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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People

@freelandtradeppl.bsky.social
499 followers 216 following 326 posts

Quotes and memes from Henry George and other cat see-ers

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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
A lot of you have convinced yourselves, or allowed social media to convince you, that there is a bright line between industrial era liberalism and democratic socialism. I would advise you to re-read the ancient texts to discover the falseness of this dichotomy
Liberalism by LT Hobhouse Protection or FreeTrade, Henry George
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
"In contrast, Henry George’s LVT offers a fundamental restructuring of privilege and land monopoly"
progressandpovertyinstitute.org
Part 1: Reclaiming the Economy Through Structural Redesign - The Progress and Poverty Institute
As the cost of living is skyrocketing, policy proposals tied to fairness and equality are making a comeback. Think about, for example, Mamdani-style socialism, a type of “consumer socialism” that atta...
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
"We should take for the uses of the community the value of land for the same reason. It belongs to the community because the growth of the community produces it. " -Henry George
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
"The laws of nature are the decrees of the Creator. There is written in them no recognition of any right save that of labor...as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only title to exclusive possession." -Henry George Happy Labor Day!
"Labor" by Saturnino Herran. Several men move a block while another man accompanies a woman breastfeeding https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1908._Labor._Saturnino_Herr%C3%A1n.jpg
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dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
🫡 bsky.app/profile/free...
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
"The laws of nature are the decrees of the Creator. There is written in them no recognition of any right save that of labor...as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only title to exclusive possession." -Henry George Happy Labor Day!
"Labor" by Saturnino Herran. Several men move a block while another man accompanies a woman breastfeeding https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1908._Labor._Saturnino_Herr%C3%A1n.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"If it has been given to me to help forward a great movement...through no merit of mine; it is not from my energy; it is not from my learning; it is not from my ability ⎯ it is from the simple fact that, seeing a great truth, I swore to follow it." -Henry George (happy birthday!)
painting of Henry George by George de Forest Bush
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Mr. Beat @iammrbeat.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Happy Henry George Day for all those who celebrate!
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"Treating land as private property stands in the way of its proper use....being treated as private property, the individual owner is permitted to prevent others from using or improving what he cannot or will not use or improve himself" -Henry George
Fenced vacant lot and vacant rowhouse following emergency demolition, 1214-1228 Hollins Street, Baltimore, MD  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=vacant+lot+painting&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image&haslicense=unrestricted
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
"Free trade is voluntary trade. It cannot go on unless to the advantage of both parties, and, as between the two, free trade is relatively more advantageous to the poor and underdeveloped country than to the rich and prosperous country" -Henry George
Ship in the port of Mombasa, photo by Ian Kiptoo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Container_ship_exiting_Mombasa_port.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"Thy kingdom come!” Day after day, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, century after century, has that prayer gone up, and today, in this so-called Christian city of Glasgow, 125,000 human beings⎯so your medical offer says⎯125,000 children of God are living whole families in a single room" -HG
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
His most frequent them though was the charge of impiety for accepting the inevitability of extreme suffering in a divinely created world, suffering which he considered primarily social in origin
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Henry George was not terribly religious in terms of traditional churches but he uses a lot of religious arguments & terminology because he was indirectly debating the Pope pretty often. The result is sort of a proto-liberation theology situation
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"Some few children are left by their fathers richer than it is good for them to be, but the vast majority not only are left nothing by their fathers, but by the system that makes land private property are deprived of the bounty of their Heavenly Father" -Henry George
Painting of a peasant family Jozef Israëls - Peasant family at the table
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
"I would urge earnest men who aim at the emancipation of labor and the establishment of social justice, to throw themselves into the free-trade movement with might and main, and to force the tariff question to the front" -Henry George
 Cartoon published in a 1912 issue of the American satirical publication Puck. It shows the Democratic Party telling voters that tarrifs introduced by the Republican Party are responsible for the high cost of living.
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
"If a man today, in any of the states of the Union...builds a house where there was none before he has to pay a fine of so much each year. The bigger the house he builds the more he has to pay." -Henry George
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Common Wealth Canada @commonwealthcanada.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Land value tax is an inclusive idea that can appeal to both those on the left and the right.
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
(it's a metaphor) "And yet—a miner is entombed alive, a painter falls from a scaffold, a brakeman is crushed in coupling cars, a merchant fails, falls ill and dies, and organized society leaves widow and children to bitter want or degrading alms. This ought not to be." -HG
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
"We should think it sin and shame if a great steamer, dashing across the ocean, were not brought to a stop by a signal of distress... Thus strongly does the bond of our common humanity appeal to us when we get beyond the hum of civilized life." -Henry George
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Paul (parking reform) Barter @paulbarter.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"[NYC's] property tax system keeps sending the same message it sent in 1988: there’s no cost to leaving good land idle, so you might as well park a few cars on it." by @danieltrubman.bsky.social danieltrubman.substack.com/p/the-willia...
danieltrubman.substack.com
The Williamsburg parking lot that used to be sixteen apartments
Just as New York passed its biggest pro-housing reform in decades, a prime Williamsburg lot won official approval to remain a parking lot.
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Individualism and socialism are in truth not antagonistic but correlative. ... there is in free trade nothing that conflicts with a rational socialism. On the contrary, we have but to carry out the free trade principle to its logical conclusions to see that it brings us to such socialism."-H George
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Individualism and socialism are in truth not antagonistic but correlative. ... there is in free trade nothing that conflicts with a rational socialism. On the contrary, we have but to carry out the free trade principle to its logical conclusions to see that it brings us to such socialism."-H George
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Reed Schwartz @reed-schwartz.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
New York State just authorized a land value tax that could generate billions of dollars for new transit. For the @niskanencenter.bsky.social, @aarmlovi.bsky.social and I wrote about how the renewal of § 119-r in the FY27 budget could unlock a virtuous cycle of infrastructure delivery in NYC.
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
"Hence, when the owners of land, by virtue of their ownership and without laboring themselves, get the products of labor in abundance, these things must come from those who have a right to them and enjoyed by those who have no right to them" -Henry George
	
