Q&A Ten Question One

Q: Is ownership an appropriate model for human relationships to objects?

A: Ownership does not appear to be an appropriate model for human interaction with animals and has related practical, if not moral, pitfalls. As I argued for before, animals cannot be owned as Subjects of a Life, which is the moral difference between them and objects. An object can only have instrumental moral value since the object is not a valuer in itself and thus, if it is to have any moral value at all, that value must be derived from it's instrumental value to a SOAL.

Then the only reason that a the property relationship would be morally inappropriate is if it causes harm to SOALs. We can clearly point out cases where property ownership causes harm to humans, such as the ownership of the means of production by a capitalist class. There is the technical skill and material wealth available to eliminate extreme poverty, but because of ownership there are vast amounts of humans and nonhumans harmed by the mechanisms of an irrational capitalism.

This doesn't invalidate little Johnny's ownership of his teddy bear, and it doesn't give us a clear picture of a post-ownership relationship with objects, but it does point out that the property relationship is in often a morally inappropriate way for a society to structure it's material culture in regards to the creation and distribution of wealth.