RD

@intransitivelie@beige.party https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/110357255122736031

@HakeemG @micchiato "I'm not interested in ideological BS or delusional fantasies." Me neither. That's why I don't accept presidents, billionaires, or borders as things we should support or believe in. They are based on ideological BS and delusional fantasies, and as long as they exist there is no way you're going to "leave [your] kids a better world". No. Fucking. Way.

@HakeemG @micchiato

@HakeemG@mastodon.social

@Gustodon @Quasit

@HakeemG @micchiato LOL, that's like asking who was a good slave owner 🤦‍♂️

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai

I don't think that taxing wealth down to size will ever happen (because wealth is power and the richest people in the world will not allow it), but even if it could somehow be achieved I cannot endorse that approach because I do not accept that ends justify means (in fact I think there are only means, no "ends"). Taxation is a means that depends on many things that I fundamentally oppose.

This doesn't mean I would oppose increased taxes on the rich if it were to happen somehow,* just that I would not feel right about diverting energy and effort into trying to make that happen as a solution because, however positive it might seem, it would depend on perpetuating systems and power structures that I utterly oppose.

* edit: though it could mean that, depending on what was to be done with those funds.

@HamonWry@mastodon.world @timagal@mastodon.social

@olliestudio45@theforkiverse.com @AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social

So-called "free market" is a fantasy caricature that does not accurately reflect reality.

@magitweeter@mastodon.social

thread continues here:
@magitweeter@mastodon.social

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @maddad@mastodon.world @MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social

Frederick Douglass was also a slave:

"The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other". Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as arising from the unequal bargaining power between the ownership/capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer class within a compulsory monetary market:

"No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the shopkeeper."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @drmambobob@ecoevo.social

Owning stock shares is not the same as ownership of the corporation. Corporations really own themselves.

https://lpeproject.org/blog/privatizing-sovereignty-socializing-property-what-economics-doesnt-teach-you-about-the-corporation/

@AlexanderKingsbury @derPUPE ...says the guy who refuses to think outside the box of a dictionary definition and state-enforced memes.

@cbmilstein@kolektiva.social https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/116182949316394491

@cbmilstein@kolektiva.social https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/116178561882089116

@futurebird More creepiness during the last couple minutes: the already excessive eye blinks suddenly become very unnatural, like they're happening in reverse.

@CrimethInc https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/116182949316394491

@markhughes None of that is true, none of that is what I was pointing out. Do you want me to hit you with a ton of links to back up what I'm saying?

@markhughes When has law been anything other than a tool/weapon of the powerful? When has there ever been a world with accountability for the powerful?

If you found this thread to be helpful and would like to share it out in the real world, attached is a file you can use to print fliers or stickers to get this important info out there.

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social @violetmadder@kolektiva.social @frrstbrwn@theatl.social This is an example of how the English language can be exploited to justify treating human beings like wood. Truly malevolent.

@hosford42@techhub.social @frrstbrwn@theatl.social That's no fun! I get a kick out of reading posts with capitalism hashtag and thinking "oh yeah, that piece of shit will chime in here", and poof, there he is. I like calling him out every once in a while. But I totally get blocking that bullshit.

@AlexanderKingsbury@mastodon.social AKingsbury, either the biggest sucker in the fediverse, or an extremely heinous and insidious weaponization operated by Capital, the God of this hellworld. Fortunately not very effective at all 🤡 @frrstbrwn@theatl.social

@harmonicarichard@techhub.social @broadwaybabyto@zeroes.ca

@NateProle@kolektiva.social btw, if you'd like to share this thread with people out in the "real world" I made the attached flier (it points to a copy of the thread on another instance). There is also a 1up pdf version you can DL here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s9x9jsrga0rnhh8p35toy/How-did-we-get-here-flier-1up.pdf?rlkey=0mabr58b7owo5sehhatq4nn3e&st=qnkvxai5&dl=0

@NateProle@kolektiva.social Yeah, I've been working on compiling it all into a single document that could be archived offline, but it's a huge project and mostly on the back burner now due to other pressing matters in my life.

@DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social @breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social @jensorensen@mastodon.social >>Ford, producer of the iconic Model T a century ago, no longer sells any sedans in its home market.<< But Ford's website says "Ford has quite an impressive line-up of new cars"! "The Family of Ford Cars": Mustang. That's it. 🤦‍♂️ https://www.ford.com/new-cars/

@zombywoof@mastodon.org.uk @Jedigirl@mindly.social

More info: https://www.science.org/content/article/worldwide-survey-kills-myth-man-hunter

Here is another reference about roles of men and women in past societies: Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers https://phys.org/news/2023-06-shattering-myth-men-hunters-women.html

@AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social Thank you for being part of its inspiration!

"Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

Highlights:

• The common notion that extreme poverty is the “natural” condition of humanity and only declined with the rise of capitalism rests on income data that do not adequately capture access to essential goods.

• Data on real wages suggests that, historically, extreme poverty was uncommon and arose primarily during periods of severe social and economic dislocation, particularly under colonialism.

• The rise of capitalism from the long 16th century onward is associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality.

• In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, wages and/or height have still not recovered.

• Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began only around the 20th century. These gains coincide with the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements.

Abstract:

"This paper assesses claims that, prior to the 19th century, around 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty (defined as the inability to access essential goods), and that global human welfare only began to improve with the rise of capitalism. These claims rely on national accounts and PPP exchange rates that do not adequately capture changes in people’s access to essential goods. We assess this narrative against extant data on three empirical indicators of human welfare: real wages (with respect to a subsistence basket), human height, and mortality. We ask whether these indicators improved or deteriorated with the rise of capitalism in five world regions - Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and China – using the chronology put forward by world-systems theorists. The evidence we review here points to three conclusions. (1) It is unlikely that 90% of the human population lived in extreme poverty prior to the 19th century. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year, except during periods of severe social dislocation, such as famines, wars, and institutionalized dispossession – particularly under colonialism. (2) The rise of capitalism caused a dramatic deterioration of human welfare. In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered. (3) Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems."

edited 8 Oct 2024 to add this side note:

You may encounter pro-capitalism arguments that offer supposed evidence from data presented at a site called "Our World In Data" (often quoted by mainstream journalists). Do not take anything from that site at face value! The data presented is often incomplete, cherry-picked, manipulated, and not standardized properly. Biases are ignored and uncertainties treated as fact. Here is a revealing article about the people and agenda behind that site:

The Unbearable Anthropocentrism of Our World in Data https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-unbearable-anthropocentrism-of-our-world-in-data/

21/30

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on Hunger https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110224911687712240 20/30

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on Poverty https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109463692215268151 19/30

Ok, so capitalism can be a tad harsh 🙄 , but we are told it's worth it because capitalism has "lifted billions out of poverty!" and that even the poor of today are wealthier than kings of old. Let's unpack these claims and take a close look at the concepts of "wealth" and "poverty". @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on Wealth https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110043938013023300 18/30

Here is @AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social on the role of state violence in market society: State Violence, The Diamond/Water Paradox, and an Invisible Axiom of Classical Economics https://chez-risk.in/2023/01/29/state-violence-the-diamond-water-paradox-and-an-invisible-axiom-of-classical-economics/ 17/30

Another quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property": "No argument about the freedom to appropriate can support the market economy, because capitalism makes people no freer to appropriate property than the common property regime, public property regime, or any other system. A person born into the contemporary market economy is as unfree to appropriate land as a person born to a common property regime or a public property regime that allows no private landownership. The right to appropriate scarce resources, as economist define the term (i.e. anything with a monetary value), is inconsistent with a system of equal freedom from coercion. The propertyless today are not and cannot be equally free to appropriate. "Lomasky’s “liberty to acquire” holdings actually means the “liberty” to purchase goods. That’s not a liberty at all. That’s a positive opportunity. The goods you are expected to buy are made out of resources you have forcibly been excluded from using yourself. The chance to take orders from one resource owner so that you can “earn” the right to buy goods from other resource owners might be useful, but it is not freedom from some form of coercion that exists in societies with a common property regime." 16/30

