The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accounts of self‐ and world‐ownership in the social philosophy of Henry George, and a Georgist social theorist Nicolaus Tideman.
The accounts of George and Tideman are evaluated using the tool of conceptual and logical analysis.
The paper argues that although the institutional proposals of Georgist are important and worth serious consideration, there are fundamental problems with the Georgist accounts of self‐ and world‐ownership.
The Georgist institutional recommendation of a land tax is not necessarily rejected by the criticism of the Georgist accounts of self‐ and world‐ownership.
The value of this paper derives from its careful analytic evaluation of the most basic concepts of the Georgist tradition. It serves, then, as a philosophical evaluation of that tradition and of those parts of the tradition that Georgism share with libertarianism generally. It also serves as a comparison of the basic commitments of Georgism and liberal egalitarianism.
