"This is my father's land." This phrase is the cause of an uncountable number of conflicts. It is at the root of the eight-century-long strife between Protestants and Catholics in Ulster. It is at the heart of the ongoing strife in the Levant region between Israel and Palestine. However, is it possible that this love of our fathers and what they have left us has impacted us in more ways than territorial disputes?
Between five thousand and seven thousand years ago, a nomadic, warlike, and patriarchal group known as the Indo-Europeans entered Europe through the Central Asian Steppe. They brought with them Horses, weapons, a warlike culture, and a polytheistic religion. They conquered Europe, and most European languages today are descended from them. They left us here in the West with the concept of who we are. Their languages would influence where we put our modern borders, and this warlike spirit was seen in their descendants on the American frontier during the excellent push west.
You are a farmer; you come from a family that has always been farmers, and the land you farm has always been the family land and farm. It is what your father left you. You own not only the land but also the food grown and the animals living on the land you own. You may and often historically did pay taxes to a leader of some kind for protection, but you owned what was yours and what your father left you, and it will be what you leave your son. This simple thing is where the concept of property rights came from and is the origin of Capitalism. This Yeoman farmer was the basis of Thomas Jefferson's idea of a Republic.
A farmer takes his food and animals that are his and sells them at the market to another man who is, in exchange, giving him something he owns, a simple barter trade, but this is Capitalism or at least the precursor to it. These men are exchanging things that they own, things that, without question, belong to them. They have property rights, eventually leading to the formation and practice of Capitalism. The entire system originates from what our fathers have done and left for us. We have inherited our land and society, allowing us to produce goods and services we own. That is valued and can be exchanged for money, which is the placeholder of value in our society and that, in turn, can be used to obtain goods and services. The Western Property rights and Capitalism systems all stem from our Patriarchal past.
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