorekeepers, so they crush it in the arts & humanities. On the other hand, they haven’t built anything in a long time, seems like all their STEM people peaced out.

The inhabitants of Bree are not highly educated and it’s hard to imagine the folk of Rohan or Gondor being much more than horse ranchers and farmers.

We have some evidence of common Hobbits from Bilbo’s party, the time spent with Farmer Maggot, and the scouring of the Shire. Not terribly literate.

In general, I’m fine with approximating educational levels as roughly matching Medieval Europe. In which case, given that most Councilmembers probably had a private tutor, speak multiple languages, have read dozens or hundreds of books, and traveled extensively.

Representativeness: Socioeconomic Class

Score: very poor

Similar to the last category, I’m approximating Middle Earth as Medieval Europe.

No Councilmember is suffering from any kind of food insecurity. Housing insecurity? Sure, but I cannot describe being hunted by assassins as an affordability problem.

Only Sam and Galdor regularly labor…ok, Gandalf and Aragorn walk around a lot.

Many are soldiers, which does seem like a common occupation.

While a few nominally own nothing beyond what they can carry, they’re clearly of the upperest of classes, other than Sam. And such trinkets like Frodo’s mithril shirt are apparently more valuable than an entire region of his homeland.

Many Councilmembers are titled, with immense fortunes and vast land holdings.

Representativeness Final Score: Pretty Rough

The Council of Elrond is a flawed representative body.

The Council of Clark

Below, I present an alternative council that would score much higher by our representativeness metrics.

Behold, the Council of Clark:

1. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins (known to be greedy and sharp-tongued)

2. Isildur* (would claim the One Ring as his weregild…again)

3. Goldberry (dominated by her husband who doesn’t give a flying fudge about anything outside the Old Forest)

4. Gorbag (tried to kill his Orc brethren to steal Frodo’s mithril shirt)

5. Dís (has family history of Dragon sickness, as she is the daughter of Thráin II and sister of Thorin Oakenshield)

6. Ioreth (would not share airtime during deliberation)

7. Haldir (legalistic and has thinly veiled racist beliefs)

8. Gríma Wormtongue (would leak any resolutions prematurely)

9. Shelob (would try to eat everyone)

10. Bill Ferny (abuses ponies)

11. Galadriel (came pretty freaking close to taking the One Ring, imho)

12. Éowyn (noble, but suicidal)

13. Sméagol (desires the Precious more than life itself)

*Ok, Isildur was dead at the time of the Council. I’m cheating a little bit.

This group would make decisions neither representative nor in the interests of the Free Peoples of Middle Earth. Is measuring representativeness even worth doing then?

Recall that, way up at the start, our first definition of sortition did not require “in order to obtain a representative sample”. This caveat is often added because forming a sortition body has practical difficulties. For instance, if participation is voluntary and unpaid, there will be more rich people, fewer parents or caretakers, and more activist types. Furthermore, if the U.S. Postal Service is relied upon to deliver selection letters, it introduces a slight bias towards people who pay attention to their mail and an extreme bias against people without a mailing address at all.

While we see from the Council of Clark that matching demographics is not sufficient for justice, sorititionists think it can serve as a fuzzy evaluation of it, if done carefully. To repeat myself, measuring representativeness is tricksy. In the case of Elrond’s Council, we’ve considered several demographics and it scores poorly in multiple categories and fails in a few. Would more demographic categories help? That requires a longer discussion, but I doubt it. Do we dismiss it, then?

Do not be too eager to discard an assembly in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

The Sortitionish Body of Elrond

Like Frodo turning back from Mount Doom, I do not cast the Council into the fire! I say it is indeed a sortition body! Or sortitionish body! If you want to bite my finger off, fair enough, I am but ten fingers typing on the internet.

Through my mortal eyes, the representativeness appears fundamentally skewed, true. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Council of Elrond uplifts the halflings, but ignores women. Tolkien is but one voice . Would he, or Gandalf, or Gollum have embraced sortition? Don’t know. Here on Middle Earth, if we could be certain that a Supreme Being had convened a legislative body, who could claim it was unjust? And justice is the goal. Until all humans can agree upon one God and how to hear Him, I suggest dice. Fair’s fair.

If you’re interested in these ideas, visit Sortition USA.

I didn’t volunteer at all for Nithya Raman’s campaign, but I was signed up to be alerted about Opportunities to Help. I’ve received dozens of emails and texts from Courtney from Team Nithya. Come, phone bank, knock on doors, or…I guess that’s most of the Opportunities. Anyway, I ghosted poor old Courtney from Team Nithya for months.

Then a few days ago, I got an email thanking me for my efforts and inviting me to the election night party at Boomtown Brewery.

I like Boomtown Brewery. I hosted a sortition + Georgism meetup there last month and I’m doing one this month, will you come?

My buddy, David, also likes Boomtown Brewery. David doesn’t have a girlfriend, so he’s available to hang out.

David is walking to Boomtown Brewery now. I drove to Boomtown Brewery early to avoid traffic. I’m always driving places early to avoid traffic. David rents downtown, that’s why he lives close enough to walk! His rent isn’t horrible, even though it’s LA, because his place is only a few blocks from Skid Row. If David had a girlfriend, would she want to live a few blocks from Skid Row?

The party starts in an hour or something. They’re setting up lots of balloons.

Nithya seems alright, as far as politicians go. Something about how she speaks reminds me of my very professional DC-lawyer big sister.

Nithya did come to the LA civic assemblies where I was a moderator and we made eye contact. And she came to Palisades Recovery Lab where I was a moderator and we made eye contact. And when I gave public comment to the city council urging them to consider civic assemblies in the future, Nithya and I…made eye contact.

Tonight, will we make eye contact?

Nithya is pro-housing. But does she know about the Land Value Tax?

Some people just sat down at the other end of my table. Looks like a couple! They just found out the Brewery is hosting Nithya’s election night party. The girlfriend said, “Dang it! I wanted to play trivia. Argghh.”

Me? I don’t believe in elections. I suppose I believe they exist. I guess. Would rather not though. You’ll be shocked to learn that I didn’t vote.

I heard a good one the other day, “I doubt. Therefore, I may be.”

May-be David will get a girlfriend tonight who exists. She’ll believe elections exist though. Worse, she’ll believe elections should exist. But David voted. So may-be they’ll work out.

I just heard the girlfriend say to her boyfriend, “You didn’t vote?!”

May-be David, that voting bastard, can swoop in. Where is he, anyway?

How much did all these balloons cost?

David, who wasn’t signed up to be alerted about Opportunities to Help, wasn’t on the invitation list. I asked the woman at check-in, after she gave me my blue wristband, if my buddy could get one even though he’s not on the list.

She looked at me QUIZZICALLY (idk if I’m using that word right).

“Is he with us?”

“Yeah…”

“Does he support housing?”

“Oh—Yeah.”

“Did he vote for Nithya?”

“Yep!”

She said ok.

So David got a blue wristband that allows him to go into the extra-ballooned half of Boomtown Brewery where the partya is happening.

Ok, Adam Conover, from “Adam Ruins Everything”, is speaking. I’ve never seen “Adam Ruins Everything”, sounds terrible, reminds me of me. Adam is cajoling us to make noise. I love making noise. I bet if we popped some of these balloons we could make some noise.

Energy is low. Numbers on the internet are not in Nithya’s favor.

Adam is done speaking. People go out into the alley and David and I scoot down in front.

Courney is speaking! Remember Courtney from Team Nithya? She’s the woman who texted and emailed me about Opportunities to Help. Nice to put a face with the name. Wonder if shes’ single. For David’s sake.

Nithya’s dad speaks now. He makes a few jokes that land and a few that bomb. I like the bombs.

He said he had wanted Nithya to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or software engineer, like all Indian dads want for their daughters. But Nithya was intent on being a good person, or something. That was kinda a joke, one that bombed, I liked it.

Nithya!

Nithya is crying. She’s talking about all our efforts and what we’ve done. In the past tense. The numbers on the internet look bad.

Looks like Angelenos will be stuck between old Karen Bass and old Spencer Pratt come November. Hoo boy!

I look at David and blame him for this. David didn’t volunteer at all, the bastard. And where did Courtney from Team Nithya go? Conveniently nowhere to be seen, at the moment. How much was she paid?

NITHYA, PLEASE MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH ME!

Through the last of her tears, Nithya says, “Ok, now, guys, if you don’t make this a real party, I’’m going to—” Nithya paused, she had picked a bad sentence template, how could she finish her threat? But she recovered—“I’m going to come out there on this dance floor and show you!”

That’s our Nithya!

And she left the stage.

Most people started exiting.

David thinks maybe the late votes will turn things around. I say yeah right.

Wonder who’s getting paid to pop all those balloons. How much did all these balloons cost? How many volunteers actually volunteered? Why was Nithya crying?

What the fuck are campaigns? How much did Nithya’s graphic designer get paid? Who came up with the slogan, “A city that works”, and what were they paid? Why doesn’t the city work? Why do I need a mayor who is pro-housing? How did housing become so expensive? Why am I supposed to knock on doors and make phone calls for free?

Where is Spencer Pratt’s party tonight? How much did his graphic designer get paid? Who came up with the slogan, “A new golden age for Los Angeles”, and what were they paid? Why aren’t we in a golden age? How many balloons does Spencer Pratt have at his party?

Where is Karen Bass’s party tonight? How much did her graphic designer get paid? Who came up with, “Forward is where we're going, together is how we'll get there”, and what were they paid? Who suggested we don’t go forward? How many balloons does Karen Bass have at her party?

Here’s my slogan, free, just for you:

“POLITICAL PARTIES ARE THE WORST PARTIES.”

David was right, though. All those late votes went Nithya’s way and she’s moving on to the final showdown in November.

Hope they saved some balloons.

Now I’m writing this blog.

Courtney from Team Nithya just emailed me.

I love balloons.

(Skip this section, if you know what it means to be STRONG)

Strong Towns is a YIMBY organization that claims the infrustructural system of North American cities has gone financially awry. Best way to understand might be to watch a few dozen hours of their (or “our”, as I am a member) YouTube channel.

It’s a movement of local communities trying to influence their officials to stop over prioritizing cars, stop under prioritizing pedestrians, to redo city zoning and city codes wholistically, and to stop treating home ownership as an investment product. If these things aren’t done, towns go bankrupt. Weak towns make weak communities and just…life is less worth living.

