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Georgist Conference in Baltimore, Part Six
Jan. 5th, 2019 05:48 pmTo continue with Open Mike in the morning of Tuesday, August 28, 2018, we heard from David Triggs, a British engineer who learned about Georgism as a twenty-year old in London, and is now seventy-six. He spoke briefly about natural law and the philosophy of Henry George, and of having been a civil engineer in India, Bangladesh, Africa, and Yemen. Any engineer must understand the laws of nature in order to know how to solve problems. He was a manager at Thames Water, then an independent management consultant.
In Baltimore, he said, we’re applying theories to practical problems. He spoke of the 1970 strike, when he organized scab labor to clean the sewage screens and avoid flooding houses. You need to operate to be a good designer; practical experience is needed to apply theory. He loves theory and the ethical basis of Georgism, but how to implement is also important.
Mr. Triggs further reminisced about how there was no war in Yemen when he was there, but he saw trouble coming. Yemen had tube wells, which were guarded by men with Kalashnikovs; the water was controlled by the qat barons. There is no use for technical experts if society and government are not functioning.
Then Alan Ridley spoke, and urged us to get up and do a few fencing exercises to get the blood flowing, which we did. These were stretches and such, not combat moves.
Dan Sullivan said that it’s not just Henry George; all of the classical liberals before Marx saw land as important: Locke, Smith, Franklin, Jefferson, William Penn. We get attacked on Henry George, but his ideas were not peculiar to him alone. Henry George got in between two gangs of monopolists, and was anti-monopoly [the two gangs being the capitalist robber barons appropriating the land, and the Communists seeking to have government appropriate and control everything]. Our movement is bigger than Henry George!
Ed Dodson chimed in to say that Benjamin Franklin wants dto meet the Physiocratic economist Francois Quesnay more than anyone lose in France.
To be continued.
In Baltimore, he said, we’re applying theories to practical problems. He spoke of the 1970 strike, when he organized scab labor to clean the sewage screens and avoid flooding houses. You need to operate to be a good designer; practical experience is needed to apply theory. He loves theory and the ethical basis of Georgism, but how to implement is also important.
Mr. Triggs further reminisced about how there was no war in Yemen when he was there, but he saw trouble coming. Yemen had tube wells, which were guarded by men with Kalashnikovs; the water was controlled by the qat barons. There is no use for technical experts if society and government are not functioning.
Then Alan Ridley spoke, and urged us to get up and do a few fencing exercises to get the blood flowing, which we did. These were stretches and such, not combat moves.
Dan Sullivan said that it’s not just Henry George; all of the classical liberals before Marx saw land as important: Locke, Smith, Franklin, Jefferson, William Penn. We get attacked on Henry George, but his ideas were not peculiar to him alone. Henry George got in between two gangs of monopolists, and was anti-monopoly [the two gangs being the capitalist robber barons appropriating the land, and the Communists seeking to have government appropriate and control everything]. Our movement is bigger than Henry George!
Ed Dodson chimed in to say that Benjamin Franklin wants dto meet the Physiocratic economist Francois Quesnay more than anyone lose in France.
To be continued.
