Ownership is Freedom --an essay from my new book

In our neoliberal society, one’s level of freedom is largely decided upon by how much one is worth —meaning our personal value is most often determined by how much money we earn, and the amount of personal property we can amass. We can attempt to deny or rationalize the absurdity of that statement all we want, but I can assure you, it will do little to change the fact that our personal freedom is heavily dependent on what type of lifestyle we can afford. While real wealth is in the ownership of natural resources, many of us have earned the privilege to acquire things far less valuable —such as cars, furniture, electronics, and an endless multitude of other personal belongings…whatever we can afford. As consumers, we place great meaning and value upon our material belongings —we’re also encouraged to compete with others, while comparing and judging our own personal worth by these commercially-conditioned standards. Living in reputable neighborhoods, owning high-end cars, having the newest smartphones, and wearing fashionable clothes are held in much higher esteem than our talents, intelligence, and pending contributions to society. While we’re on the topic of contributing to society, it’s a sad fact that most of our talents and abilities will go unwanted if they can’t contribute to commercial trends and cyclical consumption —and why should they? It’s not like they’re worth anything. Get a job.
 
Okay then, let’s talk about jobs… while I’m sure many of you work meaningful and fulfilling jobs, where you are valued, respected, and compensated fairly —I’m also fairly certain that most of us don’t. In fact, I would wager that most of us feel as though we're wasting the best hours of our days, performing menial tasks to achieve virtually meaningless outcomes for people who view us as expendable machines. This is the part where a lot of the aforementioned people above get frustrated, and start pointing out that these meaningless jobs are just entry-level positions intended for teenagers who need to learn the value of a dollar —an argument that sounds very compelling to anyone who has blinders on— but is largely nonsense, because the vast majority of career opportunities available here in the United States are just low-level service jobs. It’s also an argument that refuses to acknowledge the immense amount of skilled-labor professions that are being sent overseas, or across the nation where people cannot simply uproot themselves and follow suit —leaving large communities of over-qualified laborers to compete for minimum wage retail positions. It’s a widely disregarded fact that the average person earning minimum wage in The United States is over the age of thirty-five —and that sooner or later, the only opportunities left in this country will be those low-level service jobs. Whether you’re a service worker, or managing service workers, neither really accounts for skilled-labor in this country —resulting in increased difficulty when trying to earn a decent wage in the age of inflation. The fact is, advanced technology will eventually render the vast majority of human labor obsolete. Automation is already taking over in many aspects of modern industry from manufacturing, to clerking, and even major surgery —it won’t be long before computers are diagnosing illnesses, and recommending medical treatment. Human beings may practice medicine, but computers and machines will certainly perfect it, as they do with everything else. Automation is not only cheaper than human labor, it’s also far more precise and efficient. So whether you like it or not, unemployment is coming for all of us —but this is only frightening under a scarcity-based market system like capitalism.
 
As discussed earlier in this book, we’re all being held prisoner to a central banking system whose life-blood is the ever-increasing debt of the common laborer —also previously mentioned, the only tangible wealth on planet Earth is in the hoarding of finite resources such as the land, water, and vegetation we all need to survive. Nearly all of this finite wealth has been commandeered by a mere one percent of our planet’s population —and sadly, the majority of us have been duped into believing that they’ve earned it with the same hard work and determination that's landed so many of us in a forgettable sales position at Wal-Mart. Capitalism is a racket. There is no “free market” —there never has been. While there is certainly no shortage of people who scoff at this accusation, they will be hard-pressed to find any working examples of free-market capitalism unhindered by cartels and monopolies since the dawn of its inception. There is also no shortage of apologists for this system, insisting that the sole cause of market corruption is government interference —as if our fixed markets and political systems weren’t so tightly intertwined for the purpose of serving the minority of the opulent —that they’re somehow separate —that’s bullshit. Modern man has been hardwired to believe that free-market capitalism is not only self-regulating by way of supply and demand, but that it’s also a core element to keeping human beings in balance with nature —as if global warming, climate change, coral bleaching, deforestation, and mass pollution are all minor coincidences in the wake of man’s greatness, and will eventually balance themselves out as long as we don’t interfere. We’ve been conditioned to serve and defend this fixed market system the same way religions have conditioned us to worship their gods. An unregulated market calls for the same blind faith and unquestioning surrender as required by organized religion —reducing Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand Theory” to nothing short of a make-believe "Market God” —an apologist theory that affords all those naive enough to believe it, the assumption that it’s all in the hands of some benevolent being that would never lead them astray… but like all religious belief systems, market economies are manmade constructs subject to corruption and greed. A manmade system cannot operate freely without human intervention when its practice requires our active participation —such blind faith has been the root cause of grotesque levels of global economic inequality. The fact is, every popular religion, branch of government, and market system is intended to serve and protect the concentrations of wealth and power that initiated them —they’re all systems designed to manage human behavior in a society that operates within the confines of consumption and exploitation, and they’re becoming increasingly unsustainable. 
 
