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Money and Power I: Property

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A toothbrush is something one would preferably have all for oneself and not give to others. That’s one type of property. Land that can support more than self-sufficiency is another kind of property. Or it should be at least. 

Caesar reports the following from the Teutons

«Nor has any one a fixed quantity of land or his own individual limits; but the magistrates and the leading men each year apportion to the tribes and families, who have united together, as much land as, and in the place in which, they think proper, and the year after compel them to remove elsewhere. For this enactment they advance many reasons - lest they may be anxious to acquire extensive estates, and the more powerful drive the weaker from their possessions.»

 

John Steinbeck reports from his time

«The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges […] if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.»

 Question: One of these two types of property results from today's money – which?

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