Who Owns the Earth?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs,
but not every man's greed.

― Mahatma Gandhi

Republicans are often called "idealess," but that's unfair.

They have an idea: they want to own the earth.

But is it even possible? Can a party of people own the earth?

Our Founders' favorite philosopher, John Locke, answered the question in 1690 in his Second Treatise of Government, arguing "no."

While reason would suggest no one can own the earth, Locke says, the Bible proves that fact: "God has given the earth to mankind in common." 

But if that's true, why do we believe in ownership at all? How can anyone say he owns any piece of property? How can he say he owns something which "God gave to mankind in common?"

Locke answers the second question by examining an age-old farming practice: fencing.

Although nobody "originally" owns the earth's natural resources, Locke says, we can't make use of those resources until we "fence" them, as it were. 

"There must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man," Locke says. 

That means of appropriation is fencing.

And when someone fences—"removing" a resource from access by others—he adds value to it—the value of his labor. 

"The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, are properly his," Locke says. "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." 

A man's labor "annexes" and "encloses" a property, Locke says, excluding it from "the common right of other men.' 

In a phrase, workers keepers. "The condition of human life, which requires labor and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions," Locke says.

Work, in effect, infuses any resource worked on with property rights, which allow that resource to be owned by the worker.

Appropriating resources you haven't worked on, on the other hand, Locke calls robbery—in his eyes, a sin.

"God has given us all things richly, but how far has he given it to us?" he asks.

"As much as any one can make use of life before it spoils, so much he may, by his labor, fix a property: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil."

So no one can own the earth, but any man can have his own little acre—provided he works to improve it, Locke says. 

If he does not improve what he grabs, he's letting it spoil. That's Locke's definition of robbery.

You can't defend robbery by claiming, "Well, all of us own the earth, as God commands," because God also commands that all men should labor. Those who don't have no "title," no right to "benefit of another's pains." Those who don't labor are—literally—robber barons. There's no place in the world for them.

There's also no place for their greed, Locke says. 

Greed urges you to take more than you can improve—or ever use. 

If the barley inside your fence goes to seed, the vegetables die, the fruits rot, and the sheep and goats get sick, it signals you have grabbed more than you can care for, more than you can use; and therefore that you're greedy. 

It's "useless" and "dishonest," Locke says, to grab more than you can tend to or consume.

Although he's been dead for three centuries, Locke would be the first to say the modern Republican Party is the party of despoilers, robber barons, and greedy sinners.

But you knew that.