Strong Towns has a federated model, as they believe that lasting change only comes when local led. There’s a few hundred chapters of Strong Towns across the USA and now with some international chapters. They call these chapters “conversations”, because…I don’t know…but I go to their events and I’m in the Discords for the LA Conversation, the Artesia Conversation, and the Orange County Conversation (though OC is no longer using the official Strong Towns branding).

Fair Fayetteville

(Where the Walmartians have terraformed Northwest Arkansas)

The Strong Towns National Gathering was in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

My trip and lodging was paid for by The Land Value Group. The Land Value Group advocates for the Land Value Tax and the ideas once made popular by Henry George. Some of us don’t like the term Georgists, but I love the term Georgists and I like to call us the Georgists.

We had one (of about 10) tables at the convention. I think around 400 people attended the conference over 3 days.

There are no buses or trains from XNA to Fayetteville. Will there be? My Uber driver said that 5 years ago, there were 35 people per day moving to Fayetteville and now there’s 110 people per day moving to Fayetteville. Housing prices are gonna soar, he said.

Fayetteville is half a university town (U. of Arkansas) and half a Walmart town (that is, the Walton family lives half an hour away). The Walmartians have invested a bunch of money in the university, in parks and rec, other things too, and the public library of Fayetteville.

The library was the main venue for the convention. I put a red circle around the space that was used for the “convention floor” in the photo above. The room behind what you can see in the photo was the main conference room. The Graduate hotel also hosted some breakout sesssions, which is 0.4 miles from the library. Between the hotel and the library, very walkable, very cute, city square, and a mix of housing styles. I stayed at the Graduate hotel, which is where everyone stayed, unless they got an AirBnB.

In 2013 or so, the Walmartians are reported to have said they were going to spend $300+ million on development in NW Arkansas, but then I also just read the Walmartians are reported to have spent $1+ billion on building the Crystal Bridges Museum nearby. According to a pair of old Georgists who visited the museum, it wasn’t that spectacular, but it’s free. Everyday low prices, eh?

Southern Stroll

(The autofiction of a lonely urbanist…skip this section if you’ve already eaten lunch)

The day I arrived there was a street festival in the main square adjacent to the Graduate hotel.

My hotel room was boring and over air-conditioned so I creeped outside, into the bright sun, red-eyed and hungry.

I had woken up at 4:30 am for my flight from LA to Denver and then Denver to Arkansas and hadn’t slept much either on the plane or the night before.

At this street festival, everybody was with somebody. I’m always both surprised at how white the south is and yet nowhere close to all white. And I’m always like…almost disappointed with how similar fashion is across America nowadays.

I remember my cool older cousins in Tennessee in the 90s wearing collared with their hair combed down on their forehead and baggy jeans with sneakers, while I had recently gotten permission to spike my hair and was hoping to get a pair of Airwalks and would soon start wearing skinny jeans. I would have said my cousins looked dumb, but by being my older cousins, they defined coolness to me. Maybe I should comb my hair down on my forehead.

There was a stage with a band at the festival. I listened for half a song.

Lotsa food trucks, but didn’t buy nothing, since I’m cheap and I knew the Georgists would pay for my dinner (I think all I’d eaten were some airplane pretzels). I noted the funnel cake.

You know, you throw up just once from eating funnel cake that your granddaddy bought you in the middle-of-nowhere West Tennessee (Reelfoot Lake) and you can’t help but think of it every time you see funnel cake at a festival.

I looked at the art and stuff. Didn’t buy nothing. Was tempted to get my face painted, but my face is beautiful enough, but maybe if I comb my hair down on my forehead it would be more beautiful.

Strong Towns had a booth and I stopped by as things were winding down. The volunteers were gathered around a bench in the back and one waved at me. There were bunches of bananas turning brown on their table. I took a b4n4n4 and pretended I wasn’t supposed to. After I left the booth, I took the banana out of my pocket (ha, ha) and I ate it!

I started down the hill and could see out over Arkansas. So many trees and so green. It was as Springtimey as can be. What land, what nature. What Land Value!? One forgets, when one lives in the concrete sprawl of suburban Southern California.

I kept going downhill, pretending I had a destination.

Major Tom

(The autofiction of a one dumbass meeting another…skip this section if you don’t love dogs)

Went past a large apartment building. It had a big lawn in front of it and I sat on a bench nearby. The bench had a ballcap left on it, but I was wearing my “Tax Soil Not Toil” hat, so I didn’t put it on.

I thought about dinner and looked at the trees. I could also see a nearby bar & restaurant that was livening up. Catty-corner from me a young woman, a parking lot attdendant, was sitting and reading a book in a yellow vest. She probably doesn’t know about the Yellow Vest Protests and about sortition and ancient democracy. I was in the shade and she was in the sun. There would probably be hot sun for another hour or something. A band was beginning to play at the bar. I had 45 minutes before I was supposed to be back at the hotel for dinner with the Georgists.

Then Old Tom came and sat next to me. He asked if I didn’t mind his sitting on the bench with me. I didn’t mind. Especially because, with old Tom, was an old bulldog. Tom was missing some teeth. Tom had a Southern accent like my cousins and grandaddy did. Tom was living in the apartment building I had just walked by. Tom’s bulldog was named Major. Tom was an ex-drug addict and had been given Major not too long ago by a friend who couldn’t keep him.

I said, “Oh, so, you didn’t name him Major? Like, you’re ‘Tom’ and he’s ‘Major’ and like, ‘Ground control to Major Tom?’”

Tom didn’t seem to understand my reference. Wonder if Bowie was big in the South.

Tom said, “I grew up biking all these streets. All day and all night. Yeah, I was a dumbass…I lived over there, top of that hill.”

“Oh, you’d bike up that?!”

“More like walk up it. Ha ha. Once I got home though, that was it. I wasn’t coming back out. No way in Hell I’d go back up that hill a second time. Ha ha.”

Can’t remember how it came up that he had started doing drugs. He was doing most of the talking. I asked him why he started the meth and he said because he was a dumbass. He says he’s pretty happy now with just marijuana. While he likes living in the apartment building, it really annoys him that he can’t smoke pot in the building.

“Gotta come out to California”, I said.

He just sorta gazed out over Fayetteville.

I asked him how he’d ended up at that apartment building. He said there was some church program. I asked him what he thought of all that, the bible and Christianity.

“Can’t make no sense of it.”

I replied, “Yeah, me neither. But…maybe I’m a dumbass.”

He said he was about ready to finish his dog walk now and thanks for letting him sit on the bench. I said it’s not my bench and it was nice meeting him and Major, whom I’d been petting and whispering secrets to. I told Tom it was actually time for me to go, too, and meet my friends for dinner, so we both stood up.

He pointed at the ballcap on the bench and said, “Don’t forget yer hat.”

“Yeah, that was here before I sat down.”

We both looked at the hat. We both had on hats.

We said goodbye and shook hands. Successfully resisted the impulse to wipe my hand off on my pants. Felt a little bad about having the impulse to wipe my hand off on my pants.

I crossed the street and headed back to the hotel to meet up with Land Value Group for dinner.

As I passed the parking lot attendant, I smiled and nodded. Wonder if she or the landlord had made more money during the time I had been sitting on the bench with Tom and she had been sitting in the hot sun and the landlord had been sitting on his fat ass.

The Georgists’ Booth

(Advocating to advocates)

At the Strong Towns National Gathering, we needn’t to have worried about our booth location. Given the size of the gathering (400ish) and the number of booths (10ish), everyone who was at all interested in checking out the booths came by our booth sooner or later.

Our booth was officially the booth of the Land Value Group.

The young among us embrace the term “Georgists” and the “Land Value Tax”. The veterans soured a bit on the term “Georgist” at some point in past and also wanted to get away from using the term “tax”.

I understand. I’d heard about the whole “No new taxes!”

And I’m well aware that the idea of the Land Value Tax isn’t unique to George, so why focus on just that dude?

Whatever, I am proud to be called a Georgist.

These were the Georgist orgs that collaborated at Strong Towns:

• Public Revenue Education Council (PREC)

• Center for the Study of Economics (CSE)

• Common Ground USA (CGUSA)

• Baltimore Thrive

• Center for Land Economics (CLE)

• Progress & Poverty Institute (PPI)

To give credit where it’s due, I think the money for the booth was from PREC and CSE and CGUSA? Idk if CLE or PPI contributed. Anyway, same team. We had 11 Georgists:

1. Sue Walton - CGUSA, PREC - veteran Georgist and quaker, married to Scott

2. Scott Walton - CGUSA, PREC - veteran Georgist and quaker, married to Sue

3. Josh Vincent - CSE, CGUSA - master Georgist with real LVT successes to his name in Pennyslvania and elsewhere over the years

4. David Bjorndalen - Baltimore Thrive - tall Georgist and urbanist, bright and polite

5. Eric Reingardt - CGUSA, PREC - curly-headed Georgist who ran for Indiana state representative and has now convinced the woman who defeated him in the primaries to embrace the Land Value Tax!

6. Max Clark - CGUSA, PREC, CSE - journeyman Georgist and not-so-secret sortition spy

7. Sharon Suarez - veteran city planner, Georgist-aligned, married to Alan

8. Alen Feinberg - veteran city planner, Georgist-aligned, married to Sharon

9. Lars Doucet - CLE - wizard Georgist, perhaps the most famousest of living Georgists, a personal hero of mine, since his article converted me

10. Greg Miller - CLE - well-dressed movement-building young Georgist

11. Russell Ritchie - PPI - Georgist strategist and urbanist and ex-cognitive scientist

On our table was a replica of the Landlord’s Game that I bought on eBay a few years ago. This is my favorite way to start up a conversation with passers-by.

Lars Doucet also had 3D printed a visualization of the land assessments he had done for the city of Fayetteville! This was how Lars would engage people. Watching him talk was like sitting at the foot of a guru. He’s snappy and non judgmental.

Straight across the aisle from us was the Parking Reform Network (PRN)!

PRN has done great work teaching the YIMBYs movement about the deleterious effects of parking mandates. However, I’ve been a little frustrated with how much attention parking reform gets without the acknowledgement that it is but a special case of Georgism! The Parking Reform Network origin story revolves around the work of UCLA Georgist economist Donald Shoup. They give out awards in his name, but they never mention he was a Georgist or the Land Value Tax! (See the second sentence on his Wikipedia entry, where it says he was “a noted Georgist”)

Anyway. Same team.

Next to PRN, Urban3 had a booth! All good Strong Townies know Urban3 from seeing their super cool 3D visualizations of revenue and property values in cities used in many of the Strong Towns videos.

