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Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives
'A delicious book.' Jared DiamondWho controls the space around an aeroplane you or the person behind you trying to work on their laptop? Who owns your favourite football player? And why do Facebook and Google want your private data?In Mine! Michael Heller and James Salzman reveal the hidden economic and social rules that guide everyday life, demonstrating that much of what we assume about ownership is wrong. Whether a lost wallet, a playground swing or a London flat, Mine! explores what ownership means and why it governs everything we do.
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 2, 2021
363 people are currently reading
5275 people want to read
About the author
Michael A. Heller
5 books22 followersMichael Heller is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School. He teaches property, land use, and real estate law and has served as the school’s vice dean for intellectual life.
Heller has been a visiting professor at UCLA School of Law (2006-07), Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2004-05), visiting professor at NYU Law School (2001), Olin Senior Fellow at Columbia (2000), and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School (1991). From 1994 to 2002, Heller taught at the University of Michigan Law School where he received the L. Hart Wright Award for excellence in teaching. He co-directed corporate governance research at the University of Michigan Business School’s William Davidson Institute and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. During 1990-94, Heller worked at the World Bank on post-socialist property law transition. He clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Harvard College.
Heller has been a visiting professor at UCLA School of Law (2006-07), Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2004-05), visiting professor at NYU Law School (2001), Olin Senior Fellow at Columbia (2000), and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School (1991). From 1994 to 2002, Heller taught at the University of Michigan Law School where he received the L. Hart Wright Award for excellence in teaching. He co-directed corporate governance research at the University of Michigan Business School’s William Davidson Institute and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. During 1990-94, Heller worked at the World Bank on post-socialist property law transition. He clerked for the Honorable James R. Browning, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Harvard College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 304 reviews
July 10, 2021
I was hooked by the airline teaser about reclining seats since I not only work for a major airline, but I am a strong supporter of the side of “it is airplane etiquette not to recline your seat!” I was interested in this book because I do a lot of coaching at work and in consulting I do on the side, and a common theme of these conversations at work is around ownership with work projects, particularly when many of their projects involve cross-functional teams.
Full of interesting stories, both large and small, this book really delves into the complicated way we all let ownership influence our lives. I am the first to admit that I get territorial at times. Maybe this comes from having several siblings and having to share so much growing up, or maybe I’m just (as most humans are) a bit selfish! There is a comfort that comes from ownership, right? It is related to psychological safety. If we own something—it something is ours—there is a feeling it is more stable. That it gives us value.
I’ll be honest, the fact that the authors didn’t support my notion of the wedge of space behind an airplane seat clearly belonging to the person sitting in the seat behind felt like someone stole my identity. I loved reading about the different ways people, companies, and organizations have played with the concept of ownership—and the ambiguity of it—to manipulate all variety of situations!
Covering everything from the most trivial of disputes to the much larger topics of inequality and gender discrimination, this book is the perfect mix of engaging examples and deep conceptual discussion that makes it fly by while also profoundly impacting your world view. And by the end, I can’t imagine any reader not finding some ways of recognizing the way these “rules” or ownership apply to their own life. Just maybe, we can use that knowledge for positive change!
Thank you to Double Day Books for my copy! Opinions are my own.
Full of interesting stories, both large and small, this book really delves into the complicated way we all let ownership influence our lives. I am the first to admit that I get territorial at times. Maybe this comes from having several siblings and having to share so much growing up, or maybe I’m just (as most humans are) a bit selfish! There is a comfort that comes from ownership, right? It is related to psychological safety. If we own something—it something is ours—there is a feeling it is more stable. That it gives us value.
I’ll be honest, the fact that the authors didn’t support my notion of the wedge of space behind an airplane seat clearly belonging to the person sitting in the seat behind felt like someone stole my identity. I loved reading about the different ways people, companies, and organizations have played with the concept of ownership—and the ambiguity of it—to manipulate all variety of situations!
Covering everything from the most trivial of disputes to the much larger topics of inequality and gender discrimination, this book is the perfect mix of engaging examples and deep conceptual discussion that makes it fly by while also profoundly impacting your world view. And by the end, I can’t imagine any reader not finding some ways of recognizing the way these “rules” or ownership apply to their own life. Just maybe, we can use that knowledge for positive change!
Thank you to Double Day Books for my copy! Opinions are my own.
April 13, 2024
E ceva primitiv în posesia fizică a unui lucru. Posesiunea este un instinct primar, înrădăcinat în comportamentul animal. Spre finalul primului an de viață, copiii din orice cultură încep să manifeste o tendință puternică de posesiune pentru obiecte specifice, precum păturile. Același comportament a fost arătat la cimpanzei și la maimuțele capucin. Și să nu uităm de teritorialitatea manifestată de unele animale. Păsările nu cântă ca să ne bine-dispună, ci ca să-și apere teritoriul, să alunge competitorii și să atragă partenerii.
Vânzătorii au înțeles dintotdeaunea și au profitat de acest instinct de posesiune prin crearea condițiilor în care clienții se pot atașa de produsele aflate la vânzare. Clienții sunt încurajați să țină în mână obiectele, să probeze hainele.
Bineînțeles, cartea nu se rezumă la simpla posesie fizică. Autorii se concentrează pe modurile de dobândire a proprietății: principiul primului venit, al posesiunii, al atașării, al proprietății de sine și revendicarea bazată pe muncă; cu toate subtilitățile juridice aferente. Fiecare capitol este dedicat unui principiu. Aproape toate exemplele sunt din SUA.
Recoman
Vânzătorii au înțeles dintotdeaunea și au profitat de acest instinct de posesiune prin crearea condițiilor în care clienții se pot atașa de produsele aflate la vânzare. Clienții sunt încurajați să țină în mână obiectele, să probeze hainele.
Bineînțeles, cartea nu se rezumă la simpla posesie fizică. Autorii se concentrează pe modurile de dobândire a proprietății: principiul primului venit, al posesiunii, al atașării, al proprietății de sine și revendicarea bazată pe muncă; cu toate subtilitățile juridice aferente. Fiecare capitol este dedicat unui principiu. Aproape toate exemplele sunt din SUA.
Recoman
January 22, 2024
Things that make you go hmmm this books provides an ah ha! Thought provoking.
March 7, 2021
This is one of the most fascinating, thought-provoking books that I've read in a long time, and I couldn't put it down. Who technically owns digital media once you hit the "buy" button? Who own's the space around a seat on a plane? The recliner or the person with the leg room? Who owns intellectual property and for how long and is it fair? Most of all, who profits from how ownership works? These are all questions asked in this book as well as much more. Heller and Salzman had me hooked by covering a wide range of topics regarding ownership that really had me thinking, and if you want to get your wheels turning, you need to get this book.
