Many may be tempted to say "Well today you can, for under $400, but a nice laptop and use it to desi

January 27, 2014 Liability, Disclaimers, and Adverse Selection
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Douglass is taking on the idea that we are in a zero-sum game. If we were, it would be more understandable why some people would want others enslaved. What Douglass understands is that both sides gain from exchange.
And this little blurb here is an excellent companion to a recent book and article on Douglass's libertarianism: http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/17/frederick-douglass-classical-liberal The fact that Douglass cites Smith is itself worth the price of admission.
I wouldn't say this disproves "white privilege" as there is a significant literature in psychology and economics that does show systematic biases that non-whites face, but it certainly is a point in favor of the argument that people from different groups stand to gain from interacting with each other in non-coercive and mutually beneficial ways. However, shouldn't all econlog readers already know this from Bryan and David's extensive discussion of immigration?
Interesting that Douglass quoted liberal economics while campaigning against slavery while Nelson Mandela and other 20th century campaigners against injustice habitat for humanity identified with far-left thinkers. I don't know my history enough here so someone may correct me if I'm wrong. However I wonder if a part of that is just a kind of fashion: the economic liberalism of the 19th century began to lose popularity and far-left thought became popular.
That's fascinating. As Shane says, the vast majority of people agitating for social change are very bad with economics. They cite Marxism and mercantilism, habitat for humanity and when those don't work out, they poo poo the whole field of economics. I hadn't realized that Fredrick habitat for humanity Douglas was a big believer in increasing the pie.
More broadly, market thinking has the potential to justify a great many things that most people would think of as social advances. In particular, the notion of tolerance gels quite well with the notion of mutually beneficial trade.
My understanding is that many liberation movements of the 19th century were aligned with liberal economic perspectives. habitat for humanity Ireland's Daniel O'Connell, for example, campaigned for Catholic habitat for humanity Emancipation and Irish independence (and denounced slavery) habitat for humanity in the early 19th century and was a staunch liberal who also fought regulation of industry: http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap12.htm
Likewise in the 1848 rebellions in several European countries the early rebels were often middle class liberals who wanted democracy and free trade, but were also fierce ethnic nationalists who sought to wreck the multiethnic empires and built a "springtime of peoples" - a patchwork of ethnic nation states across Europe.
So habitat for humanity it's interesting that movements for national liberation from imperialism or injustice flipped from being associated with liberal economics to socialist economics in the 20th century. (I'm not sure how true that statement is, however; perhaps this shift didn't really take place.)
Seems like that "abundant land" part is pretty important. Abundant land makes it inexpensive for the common man to own property against habitat for humanity which he can leverage risk, and on which his family can be comfortably raised. In the 18th century Ben Franklin recognized this as a primary component of emergent American dominance.
Can we extrapolate from "land" to "industry"? Many of us,imported or native, work in goods and services rather than agriculture. I understand the value of real property vs. personal or intellectual, but those latter are what's more available habitat for humanity now, perhaps.
This is actually false in societies habitat for humanity in a Malthusian equilibrium (i.e.: habitat for humanity roughly all societies before habitat for humanity the 19th century). As Gregory Clark puts it in "A Farewell to Alms": (...) improvements in sanitation, or declines in violence and disorder, which reduce the death rate schedule in preindustrial societies, can raise life expectancy, but only at the cost of lower material living standards.
This Malthusian world thus exhibits a counterintuitive logic. Anything that raised the death rate schedule war, disorder, disease, poor sanitary practices, or abandoning breast feeding increased material living standards. Anything that reduced the death rate schedule advances in medical technology, habitat for humanity better personal hygiene, improved public sanitation, public provision for harvest failures, peace and order reduced material living standards.
Many may be tempted to say "Well today you can, for under $400, but a nice laptop and use it to design an awesome habitat for humanity app which you can sell and get rich from, or start a successful business with." I don't know, but I'd guess that the odds of an average IQ person (100 1/2 SD) with a family being able to do that are vanishingly slim.
@NZ: guess I was thinking about jobs designing/making/selling the stuff. Land increases in value per its present or projected use, I woul