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> and you can't even gather fallen branches. And that's stupid as stupid can be, and it's not theft. Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that used

> and you can't even gather fallen branches. And that's stupid as stupid can be, and it's not theft. Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that used to be customary practice for hundreds of years, maybe even more, meaning people taking the falling branches for heating purposes over the winter. Of course, as modernisation set on around these parts of the continent (thanks, Brussels) then all that became highly illegal, so that highly-equipped policemen were set up to patrol the foresty areas and confiscate the equipment used for said "theft" from what are mostly very poor people, which in many cases involved them confiscating a very weak horse and a barely functioning wooden cart. But hey, modernisation! This whole subject makes me very angry because it is so reactionary, as you've got poor people supporting the brunt of the law while the wood multinationals (or whatever their PR name is) are profiting from it because they can afford to cut exponentially more wood in a "legal" manner. And yes, we do own a small piece of forest in my family (my brother does, in fact), so I should be all-in for the camp of "damn poors are stealing our branches from the forrest we own!". I am not. One of the very few positive aspects of all this is that these type of police-imposed reactionary actions coming from the very top have created a new sense of community in my brother's village. Nowadays almost the whole village is again on the lookout for patrolling police vans, as the villagers communicate with the people who are in the forest to take wood as to the policemen's whereabouts and instruct them when it's safe to pass. And then city-based laptop class people complain how come the "populists" are winning more and more votes.

jwr 4y ago
I think the issue is more nuanced than that. If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees. Also, this is not the only thing that governments lay claim on. You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations, even if it's your land. It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property. Not to say I'm against someone picking up a few branches, just pointing out that this isn't as clear-cut as it might seem.
- paganel 4y ago
  > If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees That's not how it happened in the past (with exceptions, of course). Because of the sense of community you couldn't have cut all the forrest all for yourself and call it a day, you wouldn't have been allowed to do that, damn the State, your neighbours and the other community members would have gotten to you first. That's why and how that used to be the custom for centuries before. > You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations Industralized societies can do that, but at the (old) community level usually you could not. > It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property. I agree, in a way, it's the famous Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft, my comment was trying to explain what happens to the people who get lost along the way during that transition (which is still ongoing in some communities in my country, even though by this point the transition is close to complete). For example if you used to get through the winter by collecting fallen wood from the nearby forest (because the Gemeinschaft was allowing it) you cannot do that anymore (because the Gesellschaft is now forbidding it), you'll most probably have to rely on direct financial help from a State authority (in most of the cases local), move out or die out freezing. And about shared property, we didn't always need a government to impose that, and I'm not saying that from a libertarian/anarchist point of view or anything like that. Past communities and customary rules were pretty good at imposing some sense of collective ownership (I wouldn't call it "property"). Of course, that is almost gone for good, too.

jwr 4y ago

I think the issue is more nuanced than that. If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees. Also, this is not the only thing that governments lay claim on. You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations, even if it's your land. It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property. Not to say I'm against someone picking up a few branches, just pointing out that this isn't as clear-cut as it might seem.

paganel 4y ago
> If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees That's not how it happened in the past (with exceptions, of course). Because of the sense of community you couldn't have cut all the forrest all for yourself and call it a day, you wouldn't have been allowed to do that, damn the State, your neighbours and the other community members would have gotten to you first. That's why and how that used to be the custom for centuries before. > You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations Industralized societies can do that, but at the (old) community level usually you could not. > It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property. I agree, in a way, it's the famous Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft, my comment was trying to explain what happens to the people who get lost along the way during that transition (which is still ongoing in some communities in my country, even though by this point the transition is close to complete). For example if you used to get through the winter by collecting fallen wood from the nearby forest (because the Gemeinschaft was allowing it) you cannot do that anymore (because the Gesellschaft is now forbidding it), you'll most probably have to rely on direct financial help from a State authority (in most of the cases local), move out or die out freezing. And about shared property, we didn't always need a government to impose that, and I'm not saying that from a libertarian/anarchist point of view or anything like that. Past communities and customary rules were pretty good at imposing some sense of collective ownership (I wouldn't call it "property"). Of course, that is almost gone for good, too.