Other booths included organizations promoting mixed-use and infill development. Some with services to help peopel getting started building their communities or data services to prepare reports for persuading elected officials to implement the Strong Towns vision.

Everyone who came by the booth was more likely than not to have heard of the LVT, which, I have to remind myself, is a big deal. Nearly all were sympathetic and interested in learning more. Some were doubtful of its ever getting passed.

Land Value Tax Pizza Party

(Pizza and justice!)

Center for Land Economics (CLE) hosted an LVT Pizza Party night at their AirBnB, which was also a 5 min walk from the library and the hotel.

It was a great party, way better than any political party! (Har har har). Maybe like 20-30 people came through. We ate pizza and drank beer and asked Lars questions! Lack of dancing though.

S’More Urbanism

(Fire? I hardly know ‘er)

I ended up tagging along with some Chicago + San Diego Strong Town members back to their AirBnB and we made s’mores around a gas pit fireplace. The group grew to about 15 people. Someone said let’s go around the group announcing “non urbanist hot takes”, but…after the first hot take, every hot take was urbanist. It sorta devolved into the loudest dudes arguing about how railroads should be built in California.

At times, I can be a loud dude. So cried out that I, actually, had my own hot take!

“Elections are not democratic. We should use random selection.” The group went pretty quiet and then one person said, “Do you mean…like anarchy?”

I said, “No, not anarchy, this would—”

And then there were flames!

Literally! Someone had tossed the wooden skewers we’d been using for s’mores into the gas firepit and they ignited and someone said “Don’t do that!” I guess because it’s a gas firepit and you don’t want ashes or something and people semi panicked, by which I mean, we all just kinda like sat up and nobody really did anything, except for someone tried to fish the flaming wooden skewers out, and someone else said “Don’t do that!” because it wasn’t clear where the flaming wooden sticks should go, as we were tightly huddled around the fire, and nobody wanted to firy sticks in their lap, but the wooded skewers were just plopped onto the stone perimeter around the fire and someone said, “It’ll be fine.” It was fine.

After that, the conversation just went back to railroads. As in, a few people railroaded the conversation back to railroads. Har har.

The people next to me disengaged and started talking about Lost, the TV show, and I was kinda excited to have a smaller conversation, but then the person who cared a lot about Lost kinda droned on about the early 2000s and their CD collection.

I mean, listen, I can drone on and on with the best of ‘em. So, judge not lest ye be judged, I suppose. But…I was in a foul mood.

Walking Gawking Talking

(Knowing it all)

The next day, I went on one of the Strong Towns walking tours of Fayetteville. But first, while I highly value getting an opportunity to talk people about the LVT, without revealing all of the goings-ons of my personal life on Substack, I’ll let you know I was fighting a strong urge to just go around knocking people’s hats off*.

*See the first page of Moby Dick

Anyway, God and women were my enemy on that afternoon.

And so I walked with hate in my heart. The tour was led by Norm Van Eeden Petersman Jingelheimer Schmidt. He sure was chipper.

Norm is one of the top dogs of Strong Towns. He has very excellent elocution and precise hand gestures. A big smile, a well-groomed beard. Thin, healthy, good posture. Opens his eyes real big, but calmly, measuredly. Didn’t make any real sarcastic jokes or anything. Answered questions with sustained eye contact, a sustained smile, sustained encouragement.

He encouraged us just to have a conversation together during the walk. And so this tour of Fayetteville became a tour of urbanist know-it-alls guiding urbanist know-it-alls. Each know-it-all, upon sharing what they knew, would offer a humble disclaimer, “I know there are others in this group who know much more than I do, but I just want to point out that...”

And so we told each other about setback requirements., storm drain effects, why there are storm drains on this side of the street and not the others, retaining walls. At one point, the group was stumped about why a street light had a curved shape. We solved it. It was for artistic effect! More knowledge was shared on curb build outs, on noise reduction measures, explanations for why the side of a building does or does not have windows, a few of the disability acts that enforce a bunch of rules on the built enrivonment.

But I knew something the rest of them didn’t. A dark knowledge that had been forged in secret, that took all their knowledges and in the darkness binds them. But I didn’t speak. I brooded and walked.

They chittered. They chattered.

When Norm mentioned he was a pastor and I was not surprised in the least. I am a know-it-all, you know?

I once had pastor a named Norm. I eat at Norm’s. Norm norm nom nom nom.

I narrowed my eyes at Norm and wondered where, in his opinion, my eternal soul might end up residing. And if he believes in some kind of experienceable Hell, and if so, what kind of setback requirements housing there might have or...?

Suddenly, unlike the hereafter, the walking tour ceased to be. Norm announced he would be heading back to the library, but y’all can go where you pleased. Most of us headed back towards the library with Norm. As we safely crossed street after street, Norm turned to me, glanced at my name tag, and asked, “So, Max. What brings you here?”

I said, “You know what, Norm. You really do know a lot. Much more than I do about all this...complexity. And so do so many people here. But...”

*I heaved a sigh*

I went for it, “But it seems to me, we’re all just fighting the same...freaking battles and, yeah, I think we will have some victories, but I can’t see how this approach works long term. And, well, I’m here with the Land Value Group officially, but—”

Norm responded, “Oh, I really like the Land Value Tax idea. You know, I’m moderating your LVT panel later today.”

“Ah, great, yeah, that should be good—very excited to hear Lars Doucet speak—and I do think the LVT is...more core...gets underneath..heh..literally, most of these kinds of land-use issues—but ...yeah, all this…I have to say...it feels like we’re in a captured system. All these Non Profits here—and I’m very goal-aligned with most of them, probably all of them—they’re all dealing with the same struggles. Trying to secure donors. Applying for grants. Recruiting volunteers. Coming up with ‘calls-to-action’, managing social media account.”

I went on, “Oh man, I’m sick of social media accounts. And all these organizations want to say we’ve got big tent energy and they’re not competing, but sometimes, really, they are competing.”

I went on, “This is why, Norm, I really think sortition and civic assemblies are the path forward. Have you heard about these?”

Norm responded, “No, I haven’t, Max. I really do feel what you’re saying about all these difficulties. It’s tough. What is...what did you say, ‘sortition’?”

And then I spoke at length.

(I just removed almost 500 words from this post that was my best recollection of how I huffed and puffed at Norm about the rational ignorance of voters, the fundamental problems of elections and campaigning, stratified sampling, wisdowm of crowds vs madness of crowds, et cetera.

Ultimately concluding something like, do I think the 400 people here can change the world? Yeah, a little. The Georgists are going to have a few wins soon and I’m proud of being involved, but will it stick? Seems to hardly ever stick. Elections are broken, YIMBYs need sortition.)

And in the end, Norm said something nice, like, “Well, wow. That’s very interesting. I will have to learn more about that.”

We had arrived back at the library and Norm turned to the group and thanked everyone for coming along and participating. He anounced a few of the upcoming events, such as the Land Value Tax panel he was about to moderate.

And I felt unburdened! As I walked toward the hotel, I felt like Norm was my friend.

And, then, funny to think of it, but had I just experienced the core value in sortition? Had I just had my voice be heard? Sortition is kinda like letting everyone take a turn being heard?

The deliberation in a sortition body is not to force a conversion to the “right” views. It’s about everyone getting to have a say. And while it may feels like “minds are being changed”, it’s often just new information being passed along to the people who then apply their pre-existing values to it. This is something Yoram Gat has recently been writing about on Equality by Lot.

In this post, I’ve joked about being a know-it-all, but really, I am definitionally ignorant about the communities I am not part of. I didn’t persuade Norm that the Strong Towns vision was wrong, but maybe he has a new idea (sortition) of how his values could be securely achieved.

The LVT Panel

(The strongest panel)

The Land Value Group hosted a panel.

The panel featured Josh Vincent, Sharon Suarez, Joe Minicozzi (not technically from our group, he’s the Urban3 guy), and Lars Doucet. Norm Van Eeden Petersman moderated.

Each person spoke for roughly 7 minutes and a Q&A followed.

1. Josh gave a simple introduction and some historical examples.

2. Sharon gave some examples with pictures of underutilized lots.

3. Joe had a bunch of 3D graphs and slick slides (but he was talking fast and it was a little hard to follow).

4. And then Lars knocked it out of the park with clear language and recent examples where he’s done assessments and things are moving (Virginia, Kentucky, Spokane).

The Q&A had energy and, even after officially ending the session, many people grouped around to discuss how we can get the LVT here and there and everywhere. Some kind of threshold from “what is the LVT” to “How can we get the LVT” has been mostly crossed in the YIMBY world, I think.

I learned a new thing during the Q&A, when people were asking “how can we persuade a city to do an LVT?!” Lars pointed to Josh.

He said, “Well, there’s one way that Josh did it in Allentown. They sent letters to all the homeowners whose taxes would go down.”

Josh filled in with some more details about how the biggest opposition in Allentown was the Fairgrounds, so they did an analysis and a mass mailing to all the people who would pay less.

You know, I can’t pretend to be an unbiased reporter here. In my estimation, the Land Value Tax is a system of land use that would provide a foundation of justice the world has seldom seen. It’s what drives my sortition advocacy, in a way. If I didn’t believe such just and efficient laws could exist, I wouldn’t be that excited about civic assemblies, frankly.

So there is this fear in me. What good is the LVT for a few decades? Probably still worth doing, but why have all the LVT successes in the 20th century mostly faded away? A few small towns in Pennsylvania have hung on. Allentown is the biggest, with 125,000 residents. Harrisburg has 50,000 residents.

In the next few years, I believe some cities in Virginia and Kentucky, or the city of Spokane, will shift taxes onto land and off of buildings. Will the fate of those LVTs be different?

Lars has told me he believes the LVT has often been lost due to poor assessment practices. For instance, Pittsburgh voters had a big reaction when there was a reassessment after many years and homeowners were upset. Lars is acting on his belief! CLE has done impressive work in making assessment easy, clear, and accessible. But what allows for poor assessment practices to corrode the LVT?

Lars is not going to live on Earth forever, at least, according to my eschatology. What will Earthlings do after Lars? Will another take up the torch?

Could it be that those elected to office don’t have much reason to protect or understand the necessity of a Land Value Tax? And so, over time, the elected class neglects the LVT?

Could it be that landed interests dominate our system of elections?

Maybe. That’s just like my opinion, man.

That’s my report. Sorry it’s so long.

The free breakfasts were pretty good, but not as good as the year before, I heard.

Suppose no amusment parks existed and a man named Wally builds the first amusement park. What should the rules be about how much he can charge to go to his amusement park?

