It occurs to me that the background of much of the cause of societies problems including poverty, homelessness, violence and stress is that we live in an enslaved planet. Let me explain. The key ingredient not talked about in capitalism in American history has been the enslavement of resources.
American historians will talk for days on the enslavement of people and how it was abolished but never talk about that it was immediately replaced with resource slavery. The enslaved people that were freed after the US Civil War were promised 50 acres and a mule if they fought for the north. And the north won the war but the freed slaves were never given what they were promised.
Imagine you are slave and you can’t go anywhere or do anything. As horrible as it is, your “illegitimate owner” feeds you, gives you a place to live, and other basic necessities to keep you alive. But you can’t move about freely. Then one day you get the message that you have been freed from the chains. You are free to move about. But as you move about you have no access to land where food is grown, where homes are built, you aren’t given access to where life happens (on earth).
While you’re physical body is no longer enslaved the land where life happens and where the resources are is enslaved.
The traditional name given for this condition for humans, has been called wage slavery. But it doesn’t capture the whole picture. Because the whole picture is that a few people or leaders of institutions claim for themselves exclusive use of what nature herself has meant for all. I call this resource slavery. Enslavement of earth. Enslavement of land. It’s a closed off commons. A closed commons society. Some people block other people from land and call that fair. That’s what the robber barons did.
This closed commons characteristic is common to capitalism. It’s the poison ingredient. It’s what causes wage slavery. It’s the coercion that causes proletarization. It happened during feudalism and globally during the enclosure movement.
If you don’t understand this key concept you don’t understand a foundation of society and that society will continue its slavery and theft and the symptoms called poverty and homelessness.
It’s wrong to block people from the resources they need to survive. That’s intentional starving. But nearly all modern capitalist societies do it. A closed commons is the underlying cause of poverty and homelessness. Helen Keller said as much 100 years ago. Henry George said as much 125 years ago.
We look at all the technology of society as a barometer of success when the real metric is how happy are the people in that society.
People see our societies as good and having some evil in them but it’s the opposite. Our societies are not good with some evil in them, they are evil and have some good in them. This short sighted slavery based, feudalistic based social model we call “good” creates the horrible (intentional or unintentional) side effects and diseases of poverty, homelessness, genocide, and war. Technology will happen anyway as needs arise. And technology is a tool. It can be used for good, neutral use or evil.
Look at American history and you will see there that was no poverty or homelessness in all of the americas since antiquity until the Europeans arrived and brought with them a psychopathic social model that enslaved people and resources (not to mention genocide, dispossession and displacement, destruction of animal and plant habitat, species extinction, destruction of land by over farming, intention destruction of food sources by over hunting, terraforming and intentional scarcity) and more, all because the core social model was short sighted, didn’t plan ahead and didn’t have a unconditional commons.
At the same exact same time in history in america Thomas Paine observed and natives agree that the native people were living as if in a continual holiday while in Europe millions were in poverty, slavery, serfdom, in homelessness, begging for scrapes and often with no way out to a better life.
And it wasn’t scarcity of resources. That’s a lie. It was robber barons and land lords living according to feudalistic rules. Taking more for themselves than nature intended. Lords taking 100k acres for exclusive use. Not because they had any right to it but because they had thugs and took it by force and then they set up a social model that allowed that theft that said that theft was legitimate taking from the people who lived on the land.
In effect they said, “This is mine by divine right.” No it’s theft. But if you go by that then, “I claim this earth as mine by divine right forever above all other claims and I give that claim to the offspring of Earth. Anyone who is born man, animal or plant is given a fair share of Earth as their own. A fair share of the earth and it’s resources. Never to be sold but as an commonwealth and fund. Always available as an open commons and for a personal home. And if a money currency is created that interacts with that then an unconditional right to that for basic necessities be given to prevent slavery and coercion.” I HAVE SPOKEN!
