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.

Sign of the Times

Today's Sabre outage, which halted many departures at major US airports, riled a lot of passengers.

My local newscaster kept pronouncing "outage" as "outrage," claiming there was an "outrage at airports nationwide."

Sign of our times?

Hard to Please

People who are hard to please, in other words, idiots.

― Marty Rubin

In today's New York Times, Harvard professor Dr. Sema Sgaier profiles the four types of Americans who resist the Covid-19 vaccine and suggests we mollycoddle them. To which I say screw that.

Sgaier surveyed 17,000 Americans and places the vaccine-avoiders into four categories:

Covid Skeptics—the idiots who think the vaccine is a Chinese plot. "Everyone in this group believes at least one conspiracy theory," Sgaier reports.

The Cost-Anxious—the idiots who worry about the vaccine's cost (it's free, of course).

System Distrusters—the idiots who feel maligned by doctors.

The Watchful—the idiots who are waiting for other idiots to get vaccinated first.

The good doctor recommends four ways to deal with the wretches: we should "hold conversations" with them; "offer them a "vaccinate later" option; "be transparent" about the vaccine; and "avoid trying to debunk what they believe" and instead "acknowledge how they feel."

That kid-glove approach sounds like good psychology. It may even be smart public health.

But we're talking about idiots here, and lots of them; in fact, 38% of Americans are idiots, according to Sgaier's survey. That's too many adults to mollycoddle, if we want to survive the "Commie threat from China."

"When it comes to idiots, America's got more than its fair share," Lewis Black once said. "If idiots were energy, it would be a source that would never run out."

I Can but I Won't

I'm as guilty as anyone of romanticizing the Greatest Generation.

But—just as millions of today's Americans are jerks about mask-wearing—many of the Greatest Generation were jerks, too.

Jerks about rationing.

Three months before Pearl Harbor, FDR signed an executive order intended to curb households' consumption of commodities. He knew they'd soon be in short supply. 

Commodities like cars, tires, gas, oil, coal, wood, towels, linens, clothes, shoes, meat, fish, catsup, mustard, butter, milk, cheese, coffee, sugar, jelly, shortening, canned fruits, canned vegetables, chocolate bars, candy bars, and bubble gum.

Americans were asked by their government to accept sacrifice—all for the good of the coming war effort. But millions never did. Millions hated rationing—as they did FDR—and cheated.

They cheated by stealing and counterfeiting ration coupons; buying coupons from relatives, neighbors, and the Mafia; hoarding goods; and buying them from bootleggers, black-marketers, and crooked merchants.

The Americans who complied with rationing, for the most part, ignored those who didn't, although one government official said the latter were "secretly in sympathy with Hitler or Hirohito."

Plus ça change.

A Nation of Neurotics

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

— Sigmund Freud

What's wrong with everyone? 

Covid-19 is a moving target. 

The CDC's advice about shots, mask-wearing and social distancing merely moves in response.

Better and better news comes out every day.

Yet everyone wrings their hands.