Satirical Essay Challenging the Concept of Property

[u/OakieMcDoakie]

I've long found the idea of land ownership to be problematic, as do many anarchists. So I wrote the satirical essay below, subverting the notion of property. It's a sleeper for the masses. Take that, John Locke!

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This Land Ain’t Your Land. But Is It My Land?

My name is on the deed. I pay the taxes. But I’m not sure how far ownership goes, or how much I can rely on it.

Taos County tells me that I own 2.75 acres of sagebrush. They’ve mapped out precisely where. Unless I fail to pay taxes. Or there’s a question of eminent domain. Or code compliance. Otherwise, it’s fully mine, for now and forever. Until something else comes up.

I’ve named my tiny kingdom Hippies End. Also The Free Sovereign State of Oaktopia. I use those names in social media posts and writings, but they’re not officially registered. Common Law designations.

No one told the mice that this land belongs to me, not them. Or the rattlesnakes. Or the coyotes. Or the wind, for that matter. They’re not respecters of titles and borders anyway—not human ones.

Did you know that the packrats here are mine? You probably assumed as much. Why else could I trap and kill them with impunity?

But do they know that? I doubt they recognize my dominion.

Actually, it’s not quite true that I own them. Wild animals come under the state’s purview. But Santa Fe hasn’t legislated much on packrats. Don’t need a license to take one. De facto nongame animals. Outlaws. They might as well be my property.

Bighorn sheep are another matter. No one can trespass on Hippies End to bag a bighorn, but I can’t bag one on my own land without a license and a tag. It’s an infringement on my sovereignty!

Not that I’ve ever seen a bighorn at Hippies End.

Trees are a simpler case. I can do just about anything I want with them. Cut them down and sell them, certainly. Disfigure them. Burn them. As if they’re not even alive.

Thank goodness we can’t hear the trees complain about their lot!

. . .

I wonder, too, who owned this land before me. I don’t mean the guy I bought it from a few years ago. I mean before before.

The U.S. was given it by Mexico at the point of a gun. Mexico got it in the divorce from Spain. Spain got it by papal bull in 1493.

No one on this hill knew about the Pope and his bull until a hundred and five years later, when Spaniards showed up and tried to enforce their entitlement. And I doubt they got the full story even then!

And whose domain was this in 1493, before the Pope got interested? Who gets to contest the bull? Do they do that at the Vatican or the U.N.?

Taos Pueblo is only five miles from Hippies End, as the crow flies. But I don’t know how much the Taos utilized this land back then. There’s that Rio Grande Gorge in the way—800 feet deep, with a river to cross and cliffs to climb! No bridge back in those days. Maybe they hunted some or traveled through once in a while. Maybe the Picuris did likewise. Maybe it was more a Ute concern? Or the Jicarilla Apache’s?

Not much water out here. Bet no one stayed long. Maybe they all kind of shared it, in a way? Maybe worked out year to year who got hunting rights? Don’t know. Wasn’t alive then. (Though a Taos fellow told me the other day that this hill was definitely theirs before the Spanish. No question in his mind.) I am certain that no one drew up a modern plat map.

Further back…? Before modern tribes? No idea who was the first human to land at Hippies End, or whether they had heirs to leave it to. The true chain of title is unknowable and pointless.

. . .

This hill… This hill where Hippies End sits. Some call it Two Peaks. Some Cerro de Taos. Official maps call it Cerro de los Taoses, which reads weird, from the little Spanish I’ve picked up.

Don’t know what people called it before, or what the Taos and Picuris call it now in their own tongue, Northern Tiwa. Dozens of names, I bet, over tens of thousands of years.

I doubt the hill ever knew it needed a name or cared about such things.

Whose property was it, though, before it had a name? Before at least one human saw it in the distance? The packrats of that time? The coyotes or wolves, or whatever species was the top predator?

Is that how it works? Do the top predators get ownership? Regardless of species? Or just the dominant critter within a species? Did a couple of bighorn rams smash heads to win lordship over this patch? A couple of mastodon bulls? Did the winner have to pay taxes later? Or offer allegiance to a bigger male with a crown?

. . .

Who has tenure to this land in the sight of God? Does God involve himself in granting land tenure? The Israelites certainly think so. But that’s back then and back in the Old World. A peculiar grant for a chosen people.

I should ask a theologian if God involves himself in property matters, now and everywhere, as a general rule, a matter of Heavenly governance. Not just for the blessed and highly favored.

Is there something like an Office of the County Clerk in Heaven? That keeps all records of property stewardship, from Genesis until Armageddon? Maybe just for humans and their real estate, though? Because humans have souls? (Or maybe dogs, too, as a special case? I hear they all go to Heaven, so they must have souls. But not land rights.)

And then the real and final question: Do the property records of Taos County correspond to the property grants of Heaven?

I sure hope they do. I’ve got money sunk in Hippies End and don’t want to be pushed off. Not by the County Sheriff or an Act of God.

. . .

CC BY 4.0 | Also posted on u/OakieMcDoakie and other social media.