Can you own air? How much? Is there a limit? Can you own all the air? What about water? What about land?
Can one person own the whole planet Earth, or any other planet? Does money allow anyone to own anything if they can pay for it? How can they pay for something if no one owns it to sell it to them?
Can someone "claim" ownership of something simply because they are the "first" to get there?
Someone is the first to arrive in North America hundreds of years ago, so they can just claim the land as theirs to own? Really?
Someone is first to arrive at an idea, so they can just claim the idea as theirs to own? Really?
There are limits to what can be owned.
Source
The one thing we certainly do own, is ourselves. The principles of self-ownership is where ownership starts. If anyone owns anything at all, it's themselves. Certainly, no one can own you, you own yourself. You have no right to claim ownership over another, and that includes non-human animals. We are gravely lost in our way of living with respect to how we think we can own others. It's only recently in human existence that we have overcome the delusion of thinking we can own another human, but we still have work to do to realize how deluded and megalomaniac we are towards other animals.
Apart from the bodies that belong to individual agents (animals), what can be owned by an agent of will? The fruits of our labor. What we use our agency to produce is ours, unless we enter contracts to exchange the fruits of our labor for something else, such as work for money. If we make a chair without being employed, then that chair is ours to use, exchange with or give to others
We can also own what we collect for our personal use. A bird can collect material and build/produce a nest. That is the fruit of their labor. A squirrel can collect nuts for them to eat, and hide it locations to gather later when needed. That is the fruit of their labor. Humans can collect rainwater for personal use, collect sun energy for personal use, etc.
You can't collect all the rainwater in an area, depleting the environment of it's water source and negatively impacting the stability of the environment, simply to make money for some venture you have, or to sell the water yourself. That is exceeding the limits of use. When people lack self-control in this domain, there are laws created by local communities to impose control on others and prevent this type of greed and domination of an area.
The same should apply to land really. How was someone able to buy hundreds of hectares of land? Because they have money? Ok. But how did the person or organization or body of authority over a large area of land get ownership in the first place? Sometime long ago, someone "claimed" the land as theirs, simply by "virtue" of them being the "first" to get there and laying claim to it. Then people fought for the so-called "right" to own land and tried to steal and conquer lands that others claimed was theirs, murdering people to take and dominate more land that no one has a "right" to own in the first place.
Going by this flawed idea of ownership, everything around us in the universe can be owned. Is that how we really want to live? It's a first come, first serve modality of living. Then everyone that comes into existence later, can't own anything themselves, as it's all owned by people who laid "claim" to it, simply because they were first. It's a retarded way of doing things.
There are is legitimate ownership, based on use by an agent, as mentioned for the fruits of our labor. What we can use ourselves, we can own for use. That doesn't mean we can go around claiming ownership of many things simply because we use it at X moment in time, like going to one area and owning it because we have lots of machinery that we own to use it all up, to use all the land, trees, water, etc. No. The land area that you can use for personal living is what you can legitimately own. Others can't steal your land that you live on and use for living.
This way, everyone can actually own land and live off the land, and actually be free. The former method of laying claim to land we don't even use for our personal lives, is why we are in the mess we are now, not able to live off the land and be free from control. People long ago laid claim to land simply because they were there first, or they dominated other people's to take the land from them.
Theses people formed groups, and made external governing authorities to attempt to legitimize their rule over the land and over others. Monarchs owned, dominated and rules all the land as the master over all in it. Lords governed the lands and all in it. And regular people worked and had to give part of the fruits of their labor to the master/owner. They weren't free and able to live off the land, they had to pay for it, simply because someone else long ago decided they were the owner of the land they didn't personally use, and they formed groups of authority to prevent people from living free.
Fast forward to today, and we have the same thing in part. We can't go to some land somewhere and use it ourselves for our personal use and living. All land is owned. The whole fucking planet is owned. We that come after, have to buy things from others who don't even use the land themselves, they just simply "own" it. Everything is like this, and unless we change it, it will stay like this, and everything a human puts their feat or hands on can end up this way.
If someone arrived at another planet, could they simply claim the whole planet for themselves? It's ridiculous to think in the affirmative. No work was done to earn what they have, only a claim on ownership that isn't real. All the ownership on our planet was done this way.
About the owning air, no we don't own all the air. No one does. No one owns all the water on the planet. No one owns all the land. We make use of the air for personal use to live. We can't lay claim to the air just because we were the first to be somewhere. We can make use of water for living, but we don't own the water somewhere just because we were the first to be there. And we can make use of land for living in our personal lives, not to simply own for the sake of owning and not using.
And as for "intellectual property", you can't own an idea just because you were the first to get think it. Ideas are timeless and don't belong to anyone. This is another mindfuck we have created for ourselves. You can be the first to think of something. OK. But the only reason we accept idea of intellectual property is because of our focus on a scarcity mindset, on survival and making money to survive and be wealthy. If we lived another way in abundance, we wouldn't be so dominating over ideas and would seek to benefit ourselves and everyone with them.
