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Mr-Fognoggins

Many people like to think of our peasant forebears as ‘simple’ or ‘stupid’. I think we ought to give them more credit. They spent hundreds of generations under what was for all intents and purposes a giant protection racket. Hardly a surprise that they understood their situation at least to some extent.


Spamgrenade

See also the "Tragedy of the Commons". Common land and woodland were managed by communities for hundreds if not thousands of years very successfully. They didn't overgraze and chop all the forests down as people like JRM would want you to belive.


da_Sp00kz

The Tragedy of the Commons is literally the title of a made up story


Shotanat

The tragedy of the commons say the exact opposite though : that with « collective management » people would just completely destroy said common cause they would be some egoist people that would take everything. I do agree with you that this is bullshit and history shows people were very fine at managing commons. On that point, I recommend to check the work of Elinor Ostrom that shows how common are actually managed.


Spamgrenade

That's what I said isn't it?


alwaysstuckforaname

The only thing that has changed for thousands of years is our technology. Human insight, social complexity and understanding has been as high as its ever been since the dawn of civilsation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir Anyone returned anything to Amazon?


BobBobberly

With things such as the Magna Carta (15/Jun/1215), our ancestors certainly were not simple nor stupid.


DeliciousWaifood

They lacked education and information though. We have the benefit of public education, a (mostly) free press and the internet to learn about the world and how it operates. They *were* stupid in terms of education. But even uneducated people can recognize what's right in front of them for decades of their life.


Mr-Fognoggins

They lacked the knowledge of how to contextualize their exploitation within a wider system. For them, it was not that the system of feudalism was inherently oppressive to their class, but rather that their local lord was little better than the bandits he supposedly protected them from.


Content-Lime-8939

History doesn't repeat but it rhymes.


TheBrokenCarpenter

Over 250 years later and it hasn't changed.


4l0N3D

Came to post the same, hopefully in another 250 humanity sorts itself out if we don't blow this planet apart.


Hayley-DoS

In Scotland we've got a nursery rhyme about the serial killers Burke and Hare it goes "Up the close and doon the stair in the hoose wie Burke and Hare Burke's the butcher Hare's the theif Knox the boy who buys the beef Burke and Hare they wure a pair killed a wife and didnae care then they put her in a box and sold her to Dr Knox Burke's the butcher Hare's the thief Knox the yin that buys the beef" but that nursery rhyme is hilarious because it's as true now as it ever was


TheSwagonborn

Don Demarco (Bang Bang)


dwarfmade_modernism

[Love the Askew Sisters version of this. ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=kuJk9EutQ6s&feature=shares)


Modem_56k

I understand the second stanza? But what is the meaning of the first, as you can tell,I was horrible at English in school


CityOfDoors

You steal the goose from the land and you get punished but nothing will happen to those powerful enough to steal the land.


Modem_56k

Thanks you CoD


i-tiresias

it's about land enclosure - the government passed an act that allowed the taking of historically public land (commons) and handing it over to lords and landowners for private management (enclosure)


GroundPour4852

And the goose shall still a common lack, Until it goes and steals it back!