It is said that “If it's everybody's responsibility, it's someone else's responsibility.
If it's someone else's responsibility, it's nobody's responsibility.”
Let’s consider a scenario.
YOU individually own a car.
As this car is your private property, you can use it whenever you want and for whatever
reason.
But this ownership has a cost.
It’s called RESPONSIBILITY.
You are responsible for its maintenance like fuel, lubricants, parts, safety, and so on.
Hence, for full control, you take full responsibility for it.
Now consider another scenario in which multiple people collectively own a car.
What happens if multiple individuals want to use it at the same time for different tasks?
What if one person utilizes the vehicle more than others?
How are maintenance bills divided among the owners?
What if one owner wants to install a new music system while another owner considers it a
luxury?
It is hard to avoid the “not my problem” factor when it comes to shared ownership.
Hence, there is a big disconnect between the utilization and obligations.
This case keeps on getting worse with more owners involved.
Another problem with collective ownership is that it bounds your actions to other individuals
in the group, suppressing freedom in many ways.
On the other hand, individual ownership makes people take actions on their own without having
to ask permission from anyone.
The term ‘collective ownership’ is essentially flawed.
The word ‘Collective’ never indicates whether it means a defined group or a society
and how big the society would be.
The term ‘ownership’ is also vague as ownership in its basic sense excludes people
from a resource except for the owner.
This makes the people with opposing views follow statements like: “If it’s collectively
owned, it’s not “owned” at all.”
Collective ownership runs into two problems.
One, only a few people want to use a resource but everyone in the group is bound to maintain
it.
Second, everyone or most of the owners wants to utilize a resource but very few people
take responsibility for its upkeep.
Consider a pasture with unrestricted access for everyone to let their cows and goats graze.
While each animal is a little burden on the land but over time more of them are added,
eventually degrading the land.
Soon the land becomes worthless deprived of fresh grass, impacted by hooves, no maintenance,
and so on.
This is referred to as “the tragedy of the commons”, a term coined in an essay written
in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, that describes a scenario where individuals
have free collective access to a resource without any social structure or governing
rules, they act in their self-interest for a while but eventually end up depleting a
resource.
The degradation of the land in this example was used as a justification against collective
ownership.
The land held IN COMMON was the initial point that allowed the tragedy to occur in the first
place.
Collective ownership could make each member act as a benefactor of freeloading while neglecting
the responsibility required to maintain the resource, the limitedness, and the restraints
required for its sustainability.
These responsibilities do not go away and everyone ends up in a situation where the
resource is of no use to anyone.
That’s why Aristotle said: ’What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men
have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with
others.’
Human beings have to work to survive.
His work to provide food, shelter, and other resources for himself and the people around
him is a direct consequence of his efforts.
These resources become his private ownership.
If someone suggests forcibly taking this away from him, he feels his survival is threatened.
That is why private property rights are of vital importance.
But private ownership doesn’t put an end to people pooling their resources and using
them however they want.
Many companies run like this.
But, we are not talking about corporations that are collectively owned.
VOLUNTARY collective ownership has never been an issue.
What people tend to oppose is MANDATORY collective ownership.
The issue begins when suggestions to restrict private ownership are presented.
In other words, advocating for collective ownership being the only way to go.
This sort of setup is highly prone to drift towards authoritarianism.
It further leans towards chaos that encourages stealing the already held private property
under the tag of “collective good”.
Forcing anyone to be a part of the collective is not only wrong but inherently evil.
Morality is subjective and forcing your morality on others never solves any problem.
People who preach collective ownership have a high tendency to enforce their so-called
“good idea” as something compulsory.
Telling others what they can and can’t do is where things go wrong.
There are also instances where a resource is limited compared to the number of people
trying to use it.
To avoid conflict, management would be required with decision-making powers.
If the group becomes bigger, bigger management would become a necessity.
This management eventually becomes slower, expensive, hard to manage, and hard to centralize.
To tackle all this, the management ends up establishing itself in the form of a hierarchy,
further discarding the idea of “collective ownership”.
Hierarchal structure and rules can enforce who and when the resource could be availed.
In other words, you have created a new form of private property under the terms of “collective
good” and morality.
Orwell explained this scenario in the book Animal Farm.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Collective ownership receives criticism for its effectiveness when you try to scale it
up.
It could survive in a tight group like a family but it later becomes impractical.
Beyond a closed group, it just sheds more and more problems.
Just because a small family or a village community could run on collectivism, does not necessarily
mean it would work in large groups, where it becomes more and more difficult to administer.
Some people believe that family is the first societal system people get to see where collectivism
is the norm.
Although it's close to perfect even within a family.
Growing up with several siblings and having one TV is a good example.
Not everyone wants to watch the same channel at the same time and hence the squabble.
Living on a shared basis and having roommates is another example where it’s never fair.
Anyways.
The family heads usually parents sacrifices many things for their kids.
This sort of upbringing is further reinforced if a person is brought up in a small community
or village where everyone knows everyone else.
This somehow gets engraved in a way that it becomes a go-to way of thinking.
People begin to believe a similar system could be applied elsewhere.
This could go on and on.
And eventually, you end up with people suggesting a similar system could work for a whole country
or the entire world, which is not intelligent by any stretch of the imagination.
Even when collective ownership setups in large societies become unworkable, people involved
in these collectives uphold their belief in utopia.
It essentially becomes a belief system.
Another reason for people to choose collective ownership over private ownership is a result
of human nature.
Most people naturally support a system where they could get benefits without having to
pay for it.
If they see a system that could benefit them without paying much, they tend to support
it.
And that’s how collectivism gets its support too.
On the opposing end, if someone has to pay for something while getting little to no value,
they are highly likely to stay away from such a setup.
That’s how you are naturally inclined towards one system or another.
In simpler words, it’s all good when someone else is paying for it until your own money
is involved.
In the end, most people would choose to go to a private school over a public one, a private
toilet over a public one, a private pool over a public one and the list goes on.
Mandatory Collective ownership fundamentally emphasizes shifting “from each according
to their ability... to each according to their need.”
But some people would produce more output than others and would claim a greater share
of resources while others would do little to no work while claiming they are victims
and their needs are not fulfilled.
And there is a whole series of people in the spectrum that is somewhere in the middle of
these two mindsets.
This whole debate can be solved in a much better way if people begin to talk about both
their rights AND their responsibilities.
But unfortunately, we are pushing more and more individuals towards ideologies that only
talk about rights and turn a deaf ear when it comes to the responsibilities.
It is also alarming to see most of these individuals are mass-produced by the universities who
have their inclinations toward rights and collectivism without any concern for responsibilities.
We are going to finish the video with another of Aristotle’s saying: “For that which
is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.
Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when
he is himself concerned as an individual.
For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which
he expects another to fulfill.”
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