"Land for the taking." A walking tour

If there were an infinite amount of land that rendered fairly similar economic results for similar applications of human endeavor, there would be little political friction or examples of what we call social injustice. That, essentially, was the thesis of San Francisco's keenest social thinker, Henry George, who in 1879 proposed a pretty good fix for the reality that there is a finite amount of the preferred locations on planet Earth. His proposal was to treat the economic value of the Earth as a commonwealth but still allow private ownership of land. Huh?! He called for taxing away the potential rent of "location, location, location" as a condition for society agreeing to peaceably cede land title to individuals and legal entities.

Come along on a FREE walking tour entitled "San Francisco's Gold Rush Century" that examines ten stories demonstrating that access to land for the taking explains the "pioneer can-do" mind-frame of the United States. The walk begins by a reflection on MLK's insistence from 1967 till his assassination that "the land question" was central to understanding social justice. From there we trek eastward from Union Square to SF's Ohlone era shoreline, exhibiting land grabs as the refrain of the American Dream.

We'll distill the basis of a fresh, provocative social philosophy along the way, citing the story of William Leidesdorff, the Gold Rush, the Irish and Jewish migrations, and plenty more as the evidence that when the frontier ended, the USA encountered large scale spiritual perplexity.