Free Land, Free Trade, Free People
@freelandtradeppl.bsky.social
Quotes and memes from Henry George and other cat see-ers
Congrats - and gentle advice to Mayor Mamdani -
"We are packed together in this city of New York closer than anywhere else in the world⎯ yet there is plenty of land here. Ride up on any of the elevated roads, and you will see plenty of vacant ground." -HG
www.landsearch.com/vacant/new-y...
"We are packed together in this city of New York closer than anywhere else in the world⎯ yet there is plenty of land here. Ride up on any of the elevated roads, and you will see plenty of vacant ground." -HG
www.landsearch.com/vacant/new-y...
November 6, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Congrats - and gentle advice to Mayor Mamdani -
"We are packed together in this city of New York closer than anywhere else in the world⎯ yet there is plenty of land here. Ride up on any of the elevated roads, and you will see plenty of vacant ground." -HG
www.landsearch.com/vacant/new-y...
"We are packed together in this city of New York closer than anywhere else in the world⎯ yet there is plenty of land here. Ride up on any of the elevated roads, and you will see plenty of vacant ground." -HG
www.landsearch.com/vacant/new-y...
"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
October 13, 2025 at 8:14 PM
"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
"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
October 2, 2025 at 3:27 PM
"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
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
September 19, 2025 at 8:32 PM
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
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
September 17, 2025 at 10:18 PM
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
"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
August 25, 2025 at 3:16 PM
"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
"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
June 26, 2025 at 11:43 PM
"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
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.
June 19, 2025 at 6:45 PM
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.
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
June 14, 2025 at 5:34 PM
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
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
April 10, 2025 at 8:07 PM
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
Anon, I know just the book for you
March 29, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Anon, I know just the book for you
Ask not for Ireland mere charity or sympathy. Let her call be the call of fraternity: “For yourselves, O brothers, as well as for us!” Let her rallying cry awake all who slumber, and rouse to a common struggle all who are oppressed... let it ring and echo with the new hope! -HG
March 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Ask not for Ireland mere charity or sympathy. Let her call be the call of fraternity: “For yourselves, O brothers, as well as for us!” Let her rallying cry awake all who slumber, and rouse to a common struggle all who are oppressed... let it ring and echo with the new hope! -HG
"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
-Henry George
March 4, 2025 at 5:04 PM
"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
-Henry George
"Taxation must not repress industry. It must not check commerce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer no impediment to the largest production and the fairest division of wealth." -HG
February 21, 2025 at 6:33 PM
"Taxation must not repress industry. It must not check commerce. It must not punish thrift. It must offer no impediment to the largest production and the fairest division of wealth." -HG
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."
"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."
February 20, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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."
"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."
"...it does not take a sage to see that what is required for the improvement of land is not absolute ownership of the land, but security for the improvements." -Henry George
February 19, 2025 at 2:33 AM
"...it does not take a sage to see that what is required for the improvement of land is not absolute ownership of the land, but security for the improvements." -Henry George
"...to the man who realizes that it is given to him to work for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth, there is an exceedingly great reward of feeling that he, little and insignificant though he may be, is doing something on the side of that good power that shows all through the universe" -HG
January 29, 2025 at 5:22 PM
"...to the man who realizes that it is given to him to work for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth, there is an exceedingly great reward of feeling that he, little and insignificant though he may be, is doing something on the side of that good power that shows all through the universe" -HG
"...free trade no more originated in Great Britain than did the habit of walking on the feet. Free trade is the natural trade⎯the trade that goes on in the absence of artificial restrictions. It is protection that had to be invented" -HG
January 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
"...free trade no more originated in Great Britain than did the habit of walking on the feet. Free trade is the natural trade⎯the trade that goes on in the absence of artificial restrictions. It is protection that had to be invented" -HG
The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a mere thing of the intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or the many. -HG
January 27, 2025 at 4:07 PM
The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a mere thing of the intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or the many. -HG
"Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each; it binds all closer and closer together in bonds from which none can escape." -HG
January 16, 2025 at 9:58 PM
"Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each; it binds all closer and closer together in bonds from which none can escape." -HG
"It is given to men to struggle for the kingdom of justice and righteousness. It is given to men to work and to hope for and to bring on that day of which the prophets have told and the seers have dreamed; that day in which involuntary poverty shall be utterly abolished." -HG
January 16, 2025 at 12:51 AM
"It is given to men to struggle for the kingdom of justice and righteousness. It is given to men to work and to hope for and to bring on that day of which the prophets have told and the seers have dreamed; that day in which involuntary poverty shall be utterly abolished." -HG
"Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a similar right of property in the ocean, so that he may sell it or give it or forbid others to use it."
January 15, 2025 at 1:25 AM
"Thus, if a man take a fish from the ocean he acquires a right of property in that fish, which exclusive right he may transfer by sale or gift. But he cannot obtain a similar right of property in the ocean, so that he may sell it or give it or forbid others to use it."
"To the extent that road usage rights represent rights to the use of a land related resource, the taxation of that right
is completely in line with George's prescription for land related taxation" -Sock-Yong Phang
ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcont...
is completely in line with George's prescription for land related taxation" -Sock-Yong Phang
ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcont...
January 6, 2025 at 7:49 PM
"To the extent that road usage rights represent rights to the use of a land related resource, the taxation of that right
is completely in line with George's prescription for land related taxation" -Sock-Yong Phang
ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcont...
is completely in line with George's prescription for land related taxation" -Sock-Yong Phang
ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcont...
"The Irish famine was not a true famine arising from scarcity of food. It was what an English writer styled the Indian famine⎯a “financial famine,” arising not from scarcity of food but from the poverty of the people" -HG, "The Land Question"
January 2, 2025 at 6:58 PM
"The Irish famine was not a true famine arising from scarcity of food. It was what an English writer styled the Indian famine⎯a “financial famine,” arising not from scarcity of food but from the poverty of the people" -HG, "The Land Question"