Jacob Grimmer  Landscape with Peasants Walking Along a Road with Horse Drawn Carts and others planting in the garden of a large manor house

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attributed_to_Jacob_Grimmer_Landscape_with_Peasants_Walking_Along_a_Road_with_Horse_Drawn_Carts_And.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
"Free trade is voluntary trade. It cannot go on unless to the advantage of both parties, and, as between the two, free trade is relatively more advantageous to the poor and underdeveloped country than to the rich and prosperous country" -Henry George
Ship in the port of Mombasa, photo by Ian Kiptoo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Container_ship_exiting_Mombasa_port.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Weird it's almost, almost as if there was some factor of production that has a limited quantity that makes up higher portion of the cost of rent than other goods and services
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
"Take Italy! Is it not true that the greatest part of the land of Italy is held by those who so far from ever having expended industry on it have been mere appropriators of the industry of those who have?" -Henry George
Peasant Gathering in the Roman Campagna Pietro Barucci   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peasant_Gathering_in_the_Roman_Campagna_(unknown_date),_by_Pietro_Barucci.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
"Whatever be the increase of productive power, rent steadily tends to swallow up the gain, and more than the gain" -Henry George, Progress and Poverty
A painting "the Lone Tenement", showing an industrial revolution tenement building with some bedraggled people and horses outside
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
"Tax buildings, and you will have fewer or poorer buildings...tax ships, there will be fewer and poorer ships, and tax capital, and there will be less capital; but you may tax land values all you please and there will not be a square inch the less land." -Henry George
Painting of Japanese and Dutch trade on Dejima (in Nagasaki). The view includes two Dutch ships and numerous Chinese trading junks. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1881-1210-0-2761
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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Allowing people to defer increases in property taxes based on increased valuation to the point of sale or transfer, with a statutory rate of interest added to the deferred payments, is a pretty good policy to reduce displacement without losing any real revenue.
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
George can come off as a pragmatist relative to his near contemporaries like Marx, Bakunin, or Bellamy, but he certainly had a utopian side, which is something I try to get at with these quotes. The vision is to eliminate poverty, which is as ambitious as any more millenarian philosophy
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
"We have become accustomed to think that God’s kingdom is not intended for this world-this is the devil’s world, and that God’s kingdom is in some other sphere, to which He is to take good people when they die. If that be so, what is the use of praying for the coming of the kingdom?" -HG
lions, lambs, etc laying down together, children leading them, also europeans and native americans in the distance also at peace. painting by edward hicks, a quaker american painter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lamb_and_lion#/media/File:Edward_Hicks_-_Peaceable_Kingdom.jpg
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Late July 4th post
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Most of my quotes are from a calendar put out by early 20c Georgists - this was the quote they appropriately selected for July 4, which speaks a lot about what they found important to George's conception of America
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Most of my quotes are from a calendar put out by early 20c Georgists - this was the quote they appropriately selected for July 4, which speaks a lot about what they found important to George's conception of America
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
The giant of the nations does not depend for her safety upon steel-clad fortresses and armor-clad ships... but in her population, in her wealth, in the intelligence and inventiveness and spirit of her people -Henry George
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
"That secure possession is necessary to the use and improvement of land I have already explained, but that ownership is not necessary is shown by the fact that in all civilized countries land owned by one person is cultivated and improved by other persons" -Henry George
