Chapter 11: Ownership
Ownership is a myth, an unchallenged article of faith perpetuated by Capitalist society. In reality, it is an arbitrary construct, arbitrarily defined, and most certainly not necessary for human society to function. It is one possible construct among many that could accomplish the same function.
In Capitalist paradigms, it is one of the necessary core concepts, without which no implementation of the paradigm can function. In a system based on potentially limitless “private” ownership of resources, the concept of ownership defines who owns what, who has access and who doesn’t, who controls access to what, who must pay whom for what, who are the Lords and who are the Serfs. Indeed, ownership is the underpinning of the entire Pyramidal economic power structure – nine-tenths of the law as it is said.
The concept of ownership can most definitely serve a necessary function: to ensure that each individual or group has what they need, readily available and close at hand with continuity, a shared reality respected by all members of the community. Yet it is most definitely not the only way to achieve this necessary purpose.
When implemented with wisdom, common sense and the good of each and all in mind, the concept of ownership can serve as a way of establishing and safeguarding personal space. For example, it would create no end of problems if you were to come home from work to find that someone else had moved into your home and gotten rid of your stuff, or if you reached for your winter coat only to find it missing, or went to access your computer only to find it gone with works-in-progress on it that you need. The concept of ownership is one way to accomplish the assurance and continuity of personal space, but certainly not the only way.
The root of this concept probably does go back to our early days as a species. In nature, the function of territoriality is to ensure that each individual, herd, or group has access to enough food, water and other resources. Where resources are dense and plentiful, territories can be quite small; where resources are scarce, territories must be much larger. As humans, we are not strictly defined or limited by instinctually hard-wired paradigms as are most other species. Part of our unique make-up is the ability to improvise, conceive, re-evaluate, and adapt our ways of accomplishing necessary functions. We can postulate, however, that when we implement a socio-economic paradigm where resources are readily accessible to all, the need for Capitalist-style definitions of ownership will be largely eliminated. Consider the fact that the Capitalist paradigm’s interpretation of the concept is abundantly demonstrating its non-viability. If the purpose of ownership is to ensure that all communities and individuals have access to necessary resources, then this implementation has failed utterly.
Indeed, the concept of ownership can create more problems than it solves when taken to an unbalanced extreme as it often is in the prevailing socio-economic model that dominates much of the world today. It does an imperfect job at best of accomplishing the safeguarding of individuals' space and reliable access of useful resources. This is evidenced by the proliferation of thieves, scammers, robbers, international invasions and the increasingly blatant escalating trend that funnels an unhealthy, disproportionate amount of ownership and personal space to a very small segment of the population while depriving an ever-increasing majority of many of the most basic necessities, leaving many human beings bereft of any personal space whatsoever. It is an entirely arbitrary construct and concept that has come to be treated as almost a law of physics when in fact it is not. It was created by human beings and can be altered or done away with by human beings.
The concept of ownership has become, in many instances, an illusion, an actual falsehood supported by legal documentation but presented to the people to create the false appearance of ownership. See the chapters describing the history of currency and land ownership.
If you can trade, transact, construct or otherwise acquire something, then by the prevailing cultural concept, you own it. This is true for items like a pen, an article of clothing, a piece of fruit, a work of art or an invention.
Yet even that interpretation of ownership is being circumvented with respect to the individual member of the community via a clever and insidious construct of subscription-based goods and services. One traditional form of this is leasing – the person or entity using the resource pays the owner or provider an agreed-upon amount of currency every month for an agreed-upon period of time for use of or access to that resource. It is the same as renting but with a contract that stabilizes the terms of the transaction for a time. In the end, you have paid a lot of money and are left owning nothing. This arose from the Capitalist reality in which many resources are beyond the ability of most people to afford owning outright.
A newer version of this paradigm is seen in the software industry, among others. Traditionally, if you bought an app, a computer program, you could keep using it for as long as you wanted and your hardware/operating system would run it. In recent years, a growing number of software companies are implementing a subscription-based model in which the user pays a fee up front, then must pay a subscription fee every month for the software to continue working. If one misses a payment, the software not only stops working but also renders one’s own files unusable and inaccessible, holding them hostage for ransom. Microsoft Office 365 is a notorious example. In that context, the corporation not only claims ownership of the software itself, but of your own work that you have done using the software. The company reserves the power to lock you out of your own creations.
