Karl Widerquist
It’s wrong for anyone to come between another person and the resources they need to survive. No person or group has the moral authority to impose conditions on anyone else’s access to the resources they need to survive.
But that’s exactly what we do. Our rules grant control of most of the Earth’s resources and the stuff we make out of them to a privileged few. Everyone else has to buy access to external assets from that group, or they won’t last long.
Because our system denies the vast majority of people access to enough resources to produce food, shelter, clothing, and the other things humans need for themselves, we are all owed at least enough cash compensation to buy them.
In some ways, it’s hard to believe the position I stated is controversial. Humans are the only animal that has to ask permission to use the Earth’s resources. Carnivores don’t have to ask permission to hunt. Herbivores don’t have to ask permission to graze. Plants don’t have to ask permission to photosynthesize. For most of the time humans have been on this planet, we didn’t have to ask permission either. But over the last few hundred years, the resources of the Earth have been divided into private property, and most of us didn’t get a share. Instead, we got an unofficial but very effective obligation to work for those who got shares. And for the most part, we’ve mistaken that starting point for our natural condition.
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