May 4, 2022
Дуже цікава, гарно написана, з купою класних життєвих історій про судові позови стосовно того, чи має мій сусід спереду в літаку право розкладати спинку свого сидіння на мої коліна
March 3, 2021
This book reads like Freakonomics and gave me the same sense of being able to look at the world differently. Focusing on the different ways people own things explains everything from arguments over whether you can recline your airplane seat to slowing deforestation. This is a well-written, fun and eye-opening read.
February 1, 2024
Upd: прослухала другий раз на книжковий клуб Клятого раціоналіста.
Дуже цікава книжка.
Якби автори жили в Україні, то аналогічна книжка на українських реаліях була б наповнена набагато більш феєричними прикладами.
Дуже цікава книжка.
Якби автори жили в Україні, то аналогічна книжка на українських реаліях була б наповнена набагато більш феєричними прикладами.
December 5, 2021
This is a non-fic about the ways we decide that something belongs to someone. ‘Mine!’ is one of the first words children learn, but how we define the limit between mine and not mine? I read it as a part of monthly reading for November-December 2021 at Non Fiction Book Club group.
The authors are professors of law in the US academia and therefore, their story mostly concerns the US and a point of view of lawyer, as opposed to say economists or psychologists, even if in the middle they mention Coarse and ideas of transaction costs and externalities, even if not mentioning them explicitly.
They outline six pathways to claiming ownership:
first-in-time, or first in a queue, first come, first served. There are some problems with it, from professional people to stay in line to get to the Supreme Court or Disneyland or a concert or a play, to sell their places, to software bots that may buy tickets faster than any human.
possession is 9/10 of the law. The case of the parking chair - space-savers to hold spots e.g. leaving a chair on a parking lot or a cloth on a chair in a theater to show that it is occupied. However, what can be used to occupy and for how long differs.
labor - rip what you saw. It works well with physical produce, but less so with intellectual, authors rights and such. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speech “I Have a Dream” is copyrighted (and all his speeches) and cannot be reproduced. Disney pays a lot to extend royalties – first hey were to 1984, then to 2003 (and Pluto to 2005, Goofy to 2007, Donald Duck to 2009), now to 2023. Mikey is the wealthiest imagined celebrity.
attachment - it is mine because it is linked to mine, e.g. air above my property that can be used to fly drones, or a treasure found on your land. Problem with it that the rich get richer, their property begets new property. Externalities – pumping water at my land, takes your water from the common underground aquafer, and the owner of the fastest pump wins. Problems of overfishing and beach erosion - Florida alone has spent $1.3 billion to nourish 237 miles of its beaches over the past eighty years. In 2017 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of sand to shore up just one three-thousand-foot stretch of Miami Beach, with an $11.5 million price tag paid by local, state, and federal taxpayers. The most extracted mineral in the world today, exceeding by weight all the fossil fuels we pump, is sand and gravel, used for beach nourishment along with fracking, land reclamation, concrete, and glass. Sand has become scarce; extracting it is imposing ever-escalating environmental harms.
self-ownership why it is ok to sell blood but not a kidney, why using your womb to gestate someone’s fertilized egg is prohibited in many countries? Is selling what your body produces/has a slavery?
family inheritance and the surprising fact that the Founding fathers were afraid that it can restore aristocracy. Through careful ownership design, England’s wealthiest families were able to perpetuate themselves as an elite class that has endured for centuries. A recent study showed, remarkably, that many of the most powerful English family names in 1170—decades before the Magna Carta—still enjoy high social status more than eight hundred years later. And England is not alone: the richest families in Florence, Italy, today substantially overlap with the richest in 1427. By the end of the nineteenth century, America had drifted far from a country of yeoman farmers to the Gilded Age—lorded over by John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and other robber barons—concentrated wealth to an extent that the country had never before seen and that the Founders had labored to prevent. by the end of the nineteenth century, America had drifted far from a country of yeoman farmers. It increasingly resembled the aristocracy and landed estates of old England. The Gilded Age—lorded over by John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and other robber barons—concentrated wealth to an extent that the country had never before seen and that the Founders had labored to prevent. Teddy Roosevelt, making full use of his bully pulpit, called for both a progressive income tax and an inheritance tax.
A very interesting overview with one important downside – concentration of the USA.
The authors are professors of law in the US academia and therefore, their story mostly concerns the US and a point of view of lawyer, as opposed to say economists or psychologists, even if in the middle they mention Coarse and ideas of transaction costs and externalities, even if not mentioning them explicitly.
They outline six pathways to claiming ownership:
first-in-time, or first in a queue, first come, first served. There are some problems with it, from professional people to stay in line to get to the Supreme Court or Disneyland or a concert or a play, to sell their places, to software bots that may buy tickets faster than any human.
possession is 9/10 of the law. The case of the parking chair - space-savers to hold spots e.g. leaving a chair on a parking lot or a cloth on a chair in a theater to show that it is occupied. However, what can be used to occupy and for how long differs.
labor - rip what you saw. It works well with physical produce, but less so with intellectual, authors rights and such. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speech “I Have a Dream” is copyrighted (and all his speeches) and cannot be reproduced. Disney pays a lot to extend royalties – first hey were to 1984, then to 2003 (and Pluto to 2005, Goofy to 2007, Donald Duck to 2009), now to 2023. Mikey is the wealthiest imagined celebrity.
attachment - it is mine because it is linked to mine, e.g. air above my property that can be used to fly drones, or a treasure found on your land. Problem with it that the rich get richer, their property begets new property. Externalities – pumping water at my land, takes your water from the common underground aquafer, and the owner of the fastest pump wins. Problems of overfishing and beach erosion - Florida alone has spent $1.3 billion to nourish 237 miles of its beaches over the past eighty years. In 2017 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of sand to shore up just one three-thousand-foot stretch of Miami Beach, with an $11.5 million price tag paid by local, state, and federal taxpayers. The most extracted mineral in the world today, exceeding by weight all the fossil fuels we pump, is sand and gravel, used for beach nourishment along with fracking, land reclamation, concrete, and glass. Sand has become scarce; extracting it is imposing ever-escalating environmental harms.
self-ownership why it is ok to sell blood but not a kidney, why using your womb to gestate someone’s fertilized egg is prohibited in many countries? Is selling what your body produces/has a slavery?
family inheritance and the surprising fact that the Founding fathers were afraid that it can restore aristocracy. Through careful ownership design, England’s wealthiest families were able to perpetuate themselves as an elite class that has endured for centuries. A recent study showed, remarkably, that many of the most powerful English family names in 1170—decades before the Magna Carta—still enjoy high social status more than eight hundred years later. And England is not alone: the richest families in Florence, Italy, today substantially overlap with the richest in 1427. By the end of the nineteenth century, America had drifted far from a country of yeoman farmers to the Gilded Age—lorded over by John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and other robber barons—concentrated wealth to an extent that the country had never before seen and that the Founders had labored to prevent. by the end of the nineteenth century, America had drifted far from a country of yeoman farmers. It increasingly resembled the aristocracy and landed estates of old England. The Gilded Age—lorded over by John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and other robber barons—concentrated wealth to an extent that the country had never before seen and that the Founders had labored to prevent. Teddy Roosevelt, making full use of his bully pulpit, called for both a progressive income tax and an inheritance tax.
