@TheSingingSword,
TheSingingSword;116287 wrote:The introduction of property rights in any society is the beginning of the end of cooperation. It serves to separate people, to create winners and losers. There is no virtue in this. The idea that the hardest workers end up with the most property is an absurd lie.
Agreed...The ownership of government as a privilage of wealth adds to the problem...
If you look at Europe, the Franks beat the Muslims of Spain with an essentially free force... When they got the stirrup, one man on horse back became the equal of ten on foot, but then horse and rider needed support, and there began Feudalism...The point is that long before Frank and Muslim could meet on anything resembling equal terms the Franks had turned their might against their own people, and made them serfs, and gradually removed them from all rights excepting those which tied them to their labors...And what good did it do them???If the Mongols had wanted to roll over Europe they could have... As it was, the Vikings nearly did, taking parts of North Africa, and Italy and the bulk of Northern Europe...They could not, with their divided societies offer a cerditable defense... They were good only at controlling their serfs, and having that control all need for progress ended...In England there is a clear history of nobles, King, and church forming the constitution of the land... The took the wealth of the peasants, and commercial classes, and provide the moral argument for their position in society; but no different from any other place and time, it is what what one can keep that is owned, and the bulk of our property law comes out of the deep distrust between kings, and lords, and church and their needs to check and balance out the power of the other...
There was a time during the reign of James the 2nd, when poverty was considered no less than a crime, as bankruptcy once was; and yet much of the income of the crown came from an excise (sales) tax which weighed most heavily on the poor....All the time that labor and commerce were adding to the technology and knowledge of society the backward thinking nobility placed impediments before their progress... Who knows where we ould be of the wealth of the few were always becoming part of the common wealth as an incentive for invention and innovation... People talk about progress, but wealth in few hands is a positive brake on progress...