The same paradigm is occurring in agriculture. For thousands of years, farmers have kept a portion of their harvest for planting the following spring. Selective breeding led to greater yields, quality, quantity, robustness, etc. over long periods of time. When the farmer bought seed from the supply store, there was nothing and nobody preventing him or her from using the seeds from this year’s crop to plant next year’s fields. Now using genetically modified seed stock, agricultural mega-corporations are using intellectual property laws to gain unprecedented wealth and control over food production while in the process ruining the lives of farmers around the world, through several mechanisms.
These products are presented to the farmer as being superior to their accustomed seed stock, promising higher yield per acre/hectare and resistance to pests. Initially this appears to have been fulfilled as the farmer sees bigger, more plentiful, stronger, faster-growing crops in their first year. But if they try to save seeds from that crop for future planting, they discover that the seeds either will not grow at all, or produce inferior crops. This is built into the genetic modifications intentionally, to force farmers to buy more seed every year. And frequently the nutritional content is actually inferior to the traditional versions of these crops.
To make matters worse for farmers, if one farmer shares this seed stock with a neighbor or relative, then the corporation invariably sues both parties for infringement of intellectual property laws, often taking away their farms. This strongly reinforces against farmers helping one another. The corporations, such as Monsanto and others, count on the likelihood that many or most farmers do not have the time or background to read the contracts they sign and understand what they are agreeing to.
The implications are even more insidious and dangerous when we consider the concept of owning all instances of an organism (including both plant and animal species) via the construct of “intellectual property.” The entity that did the genetic modifications, or that controls the patent on them, claims ownership of every plant or animal grown with those modifications, in perpetuity. In other words, the farmer doesn’t “own” the crop, eggs, chickens, cows, etc. that they have raised or grown. The company does.
Imagine what is likely to happen in Capitalist paradigms when emerging genetic therapies for serious medical conditions become widely available. A genetically engineered cure for diabetes. A genetic pre-emptive fix for autism, Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, asthma or a host of other conditions that can be diagnosed and treated in utero. Given existing precedents and the prevailing mentality and assumptions of Capitalist paradigms, it is quite likely that individuals benefiting from these therapies will be legally considered the “intellectual property” of the corporations which developed the therapies. Such patients will likely be required to pay fees for life just for their existence. If these paradigms are not mothballed and soon, then that “ownership” will supercede and outweigh Constitutional rights of the individual as far as the legal system is concerned.
Under Capitalism, those higher up the economic pyramid are always dramatically advantaged over those further down. The ownership wielded by an ultra-wealthy person or Corporation almost universally negates or supercedes the ownership granted to a typical citizen/Serf. To revisit an already-addressed point, the myth of Capitalist ownership is shown clearly for what it is when one looks more closely at the concept of home ownership.
To recap: in virtually all true Capitalist societies, homes are priced so far beyond the vast majority of people's ability to afford, forcing the aspiring home buyer to get a mortgage loan from a bank or other lender. For a long portion of the term of the mortgage, the "homeowner" is paying almost exclusively the interest and only microscopically towards the principal - the actual purchase price of the house.
And it gets worse. Even if you have been keeping up with your mortgage payments for 29 years on a 30-year mortgage, then experience a change of circumstances which renders you unable to continue paying, the bank can and will foreclose on your home and sell it. The fact that you have paid off most of the mortgage does not legally entitle you to any rights whatsoever. It is considered irrelevant that you have already paid more than the purchase price of the home. You might as well have been renting for all of those years. In addition, your credit score is severely compromised, effectively barring you from recovering for a number of years, assuring your continued loss of life, liberty, ability to pursue happiness, dignity, quality of life, options, even the ability to get a job. It takes years to build a good credit rating in Capitalist societies, but only a short time to crash that rating.
With the accelerated redistribution of resources away from 99.9% of the people in the United states and other purely Capitalist countries, a growing number of people find themselves in this position.