A very interesting overview with one important downside – concentration of the USA.
May 8, 2021
Who owns what? It’s much more complicated than we think. Nothing is absolute and the court generally decides what decision will result in the greatest common good.
1. First come, last served: people generally follow queue in Disneyland. Unless you are rich enough to pay for the VIP tour at $400-$600 an hour. People also buy queue places all the time, for example into Congress hearings, or new IPhone launches.
2. Possession is one tenth of the law. Who owns the space between rows of airline seats? The person in front or the one behind? Enter the knee guard that locks the recliner of the seat in front, causing two passengers to fight and that airplane to land in emegency. Airlines do not mandate ownership on purpose so that the total perceived space is higher.
3. I reap what you sow: Intellectual property laws are complicated. Disney had extended the patent of its characters from the original 15 years to eternity and beyond; paradoxically too strong an IP law can stymie new creations. New medical products not made because there are so many patents of the product metabolic pathways held by different entities. Many books with patent are not published. Collages of songs are not made because of the need to pay every single person who owns a bit of the song.
4. My home is not my castle. Well, not all the way to the sky anyway. How about below? When resources were plentiful, it didn’t matter how much water you pump from under your land. Industrial bottled water production is something else altogether: it can drain your neighbours’ water supply dry.
5. Our bodies, not our selves: it’s not legal to sell a person, and also not ok for anyone to sell one’s organ. However, it is ok to rent out the womb (surrogacy), sell eggs and sperms.
6. The meek shall inherit very little: the rich sets up trusts to avoid taxation forever. Farmlands of African Americans are taken over by Whites because as time goes on, each descendant inherits less and less and unanimous action becomes almost impossible. Primogeniture inherited from the Old World helps preserve aristocracy’s hold on land owned.
7. The future of ownership: if we buy a book, we can use it however we like, lend it or resell it. Not so an e-book. Sometimes e-movies and ebooks we ‘bought’ can disappear and we certainly can’t resell an ebook that we’ve finished. Common ownership saved the fish stock im many parts of the coast.
So ownership is never straightforward; and it has to be discussed and thought through and updated as time goes on.
This book is full of interesting examples and make ownership law fun, actually
1. First come, last served: people generally follow queue in Disneyland. Unless you are rich enough to pay for the VIP tour at $400-$600 an hour. People also buy queue places all the time, for example into Congress hearings, or new IPhone launches.
2. Possession is one tenth of the law. Who owns the space between rows of airline seats? The person in front or the one behind? Enter the knee guard that locks the recliner of the seat in front, causing two passengers to fight and that airplane to land in emegency. Airlines do not mandate ownership on purpose so that the total perceived space is higher.
3. I reap what you sow: Intellectual property laws are complicated. Disney had extended the patent of its characters from the original 15 years to eternity and beyond; paradoxically too strong an IP law can stymie new creations. New medical products not made because there are so many patents of the product metabolic pathways held by different entities. Many books with patent are not published. Collages of songs are not made because of the need to pay every single person who owns a bit of the song.
4. My home is not my castle. Well, not all the way to the sky anyway. How about below? When resources were plentiful, it didn’t matter how much water you pump from under your land. Industrial bottled water production is something else altogether: it can drain your neighbours’ water supply dry.
5. Our bodies, not our selves: it’s not legal to sell a person, and also not ok for anyone to sell one’s organ. However, it is ok to rent out the womb (surrogacy), sell eggs and sperms.
6. The meek shall inherit very little: the rich sets up trusts to avoid taxation forever. Farmlands of African Americans are taken over by Whites because as time goes on, each descendant inherits less and less and unanimous action becomes almost impossible. Primogeniture inherited from the Old World helps preserve aristocracy’s hold on land owned.
7. The future of ownership: if we buy a book, we can use it however we like, lend it or resell it. Not so an e-book. Sometimes e-movies and ebooks we ‘bought’ can disappear and we certainly can’t resell an ebook that we’ve finished. Common ownership saved the fish stock im many parts of the coast.
So ownership is never straightforward; and it has to be discussed and thought through and updated as time goes on.
This book is full of interesting examples and make ownership law fun, actually
December 24, 2021
Wow, I LOVED this! This book has everything I look for in a quality piece of non-fiction:
- Authors that are well-qualified experts in their field
- Narrative oomph with compelling examples and brisk pacing
- Insight into a topic that I know little about
- Thoughtful structure and a clear thesis
- Responsible situation within a context of social justice
- Revelations that are powerful enough to change my worldview for the rest of my life
The concept of ownership design was honestly mind-blowing. OF COURSE ownership is socially constructed, predicated on multiple conflicting, strategically selected “stories”—it makes so much sense, but it’s not something I had ever really interrogated before! The accompanying examples do such a good job underscoring the high stakes when ownership design goes wrong, as well as the opportunity in arenas like racial justice, climate change, and taxation of the wealthy. And narratively, the examples absolutely sparkle—they are so relatable, diverse, and engaging. The sheer humanity of the Knee Defender—just *chef’s kiss.* I applaud Heller and Salzman for doing great work AND doing a great job writing about it, and would love to read more legal scholarship in this vein!
- Authors that are well-qualified experts in their field
- Narrative oomph with compelling examples and brisk pacing
- Insight into a topic that I know little about
- Thoughtful structure and a clear thesis
- Responsible situation within a context of social justice
- Revelations that are powerful enough to change my worldview for the rest of my life
The concept of ownership design was honestly mind-blowing. OF COURSE ownership is socially constructed, predicated on multiple conflicting, strategically selected “stories”—it makes so much sense, but it’s not something I had ever really interrogated before! The accompanying examples do such a good job underscoring the high stakes when ownership design goes wrong, as well as the opportunity in arenas like racial justice, climate change, and taxation of the wealthy. And narratively, the examples absolutely sparkle—they are so relatable, diverse, and engaging. The sheer humanity of the Knee Defender—just *chef’s kiss.* I applaud Heller and Salzman for doing great work AND doing a great job writing about it, and would love to read more legal scholarship in this vein!