The result of all this has been to force us into a "market society". @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on the imposition of markets and the demolition of society: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110182089285428195 @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on why money is so insidiously pervasive in virtually every aspect of life: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113854777439943148 One of the foundational falsehoods underlying capitalist ideology is the claim that money emerged at the grass-roots level as a natural and inevitable progression from supposedly pre-existing "barter economies"; a clever hack that benefited everyone. Anthropologists and archaeologists know this is not true, but orthodox economics and other conventional institutions still promote this myth routinely. Here is a recent study further debunking this pervasive indoctrination: Ancient tally sticks across three civilizations challenge myths about money https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ancient-tally-civilizations-myths-money.html See also chapter 2 "The Myth of Barter" from David Graeber's essential book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" https://we.riseup.net/assets/393727/David+Graeber+Debt+The+First+5+000+Years.pdf It is true that various forms of Indigenous currency arose independently in many places around the world, but those systems were fundamentally different from money as we know it today. Here is an informative article about that: Indigenous Currency Systems: From Wampum Belts to Trade Valuations https://archive.ph/wMhyt 15/30

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social - An investigation into money, credit, and the social role of landlords: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110108848618951452 14/30

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on art as an enclosed commons: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110162427730407993 13/30

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on the enclosure of our roads and car dependency as capitalist rent: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110123111646315678 (See also: What We Lost When Cars Won Americans once feared cars. Now we can’t imagine life without them. https://grist.org/culture/cars-crashes-books-culture/ for more horrifying details of car culture see this article which fleshes out the statistics very well though it falls short by only dealing with superficial causes and solutions: We Should Be Building Cities for People, Not Cars https://devonzuegel.com/post/we-should-be-building-cities-for-people-not-cars 12/30

Here is an insightful, extensive and detailed look at the history of Enclosure in Britain and the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons": A Short History of Enclosure in Britain https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain 11/30

With all the above context in mind let us examine the process of Enclosure. Here is an introduction to "The Tragedy of the Commons" from @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109449321659418326 10/30

