[Graeme]

Who Owns The Earth? -- Paul Roberts

In my latest book, The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution of The West:Towards A New Economics For A Full World (Clarity Press, 2013), I emphasize that nature's capital, not man-made capital, is the limiting factor for life on earth. I learned from ecological economist Herman Daly and others who were able to escape dogma and to think independently that the measure used by economists to measure economic success -- the growth of GDP -- does not include the most important costs.

What this means is that economics as presently understood is defective and is leading humanity to its destruction.


In his commencement address at the American University of Beirut on June 14, 2013, Chomsky makes the point that our planet is our common possession. It does not belong to Monsanto, or to the military/security complex, or to Wall Street, or to the oil, mining, and timber industries. It belongs to life. If we don't defend it, short-term profit greed will destroy it. Unbridled capitalism means the destruction of the Earth.

The amount of profits that can be made depends on how much of the cost can be imposed on nature. Therefore, in the world economy where unchecked greed operates, humans with their short-term thinking impose huge costs on nature in order to provide profits for executive bonuses, shareholders, and Wall Street.

Chomsky's statement is true that "the Earth now desperately needs defense from impending environmental catastrophe."

The question is: are there sufficient rational and literate persons to save Earth? And if such astute people do exist, do they have the power to save Earth from capitalist greed and Washington's desire for hegemony?

opednews

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments.


Amazon description

This very readable book by a distinguished economist, Wall Street Journal editor, and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Environmental destruction has accelerated as economists refuse to count the exhaustion of nature’s resources as a cost and as corporations impose the cost of their activities on the environment and on third parties who do not share in the profits. This is the book to read for those who want to understand the mistakes that are bringing the West to its knees.

[wildbourgman]

How can he proclaim Laissez Faire Capitalism as a failure when we haven't had anything close to that for many years? What company like Monsanto does for example is not even close to pure capitalism. Goldman Ball Sacks as another example couldn't operate without governmment intervention but we blame capitalism when things go wrong. What we have had and the problems we have can't be blamed on something that doesn't exist and has not existed for a long time.

Now if he gets around to saying in the book that Laissez Faire Capitalism is easily corrupted I might agree, but I would ask what other economic system hasn't been corrupted at some point? I realize the passages you put show a concern for the capitalism and relation to the environment, but how well did communist countries do when it came to the environment? I think we can do better for the Earth's environment without Crony Capitalism that we have today.

[Graeme]

I agree with the author - there hasn't been enough government regulation. I went straight to wiki and found these solutions:

Solutions advocated to correct such externalities include:

Environmental regulations. Under this plan, the economic impact has to be estimated by the regulator. Usually this is done using cost-benefit analysis. There is a growing realization that regulations (also known as "command and control" instruments) are not so distinct from economic instruments as is commonly asserted by proponents of environmental economics. E.g.1 regulations are enforced by fines, which operate as a form of tax if pollution rises above the threshold prescribed. E.g.2 pollution must be monitored and laws enforced, whether under a pollution tax regime or a regulatory regime. The main difference an environmental economist would argue exists between the two methods, however, is the total cost of the regulation. "Command and control" regulation often applies uniform emissions limits on polluters, even though each firm has different costs for emissions reductions. Some firms, in this system, can abate inexpensively, while others can only abate at high cost. Because of this, the total abatement has some expensive and some inexpensive efforts to abate. Environmental economic regulations find the cheapest emission abatement efforts first, then the more expensive methods second. E.g. as said earlier, trading, in the quota system, means a firm only abates if doing so would cost less than paying someone else to make the same reduction. This leads to a lower cost for the total abatement effort as a whole.[citation needed]

Quotas on pollution. Often it is advocated that pollution reductions should be achieved by way of tradeable emissions permits, which if freely traded may ensure that reductions in pollution are achieved at least cost. In theory, if such tradeable quotas are allowed, then a firm would reduce its own pollution load only if doing so would cost less than paying someone else to make the same reduction. In practice, tradeable permits approaches have had some success, such as the U.S.'s sulphur dioxide trading program or the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and interest in its application is spreading to other environmental problems.