July 11, 2021
My intro to ownership design, pretty good narrative with abundant real life examples.
November 21, 2021
Non-Fiction>Psychology/Law/Sociology/Economics
The authors review the various ways we think of things as 'ours' and how societies have dealt with ownership of everything from our own hair to a property to the air we breathe. Reading this has been a very interesting philosophical thought exercise...of course the issues with what is 'mine' arise for all of us on a pretty regular basis, I think most people are like me and never thought of it as a mostly fabricated concept that is constantly being constructed by social and legal rules.
The authors explain and expand on the various means by which we think things belong to us. Being the first there to claim it, actually having physical possession of it, working for it, it being attached to something that is already ours, it's on/in my body, my family has owned it. During the examples of what makes us think we own something, they talk about the ways we sort out or prove that we do.
My favorite section was probably the one about new ideas of ownership developing now. The 'gig' economy allows easier sharing of everything from tools to purses to cars (and charging for it). How is this going to effect our understanding of value of ownership? The limited licenses that digital platforms sell to us under the auspices of "Buy it Now"--- we don't own it, it can be altered at any time, it could disappear from our usable library at any time, and it doesn't really work the same way as buying a physical book or CD but the companies doing the selling don't want us to see the differences.
I read this with the Non-Fiction Book Club for Nov/Dec 2021.
"Ownership is the endpoint, not the start, of analysis."
"People may complain about wealth inequality in America—everyone can point to causes, from tax policy to racial discrimination. But few think about the role of attachment, the ownership mechanism that tends to concentrate ownership in fewer and wealthier hands."
"Between hair and slavery—that’s the contested terrain for claims to bodily resources deriving from self-ownership."
"There’s a lot of meaning built into the phrase ‘buy now.’ It’s not saying ‘rent now.’ It’s not saying ‘gain conditional access.’ It says ‘buy,’ and that means something very specific to most consumers—something that, in the case of digital content, isn’t true."
"Lawyers sometimes describe ownership as a bundle of sticks. This metaphor was introduced about a century ago, and it has radically transformed the teaching and practice of law. ... the sell stick, the rent stick, the right to mortgage, license, give away, even destroy the thing."
"Often, though, we split the sticks up, as for a piece of land: there may be a landowner, a bank with a mortgage, a tenant with a lease, a neighbor with a right-of-way easement, a plumber with a license to enter the land, an oil company with mineral rights."
"In short, today, you buy just a limited-use stick. Apple, Amazon, and Google hold the rest of the bundle. And they even keep a string attached to the stick you bought, so they can take it back if it suits their purposes."
The Toddler's Rules of Ownership: "If I like it, it’s mine. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine. If I can take it from you, it’s mine. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine. If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine. If it looks just like mine, it is mine. If I saw it first, it’s mine. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it’s mine. If it’s broken, it’s yours."
The authors review the various ways we think of things as 'ours' and how societies have dealt with ownership of everything from our own hair to a property to the air we breathe. Reading this has been a very interesting philosophical thought exercise...of course the issues with what is 'mine' arise for all of us on a pretty regular basis, I think most people are like me and never thought of it as a mostly fabricated concept that is constantly being constructed by social and legal rules.
The authors explain and expand on the various means by which we think things belong to us. Being the first there to claim it, actually having physical possession of it, working for it, it being attached to something that is already ours, it's on/in my body, my family has owned it. During the examples of what makes us think we own something, they talk about the ways we sort out or prove that we do.
My favorite section was probably the one about new ideas of ownership developing now. The 'gig' economy allows easier sharing of everything from tools to purses to cars (and charging for it). How is this going to effect our understanding of value of ownership? The limited licenses that digital platforms sell to us under the auspices of "Buy it Now"--- we don't own it, it can be altered at any time, it could disappear from our usable library at any time, and it doesn't really work the same way as buying a physical book or CD but the companies doing the selling don't want us to see the differences.
I read this with the Non-Fiction Book Club for Nov/Dec 2021.
"Ownership is the endpoint, not the start, of analysis."
"People may complain about wealth inequality in America—everyone can point to causes, from tax policy to racial discrimination. But few think about the role of attachment, the ownership mechanism that tends to concentrate ownership in fewer and wealthier hands."
"Between hair and slavery—that’s the contested terrain for claims to bodily resources deriving from self-ownership."
"There’s a lot of meaning built into the phrase ‘buy now.’ It’s not saying ‘rent now.’ It’s not saying ‘gain conditional access.’ It says ‘buy,’ and that means something very specific to most consumers—something that, in the case of digital content, isn’t true."
"Lawyers sometimes describe ownership as a bundle of sticks. This metaphor was introduced about a century ago, and it has radically transformed the teaching and practice of law. ... the sell stick, the rent stick, the right to mortgage, license, give away, even destroy the thing."
"Often, though, we split the sticks up, as for a piece of land: there may be a landowner, a bank with a mortgage, a tenant with a lease, a neighbor with a right-of-way easement, a plumber with a license to enter the land, an oil company with mineral rights."
"In short, today, you buy just a limited-use stick. Apple, Amazon, and Google hold the rest of the bundle. And they even keep a string attached to the stick you bought, so they can take it back if it suits their purposes."
The Toddler's Rules of Ownership: "If I like it, it’s mine. If it’s in my hand, it’s mine. If I can take it from you, it’s mine. If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine. If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine. If it looks just like mine, it is mine. If I saw it first, it’s mine. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it’s mine. If it’s broken, it’s yours."
March 28, 2021
A good compendium about different facets of ownership. The problem for me was that I had already heard of all but one or two of the examples. I would rather it had gone a little more in depth.
> Among the states that recognize publicity rights, there’s wide variation on whether they survive death and for how long. In Tennessee, rights last ten years after death; in Virginia, twenty years; in California, seventy; and in Indiana, one hundred. New York terminates them when the owner dies. So when Marilyn Monroe died as a New York resident, her heirs could not cash in. Why such variation? California has many notable dead celebrities whose heirs succeeded in pushing the state for lengthy ownership. … In the plastic King bust case, the Georgia Supreme Court neglected to specify an end date for the posthumous right of publicity it created. Nor did it craft a “fair use” exception, as in copyright law, that allows for educational uses, criticism, or parody without payment to, or permission from, the copyright owner. The court created a flawed, overly expansive ownership form—with national consequences. King Inc. keeps suing everyone who uses King’s likeness, though he’s been dead more than fifty years.
