the ability of the industrial economy to provide jobs and homes depends on prosperity, and on a very shaky kind of prosperity too. It depends on ‘growth’ of the wrong things such as roads and dumps and poisons – on what Edward Abbey called ‘the ideology of the cancer cell’ – and on greed with purchasing power. In the absence of growth, greed, and affluence, the dependants of an industrial economy too easily suffer the consequences of having no land: joblessness, homelessness, and want. This is not a theory. We have seen it happen. I don’t think that being landed necessarily means owning land.
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