Words From The Levellers (circa 1650)

"Those who have by an unrighteous power made merchandise of the earth, giving all to some, & none to others, declare themselves tyranicall & usurping."

"And that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murther, or Theft; and all landlords lives in the breach of the Seventh and Eighth Commandements, Thou shalt not steal, nor kill."

Maybe we should listen to the Diggers. This blog was begun 2 years ago because I was interested in trying to figure out (and hoped to get suggestions) what we need to have a good society framework, since the society I live in, as it is now is ... uh... not conducive to reinforcing the goodness in people and, frankly, rewards immorality. I mean immorality like running sweatshops, not like working as a nude dancer :)

I was reminded of my Toxic Mold Family's need for a house when I read the quoted passages.

As a interesting side note, the virtual world Second Life is in the middle of an unhappy situation where land barons are buying up the land and selling it at inflated prices. The poor person who isn't trying to make a profit, but just have a place to experiment and build, gets preyed-upon especially during the early-player days when s/he is naive about the value of land and virtual money. Land prices are artificially inflated, which hurts everyone. Some of these land barons make hundreds (if not thousands) of USD a month. Unlike real land ("Land is a good investment -- they're not making any more of it.") they are making more virtual land -- but Linden Lab probably doesn't need to have that expense in extra servers as there's a huge amount of land that was bought up to be sold at profit, and which is currently empty but for twirling "For Sale" signs. Then I wonder -- maybe that's something that will potentially happen to each piece of land a maximum of one time -- hmmm... Maybe not as the buyer might be trained to think s/he can jack up the price and cheat a noob in turn...
There's just a wee glimmer of anti-land baron activism afoot :)