> Texas is the only oil-producing state not to require compulsory unitization—surface owners can voluntarily create a unit, but only if they all unanimously agree, and that’s hard to achieve. Instead, Texas adopted and has stuck with a more collectivist ownership form to address the commons tragedy—an odd choice for a state that prizes individual autonomy. Since the late 1930s, the Texas Railroad Commission (by a quirk of politics) has controlled oil production through “proration” rules: the state agency sets production caps for individual owners each month and it enforces well-spacing rules.
> One hundred forty-two countries, including well-off ones like Japan and Chile, say underground natural resources belong to the state as part of the common wealth—flowing oil, gas, and water are like the air we breathe or the oceans we fish. Landownership means you control certain rights on the surface and close to it, but attachment does not reach much below ground.
> American law makes everything about managing co-owned property difficult, not just repairs. It can be impossible to get a loan with just a partial ownership interest, so the land remains undeveloped. Often you can’t get disaster relief either. Following Hurricane Katrina, up to $165 million of recovery funds went unclaimed because of difficulty in proving ownership of heir property. As a result, heir property often remains run-down and unimproved
> In practice and often in law, courts usually prefer to order the land partitioned by auction sale, especially if there are many heirs. Money is easier to split. But this administrative ease comes at a cost. According to one analyst, the purchasers at these sales “ are almost always white persons, frequently local lawyers or relatives of local officials, who make it their business to keep abreast of what properties are going to auction and who attend the auctions prepared to buy.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture says such sales are “the leading cause of black involuntary land loss.” As a recent magazine feature on this practice explains, in one North Carolina county, “forty-two per cent of the [heir property] cases involved black families, despite the fact that only six per cent of Carteret’s population is black.”
> What can be done to prevent future loss of heir property farms? Ownership design, which created the problem, is the key to solving it. Many European countries have social policies and laws that help keep family farms intact. German law requires immediate reimbursement when one co-owner makes essential repairs, in sharp contrast with the American rule that reimbursement comes after partition.
> Primogeniture was a powerful tool for aristocrats aiming to avoid fractionation among heirs, the outcome inflicted on Black and Native American owners—and on the Irish. Fractionation was in part responsible for the Irish Potato Famine and the resulting wave of immigration to the United States. Following the Popery Act of 1703, England did not allow primogeniture for Catholics in Ireland, so their farms fractured as generations passed. Plots shrank to the point that planting a diversified range of crops became impossible. Eventually, potatoes were the only viable, nutrient-dense food that could be farmed.
> That’s why, to this day, you probably mail your credit card payment to a South Dakota P.O. box (or maybe to Nevada or Delaware, which gutted their usury laws to compete with South Dakota).
> Community property includes most of the assets a couple acquires in the state, during their marriage. It protects spouses from disinheritance by automatically making them both present and equal owners, no matter whose name is on the deed or account. On divorce or death, each spouse simply gets half. Today if you happen to live in one of the nine community property states, you are automatically enrolled in America’s most egalitarian marital ownership regime. … California—also a community property state
> Because of a glitch in the federal tax system, if you own a large, highly appreciated stock portfolio, it’s better to die with those assets governed by community property law than by common law. Your surviving spouse and later beneficiaries avoid certain capital gains taxes. Alaska lets you retitle precisely the assets that maximize tax avoidance—and you don’t have to be married in Alaska or even bother visiting the state
> Allow couples to check either a community property or common law box when they get their marriage licenses, like the choices couples make when they click through pro-or-con screens regarding options for tax deductions. No lawyers, no bankers, no fees. The marriage menu could perhaps extend further. Maybe let couples choose their preferred rule on increased earning capacity and other key aspects of marriage. Maybe let couples amend their selections after major life events. A well-crafted menu would allow all marrying couples—not just the wealthy—meaningful choices in writing their own marital story.
> The first trial in Alaska began in 1995 in the halibut fishery. Derby fishing had gotten so bad that there were only three twenty-four-hour windows of halibut fishing allowed per year. It wasn’t much better for Alaskan king crabs, but crab boat owners resisted ownership innovation. Grudgingly, after waves of bankruptcies and deaths, the fleet accepted the catch share strategy in 2005, just six months after Deadliest Catch went on the air. The results have been remarkable. No more frantic free-for-all on the Bering Sea. The crab season lengthened from three days in 2004 to three months in 2006. … catch shares have been adopted in forty countries and already account for about one-fifth of the global catch. It’s no surprise the strategy has been called “the greatest unknown policy success of our time.”
> Just one HFC-23 molecule causes as much global warming as 11,700 molecules of carbon dioxide. The manufacturers spotted an opportunity with CERs. Five years into the trading program, it emerged that these companies had doubled their output and had earned roughly half the world’s total CERs. The market for refrigerants had not grown, though, so why had they ramped up production? These companies had changed their business model. Their profit no longer came from producing and selling refrigerant. What they now cared about was producing and destroying the HFC-23 by-product. They duly incinerated every pound of HFC-23 they created. And for every pound of super greenhouse gas they destroyed, the companies were awarded CERs—which they then sold to polluting countries and companies in Europe and Japan.
> Among the states that recognize publicity rights, there’s wide variation on whether they survive death and for how long. In Tennessee, rights last ten years after death; in Virginia, twenty years; in California, seventy; and in Indiana, one hundred. New York terminates them when the owner dies. So when Marilyn Monroe died as a New York resident, her heirs could not cash in. Why such variation? California has many notable dead celebrities whose heirs succeeded in pushing the state for lengthy ownership. … In the plastic King bust case, the Georgia Supreme Court neglected to specify an end date for the posthumous right of publicity it created. Nor did it craft a “fair use” exception, as in copyright law, that allows for educational uses, criticism, or parody without payment to, or permission from, the copyright owner. The court created a flawed, overly expansive ownership form—with national consequences. King Inc. keeps suing everyone who uses King’s likeness, though he’s been dead more than fifty years.
> Texas is the only oil-producing state not to require compulsory unitization—surface owners can voluntarily create a unit, but only if they all unanimously agree, and that’s hard to achieve. Instead, Texas adopted and has stuck with a more collectivist ownership form to address the commons tragedy—an odd choice for a state that prizes individual autonomy. Since the late 1930s, the Texas Railroad Commission (by a quirk of politics) has controlled oil production through “proration” rules: the state agency sets production caps for individual owners each month and it enforces well-spacing rules.
> One hundred forty-two countries, including well-off ones like Japan and Chile, say underground natural resources belong to the state as part of the common wealth—flowing oil, gas, and water are like the air we breathe or the oceans we fish. Landownership means you control certain rights on the surface and close to it, but attachment does not reach much below ground.
