Charles Eisenstein

), and if we address that symptom from the mind-set of Separation, of conquest, of overcoming evil, we will end up with the same iniquities in different forms

How similar as well to the plight of Third World countries, who are compelled to restructure their economies and devote their entire economic surplus toward the perpetual servicing of debt.

he parallel between ancient Rome and the present day is striking. Now as then, wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few. Now as then, people must go into lifelong debt that they can never pay off just to have access to the necessities of life.

In the history of radical thought, the realization that property is theft usually accompanies a rage and desire for vengeance against the thieves.

Indeed, most of us participate, in one way or another, in the ongoing theft of the commons.

a revolution that is insufficiently deep, and so re-create the old order in a different, distorted form.

The transition from the early days, when ownership of land was as unthinkable as ownership of the sky, sun, and moon, to the present day, when nearly every square foot of the earth is subject to ownership of one sort or another, is really just the story of our changing view of ourselves in relation to the universe.

Thus God has created everything in such a way that all things be possessed in common. Nature therefore is the mother of common right, usurpation of private right.15

Even more ironically, most people today who profess to follow Christian teachings have turned everything inside out and associate socialism with atheism and private wealth with God’s favor.

The first economist to develop this idea fully was Henry George, in his eloquent 1879 classic Progress and Poverty.