The Case For Universal Property

I have been against inheritance for over a decade (here, here). It's one of the major roots of all evils in the world. Peter Barnes makes a brilliant case on this topic in his new book Ours: The Case for Universal Property. 

I never knew Thomas Paine proposed a similar idea 1795!! We haven't learn much in the past 250 years! 

To be clear, I think that the property shouldn't be inherited by any of the relatives of the deceased person. That is quintessential to have a clean slate for every adult sans any privilege based on sheer random luck of being born in the "right" family. 

The excerpts from the book: 

Taken as a whole, property rights are akin to gravity: they curve econ­omic space-time.  Their tugs and repulsions are every­where, and noth­­­ing can avoid them.  And just as water flows inex­ora­bly toward the ocean, so money, goods and power flow inexorably toward pro­per­ty rights.  Gov­ern­­ments can no more staunch these flows than King Canute could halt the tides.   

That said, the most oft-forgotten fact about property rights is that they do not exist in nature; they are constructs of human minds and soci­e­ties.  The assets to which they apply may exist in nature, but the rights of humans to do things with them, or prevent others from doing them, do not.  Their design and allocation are entirely up to us.

In this book, I take our existing fabric of property rights as both a given and merely the latest iteration in an evolutionary process that has been and will continue to be altered by living humans.  Future iterations of the fabric will therefore be a product not only of the past, but also of our imagi­na­tion and political will in the future.  And, while eliminating exist­ing pro­perty rights is difficult, adding new ones is less so. 

Before we talk about universal property, we need to look at co-inherited wealth, for that is what universal property is based on.  

A full inventory of co-inherited wealth would fill pages.  Consider, for starters, air, water, topsoil, sunlight, fire, photo­syn­thesis, seeds, elec­­tri­city, minerals, fuels, cultivable plants, domesticable animals, law, sports, religion, calendars, recipes, mathema­tics, jazz, libraries and the internet.  Without these and many more, our lives would be incalculably poorer.  

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The idea of universal property isn’t new.  It was the invention of  Thomas Paine, the English-born essayist who inspired Ameri­ca’s revo­lution and much else.  Indeed, virtually all the ideas in this book can be traced back to a single essay he wrote in the winter of 1795/96.

Paine led an extraordinary life.  Unlike other American Founders, he wasn’t born to privilege.  The son of a Quaker corset-maker, he emi­grated to Philadelphia in 1774 and found himself in the thick of pre-revolu­tionary ferment.  Inspired, he wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense, which quickly sold half a million copies (in a nation of three million) and transformed the prevail­ing discontent with King George III into ardour for independence and a united democratic republic. 

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It was during his years in France that Paine wrote his last great essay, Agrarian Justice.  In Rights of Man, Paine had criticized the English Poor Laws and argued for what today would be called a welfare state, in­clud­­ing universal education, pensions for the elderly and employment for the urban poor, all paid for by taxes.  In Agrarian Justice he went farther, arguing that poverty should be systemically eliminated with universal income from jointly inherited property.

There are two kinds of property, he wrote: “firstly, property that comes to us from the Creator of the universe — such as the Earth, air and water; and secondly, artificial or acquired property — the inven­tion of men.”  Because humans have different talents and luck, the latter kind of property must necessarily be distributed unequally, but the first kind belongs to everyone equally.  It is the “legitimate birth­right” of every man and woman. 

To Paine, this was more than an abstract idea; it was something that could be implemented within a laissez faire economy.  But how?  How could the Earth, air and water possibly be distributed equally to every­one?  Paine’s practical answer was that, though the assets them­selves can’t be distributed equally, income derived from them can be. 

There needs to be a clear demarkation between identifying a problem and proposing a solution. My hypothesis on why Thomas Paine failed was because his problem identification was brilliant (air, water, earth belongs to everyone) and he should have stopped there. Providing a solution (which was plain stupid) shifts the focus to proposed solution while the actual problem gets sidelined into abyss (for 250 years and still counting). 

I think, the same thing is happening with this book (for starters, the word "universal" is a polarizing). I don't agree with solution. 

Personally, I understand inheritance is a 800 pound gorilla that unleashes lifelong cancer. All things this blue planet provides should be equally shared by human animals and non-human animals; we are all guests on this planet for a short time. We should be grateful for this opportunity and enjoy it without destroying and claiming ownership. 

As of today, I only know what we currently have is a problem and I have no idea how to solve this. We should amplify this inheritance problem so much that future generations can hear and see this clearly as the biggest problem and maybe they can propose few novel solutions (which isn't socialist).