> American law makes everything about managing co-owned property difficult, not just repairs. It can be impossible to get a loan with just a partial ownership interest, so the land remains undeveloped. Often you can’t get disaster relief either. Following Hurricane Katrina, up to $165 million of recovery funds went unclaimed because of difficulty in proving ownership of heir property. As a result, heir property often remains run-down and unimproved
> In practice and often in law, courts usually prefer to order the land partitioned by auction sale, especially if there are many heirs. Money is easier to split. But this administrative ease comes at a cost. According to one analyst, the purchasers at these sales “ are almost always white persons, frequently local lawyers or relatives of local officials, who make it their business to keep abreast of what properties are going to auction and who attend the auctions prepared to buy.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture says such sales are “the leading cause of black involuntary land loss.” As a recent magazine feature on this practice explains, in one North Carolina county, “forty-two per cent of the [heir property] cases involved black families, despite the fact that only six per cent of Carteret’s population is black.”
> What can be done to prevent future loss of heir property farms? Ownership design, which created the problem, is the key to solving it. Many European countries have social policies and laws that help keep family farms intact. German law requires immediate reimbursement when one co-owner makes essential repairs, in sharp contrast with the American rule that reimbursement comes after partition.
> Primogeniture was a powerful tool for aristocrats aiming to avoid fractionation among heirs, the outcome inflicted on Black and Native American owners—and on the Irish. Fractionation was in part responsible for the Irish Potato Famine and the resulting wave of immigration to the United States. Following the Popery Act of 1703, England did not allow primogeniture for Catholics in Ireland, so their farms fractured as generations passed. Plots shrank to the point that planting a diversified range of crops became impossible. Eventually, potatoes were the only viable, nutrient-dense food that could be farmed.
> That’s why, to this day, you probably mail your credit card payment to a South Dakota P.O. box (or maybe to Nevada or Delaware, which gutted their usury laws to compete with South Dakota).
> Community property includes most of the assets a couple acquires in the state, during their marriage. It protects spouses from disinheritance by automatically making them both present and equal owners, no matter whose name is on the deed or account. On divorce or death, each spouse simply gets half. Today if you happen to live in one of the nine community property states, you are automatically enrolled in America’s most egalitarian marital ownership regime. … California—also a community property state
> Because of a glitch in the federal tax system, if you own a large, highly appreciated stock portfolio, it’s better to die with those assets governed by community property law than by common law. Your surviving spouse and later beneficiaries avoid certain capital gains taxes. Alaska lets you retitle precisely the assets that maximize tax avoidance—and you don’t have to be married in Alaska or even bother visiting the state
> Allow couples to check either a community property or common law box when they get their marriage licenses, like the choices couples make when they click through pro-or-con screens regarding options for tax deductions. No lawyers, no bankers, no fees. The marriage menu could perhaps extend further. Maybe let couples choose their preferred rule on increased earning capacity and other key aspects of marriage. Maybe let couples amend their selections after major life events. A well-crafted menu would allow all marrying couples—not just the wealthy—meaningful choices in writing their own marital story.
> The first trial in Alaska began in 1995 in the halibut fishery. Derby fishing had gotten so bad that there were only three twenty-four-hour windows of halibut fishing allowed per year. It wasn’t much better for Alaskan king crabs, but crab boat owners resisted ownership innovation. Grudgingly, after waves of bankruptcies and deaths, the fleet accepted the catch share strategy in 2005, just six months after Deadliest Catch went on the air. The results have been remarkable. No more frantic free-for-all on the Bering Sea. The crab season lengthened from three days in 2004 to three months in 2006. … catch shares have been adopted in forty countries and already account for about one-fifth of the global catch. It’s no surprise the strategy has been called “the greatest unknown policy success of our time.”
> Just one HFC-23 molecule causes as much global warming as 11,700 molecules of carbon dioxide. The manufacturers spotted an opportunity with CERs. Five years into the trading program, it emerged that these companies had doubled their output and had earned roughly half the world’s total CERs. The market for refrigerants had not grown, though, so why had they ramped up production? These companies had changed their business model. Their profit no longer came from producing and selling refrigerant. What they now cared about was producing and destroying the HFC-23 by-product. They duly incinerated every pound of HFC-23 they created. And for every pound of super greenhouse gas they destroyed, the companies were awarded CERs—which they then sold to polluting countries and companies in Europe and Japan.
September 27, 2021
Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (2021) by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman is an excellent book that examines the law of ownership. Heller teachers at Columbia and Salzman at UCLA. Just as we’ve had many popular science and popular economics books Mine is a popular law book. It’s a gem of a book that elucidates a concept we tend to take for granted through many varied examples.
For anyone interested in the book there is an excellent episode of the Econtalk podcast with the authors.
The book starts by looking at how people clash over the ownership of the space of a reclined chair on a plane and looks at other examples that they use to show how ownership is a concept that we have different rules over and how those rules are judged to work in different cases. Car spots that have been shoveled, treasure discovered, our DNA, copyright, patents, the airspace above people’s land and the mining rights below are just some of the examples that Heller and Salzman examine.
The book states that there are six ownership principles that are used to adjudicate ownership, they are “first-in-time, possession, labor, attachment, self-ownership, and family”.
Mine is a really an excellent book. The two authors know their subject deeply and by going through various examples make the reader think and provide really good explanations for what they are describing.
For anyone interested in the book there is an excellent episode of the Econtalk podcast with the authors.
The book starts by looking at how people clash over the ownership of the space of a reclined chair on a plane and looks at other examples that they use to show how ownership is a concept that we have different rules over and how those rules are judged to work in different cases. Car spots that have been shoveled, treasure discovered, our DNA, copyright, patents, the airspace above people’s land and the mining rights below are just some of the examples that Heller and Salzman examine.
The book states that there are six ownership principles that are used to adjudicate ownership, they are “first-in-time, possession, labor, attachment, self-ownership, and family”.
Mine is a really an excellent book. The two authors know their subject deeply and by going through various examples make the reader think and provide really good explanations for what they are describing.
March 8, 2021
Mine! Ownership may seem an intuitive concept, even an instinctual one, but as often the case were law, society, and business converge, there is more here than meets the eye. Thankfully, co-authors Heller and Salzman provide a lively and inspired exploration of one of a fundamental questions: who owns what and why? The law professor pair take their extensive legal expertise and then deliver their ideas in engaging plainspoken prose with a bevy of intriguing examples. There's something exhilarating in a book that can clearly explain everything from HBO passwords to Disney cue lines, gene editing debates to chairs propped in a parking space. That something is the ability to see the world in a new light--one of the best gifts a book can offer.
