Why Trump wants Greenland and Canada, a walking tour

Trump's wanting to possess Canada and Greenland is straight outta Manifest Destiny white supremacist mythos-making. But you probably already knew that. What you may not have figured out is the San Francisco-originating Big Idea that functions as the antidote to this pernicious stuff.

Come along on a free walking tour exploring San Francisco's Gold Rush century. The 19th century was all about 100 years of Russians, Chinese, French, Germans, and most certainly white guys from the East Coast treating the land of California and San Francisco as a seemingly unending source of personal wealth simply for calling it theirs. The land seemed inexhaustible. And then there came an of it. That's when the rent hit the fan. Happily, that's when someone with his head screwed on right wrote a book about the social effects of land scarcity. Henry George bailed on the conventional way of thinking that said "Whoever owns the Earth gets to charge rent for others to occupy." George turned that belief on its head with his assertion that "Whoever wants to have society acknowledge private ownership in land needs to pay society to stay off that land!"

That's the sort of reasoning that obliterates Trump talk.