Looking further back we see that humans all over the globe have been actively managing our environment successfully and sustainably for many millennia, which reveals falsehoods embedded in the Lockean (white, European, patriarchal) view of humanity, history and land use. From the research article "People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years": "The current biodiversity crisis is often depicted as a struggle to preserve untouched habitats. Here, we combine global maps of human populations and land use over the past 12,000 y with current biodiversity data to show that nearly three quarters of terrestrial nature has long been shaped by diverse histories of human habitation and use by Indigenous and traditional peoples. With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies. Global land use history confirms that empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities will be critical to conserving biodiversity across the planet. "Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis." https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023483118 Those in power have been telling us that *we* (people in general or "human nature") are the problem. Popular narratives insist that humans and agriculture of any kind are intrinsically and inevitably destructive to the biosphere. The actual evidence tells us otherwise: @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on "Tells" (archeology): "And here these farmers sat, year after year, millennia after millennia, in one place. These were people working with the same Neolithic agricultural package, growing the same sorts of wheat and raising the same sorts of sheep, in the fields around their tells. They did not die out. They did not exhaust their soils to extinction. Many of them — especially the tells in the Danube Basin that constitute “Old Europe” — developed no states, as some people believe is inevitable from wheat cultivation. If they did leave, they left for reasons unrelated to the success of their way of life. But, as I noted, some of these tells are still inhabited, like the central citadel of Aleppo in Syria." https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113367947919067023 The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? -Across the globe, vast swathes of land are being left to be reclaimed by nature. To see what could be coming, look to Bulgaria- Many of the landscapes people now tend to think of as untouched, from the savanna lands of equatorial Africa to the deep Amazon rainforest, have already been deeply transformed by human presence. “The essential role that people play in ecology is the critical thing, and it’s been ignored,” Ellis says. “The most biodiverse places left on Earth – this is almost universally true – have Indigenous people in them. Why? Well, they conserve a lot of that biodiversity and actually produce it. They maintain that heterogeneous landscape.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/nov/28/great-abandonment-what-happens-natural-world-people-disappear-bulgaria On Navajo Lands, Ancient Ways Are Restoring the Parched Earth https://e360.yale.edu/features/navajo-natural-infrastructure-dryland-streams Traditional protection proves more successful for clams in American Samoa https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/traditional-protection-proves-more-successful-for-clams-in-american-samoa/ Milpas Based on the agronomy of the Maya and of other Mesoamerican peoples, the milpa system is used to produce crops of maize, beans, and squash without employing artificial pesticides and artificial fertilizers... A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucuna ... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary... The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, "is one of the most successful human inventions ever created." The concept of milpa is a sociocultural construct rather than simply a system of agriculture. It involves complex interactions and relationships between farmers, as well as distinct personal relationships with both the crops and land. For example, it has been noted that "the making of milpa is the central, most sacred act, one which binds together the family, the community, the universe ... [it] forms the core institution of Indian society in Mesoamerica and its religious and social importance often appear to exceed its nutritional and economic importance." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milpa Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths First described over 120 years ago in Brazil, Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are expanses of dark soil that are exceptionally fertile and contain large quantities of archaeological artifacts... Archaeological research provides clear evidence that their widespread formation in lowland South America was concentrated in the Late Holocene, an outcome of sharp human population growth that peaked towards 1000 BP https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31064-2 The Supposedly Pristine, Untouched Amazon Rainforest Was Actually Shaped By Humans "Perhaps [...] the very biodiversity we want to preserve is not only due to thousands of years of natural evolution but also the result of the human footprint on them," Iriarte says. "The more we learn, the more the evidence point to the latter." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pristine-untouched-amazonian-rainforest-was-actually-shaped-humans-180962378/ Lost Cities of the Amazon Discovered From the Air https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lost-cities-of-the-amazon-discovered-from-the-air-180980142/ Genetic Evidence Overrules Ecocide Theory of Easter Island Once And For All https://www.sciencealert.com/genetic-evidence-overrules-ecocide-theory-of-easter-island-once-and-for-all Easter Island study casts doubt on theory of ‘ecocide’ by early population https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/21/easter-island-study-casts-doubt-on-theory-of-ecocide-by-early-population The truth about Easter Island: a sustainable society has been falsely blamed for its own demise https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own-demise-85563 Debunking the “Ecocide” Myth: The Real Story of Easter Island https://scitechdaily.com/debunking-the-ecocide-myth-the-real-story-of-easter-island/ Climate change, not human population growth, correlates with Late Quaternary megafauna declines in North America https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8 New research upends theory that Indigenous Australians hunted large animals to extinction https://archive.ph/XuewE https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250078 Study finds Indigenous people cultivated hazelnuts 7,000 years ago, challenging modern assumptions Researcher says evidence challenges narratives of wild, untouched landscapes in what is now British Columbia "What this is saying is ... intentional agricultural-type food production is part of our heritage for longer than ancient Egypt." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-hazelnut-research-1.7392860 All these examples just scratch the surface. Here is an absolutely mammoth thread from @pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green with many more examples from around the world showing "that the history of our relationship to nature has not been one of unilinear destruction; and that destruction is not 'human nature'": Posts 1-21: https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109410840331192595 Thread continues here (posts 22-42): https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109508169070569262 Thread continues here (posts 43-52): https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109535265169676919 Note: some of the links in Pauline's thread are no longer working, but I was able to find alternatives. If you are seriously diving into her thread, you can check this post for alternate links: https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/114032517680702524 Rather than human nature, agriculture, or over-population, the cause of our current nightmare of environmental destruction originated with a specific group of people who had the power to enforce their exploitation and pillaging over the entire globe eventually. We'll look more later at the disastrous results of colonialism and capitalism. 9/30

