This Week: Rights, Rights, and Property

"Quote" of the Week: "They had a collective strategy..."

Who Owns Wild Rice?

"The Regulatory State" vs Property Rights

Ownership, Control, and Net Neutrality

Greetings,

Back in December, when I was talking about Deficit Mania, I said that the dispute about who owns what and how it is that they get to "own" it gets played out every day, in very important ways. In this issue I illustrate the point, focusing on three issues that are in the news right now. All of them are about ownership, although they're rarely understood that way. I hope, after reading this issue of the Notes, a few more people will understand it that way. Let me know if the examples in this issue help you to see some things you hadn't noticed before.

No room for a long Editor's Note this month. So I'll see you in Issue #472, when I talk about The Commons.

See ya then,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week: "They had a collective strategy..."

Some readers may wonder why I spend as much time as I do writing about the deep ideas underneath the things that appear in the headlines. Wouldn't it be more effective to just talk about "the issues of the day" directly? A hint of what I am up to here is found in this week's "Quote" of the Week, which I ran across in the process of researching the pieces you are reading in this series on Social Wealth. Although I don't work in academia, I have a lot in common, I think, with dissident academics. Like sociologist Joey Sprague, the author of this week's "Quote." Ms. Sprague was writing in 2008 in the scholarly journal Gender & Society about some strategies that might be used to effectively get the ideas of feminist sociologists out of the confines of academia and into the broader public realm. To create, as she put it, a "a sociology for people." In that context she said:

"In this effort, we can learn something from the right wing in the United States, which over the last forty years moved from being a radical fringe group to shaping what the public was talking about and how they were talking about it. The right did not do this as individual activists. They had a collective strategy, an important part of which was taking advantage of the barriers keeping good sociology out of public discourse. They pulled right-wing scholars from around the country together in regular conferences about social policy. They created summer programs to attract and train the best and the brightest of students in their ideology and give them the skills to be effective activists. They created think tanks of scholars and put them to work doing ideologically motivated research. The products of this research bypassed peer review. Rather, right-wing activists pumped their findings directly into the public domain through op-eds, talking heads, briefing papers, and popular books." [Emphasis added by Nygaard]

Pumping ideas directly into the public domain: That's what Nygaard Notes is about!

Who Owns Wild Rice?

Whenever we look at the world from an indigenous perspective the issues of ownership and wealth come up almost immediately. In a series from this past October called "Midwest Mining Rush Threatens Water," the Public Education Center reported that "In the upper Midwest, mining companies estimate there is the largest deposit of copper, nickel and precious stones in North America encased in nearly 5 billion tons of low-grade rock." The PEC explains that "Because the region suffers some of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, there is enormous pressure to let the mining companies come." Let them come, that is, and engage in sulfide mining that, according to the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, "contaminates lakes, rivers, and groundwater," in the process causing damage to "human health, fish, wildlife, and entire ecosystems."

One thing that would be damaged by the proposed mining operations would be the wild rice that grows in the area. As the White Earth Land Recovery Project explains, wild rice is a "sacred food" that "is a central part of Anishinaabeg culture and tradition." Minnesota Public Radio reports that "High levels of sulfates released from Minnesota's mining industry are suspected of diminishing Minnesota's native wild rice beds." That's part of the reason Minnesota currently has rules that limit sulfates in wild rice waters.

The advocacy group Water Legacy reminds us that "It is prudent to ask the political question, whether we really want to sacrifice our water for jobs." And water may not be the only thing that would be sacrificed if the mining companies are allowed to come.

In the corporate media in Minnesota this case has been reported as a dispute about "regulation," the enforcement of rules, the role of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and so forth. But the disputed ideas underneath all of those issues are fundamental ideas about ownership and control. On the one side is the dominant capitalist culture, in which land is "owned" and the owner can do with it whatever he or she likes. So a mining company can operate a mine on land that it "owns" if it can abide by the necessary regulations. (Here we are, talking about regulations again.)

On the other side are the traditions and culture of the indigenous people of the area, and the foods with which they have been in relationship from time immemorial. The indigenous people who rely so heavily on wild rice do not claim to "own" it. No one can "own" what is wild, after all. But they do claim that no one has the right to destroy this resource that is sacred to the people, that is a central part of an ancient and living culture.

The indigenous claim on the wild rice—or, rather, the indigenous relationship with wild rice—implies a right to stop the mining companies (or anyone else) from killing it. But this only makes sense if we throw out the idea of "ownership" entirely. Because if "ownership" were to settle this issue, then it would be theoretically possible for native people to "own" the rice and to kill it themselves, should they so desire. That is, they would have the "right" to do what they wish with "their" rice. But not everyone sees things this way, a fact which is hinted at by use of the word "sacred" in describing the rice.

(Somewhat ironically, the dominant culture likes to talk about something called The Enlightenment, one of the ideas of which was the idea of "natural rights," which we know as "inalienable" rights, and which the U.S. Declaration of Independence says come from the "Creator." Such rights are "self-evident," and cannot be taken away by governments. I think this is another way of saying "sacred," perhaps. But I digress...)

