There's no rule that says a wombat can't play basketball
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Wombats poop cubes. I think that justifies it.
“It’s their sacred entitlement to make a living, regardless of the consequences.”
Thats the attitude that needs to be changed. A mentality so self centered its oppressive to think of others will always result in destruction and conflict.
It comes back to the problem of how to give people enough agency to live their lives successfully, without sacrificing the environment and context that success is built upon.
Or, to put another way, how to protect personal property which leads to personal agency, but limiting personal property that leads to oppressive ownership.
We probably have it more right in Australia than many other places, at least legally. No one really owns land, its all vested in 'the crown' in the end, (btw thats different to the King), and its actually closer to a reference to god.
Our problem is we aren't acting how our laws are written, we act as if we have full and sole control on everything in our name. When it reaches the courts it thankfully doesn't seem to always go that way. But culturally and politically we act in a more American way than our nation's laws are designed.
I would agree, which is why I tend to come down against private property/privatisation of land. It serves everyone to have agriculture, but only if that agriculture is done in a way which serves everyone. Of course a community controlling its land and allocating it to people who want to use it to benefit the community is no guarantee they use it responsibly, as we can see with this one.
Managing things like environmental impact requires a very large scale view and coordination, a river might be able to tolerate run off from the first farm, but by the 50th downstream it might be cooked. It's difficult to expect the person at the first farm to really understand their impact and responsibility. Significant attitude changes are needed, almost everyone in Australia behaves in ways the earth cannot sustain and which violently exploit other animals including other humans (e.g. our diets, our trinkets). We really need to reframe what being a human in the world means and what responsibilities it entails, and set up institutions that make it easier instead of harder.
I'd definitely fall on the side of maintaining private control over land in many areas, farming is certainly one of those. Even the unending title we have, i think gives an assurance and stability for the primary user of that land.
Those kinds of enduring stability, i've come to believe, are a key source of Australian productivity and ingenuity. Where we identify it, i think we should protect it.
Community controlling land mightn't work out any better either. Scale sometimes blurs issues the individual can see clear as day.
To demonstrate with your farms along a stream example, and i suspect i'm taking what you wrote too far, so bear with me,
where a community controls the land and parcels out responsibilities to work that land it necessarily removes the individual, farmer/owner, from their personal closeness to that place.
I could very easily imagine a scenario where that 50th farmer down stream doesn't notice or even know about the toxic stream going by their farm because they simply aren't that closely invested in the place they're in. After all its often farmers themselves who call an alarm on environmental issues. Farmers were some of the first to link the toxic run off to Dupont in the US beacuse they saw it in the environment they knew best.
I think theres one idea rising in the European zeitgeist. That of Citizen's Assemblies. The bringing of a representative/randommised sample of people face to face, to participate and make the democratic decisions, could help us here as well.
I think so, so many of our intractable problems come down to a lack of discursive clarity. Citizens Assemblies is at least a model that attempts to improve that.
I find that the historical precedent of commons and allotments has many appealing safeguards built into it. And end to corporate buy ups and land speculation for instance. In leftist economic theory a distinction is usually made between personal property (stuff you use, your toothbrush etc) and private property (the means of production, agricultural land, factories etc held by individuals or companies for the purpose of exploitation).
It might serve a farmer to say over-exploit land and wear it out but a community that lives there, presumably having young people and children, are unlikely to feel that way. Similarly is a community unlikely to leave a field fallow because holding land that is not in use to later sell is very profitable. People invested in their personal property and local community, the business of living somewhere and presumably some of them farming the commons; they are still invested in paying attention to the environment and quality of the land.
You have probably heard of the tragedy of the commons but this was based off highly unusual transient conditions (sort of like the alpha wolf study) and historical evidence points to many enduring and stable arrangements. https://ian.umces.edu/blog/the-triumph-of-the-commons-no-actually-it-can-happen/ is a good primer and Ostrum, E's work for further study if curious.
I am defs also keen on citizen's assemblies, more democracy is awesome and evidence shows that true democracy (i.e. broad opinions and randomly drafted shmucks) consistently returns good results.