When I first discovered the Georgist School of economics, I probably experienced much the same feeling European navigators had when they “discovered” the Americas and Australia.

Here was a new continent, unknown to western civilisation: tangible and true – a new world of opportunity.

Trouble is, where Europeans chose to work indefatigably to develop those opportunities in the Americas and Australia (and we can’t deny this was often done with a rapaciousness that came at a horrible cost to the native populations),  the Georgist school has continued to be kept a secret from the world.  Why?

Whilst Chicagoan, Keynesian and Austrian economists cling to the restrictive neo-classical limits of their shorelines, the vast new territory that is Georgism remains pristine, untouched – even though it offers incredible opportunities to resolve forever many of the problems that currently beset the world.

Perhaps it’s time for the world to discover that the 50% of the economy that is economic rent – not the miserable one to two per cent guessed at in Jan Pen’s Income distribution: facts, theories and policies (1971) – is owed back equally to everybody because they create it?

Once known and really understood, the implications for the freedom of humanity will prove more important than the discovery of new continents.

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