We are so deluded in our concept of ownership that we create master-slave relationships all around us. We enslave other humans, we enslave other animals, we become masters over others, over the land, over ideas, and demand through our belief in authority that others have to pay us for the right to live and exist, for the right to use things that we don't even use ourselves, that we simply think we can "own" for some reason that doesn't really make sense.
It didn't used to be this way, long before humans got lost in our self-deluded abstract thinking. You could only occupy and use land that you could use. You could be free to live without paying tribute to authorities or owners, with taxes, or food, or whatever. We are the only animal on the planet that lives in a deluded construct that prevents us from being free to live off the land. We have enslaved ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. We fool ourselves.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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You post some great material, but this one really touches a nerve with me. It is something I have pondered for much of my life and it always boils down to...
Might makes right and possession is 9/10s of the law.
While I wish for a type of society that voluntarism implies, I have grown to question that it could ever be so. It seems that wherever one can look, regardless of time/place, there will always be those who want power and ownership to gather an army together to make it so. Even in the most beneficial periods where a leader allowed for great freedoms for those governed, that period always ends with that leaders overthrow or when he passed on.
I have protested this idea of ownership in many ways over my life. You mentioned
I remember years ago, an argument I was having with my ex wife. She would often use the argument that her love of horses was proof of what a great person she was. I made her really angry when I pointed out one does not stick a metal bar in another beings mouth with little ropes attached to yank on when forcing the other to submit and turn directions. One does not force another being to ride you on its back as a form of entertainment if one loves that being. That they call it breaking a horse in, because it objects to being used and what is being broken is the horses spirit.
We are approaching a frightening time. It has long since passed the time where those who believe they own all resources should have been stopped. Their disregard for everything they view (including us) has created an environment of poison and evil that will take many years to undo, if it is even possible.
I am unsure there is a workable solution, as they have weakened all who would oppose them through poisons and unnatural laws enforced by an army who think nothing of killing those who would be disobedient.
The only way to oppose those who try to take, it with those who don't let it happen and unite together to protect each other. It takes unity, and true unity comes from moral truth in alignment.
Yes, it's the self-delusion of belief. We want to believe whatever the fuck we want, so we do. We want to believe we are oh-so good and moral yet don't understand how we are failing to live up to the values and standards we claim to hold so dear. Looking into the dark mirror to see our dark hearts is hard work...
Breaking a horse is what it's called for a reason. You break their will/consciousness/'spirit'. They have will power, feeling, thinking, all from consciousness, albeit a more limited kind compared to us, but that doesn't give us all these "rights".
The solution is to care for and seek truth, and eventually you get to go deeper into moral truth and want to cast away the wrongs by admitting them :)
What an immense topic. Self-ownership as a basis for ownership is a sound foundation, but it’s an “I think therefore I am” proposition - necessary to ensure a sound beginning free of assumptions, but so rudimentary that there can be difficulty using it to inform matters on the periphery.
Ownership, Non-Aggression, and even Capitalism, are necessary concepts to usher humanity into the next phase of its social evolution, free from external authority. But this is akin to the first land animal’s steps upon the shore - we will still be FAR from expressing our full potential.
The necessity for mental constructs outlining acceptable behavior is only necessary amongst a species that does not recognize its oneness. This is a subtle concept, but if each saw the other as a variable expression of himself, the above concepts would be entirely obviated.
Survival instinct took us so far, and understanding and discipline regarding morality will take us even further; but there is still much further to go before we reach true peace and prosperity. It will require an earnest worldwide yearning for the continued expansion of consciousness unto greater and greater heights.
Yup, it's a long road ahead, and long overdue we take it. They longer we delay, the longer it takes to get to where we deep down want to go but aren't willing to put in the time, energy, effort, dedication, determination and persistence to find our way and path there.
This is a great subject. The idea and extensiveness of the concept of "ownership" and the moral vs practical uses and applications thereof.
If we boil the idea of ownership down to a basic concept... Let's consider a bar of chocolate. I brought it and laid it on the table between us. I brought it there, it is mine. Let us not consider how I obtained it.
Let's just say I brought it there and now it is between us, at an equal distance. Whose chocolate is it?
What if you take it? If I object this action the subject of ownership will come up and the strife will begin and will be settled by might or brains. If I said nothing however then it becomes your property because I did nothing to stop the chocolate from transferring ownership.
In that example I decided to give up and let the chocolate go.
Thus ownership can also be thought of as the condition of how hard I will work to keep mastery or possession of something.
Nothing really belongs to anyone. Not even ourselves if we are unwilling to look after ourselves and fight to keep ourselves alive.
