This land is your land, but is it my land?

As a design professionals, why have we wrestled so much with capitalism’s ideal of private property ownership versus a basic human right for all to have some?

Rather than explaining why things are the way they are, perhaps it is better to explore what space means in different cultural backgrounds. 

“Some Indian sophists, the story goes, were found by Alexander in the open air in a meadow, where they used to have their disput
ations; when they saw Alexander and his army, they did nothing more than beat with their feet on the ground they stood on. When Alexander enquired through interpreters what their action meant, they replied: “King Alexander, each man possesses no more of this earth than the patch we stand on.”

—-----Indra Kagis McEwen. Vitruvius : Writing the Body of Architecture

Like a good joke, this statement has a small sense of silliness with an overarching sense of truth. Does one really require more space than he or she needs? Does a millionaire really use all 12 restrooms in his mansion? 

I don’t know, but I also don’t have 12 toilets in my house.

So why have people started amassing property and not willing to share? (myself included)

One theory I have heard of is the theory of getting on the bus.

There is this bus, there is a finite amount of space on this bus. More and more people want to get on this bus so that they can “get to the places where they want to go”, but the people on the bus are clearly not going to let more and more people get on the bus, because that means they will have less space and probably less comfort. But the catch of this story is that the people who are on the bus right now were the ones that were trying to get on the bus.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

— John Steinbeck