As pointed out elsewhere, there are laws in every Capitalist society that make it illegal or virtually impossible to live without paying for a place to be. Make no mistake about it. There are officers with guns, ready to draw and use them if you resist the established order. It does not matter if you are not causing harm or depriving anybody of anything. This is yet further tragic and brutal proof that Capitalist paradigms are fundamentally incompatible with, and inimical to, a free, democratic, empowered, thriving community.
For all who rent, as already described, the situation is even more precarious. Though there are areas of the United States where rent control is in effect, the fact is that the renter is literally paying the landlord for the privilege of being allowed to stay in the domicile. The landlord can dictate whether or not the renter may have pets, keep potted plants, display decorations, have friends or family stay over and for how long and more. As in the workplace, the legal status of the property owner gives them dictatorial power that countermands the Constitution, since the renter is on their “private property” and therefore has few to no rights.
The irony is that, in many cases, the landlord is not even the true owner of the property. They are paying a mortgage on the property. The real owner? The bank, except in cases of the ultra-wealthy who can afford to write a check for tens of millions of dollars. In this scenario, the bank and/or its CEO is the Feudal Lord, the landlord is the Vassal who serves the Lord, and the renter is the Serf. A Feudal society in practice, behind a thin veneer of freedom and democracy. A fragile wallpaper mural of lofty enlightened principles covering a dark and sinister reality.
To further recap: In a culture that places a premium on ownership, an increasing number of cities are granting their police the power to confiscate the few possessions of the most disempowered citizens, the homeless - basically in order to make them go away out of sight and mind. The police are also allowed in many places to impound the car or RV of someone living in it, just because they are living in it, if it is in a forbidden location, which is generally pretty much everywhere. Those who attempt to help the homeless are increasingly criminalized. Under Capitalism, your rights, options, freedom, the respect you are afforded and your quality of life are almost completely proportional to your altitude on the economic Pyramid. If you are homeless, then your are at the very bottom of the Pyramid, meaning that you have close to zero rights or options, not even the sacrosanct right to own a sleeping bag or coat. In such cities, once these items are confiscated, they are not returned. And without a fixed address, you will not find employment.
Here again we see clearly how Capitalism subverts the Constitution and creates a situation where one's rights, or lack of them, are determined by one's wealth of lack of it. This is unacceptable in any civilized society and a direct threat to the Constitution itself.
The concept of ownership has been used historically to create and perpetuate slavery in which some human beings were entitled to own other human beings.
In the current socio-economic environment, the concept of ownership is more often destroying people's space and continuity of access to necessities than upholding it.
In the United States and some other Capitalist countries, even the concept of Eminent Domain in which people's homes and other property can be taken from them, with financial compensation, to make room for projects (hospitals, roads, etc.) that the community needs, has been subverted in an alarming number of cases to permit taking people's homes for a large corporation to use the land for a for-profit project that the community emphatically and vocally does not want or need. Justifications for these seizures typically claim that the creation of jobs and tax revenues constitute an overriding good to the public and the community. In reality, this proves not only false, but quite the opposite. Using what is called the “dark store” strategy, big box stores like Walmart, Target and others manipulate tax laws to where these mammoth corporations end up paying less taxes than were previously paid by the legitimate occupants of the same land, placing heavier tax burdens on homeowners and small businesses in the area and leading to cutbacks in public services such as schools, fire departments, and public libraries. In addition, these stores often close after a few years, resulting in displacement of all of the employees hired in the first place. This is legalized rape and pillaging of communities by mega-corporations, enriching the neo-Feudal elite who engorge themselves at the helm of these predatory corporations. Yet under Capitalist paradigms, this behavior is reinforced and legitimized. It is not illegal.
In Feudal times, the King or Queen had similar rights. They could take your farm or shop from you at will. They could tax you at will. Kings even had the power to rape a bride on her wedding night if he so desired, with no legal jeopardy or repercussions. If the wife or her husband or family were to resist, they would be put to death. In Capitalist societies, however, there is allegedly less barbarism. People who resist the power of the new Feudal Lords are simply imprisoned or deprived of the ability to survive, then kept out of sight so they can waste away slowly, unseen, unheard, unknown. Is this more enlightened than shooting them? You be the judge of that.
