chcr said:
I think that would have depended on where you lived, Oz. 100 years ago in a lot of countries people below a certain social status were not allowed to own property (still that way in India, maybe elsewhere), and therefore were depndent on others for food and board and could be kicked out on their ear for no reason at all. A lot of that has disappeared.
Indeed........but still today we have worse things happening. Take the case of Guatemala (sp?) Tens of thousands were reliant of their coffee production for an income........and since the US moved it's one of it's main coffee imports from Guatemala to the Vietnam region....the coffee those folks relied on ain't worth a brass penny. Trouble is, the plantation owners ain't selling, so millions of hectares of arable land is privately owned and restricted from peoples use
They'll hang onto the coffee (when the land could be used for alternative farming) because eventually the market will open up again......but in the meantime their former workers are living (or trying to live) below the poverty line.
That's only one of dozens of situations around the world tho'.....The great peanut growing fiasco in the 70's in Ethiopia.......millions of square miles of rainforest that is "owned" and logged by private companies, leaving the indiginous peoples no where to go. etc etc
Don't get me wrong......I know it's nothing new...it has [argueable] been going on in one form or another since the days of the Roman Empire (when the ceaser started awarding a plot of land in the Empire to soldiers after they had served 20 yrs) ......... but still, it's amazing that in this day and age that the practice is still going on.....all for the want of a coupla £'s.
And I can't see it gettin' any better in the future