Who steal the goose off the common
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.
The meek and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who forge law to keep them poor.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back."
- Tethyrian Rhyme
A not-insignificant amount of coin has gone towards attempting to publish the following across the Heartlands and abroad:
COMMON CAUSE: TO BREAK THE CHAINS
1a. For every being there is a soul within them, one purportedly weighed equally at life’s end. For life’s progression, the story is sordid and different; with rare exception, one’s means and proscribed travails are determined by one’s birth.
1b. For in birth is handed down one’s socioeconomic status, one’s circumstances, and one’s lot in life. From the garden of life is plucked meagerness intended to befit and allow one to PERSIST in their lot, but nothing more - For we are bricks supporting a spire to which the titanic majority of the fruits of labor are funneled with all speed, meant to glut an ever-expanding appetite for luxury.
1c. This spire to which we serve as the bricks and mortar encompassing is anchored with Chains, as are we all. The weight is intended to be eternally borne by past, present, and future souls that the top-heavy titans sit upon.
1d. “But what other way is there?”, some ask. This tract intends to posit the framework for a new, better society of future, happier times of plenty - Where the divisions of privilege, stature, and possession are abolished in favor of plenty, camaraderie, and freedom to all.
2 - Land and its Use
2a. To attempt to ensure that our collective souls may provide for ourselves and our posterity, there must be an answer to the private enclosure of land, of “the common”. The Common must in fact be shared in common, with its members having an equal, proportional say over how its fruits may be reaped for the good of all.
2b. The Common provides the following subsistence rights, which should be held as inalienable to all souls:
Pasture (Acreage)
Piscary (Fish)
Turbary (Turf)
Soil (Mineral)
Mast (Swine Pannage)
Estover (Lumber)
By consensual appointment of these rights by the commoner, to the commoner, each may provide for themselves as they see fit, without trampling upon the soul-given rights of another.
2c. By leveraging an end to scarcity that is so-often forced by enclosed land, this would provide for the freedom to use spare time NOT spent subsisting to better and further one’s own personal growth and dreams.
3 - Inheritance and Wealth
3a. One might hold and come to realize, then, that because what we know of as nobility and privilege is the product of the accumulated wealth of current and prior generations; that it is almost impossible to fairly discern just how necessary, how “taken for granted”, and the exact value in coinage that a given action is worth.
3b. Whether understanding this intrinsically or literally, “common” tasks are thus recompensed to subsistence and underclass. A subsistence farmer subsists because there is little room for growth in an unpredictable Faerun; a city-dweller labors for a meager wage because they are replaceable.
3c. Because there is a “pool” of labor to draw upon like drops in a well, those who own resources and wealth can rely upon the commoners to compete with one another, instead of cooperating. They are, after all, fighting for the same scraps.
3d. A bucket of water is a dousing, but a flood of water flowing in one direction is a nigh-unstoppable force, to say nothing of the seas. Each drop may be its own, but flowing in relatively the same direction, there is the chance for change.
4 - The Means to the “Means”
4a. While it is of course implied that there will be an inevitable conflict between the wealthy and the wealthless of society, it is important to allay and delay such a thing until there is a platform of unity to stand upon; a “network of wells” from which to draw water from.
4b. These “wellsprings” of plenty must shun the hierarchies they broke free from, lest new ones immediately arise - Decisions should be made consensually. Compassion for one another should prove primary to the seething indignance and anger that might otherwise drive the desire to reclaim what is “rightly theirs”.
4c. Autonomous communities and communes should take precedence over nations and oligarchies that so often espouse these hierarchies that we must unshackle ourselves from.
4d. When the landed, privileged, entitled, tyrannical, or cruel hear of your intentions to seek your own freedom, they will oppose you by law, by martial weight, or by destruction of reputation. It will be up to the courage, management, skill, and compassion of those in opposition to this to see their dreams through. No-one will ever willingly grant the keys to open the shackles binding down their perceived subordinates.
One such unshackled man put this to pen, and he resolves even in his advanced age to fight and die for this dream of Freedom; of broken, bloodied shackles lifted high in a fist.
No god granted me this vision. No ulterior motive drove me to reprise what I had once already written and lost. Freedom, or Death.
- Rhaeg