The core Georgist principle

The core Georgist principle is the equal right to use Nature (or Land, which therefore includes land). This is sometimes referred to as “common property.” From this principle, it follows that the economic rent of Land (matter, energy, space - anything natural) is for the benefit of all. This is apart from Labor (man made entropy changes to Nature). Labor is therefore what's true property.

With that laid out, we can see what is justly private and justly common. Crops don’t just grow. They involve labor (entropy changes). What natural is in them are in a configuration in space and time because of the laborer’s labor (entropy changes). Crops get to the marketplace because of labor (entropy changes). The things of Nature in the crop are merely borrowed but there is justly privately owned labor mixed in it. Usually for convenience we just say the crop is privately owned because the borrowed Nature has almost no economic rent - or as Locke puts it, there is enough and as good (of the matter, energy, space used) for others.

Certain aspects of Nature however generate economic rent. Consider the land the crop was raised in. If it was land where there are no developments, the market rent of comparable empty land may be zero. That is, someone who wants to build a house or grow crops can find land freely. This is not the case in highly developed areas where there may be only a few empty lots available. The market rent of land (in its natural state or raw) is therefore what a user owes everyone else for using the land. It is the value that he enjoys for himself to use and is denying others while he is using it.

The right to use nature vs. private property on nature

Natural law can be distilled to two things: the right to life (equal in dignity) and the right to use nature (also referred to as common property). Without these two assumptions, there can be no liberty. Other derivative true rights come from these two. For example, the right to speech comes from the right to use nature - consider, vocal speech is the right to use the air to generate sound waves to convey ideas to another person. Hence temporal and intermittent possession, control, exclusion, enjoyment are already covered by the right to use.

However, a property right to land (and Nature in general) indefinitely entails: the right of possession + the right of control + the right of exclusion + the right of enjoyment + the right of disposition. There's no universal natural law that says people may have this "bundle of rights" to land - but many here pretend it is natural law. In fact, property rights on land is merely a claim backed by a threat of force, and therefore by aggression and nothing else.

The problem is that property rights on land harms others; this is measurable by market means as it is the economic rent a title holder demands from others either to use the land (rental), or to have the title transferred to them (exchange), or without the payment of rental or the full amount of the market price, the denial of others from the economic benefits of the land. It's as if the title holder of land should take the credit for the activity around the land and even the weather.

Henry George gave a succinct solution to this problem - common property on land means its economic rent should remain common.