There was another article in the Guardian in support of LVT yesterday. This produced a torrent of the usual fatuous objections, which are well worth reading. Such is the void in understanding that it is clear that we have decades of work to do. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth bothering. If the British want to live in a country where the wealth divide is getting ever greater, to the point that serious social and political unrest is only just over the horizon, why should anyone try to stop this from happening?

Most of us in the LVT movement personally stand to lose if this policy was introduced. I don't know any poor "Georgists". We seem pretty good at understanding our own message and avoiding the worst effects of the present system of land tenure.

Read the article and comments here

"Making housing affordable" is a new contribution on housing policy produced by Policy Exchange (PE), which describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan educational charity, working with academics and policy makers from across the political spectrum, and particularly interested in free market and localist solutions to public policy questions."

Every single one of the assumptions on which the PE proposals are made can be shredded. Housing is affordable. The cost of bricks and mortar is no more than the price of building materials and the builders' wages. It is price of the housing land that is pushing up the price.

The fun to be had is on the Guardian's Comment is Free discussion site. Opinions are expressed from across the political spectrum. Given the government's controversial policies, there are several debates a week on taxation and the economy. You can challenge what is said and have your comments tested in discussion.

I came across something called the New Left Project yesterday, which published a couple of articles under the title "Political Philosophy and the Left".

The first of the articles was mostly about the old issue of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome, suggesting that equality of opportunity was not enough. This one has been argued over for as long as I can remember. Why is anyone even concerned about equality of outcome when there is less equality of opportunity now than since the end of the Second World War?

Free markets are not truly free unless land is freely available at the margin. Which is a complex idea and depends on an understanding of Ricardo's Law of Rent. You cannot have a partially free market any more than one can be partially pregnant.

The economy is not a circus stunt

In order to show that they are not totally lacking in compassion, advocates of these "free markets" then argue for a safety net for those who fall out of the system. But a safety net should not be necessary. The economy should not be a circus stunt. The system should be safe to start with. That is not an unattainable ideal.

Government would then only have to step in cases of emergencies such as natural disasters, wars, etc. Once there is a safety net, it becomes necessary to levy taxes in such a way that the two combine to establish a poverty trap and drive up employment costs. A vicious cycle is then set in place which is not sustainable.

Anarcho-Capitalism is arguably the most influential idea in contemporary political economy, yet hardly anyone seems to have noticed to the extent of naming and shining a spotlight on the beast. And beast it is. A movement that has grown up in the USA, its defining idea is that the state should be abolished and that only free transactions in a free market have any legitimacy. An identifying mark of an adherent of this political philosophy is the statement "taxation is theft", with deification of "the market".

This view has more than a little validity. We in the Campaign would firmly assert that the taxation of human labour is indeed theft. That is an idea that many people feel instinctively. They resent the state grabbing their hard-earned pennies. Experience shows that the public sector tends to inefficiency, with those in charge pursuing their own objectives - such as, for instance, to grow the departments of the organisations and departments for which they are responsible. And only big states have the resources to assemble substantial military power and conduct big wars, thereby engineering the deaths of millions of people. All of which makes the body of ideas that can be described as Anarcho-Capitalism (A-C) seductively attractive. But they are wrong nevertheless.

A-C is underpinned by a grave falsehood which makes it every bit as dangerous as Marxism. This is its understanding of what its adherents call "property rights", but which in reality are land rights.