Taxes and tariffs on pollution/Removal of "dirty subsidies." Increasing the costs of polluting will discourage polluting, and will provide a "dynamic incentive," that is, the disincentive continues to operate even as pollution levels fall. A pollution tax that reduces pollution to the socially "optimal" level would be set at such a level that pollution occurs only if the benefits to society (for example, in form of greater production) exceeds the costs. Some advocate a major shift from taxation from income and sales taxes to tax on pollution - the so-called "green tax shift."

Better defined property rights. The Coase Theorem states that assigning property rights will lead to an optimal solution, regardless of who receives them, if transaction costs are trivial and the number of parties negotiating is limited. For example, if people living near a factory had a right to clean air and water, or the factory had the right to pollute, then either the factory could pay those affected by the pollution or the people could pay the factory not to pollute. Or, citizens could take action themselves as they would if other property rights were violated. The US River Keepers Law of the 1880s was an early example, giving citizens downstream the right to end pollution upstream themselves if government itself did not act (an early example of bioregional democracy). Many markets for "pollution rights" have been created in the late twentieth century—see emissions trading.

Regulations implemented so far do impose a cost:

The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant observations drawn from the 1972-1993 Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate the effects of air quality regulations on manufacturing plants’ total factor productivity (TFP) levels. We find that among surviving polluting plants, stricter air quality regulations are associated with a roughly 2.6 percent decline in TFP. The regulations governing ozone have particularly large negative effects on productivity, though effects are also evident among particulates and sulfur dioxide emitters. Carbon monoxide regulations, on the other hand, appear to increase measured TFP, especially among refineries. The application of corrections for the confounding of price increases and output declines and sample selection on survival produce a 4.8 percent estimated decline in TFP for polluting plants in regulated areas. This corresponds to an annual economic cost from the regulation of manufacturing plants of roughly $21 billion, about 8.8 percent of manufacturing sector profits in this period.

This is far from an exhaustive survey. Here's one more.

Consequently, those who hope to improve their state's business climate,
economic competitiveness, and employment picture by rolling back
environmental statutes are misinformed and are in for great disappointment.
The evidence is compelling that this strategy will not produce any meaningful
economic gains, while imposing real environmental losses. Instead efforts
should shift to factors that have been shown to really affect the bottom line: state tax and labor policies and transportation and communication infrastructure.

Battles over such regulation are going on right now:

Code: Select all

A House hearing next Thursday will provide a platform for GOP criticism of the White House decision to increase the estimated damages from carbon emissions that agencies use in crafting regulations.

A subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is delving into the higher “social cost of carbon” estimate.
Howard Shelanski, the top White House regulatory official, will testify at the hearing, a committee aide said. Shelanski heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The upward revision surfaced in a recent Energy Department rule on microwave oven efficiency, which increased the estimated benefits of the regulation.

The increased social cost of carbon in various agency rulemakings could have big implications as the White House seeks to justify new executive actions to confront climate change, including power plant emissions rules.

The hearing is the latest of several responses to the boosted estimate of damages from climate change, such as changes in agricultural productivity, human health effects and increased flood risk.

[wildbourgman]

I think your missing my point. It's not laissez faire capitalism when business buys government regulation or the lack there of.

I might not disagree with the author's points just his use of the term "Laissez Faire Capitalism" which doesn't exist.

[mmasters]

I don't know if more government is the solution but I think there is some form of sustainable capitalism that can be done.

[wildbourgman]

I think even many libertarians would agree that government does have the the function of protecting my private property rights and that is a function must exist within Laissez Faire Capitalism. If you ruin my groundwater under my land, because you dumped chemicals on your land then government should protect my private property rights. So by definition capitalism is not the problem it's the corruption that can enter any institution within that system that's the problem.

[Graeme]

I think your missing my point. It's not laissez faire capitalism when business buys government regulation or the lack there of.

I might not disagree with the author's points just his use of the term "Laissez Faire Capitalism" which doesn't exist.

