I've recently been having this discussion with Leland Beaumont and others
and it's worth posting here as well.  Ownership of all sorts of things is
central to our society, and it doesn't seem to be working well for many
people.  It turns out that there are foundational psychological and
sociological justifications for ownership in general.


The book "Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives" by
Michael A. Heller and James Salzman explains these puzzles and many more.
Surprisingly, there are just six simple stories that everyone uses to claim
everything. Owners choose the story that steers us to do what they want. But
we can always pick a different story. This is true not just for airplane
seats, but also for battles over digital privacy, climate change, and wealth
inequality.

The key thesis of this book is that our core ownership stories are wrong.
They contend the each of us uses some version of six ownership stories:
1. First come, first served;
2. Possession is nine-tenths of the law;
3. You reap what you sow-we own the fruits of our labors;
4. My home is my castle-I own what is attached to me;
5. Our bodies, our selves, and
6. Family property stays in the family through inheritance

Once we step outside of our engrained social conditioning, we can start to
evaluate our notion of ownership with regards to specific circumstances in
our contemporary world. One prominent example: the inequities created by
land ownership. Regardless of how ownership comes about in the first place
(one or more of these six narratives), it is an objective fact that families
are often able to build inter-generational wealth through land ownership,
and the evidence shows that this has increased in recent decades. Families
that are not able to invest in land are left out of this wealth generating
process. Is there any way we might re-evaluate the notion of ownership by
going back to the six narratives above and framing things slightly
differently than what we've been used to in our society?

 

Brandon Norgaard

Founder, The Enlightened Worldview Project

 


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