The Hidden Rules of Ownership: Michael Heller on Ownership Myths, the Six Stories Used to Claim Everything, Digital Privacy and How Ownership Engineering Can Stop Climate Change
“Mine!” is one of the first words babies learn. In every culture, ownership shapes every minute of every day of our lives.
We think ownership is natural. We think it’s obvious and simple, but that’s not entirely true.
There are hidden rules that determine who gets what and why: Whether you stand at the front of the line or the back, where you live, what you drive, where you park, what you can watch and listen to. Hundreds of times a day, we encounter the rules that decide who gets what.
Ownership is always up for grabs… If you know the rules, that is. And once we start looking for these choices about ownership, we will see them everywhere. Fights over reclining airline seats, whether we can share HBO or Netflix passwords. Also big issues like climate change and wealth inequality.
All these conflicts are driven by just a few simple, hidden ownership rules. And if you’re not the one choosing the rules, someone else is choosing them for you. If we want to understand who owns our online life, whether we can solve climate change, how to battle wealth inequality, we need to understand how ownership really works. And my guest today does.
Michael Heller is an endowed professor at Columbia law school and writes and teaches about who gets what. And he is the co-author of the highly anticipated book. Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives
In this conversation with Michael, you’ll hear:
02:40 – The most important thing for listeners to understand about ownership
03:36 – The hidden rules of ownership
05:21 – Economy class airplane seats and how big corporation engineered decisions create conflict for profit
07:24 – Ownership, the remote control of life
10:20 – Digital privacy and how we keep tech giants out of our private lives
11:45 – The Wild West of genetic data harvesting and the real reason why you get charged so little money to analyze your DNA
16:24 – What “Buy Now” really means
20:40 – Big issues with regard to ownership
24:35 – How South Dakota became the biggest global tax haven for the ultra wealthy
27:00 – How ownership as a cutting-edge engineering technology can help combat climate change
30:15 – Smashing the myth that “owning nothing reduces consumption”
And much more!