According to wiki again, strictly speaking you are correct:

Laissez-faire (Listeni/ˌlɛseɪˈfɛər-/, French: [lɛsefɛʁ] ( listen)) (or sometimes laisser-faire) is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government restrictions, tariffs, and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights.[1] The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means "let [them] do", but it broadly implies "let it be," "let them do as they will," or "leave it alone". Scholars generally believe a laissez-faire state or a completely free market has never existed.[2][3]

But then wiki proceeds to describe what it is!

According to historical legend, the phrase stems from a meeting in about 1680 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants and help promote their commerce, Le Gendre replied simply "Laissez-nous faire" ("Leave us be", lit. "Let us do").[4]


In England, a number of "free trade" and "non-interference" slogans had been coined already during the 17th century.[citation needed] But the French phrase laissez faire gained currency in English-speaking countries with the spread of Physiocratic literature in the late 18th century. The Colbert-LeGendre anecdote was relayed in George Whatley's 1774 Principles of Trade (co-authored with Benjamin Franklin) - which may be the first appearance of the phrase in an English language publication.[13]


Fundamentals of Laissez Faire[edit]

As a system of thought, laissez faire rests on the following axioms:[1] 1. The individual is the basic unit in society. 2. The individual has a natural right to freedom. 3. The physical order of nature is a harmonious and self-regulating system. These axioms constitute the basic elements of laissez-faire thought, although another basic and often-disregarded element is that markets should be competitive, a rule that the early advocates of laissez-faire have always emphasized.[1]


Critiques[edit]

Over the years, a number of economists have offered critiques of laissez-fair economics.

The British economist John Maynard Keynes condemned laissez-faire economic policy on several occasions.[39] In The End of Laissez-faire (1926), one of the most famous of his critiques, Keynes argues that the doctrines of laissez-faire are dependent to some extent on improper deductive reasoning, and, Keynes says, the question of whether a market solution or state intervention is better must be determined on a case-by-case basis.[40]

Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek stated that a freely competitive, laissez-faire banking industry tends to be endogenously destabilizing and pro-cyclical. He stated that the need for central banking control was inescapable.[41]

I also take your other point regarding business corruption. Al Gore recently suggested a remedy:

Discussing his new book, The Future, Gore explained to the BBC that global electronic communications is one of the six drivers of change, and it's necessary to combat big money.

"Our democracy has been hacked," Gore says. "The operating system has been taken over and turned to uses that are somewhat different than the ones our founders intended to emerge."

His proposed solution is to use the Internet as a force of good to revitalize democracy, emphasizing the prominence of fact-checking and citizen journalists. Gore touched on the rise of bloggers and their impact on policy debates, as well as younger generations being empowered by new forms of communication.

Gore, who's had his share of influence on the government's view of the Internet, said that people must use its power to hold politicians accountable.

His latest book discusses mobile phones and the Internet in developing countries. While it poses the opportunity for “robust democratic discourse”; these growths present new issues of cybersecurity and privacy.

[ralfy]

We start with markets from which some become stronger than others due to competition, and then take over. The implication is that free market capitalism fails because it eventually leads to crony capitalism.

[wildbourgman]

We start with markets from which some become stronger than others due to competition, and then take over. The implication is that free market capitalism fails because it eventually leads to crony capitalism.

What I see today is that some become stronger due to being in bed with the government and vice versa not competition. Companies have been using government to hammer the competition and that should be as illegal as hell.

When it comes to environmental regulation if it were fair and consistant it should be like dealing with a law of physics. Ok here is the rule, kind of like gravity or entropy, we can't change it and it applies to everyone, everywhere, so lets go to work. If regulations were applied in that way they would be like breathing you just do it.

[SeaGypsy]

Totally agree Wild.

Laissez Faire Capitalism can not be truthfully said to have failed, having never fully existed. Over the last few decades we have seen an explosion of regulation on business at every level. There being no open access to the marketplace, there can be no free market.

