We are now “property owners”: After 25 years of military housing, we finally bought a house in Greenfield upon our retirement.
Even as one of the 99-percent wage earners who survive on daily labor, we “own” a few things and claim our “ownership” over them with legal entitlement: Commonly, a house, an automobile, a cellphone, a TV, and such. They are our property and we are their owners, in the same category as the Rockefellers and Bill Gates. We all own property. In this game of property ownership, our social institutions, like banks and government agencies, play along, often addressing us “Dear Property Owner.” It just makes us feel good.
On our part, we use the expression of “my house,” “my automobile,” “my cellphone,” “my TV” and so on in describing these things that properly “belong” to us. But we also call our body parts “my foot,” “my stomach,” “my fingernail,” and so on.
What does “ownership” mean? Let’s say you own a house, which “belongs” to you. But what is it that you actually own?
What is a house, our most commonly owned property? The function of a house is to protect you from the environment, for your bodily survival and comfort. In functionality, the house is like the shell for a hermit crab or a turtle or a garden snail, or a cave for cavemen. If we had each been born with a sturdy all-weather-protective shell, or strong-skinned body impervious to bad weather, or lived in climatic paradise, we would not need a house. Since we weren’t, we need a shell to protect our bodies through all unfriendly weathers. We call it a house, not a shell, since we have the word for it. Would a garden snail call his shell a “house” and “property” if he could? Only because we can detach our shells from ourselves and move into different ones and sell old ones, it has become a gigantic business opportunity for lawyers, surveyors, realtors and government registrars, and all sorts of other specialists.
You notice such “real estate” business thrives only in places where people move a lot or are wealthy enough to make their houses desirable and affordable well beyond their original function. Eskimos with igloos or South Pacific native peoples have no real estate businesses and houses to sell; they just have adequate shelters. Even in frontier America, where they built humble log houses to shelter from the worst of nature, there were no realtors. Today, houses have become bigger than necessary and their property values have made us more sensitive about who lives next door as neighbors. Instead of seeking a good shelter, we have become small-time house-hustlers, hoping to profit from our shelters, and easy marks for the mortgage banks and real estate operators. Next time you are called “property owner” by a bank or the tax office, just think: You are the turtle “property owner” who owns its own turtle-shell.
Likewise, the car you own, a mere transporter of your body from one place to another, has become a buying-and-selling property, which you would not need if you had been born with wings or fleet feet. The automobile that you are proud to own, only second to your house, is just a glorified foot that you wouldn’t need if your body had been designed better or you had no need to travel so far. Still, calling your car your property is like calling your fingernails your property, if only you could detach them and sell them.
What is the cellphone that we all own? Why, it is nothing but a set of ultra-sensitive ears and super-loud mouth that we use to talk to each other. If we had the telepathy to communicate with each other or lived within the shouting distance of one another, we would not need the telephone. In short, it is just a big mouth when you need to shout and a dog’s ears when you need to hear. Indeed, calling your cellphone your property is like calling your mouth and ears, albeit quite powerful, your “property.” If you need all its shiny gadgets to entertain yourself, it just shows you are an unhappy person who needs distractions all the time.
Now, we must understand what true property ownership is, like that of the Rockefellers, although we are both called property owners. First, what the rich own is completely separated from them, technically called “absentee ownership.” What they own may not even be in the same country, unlike you who have to live in the house you own just like the garden snail with its shell. Their properties are owned by ownership, not by daily functions. Second, what the Rockefellers own creates profits on its own, without the owners even nearby. The gold mines, the stocks and bonds, the businesses, whatever else they “own” somewhere, create profits by themselves and send the profits to the owners every second, every minute. For Bill Gates, it’s $1,000 every three seconds. They own real properties, unlike you who merely own your extended body parts.
We should be ashamed of ourselves being called “property owners.” The laugh you are hearing is from the garden snail, the turtle, and the sparrow, who are all born self-sufficient with their houses, laughing at our grand shell-castles that we call our property.
We are not property owners. We are actually somebody else’s properties, owned by the real property owners — the wealthy capitalists: They own our labor, our ideas, our souls, even our love.
Next time you are called “property owner,” it should make you cringe and want to hide under your shell.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield where he owns a shell.