Is Joseph becoming heartless too?

Question

After Jacob and his family settle in Goshen, near the end of the 2 d year of famine, the locals have to buy back the corn they had brought earlier for storage and they are moved from one locality to another, losing their possessions, their connections and identity in doing so. Meanwhile the people is totally dispossessed and the pharao concentrates all the wealth. It reminds me of the story of the Khmer rouge cruelty to the Cambodians. Is there a rationale for this way of government in the hands of Joseph or has he turned temporarily heartless ?

Bereshit 47:20 1 ותהי הארץ לפרעה. קְנוּיָה לוֹ:

ותהי הארץ לפרעה SO THE LAND BECAME PHARAOH’S — possessed by him.

47:21 1 ואת העם העביר. יוֹסֵף מֵעִיר לְעִיר לְזִכָּרוֹן, שֶׁאֵין לָהֶם עוֹד חֵלֶק בָּאָרֶץ, וְהוֹשִׁיב שֶׁל עִיר זוֹ בַחֲבֶרְתָּהּ, וְלֹא הֻצְרַךְ הַכָּתוּב לִכְתֹּב זֹאת אֶלָּא לְהוֹדִיעֲךָ שִׁבְחוֹ שֶׁל יוֹסֵף שֶׁנִּתְכַּוֵּן לְהָסִיר חֶרְפָּה מֵעַל אֶחָיו, שֶׁלֹא יִהְיוּ קוֹרִין אוֹתָם גּוֹלִים (חולין ס'):

ואת העם העביר AND AS FOR THE PEOPLE HE CAUSED THEM TO PASS — Joseph caused them to pass from one city to another city that they might be reminded that they now had no claim to the land. He settled the people of one city in another. There was no need for Scripture to state this except for the purpose of telling you something to Joseph’s credit — that he intended thereby to remove a reproach from his brothers because, since the Egyptians were themselves strangers in the various cities where they then dwelt, they could not call them (Joseph’s brethren) strangers (Chullin 60b).

Answer 1

Rav Hirsch explains that he moved everyone from one city to another as a unit. As a result, the people still were able to maintain their unity, but still considered that the land was owned by Par'o. This is similar to what the Assyrians did when they conquered the Northern Kingdom and moved everyone as a unit. Thus, everyone regarded the land as belonging to the state and could not regard the land they were on as their own. In fact their loyalty changed from considering it their own land to regarding it as land that Par'o owned and which he magnanimously allowed them to farm for only 20%.

The whole land had become state property, and to make this newly acquired rite completely actual, every owner had to leave property that hitherto had been his own and move to another district, so that a general evacuation took place. But Joseph's wisdom tempered the edict by arranging that the residents who had always been together remained together and found themselves still together with their friends but only in a fresh environment. So that the old social and communal conditions remained the same, and there was no complete upheaval by the change. Our sages point out the beneficial result that this transition must have had for the new arrivals, the family of Jacob, to whom henceforth no Egyptian could look down with disdain as newcomers. For no Egyptian either was an "old inhabitant" on his native hearth The people themselves had proposed it, v. 19, and indeed at the same time actual bondage. Joseph rejected the proposed thralldom and only adopted the state purchase of the landed property out of which finally merely a land-tax resulted.