MIne! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

By Michael Heller & James Salzman.

Ownership is a complex thing. This book provides a great discussion about how we decide ownership, and the consequences thereof. For every ownership scheme, there are winners and loser. Upsides and downsides.

Ownership schemes...

• First come first served.
• Possession is nine-tenths of the law
• You reap what you sow.
• My home is my castle.
• Our bodies, our selves.
• The meek shall inherit the earth

Many of these schemes have the benefit of being "bright line." Clear. Unambiguous. Easy to Administrate. Easy for people to work out disputes themselves. For example.. first come, first served... possession is nine-tenths of the law... you reap what you sow... my home is my castle. With these rules average people can sort out who owns what without needing someone to arbitrate. These rules work well when resources are plentiful. However, when resources  are scare, they create a race to the bottom-- the tragedy of the commons. Consider water rights in doubt ridden California. Or fishing rights in Alaska. To thrive in the long run, participants must move past these schemes when resource exhaustion is inevitable.

Resource gridlock-- sometimes so many people own needed resources that commerce can't happen. Think of a patent that's not being used. Or a farm or vacation property owned by so many heirs that no one can agree what to do with it. Care must be taken to ensure that owned resources can stay useful, that ownership is passed on cleanly after the original owner dies.

The book urges us to think through problems with a few tools...

ex ante/ex post. Ex ante: looking forward-- what decision will have the best consequences going forward. Ex post: looking back after the fact-- Who acted badly? Who well? What consequences are fairest for those in the past. Judges, by design, my decide "ex post." Legislators should decide "ex ante." 

Pay attention to and think though ownership design. Every ownership scheme has it's winners, it's losers, and those who stand by. Think about the "Reclining space" behand a chair on an a jet. Who owns it? Does the person who wants to recline? Does the person whose leg space is taken away? Airlines usually don't have policies on this. They prefer the two passengers to work it out themselves. They could set a clear policy. But why should they? By staying uninvolved in this ownership dispute, they deflect anger to other passengers, while they quietly reduce the space between seats. "It's not the airline's fault that my knees are hitting the seat in front of me. It's that jerk passenger." No, it really was the airlines choice to make that happen. 

We are often afraid of solving a problem because it creates a slippery slope. Instead, can we think of a "sticky step."-- a set of concrete things that we can do to address a problem.

Ownership in the future-- we have started renting things through microtransactions and subscriptions fees. Spotify v.s. CDs. AirBnb. This is concentrating wealth.