Ownership is the foundation of the deceit upon which all the other lies used to enslave us rest. The idea that you must pay the full value of an asset upfront before you can own it is the trick. This belief deliberately creates the need for money and establishes the privilege of those who are self-appointed as the authorized creators of money. Modern money is a debt created electronically out of thin air. It is the gasoline that drives the power of ownership and forces it into every law and institution of society. It is our almost religious loyalty to the perceived benefits of ownership that naively blind us to the cascade of harms that it creates.
To own a house, for example, you must arrange financing for the total value of the property before the ownership can be transferred. It doesn’t matter if you have enough of your own money saved or you borrow someone else’s money, the seller must be paid in full before the title to the property can be transferred. The same holds true for the purchase of a car, or business, or any major asset that’s value is greater than the purchaser’s savings. This upfront demand for payment in full entitles the money creators and money lenders, through finance, to legally own the vast majority of society’s major assets. Even though the asset is registered in the purchasers name, the legal owner is the one who put up the money for the purchase. Try missing a mortgage payment to see who really owns your property.
This illusion of ownership is the foundation that society is built upon. It is not only a legal foundation, it is also an almost fanatical emotional, moral foundation that people have been duped into revering as the key to freedom. Property rights decide who owns and controls all of the valuable assets in society. Without your own property, you remain at the mercy of the those who define the terms and conditions of your economic survival… your landlord, your employer, your government. Property rights are so deeply entrenched and passionately desired that we rarely investigate whether or not they are real, just or necessary.
Residential property ownership supposedly gives a person the right to enjoy the exclusive, private use of that property and the power to decide and control how the property is used. So many laws, bylaws and regulations now govern how we are allowed to use our own property that this idea is a joke. The government may at any time declare an emergency that gives them the legal right of eminent domain to seize your property and remove you from it. If you don’t pay your property taxes they can take your property from you. Your bank or lender can do the same thing if you fall behind on your loan payments. So how much security does property ownership really provide? Many people believe that home ownership protects them from exploitation by the market forces of rent but if you combine the costs of mortgage interest and property taxes there really isn’t much difference between the cost of owning and renting. Property ownership rights do benefit people who can access the capital or credit necessary to finance properties in order to use them to grow their wealth through rental income. Ownership used this way to exploit others who are unable to access finance themselves is anti-social and morally wrong.
The greatest deception of all in the practice of paying the full value of an asset upfront is buried deeply in the logic of depreciation. In order to buy a house that is built to last for 100 years, you must pay for it all upfront. If money is meant to represent wealth, why should the money (debt) created through a mortgage be paid back any faster than the actual depreciation rate of the asset. If our use of an asset only depreciates its value by 1% per year, why should we repay the money that was created to represent its value (the mortgage) any faster than that. Paying mortgage interest on the upfront value of a property enriches lenders with a continuous percentage of the total value of everything created. Our acceptance of this insistence to pay upfront the full value of all major assets with imaginary electronic money created out of thin air that expands our indebtedness by adding interest to the amount we must pay back is the primary reason why the money creators and lenders grow fantastically rich at the expense of the working poor.
There is another aspect to ownership that is as deeply fraudulent and evil. Another maxim that we have been taught to revere is the absolute right to own what we have ourself created. While this may have seemed logical when society began as a simple system of self-reliance, it has been corrupted through laws that unfairly bundle and award legal rights to those who can control and manipulate others through the use of money. Originally territories and natural resources were acquired through battle. The victors got to claim the assets for themselves or their monarchy and the losers lost all ownership rights. The use of force continues today but it is largely out of sight to the majority of the people in western nations. Wars are still used to justify ownership and control of land and resources. The fact that we simply take what we ourselves have not created has a profound effect on the concept of ownership. Governments use eminent domain to claim ownership over vast amounts of land and natural resources. Land and resource rights claim property and assets that humans had no hand in creating themselves. They simply expropriate things that rightfully belong to all living creatures, both alive now and yet to come, into a corrupt syndicate of control.
The myth of the self-made man follows a similar script. In a society sustained by artificial scarcity, through the authority and use of money, it is possible to force people to consent to giving up their own creativity and productivity for a pay check. When the resources needed for independent development and self-empowerment are kept out of reach financially, then people really have no other option than to agree to relinquish the ownership rights to what their labour produces. This is one of the foundational principles of capitalism. The story goes that in a free market economy we have the right to negotiate a fair value of our labour. One only has to look around to see that most wages are confined within a narrow range dictated by employers. Most people who are seeking employment in a highly competitive marketplace are desperate and have little room to negotiate for better wages. Accordingly they must relinquish their ownership rights to the goods and services that they produce for their pay cheque. The employer can then claim that workers have been fully and fairly paid for their services and have willingly transferred ownership of the assets produced to the owners of the company. Once a person can own the productivity of others the sky is the limit for ownership rights. This leads to the creation of pompous, self-infatuated personalities who claim ridiculous wealth and ownership rights to billions and even trillions of dollars. These are the self-made men (and rarely women) of legends, the role models and leaders of humanity that are steering society into an uncertain future. The whole concept of adding a “profit” on top of the value expropriated from others as an additional reward for the conquest of others should be repugnant to a civilized society. Instead it is worshipped as the engine of motivation and a reason to thrive.
In a similar way, those with exceptional talent or success who because of their popularity believe that they are worth far more than the average person, usually ignore and devalue the contributions of others who have made their success possible. No great surgeon, or developer, or celebrity could do the job they do without the thousands of other people who produce the knowledge and goods and services that they depend on. Society educates and trains them, provides food and energy to sustain them and produces everything they enjoy and need to operate. Without the collective support and contributions of others, even the most talented would not be able to function or provide for themselves. Consider this clip from James Corbett which summarizes the profound insights of Leonard Read’s parable “I, Pencil”.
To summarize, the trail of deceit flows from the worship of ownership, to the public acceptance of the necessity for upfront payment, to the corrupt system of debt-money dependency that feeds on the upfront money scheme, to the inevitable willingness to relinquish our rightful claims to the assets we actually produce, and their expropriation by a criminal class of bandits that censor and control the deceit. It’s time to abolish debt-based money, to take back our own productivity, and abandon the illusion of the security of ownership. There is a better way…
to be continued
In Australia, our house titles/deeds whatever have gone digital, so can easily disappear!