Ironically, the concept of ownership does only a marginal job of serving the purpose stated at the beginning of this chapter. While ownership is almost universally accepted as a concept, there are always some people who nevertheless do not respect it: thieves, robbers, scammers, predatory banks and credit companies which operate within the letter of the law, speculators, contractors, lawyers who find legal ways to take others' property by exploiting legal loopholes; countries, individuals and ethnic groups fighting and killing because of disagreements over ownership. Under Capitalist paradigm, we see reinforcement for abuse by those who are driven to constantly expand their sphere of ownership, even when it results in deprivation of millions of others from ownership of the most basic necessities.
As previously mentioned, one of the biggest assaults on the rights and dignity of the People is the legal fiction in the U.S. that grants corporations the status of Personhood. In disputes over ownership, this travesty almost guarantees the corporation's advantage over the common man or woman who cannot hope to afford a competent attorney to do battle against the corporation's army of top-notch attorneys.
But the prognosis is not bleak in terms of establishing and safeguarding the personal space and continuity of resources and access for individuals. The solution, however, does not lie in attempting to modify the existing Capitalistic laws and concepts of ownership, but in a complete paradigm change.
Observe that in true Kibbutz societies, for example, there is no formal ownership. Members and other residents are assured a place to live (a home), their personal space, possessions and resources, by virtue of nothing more than common agreement and culture.
In Cuba we see an entire modern country in which citizens to not need money in order to have a place to live. Many pre-Colonial (Native American) cultures in the Americas functioned very well with no concept of ownership or property. A cultural attitude of mutual respect and cooperation fosters respect for personal space, resources and "possessions."
In fact, the case can be made that Capitalism actually fosters disrespect for people's personal space and "property" by creating a scarcity of resources where in fact, there is no actual physical scarcity, by ensuring that most basic needs such as healthcare, transportation, and even living space is so expensive that most people are forced to waste much of their time and life energy just to pay for the necessities of life.
As long as it is permitted and accepted for a person or business entity to own and control access to land, homes, and other resources that they are not actually using to live, produce or function in, there is no truly free society.
When there is widespread scarcity, human nature is such that a certain percentage of the population will turn to theft, robbery, fraud and other non-sanctioned modes of acquiring property. When there is ready availability of most or all things with no artificial barriers such as cost, people will actually be less motivated to violate each other's space or resources.
To any who consider the current system of property to be sacrosanct, it is not difficult to prove that current ownership, especially of land, derives from behavior that even the prevailing Capitalist societies would consider beyond unacceptable.
To review an earlier chapter: Before the Europeans "discovered" the Americas, there were an estimated 20-100 million human beings living there in a rich variety of cultures and nations. The Europeans and their descendents claimed this already inhabited land as their own while exterminating most of the people living there through force, trickery, biological warfare (both intentional and unintentional) and a State-sanctioned program and policy of extermination, enslavement, and marginalization against a backdrop of prevailing cultural attitudes of dehumanization. Land in the United States and other areas in the Americas was then given out to Euro-American "settlers" or "homesteaders." Thereafter, once all land was thus "owned," all persons must pay money to own or rent.
If France were to do this to England today (or vice-versa), the aggressor would be heavily sanctioned and treated as a rogue nation by most of the world. Entire alliances of countries would come to the aid of the victim country. Witness what happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait. An alliance of countries stepped in to force Iraq out of Kuwait. In the modern world, in most cases where one country invades another, strong international pressure is brought to bear against the aggressor in defense of the victim. Sometimes it involves military means, almost always it involves economic, trade and other sanctions. In short, such behavior is considered unacceptable.
Yet the paradigm of ownership thus set in place is treated as unquestionable, set in stone, not to be challenged. In fact, most countries can trace their ownership lineage back to similar atrocities at various points in the past. Therefore, in the quest to create socio-economic paradigms that truly result in a pattern that works for all, we must be prepared to challenge and re-examine even these constructs that have remained unchallenged and perpetuated for far too long. The unwillingness to re-examine and redesign socio-economic paradigms is dangerous and inevitably leads to dysfunction.