Ownership

Given the political fights going on right now, it's probably not too surprising that I've been thinking a lot about economics lately. There are debates about whether socialism is more Christian than capitalism, over who should pay how much in taxes and who should get how much in government services, over whether people should have to give up money they've earned to support the common good. I have opinions on all of that, but in trying to articulate where I stand, I've wound up going back to a much more basic problem: our entire concept of ownership is on shaky ground.

For concrete marketplace transactions, the idea of ownership seems pretty simple. You own the clothes you're wearing because you exchanged money for them, or because someone else did so on your behalf, or else someone who had what society understands to be a legitimate claim on them transferred that claim to you, freely or in exchange for a different claim. (This is already more complicated than I anticipated). The difficulty as I see it, comes when we look a bit deeper than that. Anything tangible that you own comes from the earth, whether as nonliving materials, living organisms, or land itself. Obviously, none of us made the earth or have the capacity to do so. So where do the grounds for claiming ownership of anything come from? Of course this thinking isn't new to me – there have been societies where the concept of land ownership didn't exist, but I still want to explore it in more detail. Even leaving land aside, what grounds can someone have for saying that they own natural resources? All I can see is the claim of having gotten there first, and that doesn't seem like much of a claim, especially when we're talking about claiming more than a person can use at one moment.

For example, let's imagine that there are only two people plopped down into a newly created world. Their territory is what they can explore on foot. Suppose one of them comes across some berry bushes in his wanderings, bushes that neither of the people knew about before. Would it be fair for him to claim that all the berries belong to him since he found them first? It seems to me that the other person could argue that he has just as much right to the berries and that they belong equally to both of them because neither of them made anything here – they're both just finding stuff and making use of it.

Adding more people doesn't seem to change the situation. If there are eight people instead of just two, it still seems like the berries belong equally to everyone. And there's no reason it seems that it would be different with a nonliving resource like oil. Actually, I take that back – it is different because then you have the question of mining and its effects. Maybe half the people in our society of eight want the oil – and are prepared to share it eight ways – and are interested in drilling a well to get it. But the other half find more value in the landscape as it is and don't want the changes that drilling for oil would bring to it, and are prepared to forgo the oil – but they only get the benefit of forgoing it – that is, the unchanged environment – if everyone does so. Is it right for some people to prevent others from gaining access to a resource because they don't want to change the landscape? On the other hand, is it right for some people to force change in the landscape to get a resource that not everyone wants a share in? I have my own leanings, but it seems to me that there's no clear logical answer here. In either case, some people get what they want from a system they didn't make, and some don't, and there's no way to do both.

So where does God come into this? Not to steal is one of the Ten Commandments, so that indicates some sense of ownership as reasonable – or at least just as necessary to the ancient Hebrews as it is to us. But at the same time, the Old Testament also talks about forgiving debts every 50 years and returning land to its original owners. This seems to indicate a desire not to let inequality grow too much; wealth can't be amassed indefinitely, and there's a limit to how much later generations will suffer for their ancestor's bad luck or poor decisions. There's also talk of being compassionate with those who are in your debt – not keeping their only cloak as collateral during the night when they need it. It seems to indicate that ownership is fine as a practical construct, a way of deciding who gets to make the final decision in case of conflict, but also seems to show that it's not to be taken too far.

In the Gospels, of course, but also in the prophets and elsewhere in the Old Testament, there's talk about caring for the poor and making sure everyone's needs are met, doing justice for the widow and the orphan. If widows and orphans at that time were people with no legal standing, who had to rely on common decency to get by, I wonder who are today's “widows and orphans.” People who come, perhaps illegally, to do hard seasonal work in the fields? People whose family structures don't fit into our system of social convention, so they have no help or sympathy if those they've joined their lives with fall on hard times? People who earn too much to qualify for food stamps but not enough to afford more education to change their position?

Ownership in some sense means power – power to control the fate of that which you own, and power to exchange that control for other forms of control. But try as I might, I can't find grounds for one person having more control that another, nor can I imagine how to create a system that can't be abused to one's own advantage. The only thing for it is to love our neighbors.