The old settlers of the West had it half right...go West, find a piece of unused land, claim it, fence it and use it. Plant corn or oats or wheat, and they were yours to eat or sell. Dig gold or oil out of the land, and those treasures were yours. You paid for thom all with toil and sweat. You didn't have to pay anyone for the land, it was yours to live on and use.
That part was right. The wrong part was that claiming a piece of land gave you ownership of it, the right to sell it and keep the proceeds, the right to deed it to others when you died. That gave you ownership of a slice of the planet, and that is absurd.
The planet is part of nature, part of the Universe. Can we own a cloud and deny others the right to fly through it, or to capture the rain that falls from it? The Universe is where we all are. It can be said to be, OUR Universe. We can own things within the Universe, but not the Universe itself. The idea of owning part of the Universe in perpetuity to the exclusion of others not to our choosing is abhorrent to the finite nature of human life and the relationship between human life and the dimension in which it exists. It is akin to having a system that would allow me to own the next moment of time, and which gives me the power to restrain everyone else from living in it.
Patents and copyrights give us ownership of our mental output, the products of our brainpower...inventions, artistic creations, etc...for specified periods of time. Then they become public property. The same should hold true for our physical output. Use the land as a residence, for sustenance or recreation. Use it for a lifetime or some other designated period and it should then be open to claiming by others.
We ought not have a code of human behavior that does not provide room and opportunity for all others to survive...which is a possible result of our present misguided system.
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