gas prices

[David Giesen]

I know it. Domain as a community is where it's at rather than dividing the earth up as a private kingdom that challenges God as Father of all.

[apothanein kerdos]

I know it. Domain as a community is where it's at rather than dividing the earth up as a private kingdom that challenges God as Father of all.

Yeah, except that God did that too. Did He change His mind on that as well?! Gah....He has to stop doing that!

[followerofjesus]

follower just tell your cousin that it can ruin her/his engine...some people here also try using the petrol that is for farm vehicles and if you go to Ireland you can get it very cheaply ( so I have been told ) but as it is very flammable it is actually illegal to use it here ....

No it won't they've been using it after process for two years. That alone would be worth it for having no fuel expense. In dollars & sense you could probably buy a cheap car w/ the savings. CH-Ching!!

[David Giesen]

Apothanein Kerdos,

It's quite so that God authorized or even divided up the land of Israel for apportionment among the Jews, but I don't know of God doing anything like that anywhere else in the world. That leaves it up to humanity to determine land ownership and land rent ownership. I do not question private title to land, but I do question, as a matter of good public policy, privatizing the rent of land. Where private title to land's rent persists, there there persists land speculation, the hoarding of land against others use. That's hardly a Christian sensibility, is it, to withhold Creation from others unless they pay a premium to whom? Inevitably someone who bought Creation from someone who bought it from someone who either mashed someone else's brains in or who arrived somewhere on Earth a split moment or a generation (what's the difference) before anybody or everybody else.

Now there's a fine howdy-do for a little babe:

Welcome to Earth but it's all laid claim to--at least the bits that the naturally social beings that humans are want to occupy--and you'll just have to pay rent to the current occupants or title-holders of any particular bit of Creation. No matter that it's the fact that you want to use the earth, your heavenly Father's gift to humanity, that gives land its value.

The little baby's need for taking sustenance from the earth is what gives the earth its rental value. Were there no babies, nor anyone else, then Adam had no rent to collect. But just as soon as the next human wanted to use the same piece of Creation as another (because not all land yields the same return on the same application of human labor), just that soon did land rent appear. Land rent only appears where two human beings desire to use the same bit of Creation. Wages are different. Wages are the direct result of human labor. If you grasp an apple from a tree (that is wild or which no one else has planted or cared for), that apple is your wages. If you plant a vine on land which no one else desires, the fruit of the vine is your wages, all of the fruit. But where two or more people desire to use the same bit of earth to grow grapes upon, it is only the surplus of grapes above the rent of the land which constitutes wages. The premium for using one piece of land (in its unimproved state) rather than another is land rent. It is a value that arises irrespective of any labor applied. A bare parcel of land in the middle of a town or city will command rent, sometimes enormous rent, without the owner having so much as cleared the weeds and litter. Why? Because other people see in that bit of Creation the ideal or sufficient location for locating a business. Now, before a single lick of work is done, the landowner demands a contract saying such and such a land rent will be paid for mere opportunity to use the earth. What does the landlord care whether Creation is used or not as long as the rent is paid when the rent is due!

God created. God's creatures desired to use Creation. But someone, a King of Spain or a Duke of Wales or a Thomas Jefferson or a David Giesen (that's me!) has got title to Creation first. . . not from God, mind you, but from someone who got it from someone, etc. mashing of brains, good luck in "discovering" Creation, prior birth, etc. and now, lest these late arrivals to Creation dare use Creation, there I stand, title deed in hand (title deed, mind you, not to a book or a shovel or a gallon of paint or a software program I've made, but title deed to God's Creation!), demanding that everyone else pony up or move along to the next title-held piece of Creation. There's always the high desert or the wilds for those who want to live off of free BLM land far from community, Christian or otherwise. Au contraire, there is free land in the midst of community. The sidewalks of New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, Louisville, Columbus, Washington, D.C. Enough and to spare! Plenty of free underpasses and doorways and sidewalks for the broken , the halt, the vets, the drunks, the outcasts. Plenty of free land in the midst of community for the kind of flea-bit pariahs whom Jesus touched with the hands of a magnificently-trained masseure. Bring it on! We offer foodbank blocks of cheese and a fiver from our wallet and a kind word and a Coca-cola from Jack-in-the-Box. We may even offer a job. But equal shares in Creation?! God forbid! "They hanker after even the dust that settles on their heads!"

Edited August 11, 2006 by David Giesen