OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes AI can help usher in “unbelievable abundance,” but he says he wants to ensure that such abundance is shared. Toward that end, Altman has embraced a theory of 19th century political economist Henry George, who in his own lifetime worried about wealth amassing in the hands of the few following the Industrial Revolution. George posited that greater equality could be enjoyed if the economic value of land belonged equally to all members of society.
Altman similarly believes that in a world where jobs may create less economic value, a land tax could make up for income tax and guarantee that all individuals’ assets rise as land — a fixed asset — grows in value. He’s putting his money where his mouth is, too, leading a seed round in a six-month-old startup that represents a step in that same direction.
On its face, the outfit, called ValueBase, sounds fairly banal. It plans to use land-first models to create mass appraisal modeling and property valuations. Feeding into its algorithm data from weather balloons, aerial photography vendors and other sources, ValueBase says it can automate much of the appraisal of both land and buildings for municipal property tax assessors, many of whom still rely on pen and paper — and who focus primarily on the characteristics of buildings and less on the land where those buildings sit.
But the idea is to flip the model, says ValueBase co-founder Lars Doucet.
(Read the rest in TechCrunch here: https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/01/valuebase-backed-by-sam-altmans-hydrazine-raises-1-6-million-seed-round/)