You might answer: whatever amount he wants! He’s not forcing anyone to visit!

Ok. I agree with that, actually.

What would you do, if you wanted to go to Wally’s land? You’d pay. Or, if it was way too much, you’d go build your own amusement park. Nice. Two amusement parks. You could start charging people to come to your park! How much would you charge?

Then would someone else build an amusment park?

How many amusement parks would we end up with?

I don’t know, but it seems like some kind of balance would arise depending on how many amusment parks existed, how much farther away the next amusment park would have to be built, how much the amusment park owners were charging for admittance, how badly and how many people wanted to be amused at these parks, and probably a bajillion other factors. I’m skeptical any one person or office of people would be great at predicting how many amusments parks, what size, what quality, what pricing, would make the most people happy.

Now, as someone who likes markets, clearly, I don’t think the government would be good at figuring out how many amusment parks there should be or what features they should have.

In the 1950s, Walt Disney “quietly” bought 160 acres for $879,000 or $5,438/acre.

Inflation adjusted, Walt Disney “quietly” bought 160 acres for $10,000,000 or $62,500/acre.

Now its footprint is 500 acres, valued at $10,000,000,000 or $20,000,000/acre.

(I used ChatGPT for these numbers)
(Edit #1: The numbers above are from ChatGPT, but a Reddit comment didn’t like I used ChatGPT, which, you know, is a fine complaint, I just ask that people appreciate that I cited it. The amount paid in the 50s can be verified pretty easily, but estimating the value of the 500 acres now? It’s actually pretty tough…there’s not a lot of comparable sites, you know? And given CA’s Prop 13, which wasn’t around in Disney’s time, that skews it too. If Disney were to sell, would the land be sold as one big chunk? Probably broken into a bunch of smaller parcels? Would each parcel sell for about what nearby parcels sell for? Not if Disneyland as a destination is going away. Tricky.

Anyway, here’s a piece from the OC Register on the initial acquisition https://www.ocregister.com/2013/04/09/how-disneys-land-was-found/. This confirms the 160 acres for $879,000.

For land value now, I found this article https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney-buys-anaheim-land-sparking-expansion-speculation-20150804-story.html. If Disney paid $60 million in 2015 for 14.7 acres across Harbor Blvd near the resort, that gives a value of $4.1 million per acre. So 500 acres x $4.1 million is about $2.1 billion, but this was ten years ago, so it’s about $2.8 billion now. This would be the very low end of an estimate, because the initial 160 acres was selected as the prime land, near the 5 freeway that was just being completed, which was a big reason he selected the site, which is something I did learn from reading that OC Register article. To reach the $10 billion estimate of ChatGPT, you’d have to assume the prime 500 acres averages about 3.5x more valuable than the land that was just extended into. Maybe that’s unreasonable.)

(Edit #2: Ok, funnily enough, I didn’t consider the land value going up in the last 10 years when I took the $2.1 billion estimate from 2015 and adjusted it for inflation to $2.8 billion. So, you often hear 10% return on real estate, which includes inflation, but also overcomes structural depreciation often (I think?).

y = (2.1)⋅(10^9) ⋅ (1.10)^(11)
y = (5.991) ⋅ (10^9)

So, roughly, 6 billion. And remember, this was the low estimate, where we took all the land to have had the same value as the most recently acquired land. So…ChatGPT’s original estimate looks decent to me. What does it say about me, as a Georgist, that I forgot to think about the compounding land value increase over the last 11 years?)

Why has the land become more valuable? The people. Not Walt Disney.

Well, Walt is a person, so he is a small fraction of ‘the people’, let’s be fair to Walt.

Should Walt be punished for creating Disneyland?

No, I love Disneyland. As a 15-year old homeschooler with the $99 SoCal pass in 2001, I went every week. I daydreamed about creating my own park that had secrets and riddles and interactive games, where you could go solo or with a team. You could ally with other teams or compete against them, and, either way, you could make friends and meet girls. Perhaps an all-park capture-the-flag-game every Saturday? (Ok, I’ll stop there, but my daydreaming hasn’t stopped for 25 years.)

Do you think a man named Max should “quietly” buy 160 acres out in San Bernardino county? And then what should Max’s children do? Well, Max’s children can inherit Clarkland, I suppose. (This is where it’s tempting to address advocates for an inheritance tax, in the vein of Thomas Paine, which is sorta how social security, as a government program, came to be. Go read Paine’s Agrarian Justice, it’ll take you 45 minutes, but it is profound!) If we did exist on an infinite plane of lush, coastal, land in the climate of Orange County, CA, then, in some sense, each generation can kinda keep sprawling. But…who wants to homestead?

Aside #1: This is where I could start talking about how homesteading was the government’s tool for preventing the Vanderbilts, Astors, the Ohio Company, the Virginia Company, the railroads from just buying all of America’s land. That isn’t the case today, where all the parcels are owned, or the government is just sitting on public land, doing nothing. The owned, empty, wastelands of America have the speculation priced in. Homesteading wasn’t the best solution, if I’d even call it a solution. The government should have embraced a land value tax. Homsteading was but a band-aid, providing a rough, frontier life to desperate families, promising them that their children could become the Astors of San Francisco and also creating a class of preasant-proprietors.

Aside #2: This is where I could start talking about how Spain and Portugal didn’t use homesteading in South America, but instead just granted huge estates to prominent families, getting you the hacienda/latifundia system that probably has retarded South America development by incredible amounts.

Aside #3: I’ve avoided an entire discussion about Disney’s IP. How much of Disney Corp.’s value is due to possessing exclusive, legal privilege to the art and characters, mostly produced by employees and were based off of ancient fairytales??

So I don’t think Walt should be punished for labording. For building, creating, cooperating. Any time a new ride or attraction is added, we should celebrate and there should not be a penalty to those who labored in creation of it! However, Walt owes the people of Southern California a heck of a lot of money for denying them the LAND of Southern California.

The Georgist proposal is that rights to LAND must be treated differently than rights of a laborer to what they produce.

Walt didn’t make Southern California. He didn’t make the 72 degree weather there today. He didn’t fill the Pacific Ocean with water. He didn’t build the freeways (for good or ill).

Disneyland tickets are $100+ for a day, meanwhile, a massive homeless encampment a few miles away was busted up not too long ago. Those homeless didn’t disappear and Disney surely didn’t add their latest “land”, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, as a mixed-use, walkable neighborhood with affordable housing for them to move into.

The Remedy proposed by Henry George, and the laissez faire economists, was to tax people for their privilege to LAND. If there’s any piece of nature that commands a price, which implies a scarcity, then that value should be captured by society. The land tax doesn’t necessarily mean rent will go down, it just means that, whoever wants exclusive rights to nature, then they’ll have to make it up to the rest of us.

Once that obligation of one Earthling to the others has been fulfilled, they are free to create, trade, build, freely. In fact, George says this is the only way such activites are truly free.

Otherwise, the lords of Earth form a class of slavemasters over the laborers. Disney has labored to create wonder, and in that way, they should are due their just reward. Disney also acts a bridge troll, siphoning the wealth of its visitors, of its neighbors, and, for that, they owe us a bunch of money.

I personally would accept a 10-year pass with no blackout dates, thank you very much.

In progress without poverty,
Max Clark

P.S. There’s perhaps a Disney-utilitatrian-repugnant conclusion to be drawn that, if Disney’s land and Disney’s world are the ‘Happiest Place[s] on Earth’, ought we give over more of Earth’s surface to them? How much? Their claim technically becomes undeniable once we give them every square inch of the globe, right?

Last Thursday, at 1 pm, the LA City Council heard public comment on the report from the charter reform commission. If you didn’t know, LA has had a bunch of “high profile” scandals in the last decade, this kicked off a charter reform commission, spearheaded (a very popular term to apply to politicians) by Nithya Raman, who, in the midst of the charter reform process, announced her intention to run for mayor of LA, against a woman who had been her political ally, or so I’ve read.

Anyway, I got to LA City Hall around 12 pm, there was a long line already. I didn’t need to be worried, they made an exception for this first meeting to have 2 hours of public comment to ensure everyone could speak. So I could have showed up at 1 pm, and instead of waiting outside in the sun, I could have just gone way later in the order of commenters during the meeting.

As it was, I was maybe the 20th speaker of around 70ish (maybe 77?) they said had signed up.

We each were given 2 minutes, because we had the two hours, instead of the usual 1 minute.

Anyway, here’s what I said to the City Council of El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles (that’s the full name of the LA, by the way).

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Hello I volunteer with Public Democracy LA and Rewrite LA to promote civic assemblies.

First, I confess I drove up from Cerritos, which is county, not city, but hey, we have the auto square. So I hope you hear me out.

[The Cerritos Auto Square ran about a million radio ads in the 90s, so everyone chuckles when I claim the Auto Square as cultural prestige.]

I will also mention my friend’s dog got sick this morning and so she couldn’t make it and, she IS an LA resident.

Why do I bring this up?

[I paused, took a breath, nodded my head a little bit like ‘here we go’]

Every time I speak before a city council, I’m reminded of the sacrifice it takes to show up here.

And how little time I get to speak—even if it’s bumped to two minutes!

Finally, how nervous and panicked I get while speaking.

[Another pause]

This form of public comment isn’t enough. It selects only for a narrow slice of our community. It doesn’t give the time, consideration, or representation to all the voices of Los Angeles.

I believe civic assemblies can.

Civic assemblies are formed through “sortition”, which just means random selection. It’s like a gigantic jury. The randomness ensures they are representative of the community. A civic assembly comes together to talk about one issue at a time and is given time, resources, and access to subject-domain experts.

It could be about parks and recreation. Fire resiliency. Worker rights. Cops.

[Like…maybe 30 people who were giving public comment were from a big effort to fund LA’s parks system more and they all shirts and pins, and then maybe a dozen people were there from the LA Black Workers Center, so I tried to…you know, make go topical]

Or, like we did with the Rewrite LA charter assembly, we talked about council size and structure.

Thank you to the commission, and commission chair Raymond Meza [he had spoken at the outset of the meeting], for allowing us to convene a civic assembly. One of the assembly’s recommendations was for more civic assemblies.

If you want the peoples trust and involvement*, I urge the council, and actually every activist in this room, to learn about civic assemblies.

Thank you.

[*The council president, before public comment, had talked about how important it was for the charter reform to build “trust and increase citizen involvement”. But actually, idk, a little before I got to this point, I looked up, and the council president seemed really bored. And I felt a little defeated. So I actually left this clause out. Not exactly sure why.]

