Ownership and custodianship
Mano is doing his level best to negate the concept of ownership.
We're going to agree that some things are simply not prudent, like buying "five huge homes around the world, each of which uses vast amounts of resources to build and maintain but are empty for most of the time, fly around in my private planes, drive around in huge cars that I replace every year, buy lots of clothes that I discard soon after, and so forth." People don't get rich that way, and they don't stay rich by practicing that lifestyle. Some of these things are not as damaging as Mano would have us believe. There are resale shops that thrive on the discards of the wealthy. I've never bought a new car in my life, so I'm glad somebody is buying them, or I wouldn't be able to find a used car that I can afford. But in general, conspicuous consumption is pretty stupid.
But people have a right to idiocy. Even Mano."The feeling is that I have a right to do this because I 'own' these things and bought them with my own money."
Rights aren't a matter of "feeling". One has a right to property because you own youself, and thus you own everything that your labor brings you. If you don't own yourself, somebody else owns you, and you're a slave. It could be argued that "ownership" is not a valid category for human beings. Few people argue that parents own their children, even though they created them (though generally, in a free society, a modified ownership paradigm for parents brings the best results.) But an adult without questions owns himself, as that ownership can not be alienated except by destroying the self. In any particular interaction, one will be master of self, or else slave. When we behave as slaves, it is because somebody threatens a value we hold dear unless we do so.But even that transfer of power is an act of self-ownership; we have chosen to comply. And we can choose not to comply, and be free.
Can we own the Earth? I am sympathetic (i.e., I "feel") to the notion that Earth existed before us and created us, and cannot be owned. But we own Earth of necessity, as we've appropriated it to create our bodies. And every thing that we create ourselves is a modification of earthly matter. Real estate is a stickier matter, but in THIS world, we exchange life energy for real estate; we have agreed that it has become property. I would be sympathetic to the ideas of Henry George if Georgeism in practice could be anything other than state socialism. And if one is going to use property, it will necessarily prohibit other uses by other people; if I'm building something on a plot of land, you can't build something else there.
Now, I choose, as a free man, to leave property as good or better than when I got it. And I would by right leave my money to my progeny, if I had any progeny. But I have a right to destroy a house I built or bought, just as CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreen's have a right to destroy houses to put a drugstore on every corner. I would not approve of that wanton destruction, whether it's Mano or Creates Vacant Stores doing the destroying. But if I have a right to tell Mano what to do with the fruit of his labor, then he is my slave. If "society" tells him, he's still a slave; he's just owned by an ad-hoc corporation.
Now, what about intellectual property? Since IP doesn't involve earthly resources (except in its dissemination, and even that is increasingly not the case), there's less of a case for common ownership. But there are really very few totally original thoughts out there. Everything we create is based on some previously-existing concept, so can it be said to be really "ours"? If property is bad, and custodianship good, why can't I take custodianship of Mano's IP? If I publish his books under my own name, won't that protect his ideas by making them available to an even wider community? Or, what if we as a society decide that Mano's ideas erode "the long-term viability of the entire community"? If he doesn't own his ideas, don't "we" have a right to suppress them?
There's the rub: we can't remove "ownership" as a concept from human society. All that ever happens is that ownership is transferred. When ownership is socialised, when an entity or group has sole use or constructive ownership of the production of a particular person, that person is effectively a slave. In modern times, those societies have sold themselves on being able to increase consumption, a task they have failed miserably at. And most post-Marxist states are ecological disasters. An ownership society is not Utopia. But Utopia is not an option.
Comments
Posted by: Jim Quick
Posted on: December 11, 2006 08:55 PM
I agree with you about peoperty ownership. That said, there is a biblical admonition to be
a good stewart or a good husband to all things under your control. Your Grandfather admonished me that in order to be considered having a successful and honorable life, property and animals under my ownership or control should be in as good or better shape when I die then it was when I took control of it. I know by observation that you practice this to a great degree and I respect you for it.
Jimbo