Property rights

Whose hands are these?

 

Do we have the "right" to own land?  A human is an animal.  Do any animals other than humans own land?  They might use a small amount of land as their "home", and they might defend their need to use that land for their survival, but do they own it?  Did they have to purchase it?  Do they ever sell it?

The issue of property rights is called into question by Agenda 21.  Communism and socialism before it also called into question property rights.  Capitalism, of course, insists on property rights.  Capitalism thinks everything can be owned, from the land to the ideas of an individual to the very arrangement of your genes.  Is the issue of property rights then a con-game of the rich to maintain their power and control over the poor?

Native American peoples had a different concept of land use.  They understood that the land endured much longer than any one man, that it was essentially "on loan" from the Great Spirit to all living things for their needs.  The idea that one could "own" what the Great Spirit provided was ludicrous.

There are now about 7 billion people on the planet.  There are about 55.5 million square miles of land above water.  If we allow private ownership of half the available land, each person could own .0039 square miles of land, or about 2.5 acres.  It could be argued that anyone owning more than 2.5 acres is a selfish criminal.  Property rights conveniently nullify that idea.  That works well for the queen of England, who supposedly owns 6.6 billion (6,600,000,000) acres of land.  That's a lot more than 2, and potentially selfish to the extreme.

Could the queen be a sociopath?

I'm beginning to question my brainwashing again, this time with respect to property rights.  I have been conditioned to believe property rights are sacrosanct, not to be questioned, and the foundation of my country which was constructed on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Yeah, right.  Obviously, I have been thoroughly brainwashed to believe such lies.  Rich, white landowners founded my country.  They had property holdings to protect -- Mount Vernon, Monticello, and lots of other large tracts of land.  I can see the conflict of interest, so it's no wonder property rights are so revered in America, just as they were in feudalistic Europe, where the Lords (the 1%) grew richer off the indentured sweat of the serfs (the 99%).

Hey, wait a minute!  The 1% and the 99%?  You mean the same thing is happening today in the USA?

Could the president be a sociopath?

 

Socialist !

I've been accused of being a socialist.  At first, I didn't quite know what to make of it, as the definition of socialism appears to be so broad and vague that it is hard to pin down.  Generally these accusations come whenever I propose changes that would be beneficial to all of society, meaning all people.  An example might be the universal availability of low-cost health care.  One would think that it would be beneficial to both society and individuals to promote health and deal efficiently with debilitating injuries and disease.  And when I say "deal efficiently," I'm thinking along the lines of the Golden Rule, which I believe is universally recognized as the cornerstone of any cooperative social organization.  In my mind, universal health care would appear to be "socialist," if socialism is defined as organizing to provide desired benefits to all individuals of a society.  And yet the implied connotation when I've been called a socialist is that I have evil or vile intent.

Other minds have considered the question of how to best organize society without diminishing the individual.  One of those minds eerily predicted the economic and social crisis that we are faced with today in the United States (and in most other countries):

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones.  The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society.  This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.  The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population.  Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education).  It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

I have long decried the overpowering economic control of the international central bankers, their control of the media, their outright purchasing of our government representatives and so-called public servants, the deliberate dumbing down of America, and the orchestrated mind control of the masses.  It appears someone agrees with me.  The above quotation was written 60 years ago by one of the most respected thinkers of the 20th century - Albert Einstein.  He was considering the problem humanity has struggled with for a very long time - overcoming what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development.  How can we move beyond the dog-eat-dog world of competition to the more egalitarian world of cooperation?  Einstein clearly saw capitalism as a manifestation of unhealthy competition, and he argued that a socialist approach was the only cure:

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism.  Our whole educational system suffers from this evil.  An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.  I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."

In order to ensure that social goals are pursued, a socialist economy will require an accurate feedback loop between individuals and the organization charged with guiding economic policy.  The details of this organization and the feedback loop are yet to be designed, but it is clear that the design must be inherently self-correcting in the same manner as the Golden Rule.  This is no easy task, as one need only look at the capitalist fable of the "invisible hand of the market" that was supposed to efficiently regulate excesses and likewise be self-correcting.  In actual practice, however, capitalists found it all too easy to manipulate markets, and this behavior was positively reinforced by their own self-interests with no mechanism to limit those self-interests, resulting in the very excesses "the invisible hand of the market" was meant to prevent.

Would it be more correct to define socialism as the means of organizing a society for maximum individual and social benefit?  If so, then I am hoping to become the best socialist I can be.