March 20, 2021
This is a fantastic book. Written in the style of Malcolm Gladwell combined with David Cay Johnston, this book makes connections about ownership that most of us don't think about. Who owns unclaimed precious metals unearthed from your property - you or the contractor who dug them up? Who owns the space above your airline seat - you or the person who wants to recline into it? Who owns the iTunes song you purchased - you or Apple?
I especially enjoyed hearing the authors' personal opinions; they have a populist mentality combined with an eye towards making lasting positive changes in society.
A strong contender for best book of 2021.
I especially enjoyed hearing the authors' personal opinions; they have a populist mentality combined with an eye towards making lasting positive changes in society.
A strong contender for best book of 2021.
March 17, 2021
Definitely a book that will have you challenging your beliefs on what you thought the definition of "mine" aka ownership means. I learned so much in this book. There were places I was sitting there with my mouth wide open like, "you've got to be kidding me?!?" and a few other places in the book where I was a tad infuriated in disbelief. If you think you know what you own, you don't! Get this book and be prepared to learn a thing or two.
April 22, 2022
Цікава книга щоб задуматись що на справді є твоїм а що ні. Всі пприклади наведині з Американських законів і сторії.
January 15, 2024
Cleverly written, “Mine!” explains how we define ownership in the law and our society and how those changing definitions impact us. Whether it’s groundwater in Texas or fish in the Bering Sea, digital media or copyrights, theme park lines or wills, Heller and Salzman explain how different ownership structures benefit some more than others and sometimes lead to adverse conditions (e.g., right of capture incentivizes Texas farmers to pump as much groundwater as they can before their neighbor drains their shared aquifer). On the flip side, “Mine!” also explains how we can tweak ownership structures and markets to promote outcomes we desire (e.g., cap and trade to reduce emissions). Entertaining and insightful, “Mine!” is well worth a read.
May 8, 2022
Пізнавальна книжка про парадокси, колізії, конфлікти, непорозуміння тощо, повʼязані з правом власності в усіх його проявах. Це все ілюструє купа цікавих історій, здебільшого з американського досвіду.
June 12, 2025
Very interesting (and niche) topic about the nuances of ownership. How do we decide who owns what and why? It’s not always a straightforward answer. Ownership design could have far reaching consequences! Lots of thought provoking cases that touch upon many aspects of life.
November 2, 2023
Цікава книга, що розширює сприйняття власності,різних способів воложіння і як вони впливають на наше життя
May 11, 2024
شاید بحث نام کتاب که مالکیت هست خیلی جذاب نباشه ولی وقتی کتاب رو شروع کردم هرچی جلوتر رفت برام جذابتر شد.
November 24, 2025
Had to read this for my property law class. I did enjoy the example and thought it was a very easy way to explain how trends in property law do affect our lives without noticing.
March 17, 2021
So thought-provoking!!! Mine! felt like a college semester course—not like the long boring classes— like the ones with the cool professors that show how laws/arguments affect YOUR life. I appreciated that the authors share their pov, but ultimately give you space to come to your own conclusions.
April 1, 2021
For the moment, consider this definition: Popular educational nonfiction is writing (a book in this case) that informs or instructs, meant for the average reader, not a professional training to be a lawyer or doctor. To be successful, the book needs two main ingredients, knockout ideas and eye-catching examples. Slot Heller and Salzman's Mine! into this category; it more than qualifies, specifically...
The ideas in Mine! are thought provoking, enlightening, and useful for understanding everyday life. Often I found myself saying "Aha!" or "Never thought of it like that" or even "No way! That can't be." From idea to idea, chapter to chapter, Mine! is a revealing intellectual ride. That said, those ideas are not isolated, disparate concepts; the authors continually make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. After finishing the book, I left better informed and more aware of the intricate importance of ownership in our lives.
The examples in Mine! are superb, often the highlight of each explanation. They are mind bending and emotion arousing, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous. For instance, who owns the space behind/before your airplane seat, and what role does strategic ambiguity play in determining the answer? Can you shoot down a drone flying over your property when you can't shoot down a plane? What body parts can you sell (a kidney? sperm? eggs?) and should the rule be the same for each? Why did the Native Americans and European settlers define land ownership differently? Can the association control the cats in my condominium? And speaking more generally of the book's examples, who knew so many people sued so many people in so many ways?
My only quibble. Sometimes Heller and Salzman overwork the discussion with too much “if this, then that” or “if that, then this.” At times, the book feels more like a law school tutorial than education for the average reader. The weighty sections are only occasional, but they do slow the book down from time to time.
Back to the main point: Thought provoking ideas intertwined with enjoyable examples is my standard for what I'm calling "popular educational nonfiction." Mine! has just the right ingredients expertly blended, and those ingredients make for excellent reading.
Bonus ownership question: Having seen Heller and Salzman describe Mine! on a webinar, I immediately reserved the book at the library so I borrowed the book at no cost to me and no benefit to the authors. Some might say I should have bought the book and owned it for myself as a form of repayment to the authors. Others might say I was being a savvy consumer; borrowing it temporarily was ownership enough to meet my needs. I leave it to others to decide. To hint at my answer, I'm embarrassed to tell my story.
The ideas in Mine! are thought provoking, enlightening, and useful for understanding everyday life. Often I found myself saying "Aha!" or "Never thought of it like that" or even "No way! That can't be." From idea to idea, chapter to chapter, Mine! is a revealing intellectual ride. That said, those ideas are not isolated, disparate concepts; the authors continually make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. After finishing the book, I left better informed and more aware of the intricate importance of ownership in our lives.
The examples in Mine! are superb, often the highlight of each explanation. They are mind bending and emotion arousing, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous. For instance, who owns the space behind/before your airplane seat, and what role does strategic ambiguity play in determining the answer? Can you shoot down a drone flying over your property when you can't shoot down a plane? What body parts can you sell (a kidney? sperm? eggs?) and should the rule be the same for each? Why did the Native Americans and European settlers define land ownership differently? Can the association control the cats in my condominium? And speaking more generally of the book's examples, who knew so many people sued so many people in so many ways?
My only quibble. Sometimes Heller and Salzman overwork the discussion with too much “if this, then that” or “if that, then this.” At times, the book feels more like a law school tutorial than education for the average reader. The weighty sections are only occasional, but they do slow the book down from time to time.
Back to the main point: Thought provoking ideas intertwined with enjoyable examples is my standard for what I'm calling "popular educational nonfiction." Mine! has just the right ingredients expertly blended, and those ingredients make for excellent reading.
Bonus ownership question: Having seen Heller and Salzman describe Mine! on a webinar, I immediately reserved the book at the library so I borrowed the book at no cost to me and no benefit to the authors. Some might say I should have bought the book and owned it for myself as a form of repayment to the authors. Others might say I was being a savvy consumer; borrowing it temporarily was ownership enough to meet my needs. I leave it to others to decide. To hint at my answer, I'm embarrassed to tell my story.