When I was growing up, there was an allowance for micro business to operate from and at the family home, including a shopfront and customer service area. Over the last few decades, this right has been eroded to the point where it is virtually impossible to run any more than a remote office from home. Local government permits, mandatory insurances etc. have centralized business into concentrated CBD's. Only those who can afford both a home and a business dwelling have a chance to run a business.

In Australia, the axiom of starting a business is: you must have all set up costs, full time availability and be able to wear at least 2 years without a profit. Most accountants would advise $50k minimum cash availability plus an open line of credit- to start anything from a dress shop, lawnmower repairs, juice bar etc- all businesses which 30 years ago you could simply begin at home by having a service available and advertising it.

The other country I spend a lot of time is the Philippines; which by comparison does have a much more free market. I have one business there I started for under $1k which has made money from the first month and keeps 2 of my relatives employed. The local business permit and registration amounted to the grand sum of less than $10.

Real free markets only occur in squatter areas, slums; in the developing world. Slums being banned in first world countries keeps things prettier, easy to control and forces everyone into the same market for residential or commercial space. This prospers nobody but the rentier class, whilst the employed middle class get to live in 'leafy suburbia' un-pestered by micro-business in their street or slums along the floodways. All this 'niceness' is very expensive.

I believe that once the age of superabundance has ended, social security and hyper-governance will collapse and 'Laissez Faire Capitalism' will emerge in the form of free market slums- third world style- as is only natural when people need to survive and nobody is giving handouts.

[wildbourgman]

I believe that once the age of superabundance has ended, social security and hyper-governance will collapse and 'Laissez Faire Capitalism' will emerge in the form of free market slums- third world style- as is only natural when people need to survive and nobody is giving handouts.

I don't know if you realize how profound that thought is. Bravo! I agree. On another site I brought up the idea of slowly trying to get people in the west off of government welfare programs, so they would be prepared for when this age of "superabundance" as you put it does end. I believe that my thoughts on how to do that is very compassionate, but you could have thought I was saying we should enslave the poor by the response on that site. The third world poor will handle that situation much better than our poor in the west and possibly better than the suburban middle class in the west too.

People in the west are going to have a die off if we don't start trying to change our deep rooted mindsets.

We will have 'Laissez Faire Capitalism' and we will have in some places like in the rural areas that I live a gifting society. I'm of Cajun French heritage in Louisiana and we did have some more communal living with no set rules or punishments for failure to observe the rules, other than shame and the golden rule. If my great grand father slaughtered a hog there was no way he could use that for his family in time to keep it from spoiling. The salted some, they smoked some and made sausage, but the rest was gifted thoughout the community. That proscess was copied thoughout the local community over and over, season after season with cattle, hogs, produce, shrimp, fish, ETC, until refridgeration, electricity, and eventually grocery stores became widely available.
What really changed things was oil field jobs that paid a good wage rather than farming, trapping, fishing and hunting.

So I do believe in other economic systems, because they have existed and flourished, but as a libertarian I don't believe in force when implementing those systems.

[SeaGypsy]

Yep.
Very few people realize how unsustainable the systems we work in are. Trying to tell middle class first worlders that there needs to be allowance for squatter/ slums to develop in order to promote freedom and independence- it's not surprising they are aghast at the idea. Very few put the pieces together to realize how the trap is set and how they contribute personally to maintaining it.

[ralfy]

What I see today is that some become stronger due to being in bed with the government and vice versa not competition. Companies have been using government to hammer the competition and that should be as illegal as hell.

When it comes to environmental regulation if it were fair and consistant it should be like dealing with a law of physics. Ok here is the rule, kind of like gravity or entropy, we can't change it and it applies to everyone, everywhere, so lets go to work. If regulations were applied in that way they would be like breathing you just do it.

It's both: governments work for them and they compete with each other. Governments need more tax revenues and borrowing to finance their costs, which is why they want more sales, and thus try to avoid regulations. That's why economies cannot agree on measures to combat pollution, and that's why environmental damage is getting worse.