Let's spend some time looking at Enclosure both historically and as a continuing reality. We'll start with a quick look at one small example of how people organized life on their own just before having it turned upside down by Enclosure: @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on the Irish rundale system of common property: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110219111305684330 8/30

More on Locke and others like him from "The Prehistory of Private Property": "Locke could hardly have been unaware that his theory provided a justification for an ongoing process disappropriating European commoners and indigenous peoples alike or that that process amounted to redistribution without compensation from poor to rich. This observation raises serious doubts that the principles contemporary propertarians have inherited from him reflect some deeper commitment to nonaggression or noninterference. Lockeanism eventually revolutionized the world’s conception of what property was by portraying full liberal ownership as if it were something natural that had always existed, even though it was only then being established by enclosure and colonialization. Lockean and propertarian *stories* might have been more important than their *theories* in that effort. The “original appropriator” in Locke’s story resembles European colonialists rather than prehistoric indigenous North Americans who first farmed the continent. Locke’s appropriator establishes the fee-simple rights that colonial governments (building a global cash economy) tend to establish rather than the complex, overlapping rights indigenous farmers in stateless societies tend to establish." "The intent of Blackstone, Locke, Grotius, and other early modern property theorists was not to describe what property actually was or even what kind of institutions most people wanted at the time. Instead, it was “a common strategy of claiming the ground of property so as to preempt serious consideration of alternatives like common property” [Olsen,E. J. 2019, “The Early Modern ‘Creation’ of Property and its Enduring influence,” European Journal of Political Theory, Online Early, 1–23]. In that way, private property theory furnished propaganda for the enclosure and colonial movements that forcibly established that institution around the world." https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b 7/30

Here are two short threads from @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social on the Labor Theory of Property and John Locke: https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/110164109548612913 https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/109465708774475922 6/30