April 19, 2021
This is one of those books that makes you see things through a completely different lens. Ownership is something that seems basic enough on the surface but actually, is quite nuanced and foundational to a lot of our social systems. There are many different types of ownership justifications - for example, you own something because you were there first, you put in labor, it’s attached to a thing you own, etc. The authors provide lots of interesting examples to illustrate different questions of ownership claims, like:
- whether someone should be allowed to recline their seat on an airplane
- how long we should allow IP rights to persist for new pharmaceutical drugs, TV characters, etc,
- the legality and morality of markets for buying and selling organs
- what happens when one neighbor has redwood trees and the next-door neighbor has solar panels that are being blocked by them
- whether a spouse is entitled to future earnings if she helped support her husband through graduate school, he lands a high-paying job, and they get divorced
In some cases, these questions vary by state since there is often no federal ownership guidance. That said, the authors argue that ownership design in the US is one hidden but important driver of inequality we see today.
At the end, they discussed how ownership of digital goods is quite different from physical goods, even though the digital marketplaces design the shopping experience to appear similar. For example, Amazon can remove a Kindle title or audiobook from a user’s device, but of course they cannot come to your house and take a paperback from your bookshelf. Often, “owning” a digital movie or book actually means you have a limited, conditional license to stream it, but only on your device.
They also briefly touch on the sharing economy at the end, although I would have enjoyed hearing more about that. All in all, this book was a great read and I highly recommend checking it out.
- whether someone should be allowed to recline their seat on an airplane
- how long we should allow IP rights to persist for new pharmaceutical drugs, TV characters, etc,
- the legality and morality of markets for buying and selling organs
- what happens when one neighbor has redwood trees and the next-door neighbor has solar panels that are being blocked by them
- whether a spouse is entitled to future earnings if she helped support her husband through graduate school, he lands a high-paying job, and they get divorced
In some cases, these questions vary by state since there is often no federal ownership guidance. That said, the authors argue that ownership design in the US is one hidden but important driver of inequality we see today.
At the end, they discussed how ownership of digital goods is quite different from physical goods, even though the digital marketplaces design the shopping experience to appear similar. For example, Amazon can remove a Kindle title or audiobook from a user’s device, but of course they cannot come to your house and take a paperback from your bookshelf. Often, “owning” a digital movie or book actually means you have a limited, conditional license to stream it, but only on your device.
They also briefly touch on the sharing economy at the end, although I would have enjoyed hearing more about that. All in all, this book was a great read and I highly recommend checking it out.
November 23, 2021
Knowing quite well what elicits a sense of ownership and loss in people, the authors use all of these to create in readers the feeling that they are being cheated of what is rightfully theirs. So, when they relate the experience of farmers with lowering water tables, it’s framed in terms of “your water”, in spite of the fact that most of the population, hence the readership, is urban. When they address the fact that genetics companies use information from pooled raw DNA to explore patterns of illness with the intent of someday developing pharmaceuticals, they suggest to readers that companies should pay costumers for their spit. Feeling cheated because you gave a company some spit in exchange for information? Well, what did you forego? Was your digestion poorer that day? Could you have sold the spit in the market? Do you want to cash in on future profits from a drug? The logistics are ludicrous when one considers that such a system would entail giving up anonymity, developing a tracking system that would be the envy of Big Brother; one that can track you, or more likely your heirs 50/70 years from now for all of a 20 cent payment. All ignoring the fact that science requires hundreds, thousands of inputs that would be impossible to track. So, does the pharmaceutical owe you 20 cents, or is it 25. Dear me! Let’s take it to court.
In reality all “new great idea” books, books that take a fresh, new perspective function in the same manner. They emphasize some features, gloss over others, target readers’ emotions, and fail to delve into complexities. So, if you like those books, you might like this one. I, on the other hand, want full information, don’t want to be played, and don’t read these unless they are assigned by the book club.
In reality all “new great idea” books, books that take a fresh, new perspective function in the same manner. They emphasize some features, gloss over others, target readers’ emotions, and fail to delve into complexities. So, if you like those books, you might like this one. I, on the other hand, want full information, don’t want to be played, and don’t read these unless they are assigned by the book club.
November 9, 2023
This is one of the best non-fiction books (if not the best) I have read all year. I am sure I am not the only person who came to this after listening to the 99% Invisible podcast episode on ownership in which the authors were interviewed, and I'm so glad I decided to check out the book instead of calling it good with the podcast episode and moving on.
Back in high school, my AP government teacher (a queen) summed up politics in a simple way that has been seared into my brain ever since: politics is who gets what and how and when and how much. This book really cemented that basic idea in the me in a way that was both entertaining and enlightening.
The authors move through different rules/methods/myths of ownership. Each one is explored and challenged through research findings, legal cases, and anecdotes, which tend to range from amusing or annoyingly familiar to downright disturbing for societal well-being. Ownership is a hugely important topic, and more convoluted than ever. This book gave me far more perspective on it, and the approach from the authors is very creative. Everybody should read this book.
I listened to the audiobook, which I recommend! Low-key wish I had a physical copy for reference, though.
Back in high school, my AP government teacher (a queen) summed up politics in a simple way that has been seared into my brain ever since: politics is who gets what and how and when and how much. This book really cemented that basic idea in the me in a way that was both entertaining and enlightening.
The authors move through different rules/methods/myths of ownership. Each one is explored and challenged through research findings, legal cases, and anecdotes, which tend to range from amusing or annoyingly familiar to downright disturbing for societal well-being. Ownership is a hugely important topic, and more convoluted than ever. This book gave me far more perspective on it, and the approach from the authors is very creative. Everybody should read this book.
I listened to the audiobook, which I recommend! Low-key wish I had a physical copy for reference, though.
June 16, 2021
The thread of ownership binds this book together as the authors attempt a Freakonomics project by going through a long list of examples of ownership working and not working. I only give it three stars because the tone of the book comes off as Law School professors explaining how ownership works to the uneducated masses, complete with some terms defined in italics. The authors also chose to provide their opinion on the examples in some cases, but not in others. So they are fine with Disney charging for VIP passes (tough luck if you can't afford those) but they get sentimental when talking about Uber and how it does not replace the feeling of owning a car.
There are some good parts to the book, especially the chapters on copyright and family ownership of assets through generations, but taken as a whole it was an uneven read.
There are some good parts to the book, especially the chapters on copyright and family ownership of assets through generations, but taken as a whole it was an uneven read.
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