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Ta da.

I got some claps. Most people got claps.

My friend, who couldn’t make it, was watching online and sent me an email with a picture of her dog, Pepper.

Randomly yours,
Max Clark

ONE. The Nightmare and the Dream

The Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood in LA. Its location is one of the most desireable on the effing planet. It is on the beach above Santa Monica and beneath Malibu, next to mountain trails, next to UCLA, with quick access to Hollywood and the night life of Los Angeles. And approximately every day has the same forecast of 72 degrees and sunshine. The Pacific Palisades also went up in flames about 16 months ago.

The fires were an incredible natural disaster and an embarrasing government-preparedness disaster.

What if I told you that in the ashes of the Palisades a NIMBY’s dream came true? What if that dream is the same dream we are all dreaming?

A group of wealthy, white, older residents met to decide how to spend billions dollars.

Last Saturday, I sat as a content-agnostic moderator for 7 hours at a table with six women who were tasked with making this decision. I think they were all older and richer than I. Although, we were all equally white, let’s be honest about that. There were three other tables, where there was slightly more diversity. How does one measure diversity, though? (More on that later!) These tables of residents met at the office of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, which I heard used to be a Mathnasium before the fire.

These tables of residents, and their moderators, sat and listened to the Palisades Recovery Coalition leadership explain the situation. The Palisades could appeal to the LA City Council to establish themselves as a Disaster Recovery District (DRD). A DRD is allowed to do Tax Increment Financing (TIF). Using TIF, the Palisades can funnel property tax revenue that would have gone to all of the city of LA to instead stay in their community to help with recovery from the fire. Setting up a DRD with a TIF can ensure a revenue stream over 45 years of approximately $500 million. I sat up a little straighter in my chair! Then it was explained that the typical path, after securing a revenue stream from TIF, is to leverage that funding to secure more funding from other government agencies, Wall St., and philanthropic sources (“good-deed-doers”).

The Palisades exepects to receive several billions of dollars in funding and invesment over the next 45 years.

At that moment, I was suddenly confused why I wasn’t being paid $150/hr to help moderate the event.

The leadership of the Palisades Recovery Coalition further explained that this group of residents had been gathered together to decide how Palisadians should be involved with the dispersal and oversight of these funds for the next 45 years, if indeed a Disaster Recovery District with Tax Increment Financing is approved by the LA City Council.

Are you following all this? I’m sorry about all the terms, DRD, TIF, PRC, LA…the point is that the Palisades is about to get several billions of dollars over 45 years.

Residents were asked how to spend the dough.

The four tables of residents that convened at the old Mathnasium, after two Saturdays of deliberation, decided to use use a system of citizen assemblies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Could it be that the NIMBYs of the Pacific Palisades are people too?!

DISCLAIMER: The Palisades have not yet appealed to the LA City Council to establish a Disaster Recovery District. This may all get derailed. I hope I don’t jinx it.

Note: I keep saying “residents”, but technically, some of these people are no longer residing in the Palisades post fire.

Note: Also…were all the women at my table on Saturday older than I am? Idk. For reference, I’m 39. I will retreat to the claim that no participant, at any of the tables, was under 30, and the average age was 55ish.

TWO. The Un/Chosen

So what happened over those two Saturdays in April?

Well, ok, maybe I am bait & switching you a little bit.

The group was not simply a NIMBY org. It was a last minute attempt by the Palisades Recovery Coalition to incorporate some parts of a civic assemby in their community event. One of the coalition’s leadership team came as an observer to the recent LA Charter Assembly. He was impressed and asked my organization, Public Democracy LA, if we would provide process consultation and help with moderation. I do not know what the coalition has been planing prior to observing the LA assembly, but I can tell you what they ended up doing.

They decided to use sortition. They randomly selected 30 of the people from among a larger pool of people who had signed up for their upcoming “Recovery Lab” event. They added a survey to the sign up process. They used this data to constrain the random selection process to match certain demographics of the community. The demographics they chose were:

• Percent of Palisadians whose homes were [unaffected], [damaged], or [destroyed]

• Percent of Palisadians who have [kids at home] vs [no kids at home]

• Percent of Palisadians who [own single-family-homes] vs [rented]

• Then a requirement for geographic distribution

• (I worry I’m forgetting another demographic category…sorry)

They strove to match their selection to the statistics from pre-fire Palisades. There were about 45,000 people living in the Palisades before the fires, now there’s 28,000 residents.

In contrast to this, for the LA Charter Reform Assembly, the sortition process was constrained by demographics selected from the U.S. census. The chosen demographics for the LA assembly were these:

• Percent of Angelinos aged [16-24], [25-34], [35-44], [45-64], [65-74], [75+] years old

• Percent of Angelinos living in each Council District/region roughly

• Percent of Angelinos who [own], [rent], or [unhoused]

• Percent of Angelinos whose gender is [male], [female], or [other] (technically, the census only asks “male” or “female”, but other sources were used to find data for an “other” category)

• Percent of Angelinos by race & ethnicity [Black, Indigenous & People of Color] vs [White]

• Percent of Angelinos who identify as [Hispanic / Latino] vs [not]

• Percent of Angelinos by race: [American Indian/Alaska Native], [Asian/Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander], [Black/African American], [White], [Some other race], [mutltiracial] (Yes, the U.S. census categories on race and ethnicity are complicated and kinda arbitatry I was on the team whose job it was to collect that data for LA and it was super annoying going through all the census forms and copy/pasting it into spreadsheets and maybe AI could do it all in a jiffy and…yeah)

• Percent of Angelinos by educational attainment: [some schooling (no diploma)], [high school], [some college or Associate’s degree], [Bachelor’s degre or higher]

• Percent of Angelinos who [voted in the last election (2024)] vs [not]

• Percent of Angelinos registered [Democratic], [Republican], [Other party], or [not registered]

• There was also some effort made to have representation from the undocumented community in LA, but I don’t know if that happened, we couldn’t ask people about their legal status

Now, again, who’s to say which demographics are most important? What about categories like “vaccinated vs not”? Or “Lakers vs Clippers”? It’s pretty subjective.

For me, if you’re going to match demographics, it seems like age, gender, race, and income/wealth would be most important. (THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION!)

So, given that that is my personal opinion, I think that the event in the Palisades wasn’t…ideal. While the Palisades is older on average among LA neighborhoods, an average age 55+ (my estimate) is not representative. On gender, however, I think I counted 6 men and 20 women on the first day? So it was skewed, but, hey, maybe that’s still too many men? Ahahah. The group was predominantly white, but that actually matches the Palisades, which is 80% white. So on that point, there’s no complaint. No way of gauging income/wealth levels, so I withold judgment. However, by not offering compensation for participation and using an online sign up form, there’s a signficant bias towards…idk what to call it…selecting lots of activistish/busybodyish people who have free time.

This final bias is the big reason that I find the use of stratified sampling to match chosen demographics to be acceptable. Is stratified sampling necessary if you can fully, randomly select participants? (Ooooh how badly I want to launch into a 5,000-word essay breaking down all the tradeoffs with running an event with or without a random mailer, size of the group, stratified sampling using select demographics…if this is the part of sortition that hangs you up, please go read Terry Bouricius’s writing)

I saw firsthand the contrast in the attitudes and opinions of the full LA Charter Assembly that mailed invitations to a random 20,000 households in LA and offered them $20/hour compensation versus the Mini Assemblies where the selection pool came from online sign ups and participants were offered only $20 as a travel stipend. One was LA and the other was…LAish.

Was this group convened by the Palisades Recovery Coalition really the Palisades? Ehh…I’d say Palisadesish. At least, that’s my best guess, as an outsider.

NONETHELESSS! Should perfection be the enemy of the great? The good? The better? This was “the better”.

THREE. Process

Ok, 9 am to 4 pm, two Saturdays, two weeks apart.

Saturday 1, question: If the Palisades were to have a Disaster Recovery District: What types of projects should it fund?

• Presentation about what Recovery Lab is from the coalition, how the bit of sortition worked, who the Palisades Recover Coalition is, what politicians are onboard with their efforst

• Small groups discussing introducing themelves to each, sharing perspective on how recovery from the fires is going, what they love about the Palisades

• Presentations from some politicians on what is a DRD and TIF. Presentations from some researches on what is a DRD and TIF.

• In plenary (as opposed to in small groups), there was Q&A with the presenters

• Lunch

• Presentations on fire resiliency and on what sorts of things the money might be spent on. Researchers presented 9 categories of things to spend money on and each had multiple options within it!

• Small groups discussing and prioritizing the 9 categories on offer

• In plenary (as opposed to in smalk groups), sharing their prioritizations and trying to find consensus on what they valued most

Saturday 2, question: How should any Palisades DRD remain accountable to our community?

• Presentations on how other communities rebuilt after fires from a journalist from Politico, expected revenue from a DRD from a RAND researcher, advice on whats politically feasible from an LA City councilmember, information from a Team Palisades about other sources of funding

• In plenary, Q&A with presenters

• Presentation on community involvement options from…I forget this person’s credentials!

• Lunch

• Small group discussions about community involvement options

• Presentation from a city planner about what’s politically feasible

• In plenary, call for proposed structures for the DRD with community involvement, discussion, consensus seeking

I’m not going to detail all the information provided by all of the presentations on political structures, city infrastructure, fire safety, and reports about what actually is going on or to really breakdown the process design. I’m here to chew bubble gum and grind my Georgist-sortitionist axe.

The run of show was decided by the coalition and they were the ones with the microphones. They also had conducted their own research, which they presented, and were made up of members from the community with their own opinions and feelings. This was frustrating to me, as a civic assembly advocate, because it seemed like, in many ways, they were influencing the deliberation. However, again, this event was not called a civic assembly by the Palisades Recovery Coalition! They basically had never heard of sortition or assemblies, until a few weeks before their event and were just trying to make it better. I believe they did. It was an event that used sortition from among the community, had expert presenters, and featured a lot of deliberation.

Note: if you want to be real stick-up-your-butt sortitionist purist and say “sortition” requires that the people selected be given actual legislative power…ok, you got me! Sorry about that stick that is stuck up your butt right now :)

The moderators of the four tables (the small groups) were four of us from PDLA. We strove to remain content-agnostic and to create a space for voices to speak calmly and honestly. We also got paid $500 bucks each! While we were initially introduced at the event as being from Healthy Democracy (who are the professional moderators we flew in to lead the LA Charter Assembly), we cleared that up.

