All Dubya's talk of the "ownership society" brings to my mind the obsession with ownership that seems to afflict denizens of the US even more.... All Dubya's talk of the "ownership society" brings to my mind the obsession with ownership that seems to afflict denizens of the US even more than it does the rest of the world--though one can't deny that it is a universal malady!

Dubya is speaking mostly of stock ownership, but we seem to be fixated on owning the entire world, through direct purchase and through the "privatization" mania, which is a radical extension of the old Enclosure Acts that destroyed the commons two centuries ago, and provided a pseudo-legal basis for the rule of an economic elite of owner/managers over a vast horde of labor providers.

Recent attempts to retain that paradigm while distributing some crumbs of ownership to the lower and middle classes have resulted primarily in sprawl and a thralldom to unsustainable consumption, extended hours of work to support those crumbs of property at the expense of the leisure to enjoy it, and the destruction of community itself as each man retreats to his lonely suburban castle-icon at the end of another exhausting day.

It's an interesting effort to make us all complicit in robbing the commons, and thus justify, in our minds, the much greater robberies of those with the means to appropriate the world's resources on a wholesale basis. Yet to me, ownership of the commons is immoral. And by that I refer in this case to ownership of land.

Land, like air, water, and mineral resources, is part of the planetary commons, the right and realm of all creatures, as well as the necessary foundation of our physical, as well as emotional and economic, existence.

Any exclusive use, even if supported by convention or contract, constitutes then a "taking" from others who might (and in the past, did) have use of that resource, and that taking must incur a compensation.

As it happens, there is a theoretical (and in some places practical) framework for managing that compensation to the benefit of the society as a whole and the person or entity paying this "land rent," as it's sometimes called. When applied, it has seemed to act as a brake on sprawl and an incentive to high-quality, higher-density development, resulting in efficient, prosperous, and well-balanced communities.

I am referring to Henry George's concepts here, and I suggest you visit the excellent website, Progress Report, for a thorough elucidation of both the concept and the practice--in particular, this article on land rent. (I linked to the last article of three, since it links back to theh first two.)