For ninety-nine percent of us, our illusory concept of ownership is based on consumption. As stated in the opening paragraph, our personal property is limited to mere “things", rather than valuable resources —but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly valuable to us. Cars are a great example of this —many of us consider personal transportation to be a symbol of our individual freedom. With access to a car, we have the ability to go almost anywhere we please, and that feeling can be incredibly liberating. Think about it —a full tank of gas, and the open road —the possibilities are virtually endless… but the truth is, no matter how nice our car is, most of us just use them for driving back and forth to work, and to run tedious errands. Unfortunately, this also makes our cars an example of pollution and wastefulness. In addition to most of them still being reliant on outdated fossil fuels that pollute our environment, the majority of our cars' lifespans are spent idle while we’re at home and at work. When you think about how much money it costs you to initially purchase the car, then pay for the insurance, property taxes, fuel, routine maintenance and costly repairs —it’s kind of funny how that symbol of freedom can begin to feel like a necessary burden. Especially when you take into account that we have the technology and resources to build vehicles that could last us for more than fifty years while running entirely on renewable energy —the problem is that such a car wouldn’t keep in good practice with market efficiency. The capitalist system requires cyclical consumption to stay healthy, so if manufacturers were to start building cars we’d only have to purchase once in our lifetime, they’d have a hard time staying in business. This is where marketing, advertising, and planned obsolescence come into play. Whether it’s your car, your smartphone, your furniture, or your wardrobe, you're always made to feel as though it's never quite good enough. No matter how revolutionary, innovative, or stylish they said it was, or how much money you spent, there’s always some slightly better version just right around the corner —so you’re constantly pursuing upgrades to keep up with the latest technology and social standards. Even when you can’t justify purchasing the newest nonsense, there’s still a small part of you that wishes you could. You may have grown a little suspicious of this by now, but you should know that nearly every product you’ve ever bought was produced with an intentionally predetermined lifespan —alongside this mandatory practice, is a marketing campaign intended to instigate discontent with nearly everything you already own. This is what we call "consumer culture", and there is very little excuse for it. No one needs a new smartphone every year —not when we have the technology and the ability to exchange hardware and components as easily as we do. The technology that’s going to be installed into the latest smartphone five years from now has already been developed, but market efficiency calls for an expensive and wasteful climb into the future we could have had years ago. The only reason we’re still using fossil fuels to fill our gas tanks and to heat our homes, is because the market determined there wasn’t enough money in a swift transition to renewable energy —not when they're still recuperating the money they spent funding all those foreign wars. 
 
Perhaps, the invisible hand of our market god isn’t so benevolent after all… Although far too many of us have been well-indoctrinated with statist propaganda, I’m going to insist that The United States has never been involved in a military conflict that wasn’t being fought for purely economic reasons. War is indispensable to a fixed-market capitalist economy, but democracy is not. We don’t support terrorist organizations throughout Africa, Latin America, and The Middle East, because we want to see the third world develop into formidable plutocracies like ours —we get involved to plunder them for their rich natural resources, in an ongoing attempt to maintain our strategic advantage over the rest of the world. Contrary to popular belief, the third world is actually home to astonishing wealth —that’s why our neoliberal agenda will never let them develop —we don’t want the competition. It’s pretty ironic, considering that free-market capitalism is the term we use to describe the nature of free individuals competing fairly under the self-regulating guidelines of supply and demand… if we really believe in it, then why won’t we let them compete? Isn’t it their property and god-given right to do so? Well, in the words of French anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “Property is robbery”.  Property can only be obtained by force, and preserved by the ability to defend it thereafter —everything else is eventually proven arbitrary. To better understand this, let’s put it in the terms of our own private property —when you take out a substantial mortgage loan to buy a house; are you really buying a house, or are you just renting it from the bank? Let’s say you know enough about the banking system to never entrust your money to them, but you have enough cash to buy the house outright —you do so, and naturally, the IRS pays you a visit. Although, it’s technically not illegal to pay for expensive property with cash —it is legal tender, after all— the banks, along with private industry, and both the federal and state governments have collaboratively rigged the system in such a way that the vast majority of honest laborers would never be able to do this. So after you’ve been investigated, and the IRS made you feel like a criminal for having earned enough money to actually purchase a home in the first place —you now have a state mandated obligation to pay for the privilege of owning it. Considering this, are you really a property owner at the end of the day? It’s debatable. Now, let’s travel the more realistic route of taking out the mortgage loan —I want you to imagine your house is now exactly eighty percent paid off, but for some unforeseen circumstance, you’re unable to continue making the payments —is the bank going to allow you to keep the portion of the house you’ve already paid for? It’s not likely. Let’s say you’ve paid off your house, but in the event of some unforeseen circumstances, you’re unable to keep paying your property taxes —do you think the state will let you keep it? The answer is a resounding no —they’re far more likely to seize your home, and then sell it back to the bank. Are you really a property owner? The answer ultimately depends on how capable you think you are to defend it against a forceful seizure.
 