On the first Saturday, the participants were shown a few slides explaining how they were randomly selected and this was constrained to match certain statistics about the pre-fire Palisades. This was the demographic info I included way up above. This process was explained to the group as “sortation”, at which point, I did have to speak up from my table in the back of the room, “Um! Sorry, the term is ‘sortition’, if anyone wants to look it up on the internet…yeah, sorry.” Did I violate my content-agnostic mandate?

On the second Saturday, those slides were shown again to remind the participants (which included a few new ones). This time the speaker said with a big smile, “Once again, this process is called ‘sortition’. Did I get it right this time?”

We PDLAers discreetly texted each other in celebration that we had accomplished at least something :)

Between the first Saturday and second Saturday, we appealed the coalition leadership if civic assemblies could be presented as an option for community involvement and oversight of the DRD. We asked if one of PDLA’s founders could speak. The Palisades Recovery Coalition opted to have another gentlemen speak on the community involvement options and to include “citizen assemblies” as an option there.

In that man’s presentation, he listed these options for community involvement:

Rquired by law:

1. The DRD board must receive public comment

Optional community involvement:

1. A formal role for the existing community council, the Pacific Palisades Community Council (which has been around for many decades)

2. A new citizen advisory board

3. Surveys and polling

4. Citizen assemblies

From what I could tell, the presenter was not super familiar with assemblies. He told the group about the Petaluma assembly briefly, but did not mention the LA Charter Assembly. He said assemblies were an untested approach and their drawbacks may not be fully understood. It’s likely he hadn’t heard known about sortition or civic assemblies before and that he’d been asked last minute to add it in. That’s fine! After he spoke, the coaltion leadership did ask one of us PDLAers to add a few comments. So Alex very charmingly, demurely perhaps, smiled and said, “We actually just had a citizens’ assembly here in LA on the charter reform process. And, while, yes, there haven’t been many in the US, this has been going for quite some time in Europe.”

I actually think this combo of neutral presenter + Alex’s comments may have been a more effective, “soft sell” than to have had me, or the PDLA founder, come in swinging and yelling “Off with their heads! Sortition is demcoracy! Elections empower a class of narcissitic, power-seeking, sickos!”

You know, they’d just heard from Senator Ben Allen and LA councilmember Traci Park who were all gung ho about getting the Palisades the attention and money they want/need. And, during the final hour of the assembly, councilmember (and mayoral candidate) Nithya Raman came by and observed and she’s super charming. (She also stuck was given a chance to speak and answer questions and do some campaignin’ after we had concluded.) (Also, Nithya came to our other assemblies and is onboard with a lot of housing stuff. If I were a voting man, she’d have mine.)

And, while we sortitionists want to say that assemblies are not untested, ….I mean…compared to elections, they kinda are. We should mostly be yelling aout how well-tested elections are and how ridiculous it is to keep depending on them!

FOUR. The Miracle

On the second Saturday, I moderated Table #3, the one with all women that I told you ahout at the beginning. I’ll tell you our secret: this table considered the citizen involvement processes that the Palisades had been doing to be fine and that an citizen assembly was no different.

When the tables all presented to one another, two tables were strongly for citizen assemblies and two tables were for empowering the existing Pacific Palisades Community Council (PPCC).

At some point, it was asked of the events, how many people had heard of the PPCC prior to this event?

95% raised their hands.

Now, far be it from me to praise an old, white, rich man, but one such fellow did speak up a bit later. He said, “Now a moment ago when we were asked if we’d heard of the PPCR or PPCCR or whatever it was—”

Several voices, “PPCC!”

“Ok, right. We were asked if we had heard of the PPC…C. I was one of only a few people who didn’t raise their hand. Now, I can tell you, I know a hundred people who don’t know what the PPCC is. And a lot of those people have connections and they have money. And—and—they want to see the Palisades recover.”

Then the (perhaps) youngest woman (who happened to be from my table which had been very pro-PPCC) spoke up. She had really nice hair with blonde highlights, big blue eyes, nice nails, nice makeup, nice jewelry, tan, and a very nice face (I never promsised to be beauty-agnostic!). She had been quiet at our table, and nearly never spoken in plenary. But she stood up and said, “Yeah. I mean, all of this stuff is just…like…blah. Haha. I didn’t know what DRD or that TIF thing ever was, but now I know so much. I think the PPCC has been around a long time and really getting more people involved would be…better.”

DISCLAIMER: I can’t remember who said what exactly!

Anyway, the discussion went back and forth.

Table #4 made an explicit proposal for a citizen advisory board. The primary job of this board was to convene as many citizen assemblies as necessary. The assemblies could be on topics decided by that board. Some assemblies could be longer and some could be shorter, they would hear from experts. That citizen advisory board then would present recommendations from the assemblies to the DRD board (recall that the DRD board is appointed by the LA City Council). If the DRD board did not accept the recommendations from the assemblies, Table #4 insisted that the DRD must respond, in writing, as to why they rejected the assembly recommendation.

It was explained, “If the DRD accepts proposals A, B, and D, then they need to explain why they rejected, you know, C and E.”

People were nodding. Very quickly, all the tables converged on this proposal! We PDLAers made eye contact with one another and raised the brows above our eyes very high.

The details of who would be on the citizens advisory board were not fully ironed out. The group did agree on 12 people, elected from the community. Term limits? Undecided. Payment? Undecided. How often should they meet and how/where are all these desired citizen assemblies to be convened? Undecided.

While, yeah, I would have liked for that board to also be formed through a sortition process, I can’t blame ‘em for not going all-in on sortition so fast. I think it’s probably the most reasonable approach to actually not go full sortition right away. They hadn’t even seen what professional moderation was like!

So. Will the Palisades Recovery Coalition move forward with this? I don’t know.

Epilogue

If I didn’t believe that participants should be fed, paid, and have childcare, then I think I would convene sortition bodies to make all my decisions for me. Sure, I just bought a hot, hazelnut latte with whole milk, but maybe I would have preferred an iced matcha from the coffee shop across town that I’ve never been to? Anyone of you been to Vivot Craft Cafe? I need to know if their matcha is any good, the lumbar support of their seating, power outlets per patron seating, and what temp they typically set their AC to.

When leaving the Palisades to drive through Los Angeles to the border of Orange County, I reflected on the event. In some sense, I wasn’t surprised the participants embraced sortition. I had seen LA Charter Reform Assembly do the same thing. I’d seen the Mini Assemblies do the same thing. And I’ve read about other assemblies also having this outcome.

I’ve written before about how unsurpsiring it is for any group with power to want to self-propagate. What is unique for sortition is that the members of any one group know that the next sortition body will be randomly selected. They are not choosing power for themselves. They’re choosing power for the people.

Is the choice to embrace sortition miraculous? Is empathy in humans evidence of the divine or are we just fancy apes? Are regular apes evidence of the divine? Why is there something rather than nothing?

I used to argue about these things. I used to argue about a lot of things. Now I’d just let a sortition body decide and oh boy is it a relief.

So, a miracle in the Palisades? Let a sortition body decide.

Most randomly,
Max Clark

P.S. Final disclaimer: I’m writing this without any kind of…blessing (?) from either PDLA or the Palisades Recovery Coalition. Yolo.

The NY Times ghosted me. Probably an automated ghost, as I did get an automated response that my letter had been received, along with a promise, “(You will receive an auto-reply only once every four days.)”

Anyway, that’s ok, Mr. Times. I figured you were out of my league, but sometimes, you gotta make your move, if only for the story to tell afterwards. Here’s my story (that is, I knew I could just share my letter here on Substack, in the very likely event that it was not published by the New York Times):

Note: They have a very strict 200 word limit for letters-to-the-editor.

In progress without poverty,
Max Clark

I was searching the internet to learn how a jet engine worked the other day, because I’m a real curious guy, you know?

Asking for an ELI5 explanation.

Turns out, there’s a combustion engine in the tail that kickstarts everything! It funnels “bleed air” from the tail over your head in the cabin (or maybe under your feet, can’t recall) and this starts up the front fan of the jet/turbine engine so it can start sucking in/compressing air. Once the jet engine is going, then you don’t need the combustion engine anymore.

Maybe, like the combustion engine, Henry George’s understanding of society doesn’t apply to our technological age. I’m pretty sure it does, but I don’t blame you if you’re skeptical.

Have you even heard of Henry George?

Henry George died at 58 years old in 1897 and 100,000 people “came by to see his face” during his funeral. The largest funeral since Lincoln, some said.

In 1879, Henry George wrote his famous book, whose title I shall type out in full below. It sold 6,000,000 copies by 1936 (compare to Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s 146,000 copies hehehe). Also, I know that George’s book has now sold at least 6,000,004 copies, because I have purchased several. He titled his book…

PROGRESS AND POVERTY:

AN INQUIRY INTO THE

CAUSE OF INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSIONS,

AND OF

INCREASE OF WANT WITH INCREASE OF WEALTH.

THE REMEDY

BY

H E N R Y G E O R G E

Among Henry George’s admirers we have…

• Albert Einstein

• Helen Keller

• Winston Churchill

• Milton Friedman

• Leo Tolstoy

• Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Henry Ford

• Alduous Huxley

Have you heard of Henry George?

Karl Marx said, “[George] is utterly backwards […] The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt, decked out with socialism, to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one.”

I sorta agree with Marx that George is trying to save capitalism. Kinda. George never uses the term “capitalism” in Progress & Poverty. But if you believe in something like a “free market”, then George is your man. George’s free market is only possible once you recognize that LAND is required for all production and that LAND is UNMADE and the must be treated differently than CAPITAL.

To me, when you consider an early society in some simplified scenario like a 100 people sharing an island, the case for the Land Value Tax is just…slambang obvious and unconstestable. It’s still super convincing to me when we expand that island into a continent or even hypothesize an (almost?) infinite plain.

Real quick. Suppose you played Monopoly, but the board had 100 properties per side Instead of a 3-hour game ending in argument, maybe a 30-hour game. Or suppose at each corner, you were allowed to connect to an extra loop. Suppose you could even repeat this loop over and over. Well, if you can only generate wealth by “passing Go” or by other players landing on your property, what does it help the situation? (This hypothetical Monopoly board design procs some interesting consquences that might be worth thinking more about sometime).

On whichever Monopoly board, finite or (almost) infinite, there’s a huge advantage to anyone who can claim land first and it is unjust for them to not pay society back.

