The concern of this essay is justice regarding the ownership of that which is natural on planet Earth. This essay is not concerned with the ownership of that which has been created or caused by human beings.
Before human beings existed, planet Earth already existed, and many living beings existed on Earth. All of these living beings depended upon the Earth and its natural resources for their survival. They took what they needed from the Earth, as necessitated by their nature, otherwise, they would have perished. The entire Earth and its natural resources were available and accessible to all in common. The Earth was an unowned, unlabelled, borderless, unpartitioned wilderness. There were no plots of land, towns, borders, walls, territories or countries. There was no property. There were no owners. There were no concepts of property or ownership. Nothing was written into the fabric of the Earth to suggest the existence of property or ownership. The whole Earth was an undefined, open expanse, accessible to all living beings, without any artificial restrictions on usage or movement. All living beings were free to travel, live and access land and natural resources anywhere on the planet. They had direct, equal, uncontrolled access, without payment or permission, affording tremendous independence and a bountiful natural inheritance. The planet treated all living beings with equal indifference, so none were excluded or had special privileges.
After human beings came into existence, they became one species among many to inhabit the Earth, all of which depended upon the Earth and its natural resources for their survival. Initially, human beings, like all other living beings, took what they needed from the Earth for their survival, but the Earth remained in common for all, without any part of the Earth being the property of any being. At some point, however, humans, alone as a species among all living beings, began to claim parts of the Earth as their own, inventing the concepts of ownership and property in relation to the Earth.
Since, almost the entire planet Earth has been claimed as the property of human beings, despite their having not created it. The only being, if it exists or existed, that could rightfully claim ownership, would be the creator itself, but no creator has appeared to claim their property. Nor did the creator, if it exists or existed, build a land registry or leave property deeds designating any part of the Earth to any living being. Therefore, in terms of natural ownership, the Earth is without an owner and without a living being with a natural right to ownership of it.
The Earth is not even the property of all living beings or human beings as a collective in common. Even if all living beings could give their permission, to allow ownership of the Earth, despite that proposition being practically impossible, they could not speak for future generations. Moreover, the consent of all living beings or human beings in common, rests upon the premises that the Earth is ownable and owned by all living beings or human beings in common, which is not the case because the Earth has no natural owner. The Earth was and will forever remain an unowned common, in common and accessible to all living beings that inhabit it, and the property of none, regardless of the claims to ownership by human beings.
Nature does not speak of ownership or property. Human beings speak of ownership and property, and they have imprinted their concepts of ownership and property upon the Earth. Yet without human beings, there would be no walls, borders, plots of land, towns, territories or countries. Human beings have imprinted lines and labels on the Earth, but without being upheld and maintained by human beings, the labels would be forgotten and the lines would soon become lost, for they depend upon the concepts and actions of human beings alone. Furthermore, if human beings were to disappear from the Earth, the concept of property in nature would disappear with them, for it exists in the consciousnesses of human beings alone. Nature, with time, would make the material imprint of property upon the Earth invisible, as all would return to as it was before: an unowned, unlabelled, borderless, unpartitioned wilderness.
The Earth has been transformed, through a process which I call propertisation, from a planet without property that was naturally unownable and an unowned, unpartitioned wilderness into a planet with property, which is legally ownable, owned by human beings and partitioned according to the will of human beings. Almost the entire planet has been propertised: almost every piece and part of the Earth has been claimed as property by human beings, all but destroying natural access for all living beings in common, fundamentally changing the relationship between living beings and planet Earth.
Supposing a living being has a natural right to life on Earth, it must also have a corresponding natural right to access the natural parts and pieces of the Earth, upon which its survival depends, as necessitated by its nature as a living being. Before propertisation, in absence of ownership and property, all living beings were able to exercise this natural right, which afforded them independent and direct access to the Earth and its natural resources, without distinction, payment, permission or restrictions on usage or movement. Propertisation prevents many living beings, including human beings, from exercising this natural right, but the natural right nevertheless persists, unabated. It is a natural right, like all others, that can never be taken away or made obsolete, for as long as living beings depend upon the Earth for their survival.
Propertisation has made possible the ownership of that which living beings on Earth are existentially dependent upon, thereby making living beings existentially dependent upon the human owners of the Earth and its natural resources. The human owners act as intermediaries between living beings and the Earth, all but preventing living beings from accessing the Earth directly, detaching them from their natural relationship with the Earth, placing a living being’s life, wellbeing and independence into the hands of those who claim nature as their property, as surely so, as if they had created or caused the existence of it themselves.