Ownership, as it’s most commonly understood, is little more than a privilege seized by way of attrition. Wealth is a construct. A minority of people have no right to control access to natural resources —when this occurs, the majority must take liberty upon themselves to reclaim those worldly resources by any means necessary. Scarcity-based market systems and the governments created to protect them are all designed to establish a vast chasm of economic inequality —that inequality is the foundation of their power structure. The assumption that any one person could have earned the right to hoard a gluttonous surplus of resources while abandoning others to fend for themselves clearly runs contrary to being in balance with nature —it is an arrogant belief that entitles one to declare others inferior to him, and are therefore, somehow less deserving of nature’s offerings. As pointed out in the third and fourth paragraphs, I think it’s profoundly obvious that free-market fundamentalism has thrown us wildly out of balance —both amongst ourselves, and in accordance with nature. Such behavior is unsustainable —it’s time to outgrow and abandon our scarcity-based economic systems and the plutocrats who regulate them. Regardless of where you stand on this topic, the time will certainly come when we’re all marching down the unemployment line due to technological advances that rendered our labor obsolete. The time will come when our purchasing power has been completely dissolved, and everything we think we own will be seized and auctioned off to help offset the insurmountable debt we’ve accrued over the years —and when that happens, debtors prisons and forced labor camps won’t be a far stretch. The future looks grim under capitalism. We need something different. We need something sustainable that affords all human beings an equitable coexistence with ourselves and nature. The same technology that will steal our jobs and dissolve our purchasing power can be our salvation —but not under capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t want an equitable coexistence, it wants exploitation up until the day the system crashes —leaving a minority of opulent men with absolute power over the world and it’s resources. It’s up to us, the majority, to take liberty upon ourselves to reclaim our resources by any means necessary. On this day, we have all the technology, ability, and resources we need to create an equitable world for all of Earth’s inhabitants —we'll just have to abandon our outdated sociopolitical structures in order to do so. We need to leave the wastefulness of the twentieth century consumer culture behind —trading in our barbarous market economies for open-source collaboration and resource/access-based economies. 
 
An equitable future for all mankind calls for a modern-day adaptation of anarcho-syndicalism. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, I would describe anarcho-syndicalism as the collectivization of voluntary labor and cooperative ownership that results in an equitable allocation of resources for all parties involved. Anarchism is a political philosophy that calls for the abolition of church and state, while advocating for self-governing societies based on voluntary institutions. Anarchism calls for a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by manmade law —it understands that crime is nothing more than misdirected energy, and that prisons are a torturous abomination. Anarchists hold true that all forms of centralized authority are as undesirable as they are violent and unnecessary, while acknowledging that free associations of individuals cooperating voluntarily can bring about a cohesive and necessary balance with nature. Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, and to analyze the world around him —it seeks to make him conscious of himself, not subservient to the external power structures of government and religious faith. Anarchism calls for direct action and open resistance to anything that hinders human growth. To paraphrase Emma Goldman: “The abolition of economic inequality can only be brought about by a careful consideration for every aspect of human life. The individual, as well as the collective —the internal and external phases. Our individual and social instincts are not intended to conflict with one another, but rather to strengthen both for the good health and unity of all living things. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life —society is the lungs, which are distributing the element to keep the life essence, that is the individual, pure and strong. Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms who hold him captive —it has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts —the individual and society. Anarchism seeks to lift a crime-ridden army of human prey from its prostrate position, to finally claim its rightful place in abundance with nature —so that it can no longer be robbed of its labor, free initiative, and originality. Anarchists believe that everyone should have the freedom to choose their own methods and conditions of labor —it is meant to be an inspiring and creative effort organized by a solidarity of interests, recreation, and hope. Anarchism advocates that real wealth is a social wealth, that can only be found in the utility and beauty of good health in equilibrium with nature."
 
Naysayers will certainly argue that without market-based incentives, the vast majority of human beings would most assuredly collapse into lethargy —but anarchists know that all human beings dream of laboring for purpose-driven causes they identify with. Human beings are not lazy creatures by nature —rather that laziness is the result of uninspired labor that serves outcomes we’d never invest in —such as making wealthy men ever the more opulent while others are made to go hungry in polluted environments. Now that we have the technology and the means to assign all our tedious labor to machines, humanity can now have the freedom to pursue what actually matters —such as reconfiguring our social construct. Human beings are born with an insatiable desire to learn and experiment. We all come into this world as explorers, adventurers, scientists, engineers, artists, writers, and philosophers —it’s our outdated social structures that break us down and reduce us to vapid consumers and expendable machines. All our lives, we’re conditioned to believe that their ultimatum to either serve or starve is a choice we make —as if actually creating a life for ourselves by our own accord is even legal under the state. It isn’t —and unless we do something about it, the children of today are surely beholden to a future of wage slavery and work-away debt schemes. The fact is, humanity has never been more capable of achieving anarcho-syndicalism as it is today —with global connectivity, abundant information, advanced technology, mechanized production, and the desire to build a healthy and sustainable future for all children, there has never been a better time than now. Government is tyranny, and we must work collaboratively to undermine the fragility of its power in every capacity we can possibly manage. The sustained and overwhelming pressure from aggressive counter-culture initiatives will dramatically alter and ultimately abolish this poisonous neoliberal establishment once and for all. We are the ninety-nine percent, and we are impossible to stop —may our efforts bring in the new dawn of human evolution.