My take on a new symbol for Georgism. The inverted pentagram has historical significance. It uses one color and can be drawn quickly without lifting the writing tool. It represents the writings of Henry George and expands on our previous symbol. It is counter-culture. Stars symbolize nature and opportunity. Pentagrams embody the golden ratio. Nobody throughout history has better explained how to accomplish human well-being and justice in society than Henry George, and nobody has cared more about understanding evil and better used first principles to prove that nature and our universe is a fundamentally moral place.
The inverted pentagram doesn’t just make a star. It can also be seen as an arrow pointed at the earth with a pyramid in the background.
Henry George often used the symbolism of the star in his speeches. For example, in Justice the Object, Taxation the Means he said:
“When, after growing up here, I went across the continent, before the continental railway was completed, and in the streets of New York for the first time realized the contrasts of wealth and want that are to be found in a great city; saw those sights that, to the man who comes from the West, affright and appall, the problem grew upon me. I said to myself, There must be some reason for this; there must be some remedy for this, and I will not rest until I have found the one and discovered the other. At last it came clear as the stars of a bright midnight. I saw what was the cause; I saw what was the cure. I saw nothing that was new.”
and
“So it is. I notice that one of our papers gives to me the character of an apostle and speaks of my comrades as my disciples. It is not so. I have done no more to any man than point out God’s stars. They were there for him to see. Millions and millions of years have seen them precisely as I saw them; every man may see them who will look.”
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#seethecat#savetheworld#georgism#wearerent#sharetherents#savetheplanet#nature#freedom#justice#peace#love#equality#wealthinequality#poverty#climatechange#environmentalism#politics#economics#philosophy#ethics#morality#art#streetart#graffiti#design#wheatpaste#protest#disobey#land#labor
From one great to another!
…
“Mrs Anna George de Mille has received two letters from Albert Einstein. The first reads as follows:
I thank you for your great friendliness. I have already read Henry George’s great book and really learnt a great deal from it. Yesterday evening I read with admiration—the address about Moses. Men like Henry George are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation. The spreading of these works is a really deserving cause, for our generation especially has many and important things to learn from Henry George.
With friendly greetings,
A. Einstein
The second letter came in answer to her request for permission to make public the first and may thus be translated from the German:
I give you according to your request, permission to publish my letter on the work of Henry George although well know I am no expert in this field and that my judgment therefore is not of great importance. It almost seems to me as if you had no conception to what high degree the work of Henry George is appreciated by serious, thinking people.
The statement sent concerning the cooperation of America and England in foreign policies interests me very much. A short time ago President Butler of Columbia University, gave expression to the same thought which I often come in contact with, in English men of politics. This statement (of Henry George), is a new proof to me of the extraordinary foresight of this great personality.
With very great respect,
A. Einstein”
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, May-June, 1934]
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#seethecat#savetheworld#georgism#henrygeorge#alberteinstein#einstein#wearerent#sharetherents#savetheplanet#nature#freedom#justice#peace#love#equality#wealthinequality#climatechange#politics#economics#philosophy#ethics#morality#art#design#protest#disobey#quotation#quote#quotes#quoteoftheday
The Three Classes of People … “An English writer has divided all men into three classes—workers, beggars and thieves. The classification is not complimentary to the “upper classes” and the "better classes," as they are accustomed to esteem themselves, yet it is economically true. There are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth—by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much. When a man gets wealth that he does not produce, he necessarily gets it at the expense of those who produce it” (Henry George, Social Problems, Chapter IX: First Principles).
…
“Even in a narrow view there are only three ways by which men may live—by work, by beggary, and by theft; for the man who obtains work without giving work is, economically, only a beggar or a thief. But on a larger view these three come down to one, for beggars and thieves can only live on workers. It is human labor that supplies all the wants of human life — as truly now, in all the complexities of modern civilization, as in the beginning; when the first man and first woman were the only human beings on the globe” (Henry George, Causes of Business Depression).
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“The primary factors of production are land and labor. Capital is their product, and the capitalist is but an intermediary between the landlord and the laborer. Hence working-men who imagine that capital is the oppressor of labor are "barking up the wrong tree." In the first place, much that seems on the surface like oppression by capital is in reality the result of the helplessness to which labor is reduced by being denied all right to the use of land. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty.” It is not in the power of capital to compel men who can obtain free access to nature to sell their labor for starvation wages. In the second place, whatever of the earnings of labor capitalistic monopolies may succeed in appropriating, they are merely lesser robbers, who take what, if they were abolished, landownership would take.
No matter whether the social organization be simple or complex, no matter whether the intermediaries between the owners of land and the owners of the mere power to labor be few or many, wherever the available land has been fully appropriated as the property of some of the people, there must exist a class, the laborers of ordinary ability and skill, who can never hope to get more than a bare living for the hardest toil, and who are constantly in danger of failure to get even that.” (Henry George, Protection or Free Trade, Chapter XXV: The Robber That Takes All that is Left).
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#seethecat#savetheworld#georgism#wearerent#sharetherents#savetheplanet#nature#freedom#justice#peace#love#equality#wealthinequality#poverty#climatechange#politics#economics#philosophy#ethics#morality#art#streetart#graffiti#design#wheatpaste#protest#disobey#land#labor#capital