To make the privileges of ownership and property possible, from which a tremendous value is derived, exclusive access to and control over parts and pieces of the Earth for the owners of property are required. Exclusive access means shutting out all living beings, except for the legal owners and those who have been granted permission to access it by its legal owners. Exclusion is a fundamental and necessary characteristic of property and ownership: for something to belong to a particular human being or group of human beings, it cannot simultaneously remain in common: other living beings must necessarily be shut out from having access to it. This exclusion, however, prevents living beings from being able to exercise their natural right to access the Earth in common, making them existentially dependent upon gaining permission from the legal, human owners of natural property, meaning that that which sustains life is only legally accessible by permission, instead of by right, making the continuation of one's life a matter of permission, not a matter of right.
As the self-proclaimed owners of the Earth, human beings shape the planet according to their will, consequently subordinating the lives of all non-human beings below the lives of human beings, despite the planet being the only known liveable environment and home of the living beings that live upon it. The legal requirement to gain the permission of the owners of natural property, in order to be able to legally access it, excludes all non-human living beings from being able to legally and independently gain access to the Earth and natural resources owned by humans. This places non-living beings at the mercy of human beings: their survival is dependent upon the will of human beings and the scope of human intrusion into their lives, the parts of the Earth where they live, and the natural resources upon which they depend.
To create distinct units of particular property, the Earth has necessarily been partitioned. It is partitioned into countries and further partitioned into pieces of property within countries, known as legal property. To have the possibility of gaining permission to access legal property, one must first have permission to access the country within which it has been permitted its legal existence. Accessing the Earth and its natural resources is thus first dependent upon having or gaining permission to access the territories of a country and secondly dependent upon gaining the permission of the owners of legal property within a country.
The partitioning of the Earth and the requirement to gain permission to access the partitioned parts of the Earth divides living beings geographically by artificially restricting their movement and activity, severely limiting their freedom (especially that of terrestrial animals) to move around the whole planet, limiting access to that which they are existentially dependent upon, separating them from the entirety of their home and species. Furthermore, the installation of human-made physical boundaries to defend and demarcate the boundaries of property within and between countries has created insurmountable and movement-limiting obstacles for many living beings, destroying or abridging habitats, threatening the survival, independence and wellbeing of entire species.
As there is no natural right to ownership of any piece or part of the Earth, the partitioned parts of the Earth called countries have no natural right to exist or to assert authority over the parts of the Earth that they claim as their property. Their continued existence will always be conditional upon human will and physical force, to assert and defend the concepts of their identity and territory.
The existence of legal property within a country is dependent upon the continued existence of the country itself, its laws and the enforcement of its laws. The owners of legal property are subject to the authority of the country within which it exists and have permission to possess their property in accordance with the country’s laws. Those who take possession of legal property without the permission of its legal owners will potentially face the consequences of the laws formed by the government of the country within which the property exists. The governments of countries invariably demand a monopoly on the use of physical force within their territories, which cannot be resisted by individual living beings. Human beings that wish to live in compliance with the laws of countries (or wish to avoid the consequences of not doing so) are therefore compelled to obey the law and to comply with the demands of the owners of the Earth and its natural resources to gain access to that which their lives depend upon. To legally gain access to natural property within countries, one must gain the voluntary permission of its legal owners by satisfying the terms that they demand. The owners of legal property typically want to be paid money in exchange for ownership of or access to their property. This means that one’s level of access, to that which one is existentially dependent upon, is largely dependent upon one’s monetary resources. This creates a lifelong necessity to have and gain possession of ample monetary resources to be able to pay for access to that which one’s survival depends upon. To gain money legally and voluntarily, most human beings trade their work for the money of other human beings by providing value that other human beings are willing to pay for. Furthermore, to be able to work and continue working legally within a country and to avoid other potential legal consequences, one is typically obligated to surrender a significant portion of the money that one has earned through one’s work, to the government of the country within which one has worked.
Human beings invented property and have claimed the Earth as their property, but they have not shared the ownership of the Earth and its natural resources equally among their kind: a minority of human beings legally own the majority of the Earth and many human beings own nothing at all, despite all having an equal, natural claim to access the whole Earth and its natural resources. Equality of access for all living beings without distinction has been replaced by unequal access to the Earth and its natural resources. Human beings do not have equal legal rights to access the partitioned parts of the Earth called countries. Countries permit some human beings access to the parts of the Earth that they claim as their property, while excluding other human beings, despite the whole Earth being the home of all of the living beings that live upon it. Some human beings are permitted access to most countries on Earth, while others are excluded from most. Even if one has permission to access a country, accessing the legal property within a country is typically dependent upon one’s monetary resources. The distribution of money on Earth is extremely unequal, meaning some human beings have the ability to access or gain ownership of many pieces of territory within countries, while others do not. This inequality in the distribution of money among human beings perpetuates and entrenches inequality in the distribution of ownership, resulting in greater inequality of access and monetary resources.