Companies compete with each other, which is why their employees need to keep selling more goods and services in order to continue receiving their salaries, if not bonuses. Investors need the same companies to sell more goods and services to each other as that's the only way they can continue receiving their returns on investment.

Where does the credit needed to produce and sell more goods and services come from? They come from banks that need to compete with each other, which is why employees keep contacting companies and customers, inviting them to get more credit cards, invest in one venture or another, etc. How do governments help? They offer fewer regulations, which is why financial risks have grown worldwide, e.g., 1.2 quadrillion dollars in unregulated derivatives (notional value).

Why would customers want to buy more goods and services? Because most of them are poor and want a middle class lifestyle like the other 15 pct of the world's population. That's why oil consumption, car and appliance sales, etc., are growing for much of the world. Why do governments want this? Because they get more tax revenues from the same.

Thus, the source of failure of free market capitalism is itself: increased production and consumption of goods coupled with increased money supply, all supported by the majority of citizens who want a middle class lifestyle, governments that want more tax revenues through less regulation, and companies competing with each other and that want more profits. The results are a global financial crisis driven by increased risks, peak oil, and environmental damage coupled with global warming.

[ralfy]

Totally agree Wild.

Laissez Faire Capitalism can not be truthfully said to have failed, having never fully existed. Over the last few decades we have seen an explosion of regulation on business at every level. There being no open access to the marketplace, there can be no free market.

When I was growing up, there was an allowance for micro business to operate from and at the family home, including a shopfront and customer service area. Over the last few decades, this right has been eroded to the point where it is virtually impossible to run any more than a remote office from home. Local government permits, mandatory insurances etc. have centralized business into concentrated CBD's. Only those who can afford both a home and a business dwelling have a chance to run a business.

In Australia, the axiom of starting a business is: you must have all set up costs, full time availability and be able to wear at least 2 years without a profit. Most accountants would advise $50k minimum cash availability plus an open line of credit- to start anything from a dress shop, lawnmower repairs, juice bar etc- all businesses which 30 years ago you could simply begin at home by having a service available and advertising it.

The other country I spend a lot of time is the Philippines; which by comparison does have a much more free market. I have one business there I started for under $1k which has made money from the first month and keeps 2 of my relatives employed. The local business permit and registration amounted to the grand sum of less than $10.

Real free markets only occur in squatter areas, slums; in the developing world. Slums being banned in first world countries keeps things prettier, easy to control and forces everyone into the same market for residential or commercial space. This prospers nobody but the rentier class, whilst the employed middle class get to live in 'leafy suburbia' un-pestered by micro-business in their street or slums along the floodways. All this 'niceness' is very expensive.

I believe that once the age of superabundance has ended, social security and hyper-governance will collapse and 'Laissez Faire Capitalism' will emerge in the form of free market slums- third world style- as is only natural when people need to survive and nobody is giving handouts.

Actually, it's been the opposite: we've seen financial risks rise to incredible levels, stemming from over a quadrillion dollars in notional value of unregulated derivatives, coupled with a growing global middle class in, of all places, China, which I remember you kept praising in other threads. And it's not just China but BRIC and emerging markets.

Where is this global middle class getting their credit? Ironically, from the same financiers who are speculating in Asia, putting money in real estate bubbles, and earning from consumer spending economies.

Unfortunately, this will not last as increased financial risks will lead to one asset bubble after another popping. Meanwhile, high food and oil prices will soon take their toll on the same middle class and the infrastructure on which it relies on to keep a JIT system going. But the biggest hammer will be environmental damage coupled with global warming, the last of the three results of free market capitalism on a global scale.

[ralfy]

Yep.
Very few people realize how unsustainable the systems we work in are. Trying to tell middle class first worlders that there needs to be allowance for squatter/ slums to develop in order to promote freedom and independence- it's not surprising they are aghast at the idea. Very few put the pieces together to realize how the trap is set and how they contribute personally to maintaining it.

That's probably because middle class First Worlders don't realize that the only way they can keep earning their salaries and returns on investments is through increased sales of more goods and services, especially when the businesses that they work for are competing with each other in markets that need to expand.

