Land: A New Paradigm for a Thriving World

Part I:
The Cost of Ignorance

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, ventured to say, “This is mine” and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by the one who, pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to all and that the Earth belongs to no one.”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)