The existence of property and its unequal ownership has made the majority of human beings existentially dependent upon the minority of human beings who own the Earth and its natural resources, subordinating the lives and survival of the majority of human beings and all other living beings to their will. The majority of human beings must serve the interests and satisfy the terms of the minority of human beings who own the majority of the Earth and its natural resources, even though naturally, no human being has a greater claim than any other, to that which is natural, which human beings did not create or cause to come into existence.
In summary, propertisation has changed the relationship between living beings and the Earth from one of unrestricted access for all in common to one of exclusion and access by permission, despite all living beings having an existential dependency upon the Earth and its natural resources and a natural right to access that which their survival depends upon. The natural right to access is prevented from being exercised to make possible the legal ownership of nature. Ownership affords privileged, exclusive access to the Earth and its natural resources for some human beings, at the expense of all other living beings who are excluded by default from accessing the Earth and its natural resources, except where permission has been granted by their legal owners. Human owners derive tremendous value from the exclusionary nature of property, value gained at the expense of all other living beings, in terms of their natural right to access and the value derived therefrom. The partitioning of the Earth into pieces of distinct property, in combination with the necessity to gain permission to access parts of the Earth, severely limits movement around and access to planet Earth of human beings and other living beings, threatening their survival, independence and wellbeing. Ownership of and access to the Earth and its natural resources is unequal, despite all living beings having had unrestricted access originally and an equal claim to the products of nature. The inequality of access to and ownership of natural property is fundamentally linked to the unequal distribution of monetary resources, due to the usage of money as the primary means of exchange for gaining permission to access natural property. Direct access to the Earth has been all but replaced by access by permission via human intermediaries, detaching human beings from their natural relationship with the Earth and making them existentially dependent upon the minority of human beings who legally own the Earth and its natural resources.
All of the aforementioned consequences of propertisation are enforced by the governments of the countries of the Earth, who demand a monopoly on the use of physical force within their territories, meaning that the foundational injustices resulting from propertisation are maintained by an overwhelming amount of force that cannot be resisted by individual living beings, compelling them to obey the rules of the minority of human beings who run their governments and own the Earth and its natural resources. All of these consequences of propertisation amount to a fundamental injustice, contrary to the way of nature, to the unjustified and unearned benefit of a minority of human beings, at the expense of the majority of their fellow human beings and other living beings. These consequences have been caused by a system invented, designed, operated, enforced and defended by human beings. The continued existence of the system is solely dependent upon human beings and therefore it is fully within the hands of human beings to change it.
Without an amendment to the existing system of property leading to a state more approximating justice for all human beings in perpetuity, that part of all property that has been derived from nature will be held unjustly. As natural property is the foundation of all material property, this would mean that no material property on Earth could be justly owned, regardless of whether the value of human labour had been added to it. As an illustration, if the material for making a table is not justly owned, the table itself cannot be justly owned, regardless of the ownership of the value created by the work of human beings, as a table cannot exist without natural resources. Nor can a house be justly owned, if the materials that make up the house were not justly acquired. Nor can a house stand justly on land, if that land is not justly owned. As such, injustice in the transfer of the natural from an unpropertised to a propertised state undermines all material property held by human beings. Without a remedy providing justice in accordance with the natural rights of individual human beings on Earth, legal property rights, in their current form, lack a foundation of justice, meaning that they are merely reliant upon the will and force of governments, contrary to the natural rights of the individual human beings over whom they govern.
Without the existence of a worldwide authority, able to create and enforce laws for all countries or the Earth as a whole, the existing system of property can only be amended by individual countries. Individual countries have the authority to reduce barriers to movement and access, in respect to their own territories, unilaterally or in agreement with other countries. Individual countries also have the authority to amend the laws governing legal property within their respective territories. Thus, it is possible to amend the existing system of natural property for the entire Earth, albeit on a country-by-country basis.
There is only one workable remedy I can conceive of, that would approximately translate the principles of natural access and the natural rights of human beings into a monetary system that maintains a property and ownership: to equally compensate all human beings monetarily in perpetuity, by taking money in perpetuity from the legal owners of property for the whole value of that part of their property which is natural.