Not surprisingly, what shocks them, i.e., the promotion of economic development in the Third World, has been taking place for more than two decades. That is, the same companies in the First World have outsourcing and investing in poorer countries, with the result that the global middle class has grown significantly, and that, surprisingly, more investors in the same companies are from the same countries that were considered poor.

That's why China and other countries have been injecting large sums of money to obtain resources and rights in Australia and other countries as their populations increase consumption.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough resources to keep such a global capitalist system going, which is why we now have fallout from financial risks, peak oil, and environmental damage coupled with global warming.

[SeaGypsy]

We are very few, Ralphy.
The whole game is playing on a very dodgy premise: growth is inevitable/ infinite earth syndrome...
In the meantime, we are here, we want to survive.

My position is that LFC is natural in the extreme, infinitely more so then GFC (Gobal Financial Capitalism/ not GF Crisis). LFC cannot exist at present without GF capitalism.

The welfare state is perfectly viable; given an infinite state, infinite technological growth and infinite wisdom. None of which exist. LFC is the next progression. Pisses me of some idiot has proposed it failed. (despite illegality) Come to Manila with me and see LFC....

For LFC to exist literally, would require legislators to go away. The closest existing arrangement is that they go away- but pretend to be doing something else. As is current practice in many parts of the world. It does exist and relatively speaking it does work- even if illegally.

[Graeme]

I think a better solution is a circular economy.

[SeaGypsy]

Graeme, we have built a society where the people who produce nothing are rewarded with SS or a fat wage growing in excess of inflation. If reward were based on function and utility- perhaps a circular economy might have a chance.

[ralfy]

My view is that capitalism in any form can only exist through government. In fact, the very source of capitalism, which is private property, is dependent primarily on government.

Why so? Because at the start, there was no private property. Peasants used land owned by no one to produce food, and often they only had little surplus to create the semblance of a market:

http://monthlyreview.org/1998/07/01/the ... capitalism

Later, armed men fenced in some of the land (and later, more), creating enclosures. Not surprisingly, the same armed men formed what would later be seen as government, and legitimized ownership of land that was enclosed. Thus was the idea of private property born.

From there, peasants who no longer had access to land that now belonged to someone else, were now given the opportunity to farm the land in return for scrip, which they could use to buy food that they planted in markets where it was sold by the same landowners. Thus came the next aspect of capitalism, which is accumulation of capital.

From there, it was a matter of time for those who now controlled the means of production--capitalists--to do the same for manufacturing and then take control of the credit needed to expand production and pay laborers: the financial industry. That expansion also led to an expansion of markets, and with better technology and resources (such as oil), increase production significantly. Thus, we have the global capitalist economy.

Not surprisingly, the same governments worked with those in power, and military and police forces served them as well to maintain the status quo. As more credit trickled down to the masses, more became part of the middle class, which was also needed as more of what was produced had to be sold, and the same new members of the middle class who often earned by working in the same corporations controlled by capitalists or in businesses financed by or dependent on the same markets, needed to buy and sell more to afford their more expensive lifestyle.

That is why sustainable or localized capitalism or capitalism without or with less government or capitalism without violence or control of most people are fantasies. The very nature of any capitalist system is control of the means of the production by a few, ownership by force that is later legitimized, and profit from sales or from investments which ultimately leads to growth. In fact, the very presence of profit and interest negates any point about a steady state, sustainability, or localization.

Finally, can anything be done about this? Likely not, because most human beings lack basic needs and want what the middle class has. The middle class, in turn, can only receive their wages, returns on investment, and profits by selling more goods and services to the same larger group. The same goes for businesses large or small and governments.

What will stop the system will be continued GFC coupled with peak oil, environmental damage, and global warming.

[Quinny]

In 1649
To St. George’s Hill,
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

We come in peace they said
To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste ground grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all

The sin of property
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command

They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich
While poor folk starve

We work we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters
Or pay rent to the lords
Still we are free
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now

From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
But still the vision lingers on

You poor take courage
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The orders came to cut them down