Tristan Roberts (tristan@tristanroberts.org) is a former state representative, a small-scale farmer, and a writer who explores the intersections of rural life, policy, and human dignity from Quill Nook Farm in Halifax.
HALIFAX-I love going to downtown Brattleboro to shop. But I feel all kinds of terrible each and every time I cross the pedestrian bridge going to the food co-op. That's one of many places in Brattleboro and other U.S. cities and towns where I encounter fellow humans who are not only houseless but also unwell by many conventional measures.
In 1597, Sir Francis Hastings reportedly called for "vagabonds" in England to be "arrested, whipped and returned to their place of origin." Ten years earlier, William Harrison described "vagrants" as "thieves and caterpillars in the commonwealth."
Harsh words? To my ear, President Trump raging about homeless "maniacs" and encouraging the Washington, D.C. police to "to do whatever the hell they want" fits right in with these quotes from the English Parliament in the 16th century, justifying harsh punishment of the homeless.
I want to uphold higher standards for civil behavior. I believe in rising to expectations. But I struggle knowing that our national economic policy doesn't tend to a shared commons on which we can all subsist.
Instead, we've inherited a system of winners and losers.
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The English Enclosure Movement eliminated peasant access to commons - shared cultural and natural resources, including land - from the 12th through 19th centuries. Parliament transformed these communal assets into private property.
An old folk poem captured it: "The law locks up the man or woman / Who steals the goose from off the common, / But lets the greater felon loose / Who steals the common from the goose."
Enclosure displaced peasants, who became "masterless men" wandering for work. The laws created the first systematic association of landlessness with personal inadequacy. Productive commons were redefined as "waste," requiring private improvement. Self-sufficiency became impossible. New vagrancy laws criminalized homelessness.
The "tragedy of the commons" - the overgrazing that justified Enclosure - is a myth. Economist William Lloyd invented the concept retrospectively in 1833 to rationalize what had already been stolen. Actual English commons functioned sustainably for centuries through community management.
Even more insidious was the hidden logic that created wage slavery. Factory owners needed desperate workers accepting dangerous, low-wage jobs. Enclosure created masses with no alternative. Workers with land could refuse exploitation. Landless workers faced starvation or submission.
* * *
The pattern crossed the Atlantic intact. Today's housing crisis continues an unbroken tradition since 1797, when, according to the Vermont Historical Society, our Legislature required towns to support their poor while preventing them from "strolling" elsewhere. Towns' actual solution? Auctioning paupers to the lowest bidder - whoever would maintain them cheapest.
Thirteen-year-old Aaron Bristol was indentured until age 21. The caretakers chosen were often those seeking bargains, providing minimal food and demanding maximum service.
From then until today, we continue to rely on systems that, to paraphrase one historian, "relieve our consciences without emptying our pocketbooks too much."
In my recent term in the Vermont House, I was deeply disappointed at debating housing bills and social services without talking about how we got there.
Ruling-class titans like Gov. Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire applied Enclosure logic to Vermont, parceling up Abenaki lands between 1749 and 1764.
Post–Civil War sharecropping extended landlessness to freed slaves, with many fleeing for industrial jobs in cities. Industrial development followed the script: Create desperation, exploit it, blame victims.
* * *
Today's America enshrines property rights as constitutional, while subsistence isn't. The president, the Federal Reserve, and Wall Street don't want 0% unemployment - they want at least 5% of workers unemployed to depress wages and provide ready labor. They'll shave margins for social services to appear compassionate, but the higher priority is the nation's industrial capital.
The wealthy navigate Vermont's Act 250 to carve raw land into dream homes, while basic shelter remains out of reach for typical workers. Zoning turns well-meaning neighbors into Enclosure enforcers. Live in a tiny cabin with a composting toilet, and you risk Environmental Court, even as industrial farms and parking lots pour far more pollution into our waterways.
Urban design demands car ownership and wage employment. Student debt forces acceptance of any job. Medical bankruptcy re-creates the desperation of historical land loss. The "gig economy" strips away worker protections without providing alternatives.
"America First?" Nah. Trump is "Me First."
Typical elite, he protects his property values while criminalizing the human costs of policies that enrich him and his friends. He follows centuries of ruling-class behavior: inherited wealth creating psychological distance from insecurity, demonizing victims of his class's policies, redirecting attention from systemic causes to character flaws.
He would fit in well with 1597's Enclosure advocates, with the same blindness to how elite advantage requires mass suffering.
* * *
I'm familiar with the uphill battle of trying to beat the system. Twenty years ago, I started a small farm in Vermont, trying to grow food despite our nation's policy, from the Lincoln's 1862 creation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture forward, to consolidate farms for mass production and profit.
I'm persisting today, even while growing more afraid for my children and the youth in my rural community. They are increasingly unable to afford land. Our youth are being forced into debt, urban employment, and undesirable jobs instead of starting families.
The old poem goes on to say: "And geese will still a common lack / Till they go and steal it back." Nice fantasy, but millions starved under Stalin's and Mao's boneheaded respective attempts at forced collectivization. We need to go beyond the false binary of socialism versus capitalism.
* * *
What's the way forward? I feel it is remembering that commons wasn't just land. It was a commitment to each other.
What if we adopt property taxes that incentivize landowners to invest in property for purposes that are higher than passive accumulation? What if legal frameworks prioritized human welfare over property hoarding?
But perhaps most radically - what if we acted as if the commons still existed?
These days, I'm doing all I can to give time to meal trains and barn raisings, to tool libraries and seed swaps, so we can create through our hearts, hands, and imagination what the law denies.
Walking back across that Brattleboro bridge, past my unwell neighbors, I carry both my desire for civil standards and knowledge their suffering serves economic function.
Vermont's 1797 solution - auction the poor - differs only in degree from today's policies. Moving beyond charity to collective solutions means recognizing that elite wealth depends on mass poverty.
We need to ask for better from our elected leaders and wealthy elites.
Stop blaming victims. Address causes. Dare to dream.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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