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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

Is property ownership instinctive? I'd definitely agree that [usage] is instinctive, in that one may want to use something without interruption or threat of having it taken away during usage. However, the idea that one needs to own something after it has been used, no longer needs to be used, or simply is no longer in use seems interesting.

Maybe I'm too idealistic, but I could imagine a society where everything is communal. I just think we started off in a way that would make it too difficult to transition to that now (too many people have too much to lose).

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Consider 'ownership' as 'control' of a resource instead if it helps (control of access, of distribution, of use, etc.).The word has a lot of subjective baggage from our own culture and economic system that can cause confusion in these sorts of discussions. Whether you're talking about private or communal ownership, it's still just a form of ownership. Even when we talk of communal ownership, such as Hawaiian lands pre-Cook (actually, it's a pretty fascinating subject to read about, especially with how they wound up transitioning over a relatively short time and the protections they tried to build into that transition),[0] there's still some method of controlling access and use. That can be as simple as cultural norms that exemplified a sort of "don't be a jerk" attitude towards shared property that's widely accepted, or some sort of ruling authority that granted access, dictated acceptable usage, punished misuse, etc.

0. http://files.hawaii.gov/dcca/reb/real_ed/re_ed/ce_prelic/lan...

Some concept of ownership of the kind of things that are the subject of tangible personal property seems to be nearly universal and likely reflects something inherent. Other categories of property (real property, intangible personal property) this is less true of.

Can we somehow tilt the balance by encouraging more Coops to form etc? I too think society where everything is communal is a worthy goal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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