Countries should assert and protect this legal right to compensation, in the same way that they assert and protect the legal right to ownership of property because compensation for the loss of natural access to the Earth and its natural resources is inextricably connected to the existence of legally ownable and legally owned property: it is impossible to bring legal property into existence without first removing natural access, as legal property and natural access cannot exist simultaneously for the same piece or part of the Earth. Indemnification, in this form, should therefore be an obligatory cost of propertisation. It is a cost that has hitherto not been paid, but must henceforth be paid, if property is to rest upon a foundation approximating justice.
The legal owners of natural property (including countries themselves) should perpetually have the value of the natural part of their property extracted from them. The extraction of value, or rather the confiscation of money, from the owners of natural property, is to take away the unearned, incorrectly appropriated value of natural property. The owners of natural property are the primary and direct beneficiaries of propertisation: they derive tremendous value from the privilege of having exclusive access to a particular part or piece of the Earth, which is only possible because other human beings have been excluded from being able to access the same particular part or piece of the Earth, despite all other human beings having as much of a natural right to access that piece or part of the Earth as the legal owner. The only value that would be eligible for confiscation is the entirety of that value which was created or caused by nature, meaning not by human beings. These principles apply to all types of natural property. Two essential types of natural property for human beings are land and natural resources. When it comes to land, a rental fee could be charged annually, based upon the rental value of the land with planning permission (which is created by governments on behalf of their citizens and artificially distorts the value of natural property) without having any human-made improvements made to it. When it comes to natural resources, only the monetary value of the resource in its natural form should be confiscated. For instance, with a fossil fuel like crude oil, human beings have a natural claim to the monetary value of unextracted crude oil, but they do not have a natural claim to the value created or caused by human beings through the discovery, extraction, refinement, storage or transportation of the oil. The exact methods used to extract value for different types of natural property are not important, as long as they approximately extract from its legal owners the entirety of that value created or caused by nature.
The money confiscated from the legal owners of natural property within a country should go into a country-specific fund. A country-specific fund should operate as an independent and distinct entity, separate from the government of a country, regardless of the beneficial acts a government may wish to do with the money, acting on behalf of human beings as individuals rather than as a collective. It was the natural access of individual living beings that was lost by the human inventions of property and ownership, not the natural access of living beings as a collective. The individual right to access is derived from the individual right to life, the individual nature of life itself, and the dependence of the individual upon the Earth and its natural resources for their individual survival.
Compensation should be given to all human beings in perpetuity and in equal measure, to honour the equal and perpetual natural right of all individual human beings to access the Earth and its natural resources for their survival. Recipients should be paid as frequently as practically possible because access to nature before propertisation would have been available at all times. Many human beings would likely become existentially dependent upon the compensation, thus reliability and stability would be essential characteristics of the fund. The amount paid to recipients would depend upon the income of the fund, the frequency of distribution and the cost of administering the fund. No deductions by any authority, using taxation or other measures, should be imposed upon the money confiscated from the legal owners of natural property, the fund itself, or on compensation distributed to human beings. Such deductions would constitute a loss of compensation for the loss of natural access, meaning the compensation due for the continued existence of legal property, within a particular country, would not have been paid in full, undermining the foundation of justice upon which legal property would rest. For the sake of clarification, children (regardless of their age) should have the same right to compensation as adults, and in equal measure. Their compensation could be managed by their parents until they reach adulthood. The eligibility of human beings to receive compensation from a country-specific fund, based on criteria such as citizenship or residency, would be a political matter to be decided by the governments of individual countries. Otherwise, problems would inevitably arise if, for instance, human beings from countries without compensation could receive compensation from countries with compensation. As all human beings have an equal, natural right to access the whole Earth and its natural resources, it does follow that all human beings should have an equal, legal right to receive compensation for the whole Earth and its natural resources. A worldwide fund redistributing the value extracted from all natural property on Earth and compensating all individual human beings on Earth equally would therefore be the ideal, but without the existence of a worldwide authority, this end must be pursued on a country-by-country basis.
For non-human living beings, humankind mustn't evade the fact that this planet is not the home of human beings alone. If we orient the planet around only one species, as we are presently doing, other living beings will suffer, despite their having no less of a natural claim to the planet and its resources than we do. Against our apparent inclination as a species, to want to possess everything for ourselves, we could allocate portions of the Earth to non-human living beings, untouched by and devoid of human beings, free from the intervention and control of human beings, leaving them completely wild, except in those rare cases, in modern times, where human beings are able to live in balance with the rest of nature. Many species will otherwise become extinct or their continued existence and ways of life will become threatened, and we may very well undermine the natural foundations upon which our survival and wellbeing as a species depend.
By Darren Ryan Murphy
12/07/2023