Equitism

Equitism is the economic system of Telosa. Its characteristic feature is a form of Georgism whereby the city captures the economic rent of land and uses it to fund public services.

## Official Description

According to Telosa's website, Equitism is

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> An economic system in which citizens have a stake in the city’s land — as the city does better, the residents do better.
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> Imagine if all the land in Manhattan was owned by a community endowment focused on improving the quality of life for all citizens. At current estimates, the endowment would be worth over $1 trillion and could generate over $60 billion every year in income to invest back into building the physical and human capital of the city — that is 2x the current annual spend. Just imagine for a moment the impact these additional funds and resources could have on individuals and the entire community.
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> Land is a finite resource that appreciates in value over time in large part because of the growth and activity of the community. The land value also increases from the tax dollars that residents pay to support the city for roads, bridges, tunnels, subways, and other infrastructure. Therefore, since the community is the primary growth driver of land values, it seems fair that the community should benefit from the increase in land prices.
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> Equitism is a new economic model based on the premise that citizens should have a stake in the land and as the city does better, the residents do better. It retains the same system of Capitalism but with an additional funding mechanism for enhanced services — through the land. With Equitism, we will create a much higher-level of social services offered to residents, without additional burdens on taxpayers.
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> Equitism in Telosa starts with land — and will be driven by the city’s values. Initially, we will find uninhabited land that will allow us to fully demonstrate the power of this idea. The land will be donated to a community endowment which will use the increasing land values to fund enhanced city services — the building blocks of prosperity: higher quality education, greater access to home ownership, improved health and wellness, more innovative business opportunities, and expanded jobs and retraining. This will provide wider access to opportunity and a greater shared prosperity for all citizens.
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> There are many successful examples of the endowment model and the concept of land value return being reinvested back into the community to fund essential public services. Some of these examples including Alaska, Utah, nearly twenty cities throughout Pennsylvania, and leading universities, such as Stanford, are using land and other finite natural resources to provide essential support in education and other key areas that strengthen communities. While we plan to focus on a much larger scale and a broader social mission, their success gives us confidence with this strategy and approach.
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> Simply put, Equitism is inclusive growth.
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In response to the question, "what mechanisms are anticipated for actualizing funds from the endowment's increasing land value," Tom Rossman wrote,

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> The Telosa Community Foundation(TCF) will be seeded with the donation of the land that Telosa is being built upon.  As the Telosa progresses and the land values increase, TCF will have a substantial asset base to work with.  When funds are needed to provide the enhanced social services in things such as education, housing, health and jobs/re-training,  just as other endowments and foundations that have hard asset donations as their funding source, we will borrow against that value of those assets as needed to reinvest back into the community.
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## Questions

This space is for listing open questions about equitism left unanswered in the rest of the page.

## Proposals

This space is for listing and linking to proposal pages.