Ownership

This document examines the concepts of ownership, intellectual property, scarcity, abundance, sharing and cooperation.

This is potentially a length topic.

For the sake of brevity, I will first say that there is no basis in physical reality showing that a given conscious entity has exclusive use a possession of some object or aspect of reality.

I cannot examine physical reality and determine who the true owner of a piece of land, or a car is. The concept is purely in our minds, and a mutually agreed upon concept.

Claims

The only basis for one conscious entity to own an aspect of reality I can see is through a claim. If I claim a piece of land, and no one else disputes the claim, then I can say I own it.

Disputes and Controversies

What is someone disputes a claim? There are a few ways to resolve this controversy:

1) Violence and coercion 2) Peaceful communication

Throughout recorded history, it appears that the first method of resolve disputes has been prevalent. The location of the violence has changed, from very close and intimate: beating someone over their head until the property is "yours", to very remote: filing legal paperwork and deferring to some authority and set of rules to beat someone over the head (or threaten to do so) via "The Law".

I'd like to see a world where we trend towards 2). This almost certainly requires inner work, so people are able to know their true needs, desires and intentions, and aren't filled with violence and greed.

Ownership in the Future

As ownership is ultimately a social construct, the nature of it will not fundamentally change, only the methods we use to keep track of who owns something. I see a world where some ownership information is encoded in a blockchain, or other public ledger.