Next we're going to meet a monster and do our best to kill it. This monster is the ghost of the man John Locke, a philosopher known as "the father of liberalism". We're going to spend some time dragging Locke through the mud because his ideas became a linchpin in our whole system of property, justifying atrocities that continue even as we read this together now. It's not that Locke was single-handedly responsible for our plight, but he does serve as an example of the kind of men who used high-sounding words and "moral" arguments to draw us all into a nightmare that enables *them* to "live the dream". We'll start with this excerpt from an article by political economist @blair_fix@mastodon.online "Can the World Get Along Without Natural Resources?" (by all means read the entire excellent article, but for now this excerpt serves our purposes): "The original sin From its outset, the field of political economy was not designed, in any meaningful sense, to understand resource flows. Instead, it was designed to explain *class relations*. The goal of early political economists was to justify the income of different classes (workers, landowners and capitalists). They chose to do so by rooting this income in the ‘production of wealth’. What followed from this original sin was centuries of conflating income with ‘production’. This conflation is what allowed Robert Solow to proclaim that the world could “get along without natural resources”. Let’s retrace this flawed thinking. It starts with a failure to understand property rights. Political economists largely understand property as a productive asset — a way of thinking that dates to the 17th-century work of John Locke (or perhaps earlier). Locke proclaimed that property rights stemmed from ‘natural law’. A man, Locke argued, has a natural right to own what he ‘produces’: _____ ...every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. _____ Locke’s thinking became known as the ‘labor theory of property’. This theory (and its derivatives) is why political economists misunderstand the role of natural resources. Here’s what happens. If we accept Locke’s argument that you have a right to own what you produce, it follows that your wealth should stem from your output. Most political economists after Locke accepted this reasoning (at least in part). That meant that the debate was not about whether wealth was ‘produced’, but rather, about *which* ‘factors of production’ were ‘productive’. The physiocrats thought land alone was productive. Marx insisted that only labor was productive. Neoclassical economists proclaimed that, alongside labor, capital too was productive. The debate between these schools played out over centuries. The problem, though, is that it’s based on a flawed premise. The debate assumes that value is ‘produced’. (It’s not.) To see the flaw, let’s go back to Locke’s theory of property rights. Notice that it’s not really a ‘theory’ in the scientific sense. It doesn’t explain *why* property rights exist. It explains why they *ought* to exist. Locke proclaimed that a man ought to own what he produces. That is his ‘natural right’. This change from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ is important. It means that we’re not dealing with a scientific theory. We’re dealing with a system of *morality*. The philosopher David Hume was perhaps the first to understand this moral sleight of hand. He noticed that moral philosophers made their arguments more convincing by framing what ‘ought’ to be in terms of what ‘is’. Here’s Hume reflecting on this trick: _____ In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. _____ With David Hume’s observation in mind, let’s return to Locke’s ‘theory’ of property. It’s not a ‘theory’ at all — it’s a moral treatise. According to Locke, we *ought* to own what we produce. But that doesn’t mean that we *do*. To see the consequences of this mistake, we need an actual scientific theory of property rights — a theory that explains why property exists, not why it ‘ought’ to exist. The most convincing theory of private property, in my opinion, comes from the work of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. To understand property, Nitzan and Bichler argue that we should turn Locke’s idea on its head. Property isn’t a ‘natural right’. It’s an act of *power*. Property, Nitzan and Bichler observe, is an act of exclusion. If I own something, that means that I have the right to exclude others from using it. It’s this exclusionary power that defines private property. Here are Nitzan and Bichler describing this act: _____ The most important feature of private ownership is not that it enables those who own, but that it disables those who do not. Technically, anyone can get into someone else’s car and drive away, or give an order to sell all of Warren Buffet’s shares in Berkshire Hathaway. The sole purpose of private ownership is to prevent us from doing so. In this sense, private ownership is wholly and only an institution of exclusion, and institutional exclusion is a matter of organized power. _____ When we think like Nitzan and Bichler, we get a very different view of income. Recall that most political economists see property in terms of the ‘things’ that are owned. They then argue that income stems from these ‘things’. Nitzan and Bichler upend this logic. Property, they argue, is about the *act* of ownership — the institutional act of exclusion. Income stems from this exclusionary act. We earn income from the *fence* of property rights, not from what’s inside the fence. In other words, if you can’t restrict access to your property, you can’t earn income from it." https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/06/18/can-the-world-get-along-without-natural-resources/ 5/30

Understanding the state of things requires us to understand The State. Here's a crash course: What Is The State? A helpful thread from @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/113034394722266469 The State, Our Ancient Enemy https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/the-state-our-ancient-enemy/ The State as Sole Capitalist https://archive.ph/7uRGy Here is another aspect of state, and another example of accepted narratives that need to be questioned in light of actual evidence. It turns out we can probably thank state for #patriarchy: How did patriarchy actually begin? https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230525-how-did-patriarchy-actually-begin More info about roles of men and women in past societies: Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers https://phys.org/news/2023-06-shattering-myth-men-hunters-women.html Worldwide survey kills the myth of ‘Man the Hunter’ https://www.science.org/content/article/worldwide-survey-kills-myth-man-hunter Iron Age DNA Reveals Women Dominated Pre-Roman Britain https://www.sciencealert.com/iron-age-dna-reveals-women-dominated-pre-roman-britain 4/30

To explore this new understanding further here is a more detailed look at the stories we've been told and who has been telling them (this one is a longish read, dive in if you find it interesting, otherwise don't get bogged down here, move on to the next post!): "How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened)" by anthropologist David Graeber and David Wengrow: https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/ 3/30

A big part of this false lesson is the fantasized history that serves as its foundation; the stories we've been told and the assumptions we've been conditioned with. To introduce us to "A new understanding of human history and the roots of inequality" here is the TED talk by archaeologist David Wengrow (link includes transcript): https://www.ted.com/talks/david_wengrow_a_new_understanding_of_human_history_and_the_roots_of_inequality/transcript?language=en 2/30