What is yours to own

While I sit here singing my daughter to sleep, I was thinking about ownership of things. What do we actually own that can't be taken away by an authority? There really is very little.

You might own your house but no matter how much you love it or what it is worth, if the government wants to put a highway through it, they will. This is the same with your bank account too as after all, the money you have there isn't likely actually there, so what do you own?

It really is a very short list and pretty much, it is what you can carry with you. Skills, ideas, beliefs. Even these things can be manipulated and potentially even taken away but, they are relatively ours.

There is value in ownership of course, even if it is just the sense of ownership like a house or car. It is interesting to look at the vocabulary differences though as while the money buys the house, we know we don't own the money. I own a Honda, I have very little money in the bank. Having is not owning. I have a wife and daughter, I own neither.

This is something that people need to consider when they look at economic security as having money is not independence, it is allowance in a larger system. What is interesting when people talk crypto is that people own Bitcoin, own Steem. And while they might not have value at all, the sense of ownership itself does hold value.

There is a very practical reason that people say that if you do not have they keys, it isn't yours - as whoever does have the keys can take it away from whoever thinks they own it. This is also why it is a very bad idea to consider forking out someone's stake as it would prove that just like fiat, it isn't owned.

Crypto is about the security and responsibility of economic ownership and personal control of finances. The ideal is going to get increasingly important as we go forward and authorities try to make claim on what is not theirs to possess. I hope that people are ready to Braveheart it in the future.

But, from a quality of life perspective, we need a sense of control over our actions which require a sense of ownership. This is something that I have noticed develop in myself over my time on Steem as I increasingly feel that I have ownership over my stake and even if the economic value is zero, what is in my wallet is mine.

This is peace of mind, even if only in a limited and quite narrow sense of control. As I see it, this sense of ownership is one of the components that are going to drive mainstream adoption as people are increasingly having what they thought they owned taken away, piece by piece.

So many get into crypto in the hope to get rich and buy back into the very world where they own nothing. They don't seem to realise the precarious nature of the system they have dug deeper into or how little control they actually have as at any moment, an authority can wipe their board clean.

Keep something you own under lock, hold onto the key with your life. One day, it might be all you have.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(posted from phone)}