Starlight

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ubi, science, art, music, food, nature, writer, software, film, tv, sci-fi, ontologist, working on understanding causes of poverty and homelessness and providing solutions. Hire me to add comedy to your video game or movie / tv

"In all primitive societies," says M. de Laveleye, as the result of an investigation which leaves no part of the world unexplored - "in all primitive societies, the soil was the joint property of the tribes and was subject to periodical distribution among all the families, so that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of each was thus proportioned to his energy and intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsistence, and inequality increasing from generation to generation was provided against." If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and that he is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, has the reduction of land to private ownership become so general? The causes which have operated to supplant this original idea of the equal right to the use of land by the idea of exclusive and unequal rights may, I think, be everywhere vaguely but certainly traced. They are everywhere the same which have led to the denial of equal personal rights and to the establishment of privileged classes. These causes may be summarized as the concentration of power in the hands of chieftains and the military class, consequent on a state of warfare, which enabled them to monopolize common lands; the effect of conquest, in reducing the conquered to a state of predial slavery, and dividing their lands among the conquerors, and in disproportionate share to the chiefs; the differentiation and influence of a sacerdotal class, and the differentiation
"In all primitive societies," says M. de Laveleye, as the result of an investigation which leaves no part of the world unexplored - "in all primitive societies, the soil was the joint property of the tribes and was subject to periodical distribution among all the families, so that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of each was thus proportioned to his energy and intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsistence, and inequality increasing from generation to generation was provided against." If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and that he is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, has the reduction of land to private ownership become so general? The causes which have operated to supplant this original idea of the equal right to the use of land by the idea of exclusive and unequal rights may, I think, be everywhere vaguely but certainly traced. They are everywhere the same which have led to the denial of equal personal rights and to the establishment of privileged classes. These causes may be summarized as the concentration of power in the hands of chieftains and the military class, consequent on a state of warfare, which enabled them to monopolize common lands; the effect of conquest, in reducing the conquered to a state of predial slavery, and dividing their lands among the conquerors, and in disproportionate share to the chiefs; the differentiation and influence of a sacerdotal class, and the differentiation
"In all primitive societies," says M. de Laveleye, as the result of an investigation which leaves no part of the world unexplored - "in all primitive societies, the soil was the joint property of the tribes and was subject to periodical distribution among all the families, so that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of each was thus proportioned to his energy and intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsistence, and inequality increasing from generation to generation was provided against." If M. de Laveleye be right in this conclusion, and that he is right there can be no doubt, how, it will be asked, has the reduction of land to private ownership become so general? The causes which have operated to supplant this original idea of the equal right to the use of land by the idea of exclusive and unequal rights may, I think, be everywhere vaguely but certainly traced. They are everywhere the same which have led to the denial of equal personal rights and to the establishment of privileged classes. These causes may be summarized as the concentration of power in the hands of chieftains and the military class, consequent on a state of warfare, which enabled them to monopolize common lands; the effect of conquest, in reducing the conquered to a state of predial slavery, and dividing their lands among the conquerors, and in disproportionate share to the chiefs; the differentiation and influence of a sacerdotal class, and the differentiation
WHEN PLUNDER BECOMES A WAY OF LIFE FOR A GROUP OF MEN IN A SOCIETY, OVER THE COURSE OF TIME THEY CREATE FOR THEMSELVES A LEGAL SYSTEM THAT AUTHORIZES IT AND A MORAL CODE THAT GLORIFIES IT. FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed." Herman Melville, Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs (1854)
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. Andrew Jackson quotefancy
"When our davs become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows."
WHEN THE ENTIRETY OF YOUR EARNINGS ARE EXHAUSTED ON FOOD AND SHELTER, YOUR LABORS ARE NO LONGER VIEWED AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT, BUT RATHER AS AN ACT OF SELF-PRESERVATION. IN THE REAL WORLD, THAT'S CALLED SLAVERY
WHEN THE ENTIRETY OF YOUR EARNINGS ARE EXHAUSTED ON FOOD AND SHELTER, YOUR LABORS ARE NO LONGER VIEWED AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT, BUT RATHER AS AN ACT OF SELF-PRESERVATION. IN THE REAL WORLD, THAT'S CALLED ...SLAVERY
"Had we to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short work of the matter." Why not make short work of the matter anyhow? For this robbery is not like the robbery of a horse or a sum of money, that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery, that goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll levied upon labor constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam engine, pays it tribute. It levies upon the earnings of the men who, deep under ground, risk their lives, and of those who over white surges hang to reeling masts; it claims the just reward of the capitalist and the fruits of the inventor's patient effort; it takes little children from play and from school, and compels them to work before their bones are hard or their muscles are firm; it robs the shivering of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of medicine; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight and ten into a single squalid room; it herds like swine agricultural gangs of boys and girls; it fills the gin palace and groggery with those who have no comfort in their homes; it makes lads who might be useful men candidates for prisons and penitentiaries; it fills brothels with girls who might have known the pure joy of motherhood; it sends greed and all evil passions prowling through society as a hard winter drives the wolves to the abodes of men; it darkens faith in the human soul, and across the reflection of a just and merciful Creator draws the veil of a hard, and blind, and cruel fate! It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is a robbery in the present - a robbery that deprives of their birthright the infants that are now coming into the world!
Enslaved workers felled trees by ax, burned the underbrush and leveled the earth for planting. "Whole forests were literally dragged out by the roots," John Parker, an enslaved worker, remembered. A lush, twisted mass of vegetation was replaced by a single crop. An origin of American money exerting its will on the earth, spoiling the environment for profit, is found in the cotton plantation. Floods became bigger and more common. The lack of biodiversity exhausted the soil and, to quote the historian Walter Johnson, "rendered one of the richest agricultural regions of the earth dependent on upriver trade for food.?"
M. Smile de Laveleye's "In all primitive societies," says M. de Laveleye, as the result of an investigation which leaves no part of the world unexplored - - "in all primitive societies, the soil was the joint property of the tribes and was subject to periodical distribution among all the families, so that all might live by their labor as nature has ordained. The comfort of each was thus proportioned to his energy and intelligence; no one, at any rate, was destitute of the means of subsistence, and inequality increasing from generation to generation was provided against." - Progress and Poverty
Monopoly
A posteriori a priori
Hythloday describes a dinner he once attended in England with Cardinal Morton, who was then Chancellor to Henry VII. At this dinner was a lawyer who begins, in intelligent discourse to support the policy of capital punishment for the crime of theft, and yet expresses amazement that so many continued to steal. Hythloday speaks up, exclaiming that the lawyer should not be surprised, since capital punishment of thieves “is contrary to justice and of no benefit to the public.” He claims that capital punishment is at once too harsh a penalty and not a good deterrent. Theft does not deserve death, and death will not stop a person from stealing in order to put food on his table. A far better policy, Hythloday advocates, would simply be to make sure that everyone has enough to eat. The lawyer responds that such is already the case — men can choose to work or they can choose to steal.
“the absence of the motive of gain; the absence of the principal of laboring for remuneration; the absence of the principal of least effort; and the absence of any separate and distinct institution based on economic motives”
“The same bias which made Adam Smiths generation view primeval man as bent on barter and truck induced their successors to disavow all interest in early man…they abandoned all interests in the cultures of ‘uncivilized’ man as irrelevant to understanding the problems of our age.”