h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I find the Jewish jubilee idea of 'returning land to it's original family owners' particularly interesting. It sounds such a sensible way of ensuring that the rich don't become too rich and the poor don't get (completely) shafted - or at least not for ever.

Somehow I suspect that would depend on how you were to define "original owners"...

I suspect that there was much opportunity to "shaft" all sorts of people with that one. I don't suppose that the poor were often able to excercise their definition.

I think there may have been a sense that the promised land flowing with milk and honey was a gift from God and that man held it on a lease and had to look after it for posterity.

They also had a law which said that when they harvested they had to leave the corners of each field unreaped, and not take every grape in the vineyard, and also leave the gleanings for the poor.

I think the main problem with the Jubilee, wasn't how the land was returned to its original family (whichever household had been allocated by lot, when the Israelites had first taken the land from the Canaanites after the 40 years in the wilderness.)

I think one of the main problems was that God's commands on the matter were just forgotten and the very idea of Jubilee soon fell into disuse.