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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 1d

"The vice and misery that come of want can no more be attributed to... Nature than can the six millions slain by the sword of Genghis Khan... or the extermination of the aboriginal inhabitants of the West Indies." -Henry George, who likely would not have celebrated Columbus Day

Plate p.10. Conquistadors attacking a village of Indians. Scene of hangings and stake. A 16th-century illustration by Flemish Protestant Theodor de Bry for Las Casas' Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, depicting Spanish atrocities during the conquest of Hispaniola. Bartolome wrote: "They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, every one of which was so ordered as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them"

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Bry_1c.JPG

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 12d

"The vice and misery that come of want can no more be attributed to…Nature than can the six millions slain by the sword of Genghis Khan" -Henry George, Progress and Poverty

PBS: Sudan's famine worsens as civil war intensifies: "we have nothing to eat but animal feed"

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Feb 20

I would guess both Douglass and George drew from Paine:

"It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race."

Thomas Cole, expulsion from the Garden of Eden

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 25d

Love this picture because you can’t tell if it’s a navel blockade or tariff enforcement

Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 25d

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons -Henry George

A British excise cutter pursues a trade vessel https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=customs+cutter&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image

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Politically_Illinois ⚾️ @pol-il.bsky.social · 25d

The Henry George was right about most things

Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 25d

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons -Henry George

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 25d

Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons -Henry George

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Pennamite Patriot @pennamitepatriot.bsky.social · 27d

Tariffs won't protect industry. They'll only ensure that it'll be uncompetitive when exposed to competition...and in a society where there's votes to be found in lowering prices, industry will eventually be exposed to competition.

I'm for a sensible industrial policy, and so I'm against tariffs.

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27d

There is something in the very word “protection” that ought to make workingmen cautious of accepting anything presented to them under it. The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny⎯the plea of monarchy, or aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. -H George

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · Sep 7

Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jun 26

"If we ever again have a foreign war it will be of our own making. And too strong to fear aggression, we ought to be too just to commit it" -Henry George

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Aug 25

"The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen: not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers: blows were the current coin given in payment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be thus constituted? Hardly." H. Spencer

Rich guy: "get off this estate"
poor mob: "what for"
RG: Becuase it's mine
pm: where did you get it
RG: from my father
pm: where did he get it?
RG: from his father
om: And where did his father get it?
RG: He fought for it
rm: Well, we'll fight you for it!

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jul 8

How is it possible for them to be privileged with high incomes due to their high levels of human capital and yet not have enough spending power to rent homes on their own?

Where could the money be going?

Guess we'll never know

Matt McManus @mattpolprof.bsky.social · Jul 8

Apparently Mamdani voters are the most privileged class in history AND are bitter about having no money and living in an apartment with 3 roommates into their 30s.

Pick a damn lane.

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jun 26

"If we ever again have a foreign war it will be of our own making. And too strong to fear aggression, we ought to be too just to commit it" -Henry George

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jun 19

But the justness of the "forty acre" donation cannot be controverted. To tell him he was a free man, and at the same time shut him off from free access to the soil...was to add insult to injury, to mix syrup and hyssop, to aggravate into curses the pretended conferrence of blessings. -T.T. Fortune

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jun 19

The wag who started the "forty acres and a mule" idea among the black people of the South was a wise fool; wise in that he enunciated a principle which every argument of sound policy should have dictated...a fool because he designed simply to impose upon the credulity and ignorance of his victims.

Timothy Thoams Fortune. Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South, with a cool cover

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Jun 14

For instance, the decline of civilization as manifested in government would not take us back from republicanism to constitutional monarchy, and thence to the feudal system; it would take us to imperatorship and anarchy. -Henry George, Progress and Poverty

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · May 29

What if we could tax larger estates fairly but without having to define a particular cutoff point? Might there be a tool for that?

Push The Needle @pushtheneedle.bsky.social · May 29

I am all for taxing large luxury homes to discourage them but as @buildhomes.bsky.social pointed out in the replies, the threshold of 1,750SF is a townhome! We should tax large homes, not those. Threshold should be 2,500 SF

The Urbanist @theurbanist.org · May 28

NEW STORY // Kenmore Considers McMansion Tax in Zoning Overhaul www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/28/k...

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · May 6

If you've liked some of what you've seen on this account and are interested in helping guide an organization that's spreading these ideas and engaging in education about resource justice, take a look here. We're currently looking for new board members; DMs open!

The Progress and Poverty Institute

The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation is now The Progress and Poverty Institute! This change reflects our commitment to the core principles that have guided us since our founding 1925, while embracing a ...

progressandpovertyinstitute.org

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · Apr 21

Paying income taxes: an hours long ordeal involving 8 different pieces of Mail, an excel spreadsheet, and fear of arrest

Paying property taxes: click a website. Type 23 numbers. Click ‘okay’.

This Is The Way, people

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · Apr 10

The state goal of ICE is to end all the benefits Henry George identified from trade

Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Apr 10

Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge... men in one place have been enabled not only to obtain the products, but to profit by the observations, discoveries and inventions of men in other places. -HG, Protection or Free Trade

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Apr 10

Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge... men in one place have been enabled not only to obtain the products, but to profit by the observations, discoveries and inventions of men in other places. -HG, Protection or Free Trade

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · Apr 10

Pretty good illustration that the problem with trailers (which seems to have whooshed over the meme maker's head) is that they often have no foundation and the reason they have no foundation is that they don't come with land - which is the part of the 'house' package that appreciates in value

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Apr 8

"Protective tariffs make more work, in the sense in which the spilling of grease over her kitchen floor makes more work for the housewife, or as a rain that wets his hay makes more work for the farmer" -Henry George, Protection or Free Trade

Building an economy on spilt grease and wet hay

Trade barriers are having the impacts liberals expected. Those who denied it are suffering

substack.com

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · Apr 2

Of course the idea of onshoring industries using robotics defeats the ostensible purpose of onshoring industries to bring back manufacturing jobs

Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Mar 4

"We maintain a tariff for the avowed purpose of keeping out the products of cheap foreign labor; yet machines are daily invented that produce goods cheaper than the cheapest foreign labor...the only consistent protectionism ...would forbid the introduction of laborsaving machinery"
-Henry George

Steam shovel on the Panama Canal, 1908 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MarioModel90_1908.jpg

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Apr 1

Once in the late 1800s five Congressmen read the entirety of Protection or Free Trade into the Congressional Record and a repeat of the endeavor couldn't come at a better time

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · Apr 1

What would you talk about for 19 hours?

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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · Apr 1

Once in the late 1800s five Congressmen read the entirety of Protection or Free Trade into the Congressional Record and a repeat of the endeavor couldn't come at a better time

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · Apr 1

What would you talk about for 19 hours?

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