Property rights and claims to ownership over a planet and it’s resources that will still be here when the person who claims ownership dies are the source of like 90% of our societal problems.
Intellectual Property rights doubly so. If the “Intellectual Property” I create relies on me reading and knowing information from humans that came before me, do I really have ownership over this idea? Isn’t this idea entirely contingent and reliant on the work of others who came before me? Once I put the idea out into the world, what’s preventing other people from copying it other than arcane rules and regulations?
Marx argues as much in Das Kapital but the US was only couple of steps away from constitutional monarchy which was feudalism but with extra rules. Similarly, France, after its 1789 revolution tried a few versions of constitutional monarchy before going full republic many decades later. A lot of landlords promised to play nice instead of giving up their land.
Maybe we should have piled their heads high after all.
Anyway, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution of the United States were all written by well-to-do literate land owners, and they weren’t ready to give up wealth and power for the good of the public.
It’s likely too late now, what with the climate crisis and plastic crisis, but yeah, with a higher literacy rate we might be able to get the 80% of us in poverty or precarity on board with rights to accommodation over right of ownership. But it’s going to be a struggle.
Property rights and claims to ownership over a planet and it’s resources that will still be here when the person who claims ownership dies are the source of like 90% of our societal problems.
Intellectual Property rights doubly so. If the “Intellectual Property” I create relies on me reading and knowing information from humans that came before me, do I really have ownership over this idea? Isn’t this idea entirely contingent and reliant on the work of others who came before me? Once I put the idea out into the world, what’s preventing other people from copying it other than arcane rules and regulations?
Property rights were a mistake.
Marx argues as much in Das Kapital but the US was only couple of steps away from constitutional monarchy which was feudalism but with extra rules. Similarly, France, after its 1789 revolution tried a few versions of constitutional monarchy before going full republic many decades later. A lot of landlords promised to play nice instead of giving up their land.
Maybe we should have piled their heads high after all.
Anyway, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution of the United States were all written by well-to-do literate land owners, and they weren’t ready to give up wealth and power for the good of the public.
It’s likely too late now, what with the climate crisis and plastic crisis, but yeah, with a higher literacy rate we might be able to get the 80% of us in poverty or precarity on board with rights to accommodation over right of ownership. But it’s going to be a struggle.