When you think of freedom, remember the Charter of the Forest, not the Magna Carta

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/06/800-years-ago-today.html

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The Charter has 17 articles, which assert the eternal right of free men and women to work on their own volition in ways that would yield all elements of subsistence on the commons, including such basics as the right to pick fruit, the right to gather wood for buildings and other purposes, the right to dig and use clay for utensils and housing, the right to pasture animals, the right to fish, the right to take peat for fuel, the right to water, and even the right to take honey.

This sounds like some form of left-Libertarianism.

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[orders oil-drilling rig]

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61 years in the UK, and I have never heard of the Charter of the Forest. Ever. Thank you.

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Pretty much. The idea of the commons has been in many ways the proposition that Smith and Ricardo tried to formalize in their own work. It’s sad that it’s an idea which is seen as antiquated despite its utility. Roads are a form of commons but even today people are proposing their complete privatization in the US. It’s really creepy how capitalism has destroyed what little we have left of the commons which has brought us to the modern world. Because without the commons both conceptually and physically there can be no free trade, no free movement of workers, and definitely no free enterprise as defined. In essence, a free market is one that is held in common for all and not for those who merely own a title to property.

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They hang the man, and flog the woman,
Who steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose,
Who steals the common from the goose!

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Dang, that’s some nice handwriting.

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OMFG - did they not invent paragraphs back then?

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Hey, sheep don’t grow on trees.

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Mmm did they know that? They used to think Swans came from trees. OR was it geese?

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You need to listen to BBC History Extra!

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They did not. The idea of a paragraph as we know it today only dates back to the early 16th Century. Before that the standard way of starting a new thought/passage of text was to use some physical mark like the “¶” symbol instead of starting on a new line.

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Way to ruin a joke with facts :wink:

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So, basically, primitive indo-HTML?

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