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About this quote

What does it mean?
No individual has an inherent claim to ownership of the earth itself.
In plain terms
We cannot claim exclusive right to own the earth.
What can you take from it?
No one owns the earth.

Where it applies

  • property debates
  • resource distribution

Putting it to work

  • challenging property rights
  • land reform

Questions to consider

  • What rights do people have to resources?
  • How should land be shared?

Another view

It does not explain how resources should be managed.

More from Benjamin Tucker

  1. We aim to decrease invasion only because, as a rule, invasion increases the total of pain (meaning, of course, pain suffered by the ego, whether directly or th…

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  2. To secure ourselves in this use, each contracts, or will ultimately contract, with his fellows not to encroach upon those portions of the earth which they are …

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  3. Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of invasion, but a minimum of …

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