[GarthVader]

Socialism isn't pleasant. But neither was the capitalism of the early Industrial Revolution nor the feudalism which preceeded it. The Bible has he solution to all this unpleasantness, buried in law codes long unused. Here is opportunity for kinder gentler conservatism which is merely mushy compromise with the liberals.

[ozark hilljilly]

What I recall of the Jubilee laws was that every 50 years all your debts were wiped clean and servants were released from conscription. Simply put, society would get reset twice a century. I always wondered if folks took advantage of it.

[redgolum]

Even Israel didn't use the jubilee laws. Having a debt reset takes a lot of profit out of the banking sector (or the traders).

Not saying it isn't a good thing, or needed, but just that human nature is such that it won't happen.

[jjotto]

http://www.torah.org/learning/halacha-overview/chapter40.html

...The Jubilee year is exactly like the sabbatical year as regards cultivation [as it says “A Jubilee the fiftieth year shall be for you; you shall not sow and not harvest what grows by itself and not gather what is untended; for it is a Jubilee, it shall be holy for you, you shall eat its produce from the field”]; but it does not require release of loans. The commandments involving the Jubilee year, including the laws of Jewish slaves, houses in walled cities, and land consecrated to the Temple or “devoted” to the priests, apply only when all of Israel dwells in the land of Israel...