[Peace-discuss] binary criterion of war/not war

[John W.]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:

Along with Karen's other good points, I like this one especially:
>
> > > I think that every 7 years, everything needs to be re-distributed
> equally.
> >
> > It would be lovely, but it would do very little to end war.  And who is
> > going to supervise the redistribution?
>
> Well, we have a mechanism for it.  Even a Biblical one, right?  The
> Jubilee,
> at which all debts are forgiven?  How many ex-colonial countries are
> kept de facto colonies by debt service?   Eliminating indefinite-term debt
> would change both the borrowers' positions and also limit how much a
> greedy lender could expect to get.


Yes, a worldwide Jubilee would be interesting.  The Biblical Jubilee was
every 50 years, I believe, and slaves were set free at that time also.
Fortunate if you're a young slave, not so hot if you've been a slave for 49
years.

The time period would probably have to be negotiated.  I'm guessing that, if
the Jubilee period was only seven years, lenders would simply refuse to lend
money unless the repayment period was 7 years or less.  That would make
mortgages, for example, impossible for most of us.

Anyway, let's try it.
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