Can you own air? How much? Is there a limit? Can you own all the air? What about water? What about land?

Can one person own the whole planet Earth, or any other planet? Does money allow anyone to own anything if they can pay for it? How can they pay for something if no one owns it to sell it to them?

Can someone "claim" ownership of something simply because they are the "first" to get there?

Someone is the first to arrive in North America hundreds of years ago, so they can just claim the land as theirs to own? Really?

Someone is first to arrive at an idea, so they can just claim the idea as theirs to own? Really?

There are limits to what can be owned.

_Source

The one thing we certainly do own, is ourselves. The principles of self-ownership is where ownership starts. If anyone owns anything at all, it's themselves. Certainly, no one can own you, you own yourself. You have no right to claim ownership over another, and that includes non-human animals. We are gravely lost in our way of living with respect to how we think we can own others. It's only recently in human existence that we have overcome the delusion of thinking we can own another human, but we still have work to do to realize how deluded and megalomaniac we are towards other animals.

Apart from the bodies that belong to individual agents (animals), what can be owned by an agent of will? The fruits of our labor. What we use our agency to produce is ours, unless we enter contracts to exchange the fruits of our labor for something else, such as work for money. If we make a chair without being employed, then that chair is ours to use, exchange with or give to others

We can also own what we collect for our personal use. A bird can collect material and build/produce a nest. That is the fruit of their labor. A squirrel can collect nuts for them to eat, and hide it locations to gather later when needed. That is the fruit of their labor. Humans can collect rainwater for personal use, collect sun energy for personal use, etc.

You can't collect all the rainwater in an area, depleting the environment of it's water source and negatively impacting the stability of the environment, simply to make money for some venture you have, or to sell the water yourself. That is exceeding the limits of use. When people lack self-control in this domain, there are laws created by local communities to impose control on others and prevent this type of greed and domination of an area.

The same should apply to land really. How was someone able to buy hundreds of hectares of land? Because they have money? Ok. But how did the person or organization or body of authority over a large area of land get ownership in the first place? Sometime long ago, someone "claimed" the land as theirs, simply by "virtue" of them being the "first" to get there and laying claim to it. Then people fought for the so-called "right" to own land and tried to steal and conquer lands that others claimed was theirs, murdering people to take and dominate more land that no one has a "right" to own in the first place.

Going by this flawed idea of ownership, everything around us in the universe can be owned. Is that how we really want to live? It's a first come, first serve modality of living. Then everyone that comes into existence later, can't own anything themselves, as it's all owned by people who laid "claim" to it, simply because they were first. It's a retarded way of doing things.

There are is legitimate ownership, based on use by an agent, as mentioned for the fruits of our labor. What we can use ourselves, we can own for use. That doesn't mean we can go around claiming ownership of many things simply because we use it at X moment in time, like going to one area and owning it because we have lots of machinery that we own to use it all up, to use all the land, trees, water, etc. No. The land area that you can use for personal living is what you can legitimately own. Others can't steal your land that you live on and use for living.

This way, everyone can actually own land and live off the land, and actually be free. The former method of laying claim to land we don't even use for our personal lives, is why we are in the mess we are now, not able to live off the land and be free from control. People long ago laid claim to land simply because they were there first, or they dominated other people's to take the land from them.

Theses people formed groups, and made external governing authorities to attempt to legitimize their rule over the land and over others. Monarchs owned, dominated and rules all the land as the master over all in it. Lords governed the lands and all in it. And regular people worked and had to give part of the fruits of their labor to the master/owner. They weren't free and able to live off the land, they had to pay for it, simply because someone else long ago decided they were the owner of the land they didn't personally use, and they formed groups of authority to prevent people from living free.

Fast forward to today, and we have the same thing in part. We can't go to some land somewhere and use it ourselves for our personal use and living. All land is owned. The whole fucking planet is owned. We that come after, have to buy things from others who don't even use the land themselves, they just simply "own" it. Everything is like this, and unless we change it, it will stay like this, and everything a human puts their feat or hands on can end up this way.

If someone arrived at another planet, could they simply claim the whole planet for themselves? It's ridiculous to think in the affirmative. No work was done to earn what they have, only a claim on ownership that isn't real. All the ownership on our planet was done this way.

About the owning air, no we don't own all the air. No one does. No one owns all the water on the planet. No one owns all the land. We make use of the air for personal use to live. We can't lay claim to the air just because we were the first to be somewhere. We can make use of water for living, but we don't own the water somewhere just because we were the first to be there. And we can make use of land for living in our personal lives, not to simply own for the sake of owning and not using.

And as for "intellectual property", you can't own an idea just because you were the first to get think it. Ideas are timeless and don't belong to anyone. This is another mindfuck we have created for ourselves. You can be the first to think of something. OK. But the only reason we accept idea of intellectual property is because of our focus on a scarcity mindset, on survival and making money to survive and be wealthy. If we lived another way in abundance, we wouldn't be so dominating over ideas and would seek to benefit ourselves and everyone with them.

We are so deluded in our concept of ownership that we create master-slave relationships all around us. We enslave other humans, we enslave other animals, we become masters over others, over the land, over ideas, and demand through our belief in authority that others have to pay us for the right to live and exist, for the right to use things that we don't even use ourselves, that we simply think we can "own" for some reason that doesn't really make sense.

It didn't used to be this way, long before humans got lost in our self-deluded abstract thinking. You could only occupy and use land that you could use. You could be free to live without paying tribute to authorities or owners, with taxes, or food, or whatever. We are the only animal on the planet that lives in a deluded construct that prevents us from being free to live off the land. We have enslaved ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. We fool ourselves.

---

Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.

---

_{If you appreciate and value the content, please consider: Upvoting, Sharing or Reblogging below.
me for more content to come!}

---

_{My goal is to share knowledge, truth and moral understanding in order to help change the world for the better. If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page.}