Would You Sell Your Mother?
No one should own the Earth. We need long-term leases on land
“Under capitalism, all land is seen as a warehouse of potential commodities to be sold to the highest bidder.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Can a person own a piece of their mother? No? Then, how can we claim to own land? Land is Earth, the giver of all life. We didn’t create it; it created us.
Dictionary.com defines ownership as “The total body of rights to use and enjoy a property, to pass it on to someone else as an inheritance, or to convey it by sale.” They could have added the right to deny other people its use. How does anyone earn the right to exploit their creator, no matter who the process harms?
Owners no doubt spent money for those rights, but whom did they pay? How did the seller gain ownership? They bought it from somebody else, who had bought it from somebody else, until you get back to the original owner, a conqueror or King who stole it from the indigenous people.
Land ownership is possession of stolen goods. When a landowner claims a right to log a forest, mine coal under the ground, or build a chemical plant, because they bought the land, they are confessing to a crime and planning new crimes.
