Rent

Everything is Rent..............Rent by Jonathan Larson

Before agriculture, each person or family was responsible for making its own living.  Once our ancestors settled down, another option was opened up - "ownership" of the previously common land and extraction of rents from others allowed to use it.  Chieftains, priests, and kings became the first rentier class, but the idea of living by the sweat of someone else's brow was popular enough to give rise to new classes of property and new classes of rentiers.

The invention of banking and capitalism more generally gave us all an opportunity to become rentiers - if we could manage to save money. This presented a bit of a problem - if we are all to live by the sweat of someone else's brow, whose brow will sweat?

To be continued.

PS - I think this post is going to be about Greece.

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