An Italian farmstead https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_farm_-_Giuseppe_De_Nittis.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
"If I trade with a Canadian, a Mexican, or an Englishman it is for the same reason I trade with an American ⎯ that I would rather have the thing he gives me than the thing I give him...is it not...an injury to me that my trade should be prevented?" -Henry George (Happy Canada Day)
old stamp "a century of friendship" US - Canada 1848-1948
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
"If I trade with a Canadian, a Mexican, or an Englishman it is for the same reason I trade with an American ⎯ that I would rather have the thing he gives me than the thing I give him...is it not...an injury to me that my trade should be prevented?" -Henry George (Happy Canada Day)
old stamp "a century of friendship" US - Canada 1848-1948
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
"We should keep our own market for our own products", seems by many to be regarded as the same kind of a proposition as, "We should keep our own pastures for our own cows", whereas, in truth, it is such as proposition as... "We should keep our own transportation for our own legs." -Henry George
Prthu chases in a chariot (not keeping his own transportation for his own legs) the goddess earth (in the form of a cow) , from an illustrated manuscript of the Bhagavata Purana 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prithu.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
"It is sad, sad reading, the lives of the men who would have done something for their fellows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus they killed with sticks and stones; and One, greatest and purest of all, they crucified" -Henry George
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
"But what shall we call the man who tells us that with this sort of a world God bids us be content?" -Henry George
Sellers of indulgences. The man behind the desk shows his authorization with papal seals.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Avlatskr%C3%A4mare.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
"If you will come to the United States, you will find in a land wide enough and rich enough to support in comfort the whole population of Europe, the growth of a sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration, because the artificial scarcity that results from private property in land" -H George
A wide open landscapehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spring_Landscape_MET_ap17.66.jpg
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
"The iniquity is not in abolishing an institution which permits one man to plunder others, but in continuing it." -Henry George
European serfs
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Post Monkey @postmonkey.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
No Land, No Justice.
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
“Was agriculture good?” Discourse has basically already been solved
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
"Cobden saw that the agitation of the tariff question must ultimately pass into the agitation of the land question..I am think that were he in life and vigor today, he would be leading in the movement for the restoration to the British people of their natural rights into their native land"
Richard Cobden
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
it is not the forethought of carrying water where it is needed, but the forethought of seizing springs, that you seek to defend in defending the private ownership of land!
oil painging of a drinking fountain in 19th century India
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The Henry George Program @seethecat.org · 29/05/2026
New ep! We talk to @kerstanley.bsky.social about what happened behind the scenes on SB79, and how some ugly sacrifices were made, on local control and (especially) transit value capture What happened? Why didn't transit agencies fight for themselves? LISTEN >>>>> seethecat.org/ep/2026-05-2...
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Free Land, Free Trade, Free People @freelandtradeppl.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
I do not need more formally to show your Holiness that between utterly depriving a man of God’s gifts and depriving him of God’s gifts unless he will buy them, is merely the difference between the robber who leaves his victim to die and the robber who puts him to ransom.-Henry George, to the Pope
A 17th century dutch painting of robbers attaching a market cart

Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem 1619-Haarlem 1668) - Robbers Attacking a Market Cart
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