The Forum on Privatization and the Public Domain, a Canadian anti-privatization group, explains that the question here is "the question of how indigenous peoples are to conserve their culture, language, spirituality and ecology without being forced to 'own' it according to the property laws of the dominant culture."

Culture, language, spirituality and ecology are invisible—if not inconceivable—in the market. So we argue about rules and regulations when the issues go much deeper, out of the view of most of us.

"The Regulatory State" vs Property Rights

As the Republicans sweep into Congress and the media focuses on their agenda, one of the things we hear about a lot is "regulation." The new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is a California Republican named Darrell Issa, who was in the news a couple of weeks ago for sending out letters to "more than 150 trade associations, companies and think tanks last month . . . [requesting] a list of existing and proposed regulations that would harm job growth." That's how the website Politico put it when they broke the story on January 3.

Attacks on regulation are always framed as being about "jobs." For example, in a December 8th letter to one major business group, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Issa wrote, "As a trade organization with members that must comply with the regulatory state, I ask for your assistance in identifying existing and proposed regulations that have negatively impacted job growth in your members' industry. Additionally, suggestions on reforming identified regulations and the rulemaking process would be appreciated." (Leave aside for the moment that one cannot "comply" with a "state." We know what he means, don't we?)

Issa really didn't need to send out a letter, since he could have just looked at "The NAM Agenda" produced for the new Congress. It's basically a 23-page wish list for industry, and on page nine we read:

"The EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act would impose overly burdensome compliance requirements on manufacturers and would also result in job losses."

There's the "job losses" argument again. And the "Agenda" talks about the need to be "competitive in the global marketplace," as well. (And this set of arguments is not the sole province of Republicans, by any means. Just last week "President Obama . . . ordered 'a government-wide review' of federal regulations to root out those 'that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive'," as the New York Times reported.)

In none of these discussions about "regulations" do we ever see the words "owner" or ownership," but that's the concept that animates the whole business. The idea, after all, that brings people like Issa to see the federal government as "the regulatory state" is the ideology which says that "owners" have the "right" to do with their "property" whatever they please. After all, it's "theirs." Property rights, y'know.

The idea I'm talking about in this series is an idea that causes serious problems for the capitalist structure. And that is the idea that there are things, places, activities, and entire realms that do not "belong" to anyone, but that are essential to all of us. In the case of regulating greenhouse gases, this literally means all of us—as in, every single person on the planet who breathes.

So, whenever you hear about "regulations" or "regulatory reform," it might be helpful to re-frame the question and begin to ask the corporations and politicians that demand these reforms, "What gives you the right to damage the common heritage that sustains us?" You might even rhetorically ask, "What good is a job if we can't breathe?"

Ownership, Control, and Net Neutrality

Among the many contradictions in regard to the mass media in a "private enterprise" culture like the United States is this one: On the one hand, the means of distributing information are owned by a relatively small number of very large corporations that are generally agreed to have the "right" to report the news in any way they wish, subject only to the discipline of "the market." On the other hand, there is a society-wide need for information, which is understood to be, in part, the responsibility of "the media." There's a tension here, since everyone needs information but not everyone has a say in how they get it. The only ones who get to decide such things are those entities that "own" the media. And that brings us to Net Neutrality.

First of all, what is "Net Neutrality"? According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the idea of "Net Neutrality" is that "owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network; and should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network."

We can immediately see how the idea of ownership is central to the controversy surrounding the issue of Net Neutrality. Nobody "owns" the internet, just as nobody "owns" the media. Yet someone does, indeed, own the tools that are needed to access the information that resides in cyberspace. Bill Gates et al didn't get to where they are by giving away their programs or the machines that run them.

As the CRS definition makes clear, Net Neutrality requires us to separate the concepts of "ownership" and "control." Under such a system, persons or corporations would still be able to own the parts of the infrastructure that they currently own, but they would not be able to exercise all the "rights" of ownership to which we have become so accustomed in the physical world. Net Neutrality would not allow for "No Trespassing" signs. Nor would it allow for preferential treatments or special access permits for people who happen to be friends of the owners.

Lawrence Lessig, in his 2001 essay "The Internet Under Siege," reminds us that the Internet from its beginnings was never conceived as the "property" of anyone. Instead, says Lessig, "the core resources of the Internet were left in a 'commons.'" And a "commons," Lessig explains, "is a resource to which everyone within a relevant community has equal access." (More on this idea later in this Social Wealth series.)

It's time, once again, to re-frame a familiar discussion, based on our understanding that the controversy underlying the debate about Net Neutrality is the age-old controversy about ownership. Should everything—including the Internet—be the "property" of someone, and its use dictated by "the market"? Or is there another way, a way that most USAmericans have never considered? We'll learn more about this "other way" in the next Nygaard Notes.