Ownership = Coercion + Violence

Here's a nifty little essay about the concept of ownership:

There are a large handful of things that make humans uniquely different from animals. In many other areas - language, abstract reasoning, music-making, conceptions of self and fairness, large-scale cooperation, etc. - humans and animals vary (hugely) in degree and kind. But they still share those phenotypic behavioral traits.

I’d like to explore one of those unique differences: ownership of property. Animals don’t own property. Ever. They can and do possess and control goods and territories (possession and control are importantly distinct), but they never “own” things. Ownership is a uniquely human construct.

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It’s not hard to see the crucial fact ... property rights are ultimately based, purely, on coercion and violence. If the controlling tribe can’t enforce its claim through violence, their “ownership” is meaningless. And those claimed rights are not just inclusionary (the one tribe can use the water). Property rights are primarily or even purely exclusionary. Owners can prevent others from doing anything with the owners’ property. Get off my lawn!

When push comes to shove (literally), when brass tacks meet the rubber on the road (sorry, couldn’t resist), ownership and property rights are based purely on violence and the threat of violence.

You can read the rest @
http://evonomics.com/ownership-evolution-property/

That strongly implies that the 80 people who own one half of the world's wealth are the chief source of coercion and violence in our lives. You can find their names and read about them here:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/meet-the-80-people-who-are-as-rich-as-half-the-world/

Among other things, "trade deals" (i.e., undeclared treaties) like TPP, TTIP, and TISA will be used to enforce property rights, especially "intellectual property" rights. And since the vast majority of humanity owns no such property, these treaties will subject We The People to previously unknown levels of coercion and violence.

So why in hell would "our" Congress even consider voting for them?