Interesting example, but if you don't say it's yours, someone can assume it's a gift left by someone. It doesn't require fighting, but speaking. The other who doesn't want to be moral will be the one who instigates violence in a physical manner, and that's why there is work to fight for what's ours because others don't care and just want to take even when it's not theirs.
But we do belong to ourselves. How we treat ourselves in another issue apart form self-ownership.
great post, i have been thinking about this a lot. Also great connection to intellectual property, something I have not seen this way so far.
I mostly agree with your point of view. Self-ownership and owning your labour. Then for objects where the value is dominated by the value of labour you can also own them. All air, water, land, crude resources should be unowned as nobody worked to create them.
Then the problem is how to implement this in a free way without applying force? Can we argue that we act in self-defence? Can we set up a world where bare resources are managed by fair open protocols? How do we reward people that realise that a certain material will be valuable in a few years and start mining it now? So many open questions.
But the idea that every human has an inalienable right to use a reasonable amount of land and resources is a strong statement. It provides a type of UBI and a way to be self-employed by working that land for everyone. It solves many problems that we are facing.
Well, if people can realize the wrong of it, force can be used to reset things right. Just like when slavery was wrong, force was used to stop it. Expecting people who have gotten things from a corrupted way of life to just stop is not going to happen in short time, force often needs to be used. Things never got corrected from centuries of ill gotten land gains. A correction needs to happen. Voluntarily it will take forever yo get people to give up land to put things right, they just care about whats theirs and want to keep it no matter how it was obtained long ago.
I basically agree and we all know how wrong the current situation is. I am just scared that a forced redistribution may lead us to situations as bad as the consequences of communism. Before applying force one needs to be very sure that one is not messing up. But humans are imperfect and things often start with a clear goal and then quickly move in a very different direction.
For this reason I would very much prefer a voluntary solution. I cannot see one now, but a few years ago I also did not believe bitcoin would be possible. There is a lot of potential and I may just not be able to find the correct path yet.
@krnel, genuinely speaking, what you've said it's my core belief and literally speaking this is an post which should transferred to all those people who think they are the superior owners of this world and who hold tremendous amount of land wilfully. We will stay here for the limited time means, we don't hold any ownership on this planet and it's an big joke that people name lands with their names and here i want to ask one thing, you in first place perishable being and you cannot take with you whatever you are saying as mine. All so called ownership is nothing but the act of domination and literally done on the basis of first come first basis, which is joke.
Nature time to time alarm us through the natural disasters and try to teach human beings. We all are becoming so greedy that nowadays we are willfully hurting the ecological balance of this earth. If everyone can understand your post then no one will stay in adversity phase, we don't need this rat race life, we can stay as one world one family, everyone will have small homes and beautiful life and everyday will become like an festival but, i always think that all are not human beings and there are other species which reflects as human beings but they are different, and whatever we are facing today or faced in past it's an ancient conspiracy. But i always say that spread love, peace, kindness and brotherhood.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Yes, we are our own worst enemy, destroying ourselves and other species :/
Absolutely.
Indigenous cultures were often nomadic so the more you own the more you had to carry from place to place. They had trouble wrapping their minds around the idea of owning the land and materialism was just plain insanity.
As always great post. So appreciate that "How do we get out of this box?" thinking:)
Yeah, ownership has gone haywire, we are all locked into a slave system :/
You need to explain this part to Nestle, and see what they say. :-)
Yes, they are huge thieves. Water companies are stealing water all over the place, paying small land fees and taking water from the water table that belongs to everyone in an area. It's a crime against humanity and the planet.
Great information sir @krnel
Ownership is something you own but there are allot of things which need not buy with money, such as air, oxygen, space etc where you walk or sit.
So temporary ownership in the sense that someone can't just come take it from you because you're using it. I think that is how a lot of legitimate ownership applies, as a way to prevent others from taking what you use despite not owning it forever.
Well, believe it or not, even colours can be "owned" today :-/
http://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-2012-9?IR=T
And yes, we have this tendency to enslave ourselves with property and all, because the more we become, the more organization is needed and slowly but surely we get ourselves in a very tight corner from which it will be difficult to get out...
Madness :/
With ownership as a 'right', we should firmly be aware of the 'responsibility' of stewardship over the things we own... great read... :)
Nothing that we think we possess is really ours, just as we came to the world, in the same way we will leave, naked. One of the great follies of humanity is to think of ourselves as something material, the only thing that belongs to us is the opportunity to live and make this experience the best possible. When we arrived at the plant and everything needed to live existed but in a desire for power we intend to own more than we need to live ... and without remedy when we die we have to leave here, it does not matter how much it cost us.
I do own air... The air from my own bowels 😂
lol, i meant the air out there ;)
A very good post. Money can not buy anything they want, and if people don't want to sell to them.
Its not, who arrived first, Its who arrived with the most fire power.
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