George argues that what holds for these simple models of society then holds for more complex forms. He, as stated earlier, died in 1897. So, while he gave examples of how to connect the simple forms of society to early industrial society, that was…still, to our minds, a pretty simple. The issue of what holds for early society holds for modern day is kinda related to the critique that you do often hear: land isn’t a big deal these days. These are different critiques. If you want to talk about how big of a deal land is, I would point you to Lars Doucet’s article.

Most Georgists and the r/Georgism almost only ever talk about the policy proposal of a Land Value Tax.

George’s quest was to solve for industrial depression and increase of want with increase of wealth!

IT’S IN THE TITLE.

I think he did it. I think George has the Remedy. (Ok, like 90% is in P&P, then he talks about monetary policy elsewhere, and I think he gets intellectual property only half correct).

Nonetheless, I think it is rational for you to be skeptical of me and skeptical of George.

I think it is rational for you to not read George’s book.

Why? Because it’s too hard. Too hard for me, at least. In the words of my buddy, “I’m just driving [myself] crazy.”

I eat from George’s tree of the knowledge of taxation and so I See The Cat wherever I look, but I can do nothing.

So don’t read Progress & Poverty. It’s a waste of your time. Pay your taxes and then go play pickup soccer in the park, if you have healthy hamstrings and ankles. Just please, please remember, if you’re ever in charge of the tax system, remember George.

(Hint: if you’re a Connecticuter and you’re selected to the Connecticut Assembly on property taxation, then…please do read George)

In progress without poverty,
Max Clark

A. Double Fault

The graphic below I saw shared in a Substack article the other day.

Let’s whine about it!

First, what the heck do we mean “take a point”? Did you know that Roger Federer, in his whole career, only won 54% of his points?? That’s a fun stat!

Does winning a point against Serena mean in a single game, set, or match of tennis? And by “could”, do we mean like…if you hit your absolute miracle of a best serve 100 times in a row is there a decent change Serena might not return every one? Also, Serena is old now. Can we play her when she’s sick? Can we play her on a day she has diarrhea?!

Anyway, I don’t even care about all that. There’s a whole Reddit post talking about such things. You can caveat it all and I’ll grant you’d still up with men responding at a much higher rate than women and that’s what I’m here to talk about. I care about the claim that it is men who are over overestimating their ability. I’m happy to assume we’re all idiots who think we can take a point off of Serena. Are men more idiotic than women?

My position: Eh, I’m egalitarian, I say women are just as capable as men of idiocy!

But, clearly, 12% saying they can take a point off of Serena is a way dumber answer than 3%, right? I am just an idiot man writing on the internet after all.

What if we look at like this: does a man have about a 4x higher chance than a woman to score a point against Serena? My intuition is that this is actually reasonable. I’ve conducted many informal studies from the 40 years of picnics I’ve gone to where only the athletic girls even dare to get off the blanket to join in the lawn games.

For every woman who can hit a home run in wiffle ball, it seems about right that there’s four men who can hit a home run in wiffle ball.

Therefore, by the most rigorous of studies, we conclude it is reasonable that for every idiotic woman who thinks she can score a point against Serena, there’s four idiotic men who think they can score a point against Serena!

In my heart, this is a very nice result that we roughly share the same idiocy.

Now, there’s a question about who will accept or reject what I’ve shared. I’m not sure. While I’d say for many cultural/biological/other reasons, many more men have played a signficant amount of sports than women. So perhaps men have a better sense of the physicality of their body and how it compares to other men’s bodies.

On the other hand, every woman I know is very attuned to the danger of walking alone at night. So maybe women have a better sense of how big, dumb, and strong men are?

So, yeah, that headline went a little viral and it is misleading in a subtle way that may or not be intersting to you. Whoop tee doo.

I don’t know. Whatever. I only wrote this because actually another article used a statistic right off the bat that…caused me tribulation. So my recent frustration has boiled over.

Here’s the article that starts off talking about this tennis poll. I generally quite like its thesis and found it valuable.

Homo Sabiens

No Arrogance Like That Of The Recently Humbled

I. Randall Munroe, author of the popular webcomic XKCD, once published this gem…

Read more

3 years ago · 271 likes · 1 comment · Duncan Sabien

B. Two Studies, Three Branches, Nine Years

In another Substack article, it began by sharing that a 2016 study revealed only 1/3rd of people can name the three branches of government. I was like…who are “people”? So I internet-searched this and the first link I clicked on from the investigators’ website had a result from that 70% of U.S. adults can name the three branches of government. I was like what. Then I saw it was from 2025 and that it specially noted this figure was up from 65% from 2024.

Did a little more internet-searching and found the 2016 study. Here are the links:

2016 study (26% of U.S. adults could name all three): https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-knowledge-of-the-branches-of-government-is-declining/

2025 study (70% of U.S. adults could name all three): https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-knowledge-of-civics-increases-annenberg-survey-finds/

This was from an article titled “Are You Too Stupid To Vote?” So maybe in 2016 people were too stupid to vote, but in 2025 they’re not! Maybe? The author doesn’t talk about the 2025 article. Just starts with a nice, attention-grabbing study to reel you in.

What’s awkward for me though is that this article was interesting and valuable, too.

What’s the point of all this? I don’t know.

Maybe Federer won more than 54% of his points in his career. Who cares.

Frustratingly, this article with these studies of the knowledge of legislative, excutive, and judicial branches…it’s about voting, democracry, and epistocracry, and it mentions Hélène Landemore (!), but then it ignores her solution to the voting problem! (Hint: using sortition to create citizens’ assemblies!)

Here you go.

The Second Best World

Are You Too Stupid to Vote?

In 2016, the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that only 26 percent of Americans could name all three branches of government. Thirty-one percent could not name a single one. These are the people choosing the leader of the free world…

Read more

5 months ago · 46 likes · 12 comments · John Smith

Yours truly,
Max Clark

At the conclusion of Elizabeth Hansbourg’s presentation on Housing Advocacy to Strong Towns Fullerton, she suggested to the leader of us volunteers, Andrew, that he run for office. Andrew is Latino, mid 30s, 6 feet tall, nice white teeth, a kind smile, and a father.

His verbatim response, “My wife would leave me.”

AND HERE, FOLKS, YOU HAVE REASON #1, WHY ELECTIONS DON’T GET US GOOD MEN.

Andrew explained, “No, yeah, my wife has said she would never be the wife of a councilmember.”

Elizabeth responded, “Yeah. Too bad…I’ve thought about it myself over the years, but my hubsand is really well known in our community. He’s taught public school for 20+ years. I wouldn’t want people being unhappy with him because his wife voted the wrong way you know!” and there were murmurs of understanding. She then added, “Plus, running a campaign is just so expensive!”

AND HERE, FOLKS, YOU HAVE REASON #2 WHY ELECTIONS DO NOT GET US GOOD WOMEN.

You know what didn’t happen?

No one suggested Anjali run for office.

And why is that? From what I can tell, she has more time, more passion, and more localized knowledge of what is being done badly in Fullerton (and many other cities) than anyone at the meetings.

Did no one ask her because she seems a little shy and speaks quietly? Or because she’s unmarried and childless and there’s not a large population in Fullerton of her ethnic group (I think? What do I know?), and so we silently assume she is less electable?

AND HERE, FOLKS, REASON #3 WHY ELECTIONS DO NOT GET US THE MOST CARING AND INFORMED.

I don’t even know what else there is to say. Elections are systematically broken.

I’m so sortition-pilled, I can’t remember why it took me six months of encouragement to study the topic. Upon a few hours of reading I was convinced and convicted: https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections.

Maybe I should end the post there.

Look. Listen. You beautiful, moronic, YIMBYS…

Do you think you care more about street safety than the first mom to have a child run over by a drunk driver? Do you think you care more about housing than the first father to have to tell his wife he lost his job and they can’t afford rent? Do you think you have better policy suggestions than Jane Jacobs, Herbert Gans, or Henry George, or Adam Smith?

You are in all these nonprofits with their donors and their grants, with their cute tax-exemption statuses as 501c3s and/or 501c4s and/or 527s…

God dammit.

You’re all sidelined. Don’t you see it?

Some of you have paid jobs in nonprofit world, so woe unto you, if that is skewing your view. Yet far be it from me, in a world where nature is scalped by those who stuck their flag in the ground first, to curse any of the landless for trying to get paid any way they can.

And I get it. Seeing other humans suffer…you have to do something, especially when you’ve got not much else do to do. I mean, I’m a member of Strong Towns and Abundant Housing LA and Common Ground USA. I’m mostly aligned with their desired outcomes and their policies (some more, some less).

But the battle they wage isn’t so much about ideas. It’s tactics. Lobbying? Public comment? Stirring up anger in the community?

Vietnam didn’t end because of protests.

Returning to the Strong Towns Fullerton meeting, a college student mentioned feeling dread about giving public comment at city council meetings. He was given enoucragement about how to overcome nerves for public speaking.

Then he clarified. He meant that, during his job as an intern with Orange County’s transit department, he’s been on the other side of public comment sorta. He’s had to field complaints from the public. It seemed to him that the complaints were ignored in favor or pre-made decisions by bureaucracy. His dread with public comment wasn’t that he was nervous to speak at city hall necessarily, but that the elected officials have already decided regardless of what he might say.

He may be in college, so in our society, he’s basically a child, but maybe that’s how, with sweet naivete, he said it out loud: the electeds aren’t wearing any clothing.

Public comment is kayfabe.

At its most effective, it can scare electeds when something like an angry mob assembles. Speakers who can rile up the crowd do well. It is not sensitive to reflective thought or an exchange of ideas and experiences and back and forths.

Any victory within these systems will be ephemeral, marginalized, co-opted.

I’m talking to my YIMBY comrades, my precious inner ring of Georgists, my Christian loved ones, my idiot socialist friends, and those who’ve internalized despair and are civically unengaged (to be honest, I find this position most reasonable, especially if you have a spouse and kids).

The vision of Abundant Housing LA is noble and I am friends with a few of its staff members. They sent out an email celebrating the passing of SB79 that they worked really hard to make happen. (The bill was about relaxing restrictions on building near metro stops).

The email declared it a “once in a generation victory!” and invited us to a celebration party.

A few months later, another email went out from Abundant Housing LA. It was an invitation to a webinar to alert us about how cities are working to delay SB79 and avoid its implementation. So there’s more emails to send, more public comments to make, more social media posts to post. Great. Fucking terrific.

Come. Rage against the machine with me.

https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections.

https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections.

https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections.

For justice and progress without poverty,
Max Clark

P.S.

If you don’t know what exatly I’m talking about when I reference the landless or land scalpers, that’s because I’m referencing the ideas of Henry George. You can look up Common Ground USA or Henry George.

