18 October 2011

Wither & revive

The central teaching of the laws of sheviit is that people can't create institutions for the distribution of unearned wealth; people need, rather, to dismantle institutions in order to allow the wealth to return to its source. 
It's as though every seven years the institutional life of the community needs to wither and then to be revived; while during that interim sabbatical year things need to return to the wild for a spell. 
In short, people need more institutions so they can generate the surplus during the six years and then they need to cut back to fewer institutions so that they will have to consume the surplus and return to a paradisical state where everyone can just pluck the fruit from the tree. 

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