gclayjr wrote:All,
I worked in Latin America during the early 80's including in Peru. I have spent some time working in Lima. Peru, which like many Latin American countries was dominated by a few very rich land barons and millions of poor farmers (campesinos).We don't know how lucky we were to be colonized by English colonists searching for homes and freedom rather than by Mercenaries looking for Gold.[/color] In much of Latin America ,"Land Reform" is a hot political topic for which wars and revolutions have been fought (Mexico for instance).
While I was working in Peru, a Socialist Junta government, took over and made good on their promise for land reform. They took land away from the rich land barons and gave it to the campesinos living on the land. If I were to say that this approaches Mr. Sinclair's vision of implementing the Law of consecration "with and deed and covenant...." etc, you might point out that this is different. In Mr. Sinclair's Utopia, the giving of the land would be "Voluntary". You would be right. But the forced taking of Land from the rich and giving it to the poor was only the beginning of the nightmare that the Peruvians were about to live.
The other problem was not only that this land taken forcibly, but it was given to those who had no idea how to care for their stewardship and their lives were soon to get much more miserable than they were as serf farmers. Also, this impoverished country started down a path similar to the wonderful path of Venezuela today (lets give a cheer for all of the noisy Chavistas on this board that were ranting that maybe Chavez was flawed, but better than us) .
Before, I go into the real horror, I would like to note that while I was working there, Peru, which was formerly a major exported of sugar was desperately trying to get a loan from either the IMF or the world bank so that ships that were waiting outside the port of Lima could come in and deliver sugar to Peru, who needed it to sweeten their coffee and cereal.
However, I remember walking through Lima with some co-workers one day when I came upon a huge park. I, who had been working in many Latin American cities and was pretty hardened to extreme poverty, was horrified at what I saw. There were acres and acres of shabby structures built from packing crates. There were people jammed together, getting water out of small hand communal pumps. There was some electricity in a few of the crate homes, because some were able to access the electricity from a public fixture like a street light and then run extension cords from one window hole to another, although most didn't have such luxury. I could see more and more and more desperate people streaming in to the park. Then going to piles of busted packing crates that the government had dumped in the park to scrounge material to make some sort of shelter. I asked my friends who these people were. They replied that they were those campesinos who, after being given land to work, were starving and had left their little farms and were steaming into Lima looking for work, food, and shelter.
I could go on into some of the other horrible things I saw while working in Lima, but I will just finish with one more. Although, the government was socialist, it wasn't good enough for the Sendero Luminoso, A Maoist revolutionary group inside of Peru (and many other countries). They decided to stage a "Huelga", which translates to a labor strike, but this isn't what us panzies in America or those in Europe think of as a labor strike. I was restricted to my hotel and listened to machine gun fire in the distance as the government troops fought the Maoists. The Maoists succeeded in blowing up the electrical generation facility for Lima. I was lucky because, my hotel had generators and I was able to see and take showers. Not everybody was so lucky as I learned when I noticed the smell in the airplane I took out of there.
So these Socialist redistribution schemes cause unbelievable misery, not only because they forcibly take from people, but because they mindlessly give to people that which they are not prepared to take care of.
In the law of Consecration, your stewardship are not equal in material value. Your stewardships are based upon your righteous desires. If I had no family, but I was capable and desired to build a shoe factory, and my neighbor had 10 kids, and desired to work in a shoe factory, my stewardship would need to be "larger" in material value than his, even though my need to support myself would be less.
I submit under the law of Consecration, if Dr. Jones, truly believe that cold fusion, magnets or such things hold the promise of future energy independence, he would better use his stewardship to pursue this goal which might hold great benefit to society, rather than divide it up among the poor.
Having seen this idea in practice, I see how evil it is. Now the only difference between this and Mr. Sinclair s dreams is that he wants to persuade either Church Leaders, rich fiends and relatives or government functionaries such as Senator Hatch to buy into these schemes. Thank goodness for that. They are each given the freedom to reject this destructive idea.
So to paraphrase Rush Limbaugh
I Love ya Robert, but I desperately hope and pray that you fail in your mission.
Regards,
George Clay
We would be wise not to assume that everything that happened when people tried to provide homes for the homeless in Peru, then, would automatically happen here, now.
I enjoyed reading about your experience in Peru. But what jumped out at me was not the similarities between what Robert advocates, but the differences. Basically, the situation in Peru, then, was only superficially like the situation here, now.
I guess I think that although it is a story of how providing homes to the poor didn't work out then, and there, it doesn't shed much light on whether or not Robert's plan would work here, and now. It isn't that there isn't much to learn from Peru's experience -- there is. But it would be foolish to forget that the two countries, and their two situations, have significant differences that would most certainly impact the success of the plan as Robert envisions it.
♡