Arthur Noll
I was looking through links on this web site, and came across this verse about the commons that used to be, well, common.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal a goose from off the commonBut let them prosper and go loose
That steal the common from the goose
This is supposed to be an old nursery rhyme. Though, I never heard it as a child, I heard many others. Seems a little more of an adult theme, than to be a nursery rhyme, but be that as it may, it apparently died out from memory as the commons ìdied out”. This sparked a remembrance of something I had thought of a few years ago.
We don’t have much commons or commoners anymore, people who used to make their living from the common land. The theft goes on, for whatever is left. We have fish and game laws to protect wildlife from poachers, yet there is little restriction on building more houses, more businesses, more farmland fenced or plowed, land taken and totally controlled in many different ways, all of which takes away habitat for wildlife, ìsteals the common from the goose”. It is a blind, irrational thing, to both punish and allow different actions that both destroy wildlife.
I was thinking recently about how the body passes around nutrients, each organ, each cell, taking what it needed from the flow, and no more, letting the rest pass on by. In similar manner, who has not sat at dinner with a lot of other people, and passed dishes of food around, and each person takes some and passes on the rest to the next person? It would be unthinkable that one person would take grossly more than they could eat, essentially stop the flow of food at themselves, pass on only dribbles and crumbs to the people ìdownstream”. And yet, when we deal with money, that is precisely how people behave. Some very few divert the flow of money to themselves, and keep far more than they need, and others quite literally starve. And instead of everyone else being offended, and taking action to change this behavior in one way or another immediately, people eagerly try to learn just how this feat is done so they can do it themselves. What would be highly disapproved behavior in one context, is encouraged, emulated, in only a very slightly different one. Once more, it seems a blind, irrational thing.
What I see going on, is that monetary systems attempt to make people into independent agents, even though it is a fact we are not. Every man and woman for themselves to the highest degree possible. Instead of passing resources around, and people taking what they need and passing the rest on, we play a game with money where we try to take more from society and nature, than we need. We try to be independent, because in this game we can’t rely on other people to give help unless we can pay them. So we try to save up money for the problems that may strike us. Since problems in the future are of unknown character, we can never have too much. The system devours itself, creating problems of people taking too much to deal with the fear of not having enough.
If we had friends we knew we could count on, regardless of what problems came along, we could relax a little from this problem of an unknown future. If we counted up the resources we have, and collectively didn’t take them faster than they renew, we would at least not cause problems ourselves, with regard to having enough in the future. If we worked together, we would find that many of the energy expensive tools we think are necessities, were actually designed to replace people that we found too expensive and unreliable under a monetary system. With this system gone and people back together, we no longer need so many of the expensive tools.
Endless laws are passed to try and fix symptoms from this basic problem of everyone trying for financial independence, but not to deal with the basic problem. The rich rule in one way or another, they pass the laws, and have no intention of getting rid of a system that favors them. The laws go every direction, become a tangled mess, contradictory. ìWhat a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”, Shakespeare wrote. So true, and exactly what we have.