What is self ownership?
Self-ownership is a central idea in several political philosophies that emphasize individualism, such as liberalism and anarchism.
Discussion of the boundary of self with respect to ownership and responsibility has been explored by legal scholar Meir Dan-Cohen in his essays on The Value of Ownership and Responsibility and the Boundaries of the Self. The emphasis of this work is in illuminating the phenomenology of ownership and our common usage of personal pronouns to apply to both body and property; this serves as the folk basis for legal conceptions and debates about responsibility and ownership. Another view holds that labor is alienable, because it can be contracted out, thus alienating it from the self. In this view, the choice of a person to voluntarily sell oneself into slavery is also preserved by the principle of self-ownership.[1]
Right-libertarian conceptions of self-ownership extend the concept to include control of private property as part of the self. According to G. A. Cohen, "the libertarian principle of self–ownership says that each person enjoys, over himself and his powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use, and therefore owes no service or product to anyone else that he has not contracted to supply."[4]
Anarchists, left, and right libertarians all agree on the value of self ownership. Self ownership isn't just a political principle but also a legal concept serving as a foundation for other concepts to built up from. So the concept of property ownership starts with self ownership in theory as the self is the primary property. Securing the right to self ownership is at the core of all property rights protections and everything else is merely an extension from the concept of self ownership. Your body, your labor, your time, you may use as you see fit, offer services as you deem appropriate, as long as in the process you're not violating the rights of other people. This is of course at the core of many ideologies but it is also the core of how individualism works in general.
If you own yourself then would you sell shares in yourself to investors?
Atleast one person who owned himself decided to do exactly that and launched an IPO selling shares in himself. For reasons I don't quite understand, he did not maintain at least 51% control which means he's perhaps sold himself into slavery for only $1 a share?
He isn’t alone in this theory. Upstart.com, a company founded last year by Google exec David Girouard, offers a bit of capital in exchange for a cut of a college graduate’s future earnings. Other startups, like Pave and Thrust Fund, solicit investments in entrepreneurs for a return on their future ventures. (And of course David Bowie, European soccer players, and a minor-league baseball player have all sold shares of their earnings.)
But Merrill has taken it further. He felt that more people would invest in him if they knew they were going to have a say over which projects he pursued. To enable this oversight, he paid a developer 500 shares and $500 to build a website that allowed shareholders to vote on his priorities and projects. The developer also coded a trading platform so Merrill’s stock could be bought and sold after the IPO. Anybody could now get a piece of him; you just had to click a Buy button on KmikeyM.com (the site is an abbreviation of Merrill’s full name: Kenneth Michael Merrill).
Is this a good idea? On some level most people already are influenced by others and selling shares only formalizes (quantifies) that influence. On the other hand to sell 51% would mean slavery and anyone who values self ownership could never sell more than 49% of themselves under any circumstances.
Does people as product violate self ownership principles?
To the individual who seeks to be a self owned (autonomous) person then is it a violation of that goal to make oneself a product for another entity such as a corporation? If we only have the rights which we can define under the law and enforce then if the person is self owned then how can they be a product without first licensing this away? And as a result we have the nightmare terms and conditions which are written in boilerplate legalese which give companies the permission to do what they will with the information they gather. This allows the company to in a sense own the digital derivatives of the individual and in cases outside of Steemit the individual is not compensated.
Steemit is not at all perfect. While Steemit does compensate us for our works and our information in some way, we at the same time lose control of it. In a sense it is a permanent store to the blockchain which on one hand is kind of cool but on the other hand is a machine which cannot forget for better or worse.
Or do you view self ownership in a less corporate way?
What about in the personal life? Self ownership has a place there as well. A person owns themselves starting with their body. Legal consent is a necessary concept because if a person is to share their body with another individual (interpersonal sexual relations) it requires consent. While I'm not going to go into the debate as to what exactly qualifies as consent as this is extremely complicated I will say that consent is always necessary because as an individual who owns his or herself. So we can see that self ownership is also the key to consent in human interpersonal relations. Additionally people get life insurance or health insurance which again is another kind of legal method of protecting the primary property an individual owns (their own body) or in the case of life insurance to protect the interests of others who depend on them if something tragic should happen.
And the most important question, how would you go about it?
Assuming you value self ownership and understand the law how would you choose to formalize your self ownership rights? Technically securing self ownership via blockchain technology is valuable but how would you go about legally guaranteeing you can maintain this ownership indefinitely no matter how big any tech company gets or what services they might try to offer in exchange? In my opinion one of the security guarantees at least in the blockchain space is to always put the individual user above all when discussing security because individual rights are what a blockchain in the best case scenario is meant to secure. Valuing security in this way, Steemit is only as valuable to the individual as Steemit is able to secure individual rights. Bitcoin is only as valuable to the individual as it is able to secure individual rights. So at the end of the day all blockchains are a means of securing individual rights in the technical sense to an individualist who believes in individualism.
References
Davis, J. (2013). Meet the Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share. https://www.wired.com/2013/03/ipo-man/, 28.
Naffine, N. (1998). The legal Structure of Self‐Ownership: Or the Self‐Possessed Man and the Woman Possessed. Journal of Law and Society, 25(2), 193-212.
WOW. I love the title and isn't this truth? One of those we find to be 'self-evident?'
