Who Made This and Why

GANDALFO 4 min read

I’m GANDALFO, and I made this site. I post on X as @gandalfo. This page is about why the site exists and where I’m coming from. For how the book itself was prepared, see About this edition.

How I found Henry George

Painted portrait of Henry George, a balding man with a reddish beard, in a dark coat against a dark olive background — Henry George, painted by George de Forest Brush, 1888. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Public domain.

In 2008 a coworker introduced me to Henry George. I didn’t know then that the conversation would run for years, or that he would become one of my closest friends. I suspect a lot of people come to George that way, through one person who won’t stop talking about him.

Before that, Ron Paul had led me to Ludwig von Mises and Austrian economics. George added a piece I hadn’t found there: land is not like the things people make. Put the two together and you get what I call myself, a geolibertarian. I want people free to work, trade and keep what they earn, and I think the value of land, which nobody made, belongs to everyone.

Fred Harrison and Mason Gaffney’s The Corruption of Economics explained why I had never heard of George in school. Their argument is that John Bates Clark and others folded land into capital, and once land stopped being its own category, George’s question went quiet with it. I go through that story in The corruption of economics.

Why compute

George asked a plain question in 1879: why does poverty advance with progress? His answer was that the gains go to whoever owns the ground everyone else needs. I think compute is the new land. Today you either build your own compute or you rent digital land from the people who own it, and as more of life runs on it, more of what we earn flows to them as rent. That is why George’s question applies again. I make the case in Compute Is the Soil, and Meet the compute barons follows the chokepoints.

Aerial view of large flat-roofed data center buildings among roads, power substations and housing near Ashburn, Virginia — Data centers near Ashburn, Virginia, 2025. Photo: Theodore Christopher. CC0.

So the site exists for two reasons. I wanted Progress and Poverty in a form people would actually read. And I wanted to ask George’s question of compute where anyone can argue with it.

What I believe, and what I don’t

I don’t blame the players. I blame the game. As they say on The Wire, the game is the game, and Monopoly itself began as Lizzie Magie’s Landlord’s Game, a lesson in George’s ideas (Don’t blame the players). People respond to the rules they’re given, so the rules are where I look.

Black and white portrait of Milton Friedman, an older man in glasses and a suit, resting his chin on his hand — Milton Friedman. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. CC0.

René Girard, an older man with thick white hair, speaking into a microphone — René Girard at a colloquium in Paris, 2007. Photo: Vicq. Public domain.

Noam Chomsky, an older man with white hair and glasses, in a dark sweater, speaking — Noam Chomsky speaking in Amherst, Massachusetts, 2017. Photo: Σ, retouched by Wugapodes and Jonnmann. CC BY-SA 4.0.

I also don’t accept “it’s never really been tried” as a defense of any system, and that includes Georgism. A land value tax should be judged by measurable results. Places that tried it partway, like Pittsburgh, left records I find underwhelming, and I say so in the explainer. What keeps me interested is the logic, and the fact that Milton Friedman called it the least bad tax. The objections page is where I try to answer the hard questions straight.

Other writers shape how I see all this. René Girard showed me how much of what we want we copy from each other, and how that rivalry tends to end with a scapegoat. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent taught me to ask who frames a debate before I accept its terms. Ernest Becker wrote about immortality projects, the things we build to outlast ourselves, and I suspect hoarding land is one of them. Martin Butler’s blunt, cold water way of telling the truth reminds me not to soften what I think. One line I come back to often: a puppet that knows he’s a puppet is no longer a puppet.

Owning land while arguing against it

Hand-drawn survey plat in ink and blue wash on tan paper: a grid of township lines laid over the inlets and islands of southern Puget Sound, with handwritten measurements along every line — A federal survey plat of the township lines around southern Puget Sound, Washington Territory, 1853. Surveys like this laid out the grid by which public land was claimed and sold. Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records. Public domain.

I own property myself, and I play the land game like everyone else. The game is the game; what choice do I have? So when I argue for taxing land values, I’m arguing against my own interest. I don’t think that makes me right, but I hope it shows I’m not selling anything. Owners, me included, followed the rules we were given. The point is to change the rules, not to pass judgment on the people who played by them.

Room for more than economics

Economics isn’t the whole of life, and I don’t want this site to pretend it is. I value grace over moralistic judgment. The story I keep returning to is the woman caught in adultery, where the crowd is ready with stones and is told that whoever is without sin should throw the first one. I’d like the arguments here to carry some of that spirit: hard on ideas, easy on people.

Painting of a sunlit courtyard below a stone temple in Jerusalem. Christ sits calmly on a low wall among his followers, while an old man in white turns to him and points back at a young woman held by a crowd — Vasily Polenov, *Christ and the Sinner (He that is without sin?)*, 1888. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Public domain.

How to reach me

The best way to reach me is on X, at @gandalfo. If you think I’ve got George wrong, or compute wrong, tell me. I’d rather hear it.

Photo credits

Henry George by George de Forest Brush, 1888. George de Forest Brush (National Portrait Gallery). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Cropped.
Data centers near Ashburn, Loudoun County, Virginia, November 26, 2025. Theodore Christopher. Wikimedia Commons. CC0. Cropped to remove an aircraft wing.
Milton Friedman, Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Wikimedia Commons. CC0. Cropped.
René Girard, Paris, November 26, 2007. Vicq. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Cropped.
Noam Chomsky, Amherst, Massachusetts, April 13, 2017. Σ, retouched by Wugapodes and Jonnmann. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.
Survey plat, Townships 17 to 20 North, Willamette Meridian, 1853. U.S. Surveyor General (Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Cropped.
Vasily Polenov, Christ and the Sinner, 1888. Vasily Polenov (State Russian Museum, inv. Zh-4204). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Cropped lightly at the top and sides so the figures read at web size.