If you live in Orange County, CA, Elizabeth Hansbourg’s organization does help building projects get passed. She’s a passionate, practical, knowledgeable, veteran YIMBY and has done some good in this world.

If you are interested in promoting safer, more efficient, more communal transit options, along with housing and local city government improvements, you can look up your local Strong Towns chapter, wherever you are in the USA.

But the whole point of this article is that all those things you might care about are bottlenecked by an electocracy that stymies their efforts.

To go to war, the U.S. Congress must make a declaration of war.

Should they be the ones to decide? A group of rich people who are really good at winning elections?

Perhaps a few 5-star generals? How many stars should do the trick?

Or perhaps the people who write really great papers about the state of geopolitical affairs (whose bosses are the rich people who are really good at winning elections)? I bet they’re real good at winning board game night. Should be handy.

“In governance, sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e. by lottery, in order to obtain a representative sample.”

With sortition, you can form Civic Assemblies.

“[Civic]Citizens’ assembly is a group of people selected by lottery from the general population to deliberate on important public questions so as to exert an influence.”

Oftentimes, when I advocate for sortition I’m like, “You know, what’s really neat is that we can try it out on a small scale, you know, for whether or not a community should build a dog park or a pool.”

And then sometimes, it’s like, whatever issuse you might think too complicated for a sortition body to deal with, like whatever the FDA does, whatever interest rate the Fed should set, however many licensed electricians it takes to screw in a light bulb, etc, etc…

Going to war…it’s sending people to go kill.

When a human has been killed, we think a jury should decide if another human should be held responsible.

A giant jury be used to decide when we go to war.

But the jokes on me, you already know this, the U.S.A. doesn’t go to war. Last time U.S. Congress declared war was 1942.

What am I even worrying about?

Yours truly,
Max Clark

Sortition is the formation of decision-making bodies by random selection.

There’s a bunch of typical reactions, but one I only hear from time to time is that sortition would result in “design by committee”, and since everyone knows that committees end up making the worst products, this would make for terrible laws.

(The most common response I get is “what if my dumbass neighbor is randomly selected?”)

Maybe it’s an uncommon complaint against sortition because people intuit that the flaw usually attributed to design by committee is funnily enough what we want for laws: something that tries to satisfy every member of the committee. We do not just want the laws according to one visionary’s vision.

Maybe making laws is a lot different than making art.

Maybe I am strongly skeptical of a vsionary’s vision actually working out how they envisioned.

And if that committee is a representative sample of my people, oh boy! The laws we could make! Or laws we could unmake!

Sign me up for sortition!

Ok, so a hundred little nitpicks/objections/clarifications are popping into your/our heads right now, I’m sure. You know, like, we already have design by committee and it does suck! The Land Value Tax is an obscure policy that a committee wouldn’t take a risk on! Committees take forever! Hm. I see where you’re coming from, and I’d love to keep arguing with you, but my vision for this blog piece was to keep it nice, short, and effective: design by committee has a systemic tendency we want for legislation.

Let’s at least just agree that laws should be made to work for everyone, not just the voting majority, not just the 40% of Americans who own their own homes free & clear, not just people who got college degrees.

Yours truly,
Max Clark

P.S. Sometimes, it feels like no one really believes that justice works. Like, yeah, everyone wants justice, but everyone has this sorta lame suspicion that justice alone doesn’t fix poverty and end world hunger.

I WANT TO SCREAM (along with Henry George) THAT YOU HAVE NOT KNOWN JUSTICE.

The USA has had but a half portion of justice.

And that only because there was a frontier. George further argues the New World as a whole provided a frontier to the Old World, and likewise a dollop of justice.

We did it. LA has concluded its first full Civic Assembly. Sortition has happened.

40 LA randomly selected residents were invited to participate over two weekends. Not everyone showed up, but those who did engaged in 26ish hours of deliberation, heard from experts from around the world, were provided professional moderators, and compensated $20/hour for their time.

Later today, March 10, several the of assembly participants will present their recommendations to the Charter Commission. Here is their report.

2026 Los Angeles City Charter Civic Assembly

Final Recommendations

March 8, 2026

The following Recommendations were created and approved by the 2026 Los Angeles City Charter Civic Assembly. The Assembly addressed the following question: “What should be the size and structure of the Los Angeles City Council?”

The Recommendations below were written by the Assembly’s Delegates after approximately 26 hours of in-person information gathering, deliberation, and decision making between Feb. 28 and March 8. The Assembly heard from 17 informational presenters and reviewed many supporting documents. The Assembly identified 68 initial policy concepts and worked to refine these into a slate of Final Recommendations through a multi-stage small- and large-group deliberative process. These Final Recommendations were supported by 31 of 35 voting Delegates (that is, 89%) at the end of the Assembly. With the exception of this explanatory text preamble, this report is composed exclusively of the words of Delegates themselves, with no additions, deletions, or edits of any kind by staff.

The official recipient of these Recommendations is the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission, which committed to receiving the results and thoroughly considering them as the Commission prepares its own final recommendations for the Los Angeles City Council on proposed changes to the City Charter. This Assembly was a project of Rewrite LA, a coalition of several nonprofits and individuals working to expand public participation in the charter reform process. Rewrite LA includes Nick Goddard, Joe Mathews, and leaders of Public Democracy Los Angeles, Metagov, Healthy Democracy, and Sortition USA. This Civic Assembly was funded by contributions from local individual donors and foundations – including the Broad Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, and the Berggruen Institute.

Assembly Delegates were selected from among respondents to a postcard mailed to 20,000 residential addresses equally distributed across each Council district in the City of Los Angeles – as well as to outreach in partnership with social service organizations to residents without addresses. Delegates were randomly selected from this respondent pool to reflect a microcosm of the city in terms of age, gender, race/ethnicity, location of residence, political party, housing status, and educational attainment. Healthy Democracy, which designed and coordinated both the selection process and the in-room deliberations, will release a final Demographic Profile of the Assembly soon. This Profile, as well as all further communication related to the Assembly, will be posted at healthydemocracy.org/LA.

Recommendations

1. Establish a permanent civic assembly, randomly selected to reflect LA demographics, to review, advise, and refer Council decisions back for consideration, with a minimum of two assemblies per year.

2. The City Council should be 25 single-member districts. The office of City Council president should randomly rotate between members with nonconsecutive terms ending at the end of each session, including special sessions.

3. As population increases per the U.S. Census, the size of the City Council should automatically increase. There should be no more than 170,000 people per district.

4. Councilmembers must live in their respective district for at least one year prior to the election.

5. Councilmembers and the Mayor will no longer have appointment powers to the Ethics Commission.

6. Create an independent, nonpartisan office of the Inspector General with the authority to investigate, audit, and refer for prosecution any City employee, whether they be elected or appointed. The Inspector General will lead the Ethics Commission.

7. Voting will be done by ranked choice.

8. One council size option should be presented for the vote, Language shall include that an increase in City Council membership is an increase in representation.

9. Hire a qualified COO and CFO independently, not appointed by the mayor or City Council.

Did they get all the right answers?

Yours truly,
Max Clark

Op-Ed Submission: Democracy From East Belgium to East L.A.

I turned 39 in November and I have now become that Thanksgiving uncle. The uncle who brings up politics, religion, money, and makes his nieces’ eyes roll. And what do I shout with my mouth full of yams? The U.S.A. is not a democracy. It is an electocracy. Democracy is, as Aristotle told us in Politics, “selecting government officials by lot.” Los Angeles is planning to experiment with ancient democracy this winter.

In an article from The New York Times on November 23, “Democracy Is in Trouble. This Region Is Turning to Its People,” it is described how a region of Belgium uses selection by lot to form assemblies of everyday people. The article states that the leaders “acknowledge that what works in their small, relatively homogenous region may not translate everywhere.”

The L.A. City Charter Reform commission has agreed to test that. They have approved a process to randomly select from the heterogeneous pool of L.A. residents to create a series of assemblies. Each one will deliberate on an issue germane to the charter. American cities should be watching.

The method of randomly selecting members of a legislative body, known as sortition, is unfamiliar, yet deserving of serious thought. In a sortition assembly, also known as a civic or citizens’ assembly, there is facilitated deliberation. In this way, the “wisdom of crowds” may be harnessed and the “madness of crowds” tempered. As with a jury sitting in a trial, subject-matter experts come before the assembly and present information and proposals. Members may ask questions, request further information, and then engage in discussion. The assembly may accept, reject, combine, or develop their own proposals as they weigh the tradeoffs with the values of the community.

While some sortition advocates aim to replace elections with sortition, all the assemblies in the 21st century have worked alongside elected officials. There have been at least six such sortition assemblies in North America in the last 30 years. The L.A. assemblies will be an advisory body as well. This is quite a reasonable approach to a radical form of communal decision making.

The key is that, through random selection of members, a group is deeply representative of the community. Therefore, when a sortition body seeks its own interests, it is seeking something extremely close to the interests of the community. If a legislature is formed through elections alone, then it will be dominated by those who dominate elections. A successful candidate is required to have both the resources to run for office and the desire to run for office. With sortition, it is mathematically ensured to be representative of the people. The reluctant leaders are actually made leaders, from time to time.

In drafting the U.S. Constitution, American elites not only rejected monarchy, but also were skeptical of direct democracy, considering it to be mob rule. A “natural aristocracy” was their hope. They selected their tool: mass elections. The actual details of Aristotle’s notion of democracy, as described in the Times on November 23, were lost to history until the late 1800s, when Aristotle’s scroll Constitutions was rediscovered. The scroll explains the daily, random selection of 500 Athenians. Would our founding fathers have used sortition if they knew these specifics? If so, would they have restricted it to land-owning citizens as did the Athenians?

Not only will the L.A. assemblies feature the first American assemblies to address a city’s charter, but they will also be some of the most diverse assemblies in history. They will neither ignore the voices of the landless and downtrodden, nor the voices of the landlords and the prosperous. The voices will be proportional to and representative of those groaning in L.A.’s traffic.

This is why I yell with my mouth full. This is the democracy I want for my nieces. This is the democracy I want for America.

Okay, there it is. We have had two single-day assemblies in LA now and there’s a two-weekend one starting this weekend! It is awesome. It will probably be mostly ignored by LA City Council, but we are pushing the movement forward. Maybe in a big way.

Check out RewriteLA.org to follow along.

Check out PDLA, if you’re in LA.

Check out Sortition USA, if you’re in the USA.

Check out INSA, if you’re on planet Earth.