Isn't the real question whether we can fractionate the individual? A percent on future earnings on profits from projects or education, fine. Maybe this is a way for the nations colleges to stay in business. Wouldn't this correct unemployed college graduate epidemic? You read it here first. See how bad I need to be on a new issue token ico team? Anyone out the with the expertise to run with this please cut me in. ty
Or it could create a nation of debt slaves. How do we know college students can ever make enough to pay for the loans and what about the compound interest where interest is added to the principal?
My thinking was the colleges could then become truly vested in futures of the individual this way. Where the income/future earnings of the university are dependent on the success of the individual and industry. It would revolutionize 'higher' education.
If you own yourself then would you sell shares in yourself to investors? Is quite a good question. I love this post for real.
Ownership of one's self in an interesting question as it does indeed form a hierarchy to owning everything else, which as you rightly pointed out means in principle you could sell yourself deliberately or inadvertently into a form of slavery.
Ownership of animals is an odd concept and something that has intrigued me for years. I do eat meat and have kept many pets in my life and I have enjoyed both immensely. (I am human)
We profit from animals in various ways from breeding for companionship to rearing for meat, skins, etc even perhaps earning a direct living from their work on film, television and modelling. They are all slaves and it strikes me as very interesting that in recent years there have been calls to re-evaluate the nature of rights, irrespective of ownership in relation to some animals, if not all.
Higher Primates; the Great Apes are first to come under scrutiny. There have been calls for a revision of human rights to include certain inalienable rights for Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Orang Utan. This has been perhaps conveniently boo-hooed / laughed at and swept under the carpet because it opens a floodgate of legal uncertainty which could (I envisage) eventually lead to the end of all zoos, the pet industry, meat production and medical laboratory testing.
It could one day lead to globally enforced fishing bans (even if to protect the rights of marine mammals and the larger fish as a first step) and the abolition of the continued destruction of the habitats of many important animals. I say important, but they are all really. What I perhaps mean is a keystone species, but nonetheless an arbitrary term today, and reserved for animals we recognise as having similarities to ourselves. If legally challenged in court, could slowly widen out through precedent to include co-dependent wild species. If you protect forests where Chimpanzee reside, the other animals may get inadvertent protection. this happens now but let's think long term. I am actually really intrigued by the idea of animal rights and where they lead us to in terms of our own understanding of who we are and our responsibility to our ecosystems.
Some animals enjoy a (captive & owned) lifestyle with better food, healthcare and even leisure activities than some humans. This is the choice and preserve of their owners.
Other animals live a torturous life, exploited and treated with minimal care, in the production of food mainly. For thousands of years we domesticated animals for our own welfare. Dogs for security and herding, Horses and Cattle for work and meat, Sheep and Goats for wool, milk and meat, birds for their feathers, their eggs and their meat and of course, pigs who being very intelligent are also often kept as truffle sniffers and pets. Where I live eating dogs and horses would be considered barbaric. Perhaps because of the way we see horses. But just a few miles away horse is considered a delicacy and in other countries dogs are eaten like beef.
These are all subjective notions. Animals have no self-ownership and I wonder if when a human eventually legally and successfully challenges court institutions with greater rights for some animals, where it will lead for them and their cousins and for us.
sorry, @dana-edwards I didn't mean to ramble on there, just got a bit carried away ! very interesting topics :)
I have to add, I read recently that as much as 50% of the animal mass on the planet has diminished in my lifetime (since the early 70's) and that's an incredible, almost unimaginable figure. Due to a combination of habitat loss, poaching, hunting, environmental degradation, pollution and climate change. It will be a wonder if there are any animals left. We haven't even mentioned plants !
self ownership is a mirage... earth owns us
Interesante post @dana-edwards, saludos desde Ecuador :)
This is a broad explanation of self ownership, though I enjoy the Liberterian explanation. I would have also advise you explain more on your own view on consent qualifications.
My view on consent is I do not own the body of someone else. I must obtain a legally recognized consent before I do certain things with their body. In other words, it's a matter of receiving permission because of the recognition that they own themselves and should have some control over who can touch them and how.
That is just interpersonal consent but then you have all the kinds of consent for businesses to interact with individuals. In general, because I'm not a lawyer my words aren't so good on these topics. So I apologize if I express myself in an uninformed fashion.
I am inquiring information and I have no right to judge you, we have rights to our opinions and I think you have a nice view.
excellent post, very motivating ...
9/10th of the law is possession...........Know yourself Know your neighbour...Love yourself Love your neighbour .......much Love to all
güzel
at best we only can own our minds... materialistic sense of ownership is bunk... property rights? Knowledge is cosmic and nobody can detain it. Man merely discovers
Catchy title, Great post. Upvoted and followed
Kindly upvote and follow me. Here is my newest post
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@mickyscofield/free-bitcoin-offer
The origin of human is freedom in various laws, races and societies great post. Upvoted and followed
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STOPHey @dana-edwards, great post! Upvoted.
I would say that
Then you should be able, if you take this choice freely, to sell yourself.
Interesting similar topics:
I love these debates posts and tried to start a few of my own, I would love to hear what you think if you had the time:
Economics Specialists
Value of Education
As the person who sells shares in myself this is pretty interesting. I think the main flaw in my system (KmikeyM.con) is that we’re applying our thoughts of corporate self ownership to personal self ownership. It’s a different thing, for many of the reasons stated here and also the core element of control is not money but influence (money can be used to gain influence of course, but it’s not a direct relationship, it has to be converted to “shares”).