On these pages and posts

I would like to explore with you what it is to occupy and inhabit a piece of territory.

I would like to explore ways the edges to territory may be made.

(These explorations may often be re-explorations, because, since ancient times people everywhere have time honoured ways to make and maintain the edges to the places we have inhabited.)

I would like to explore ways a solid, healthy occupation of a place can be secured: Secured from others in ways that do not threaten others. Ways that instead use a making and a re-making of our customs of using hospitality and courtesy to strangers to secure our inhabited places.

Please join me in these explorations.

A loud Declaration

A clearer understanding of the difference between types of property, Just two types of property, has all the marks of being at the centre of a spring uprising.  A Spring Jubilee perhaps.

The one type:

This is the hold you and I have on the space we take up. The space you and I take up has measurable dimensions. Most obviously and firstly is land. We are land owners and land users. There are plenty of other landowners and land users who can now consider what of earth’s dimensions they occupy. There are plenty of dimensions to this earth that we, collectively, have measured.  Geometrically, geographically, geologically, geo-dynamically, geo-orbitally.

Once considered, an estimate of the ongoing use-value of a place can be determined with reference to the keenness of those who would use it.  This use-value is solely by courtesy of the public and so belongs to the public. We need to find ways that it can be distributed directly to the people of the planet.

And the other type,

The property that arises from what you and I make out of the space we use. This type of property belongs solely to us. It includes all the goods and services that arise out of the efforts of you and me. There comes a clarity of understanding that all the proceeds of what you and I do belongs to us to use/trade/exchange/employ as we feel fit. All that you and I make out of the space we use may be called rightfully ours.

 

My declaration is that each month I hereby allocate the use-value rent for the space I take up as revenue for public use.

The enforced taxing, fining, and fee impositions that at present supply the public revenue will soon become more obvious as the theft by the powerful that it is.

I make this simple declaration: I trust the public directly, and declare that the (estimate for this year, £300.00 per month) belongs to the public I deal with directly. This is my earth rent.

This trust will serve our families’ protection better that the global institutions of management that you and I are suffering under right now. The fees and fines and threats that our governments and our money systems are imposing right now are failing to secure my future or the future of my family.

So, I am also declaring that his £300.00 a month I see as a priority expenditure. A first priority expenditure. It is to directly safeguard the good manners that society treats my family. Payments for current demands from the failing systems come after as a lower priority.

This may see be seen, not as a threat to current institutions, but as a gift to them. They may now take time to begin to appreciate the measurable dimensions of the spaces of the earth they occupy. They might then use the rent of these spaces either for public services or release space on the earth for others to have a hold on a portion of the planet.

We all may then enjoy the more straightforward task of defending what is seen to properly belong to either public or private concerns.

It makes me happy to know there is a way.

 

“We have an ancient and long-enduring cultural imperative of neighbourly love and work. This becomes ever more important as hardly imaginable suffering is imposed upon all creatures by industrial tools and industrial weapons. If we are to continue, in our only world, with any hope of thriving in it, we will have to expect neighbourly behaviour of sciences, of industries, and of governments, just as we expect it of our citizens in their neighbourhoods.”

Wendell Berry, 2015

 

The first task is to tease apart how we treat property that IS the world (as tenants – with use-rights and duties)

 

from property that we make out of the world (as full owners of the products of our work).

 

The time has come to

Occupy the earth!

As tenants of the places we use.

The time has come

To occupy the earth

As tenants of the links between the places we use.

 

We men and we women of this world can overcome the weaponization of the cultures of the places we use.

 

The time has come to write up some tenancy agreements:

 

 

 

Sample Tenancy Agreement

Relating to:

The Place I Occupy

(insert here, the measurable boundaries of the “ground state”: earth/sea/air/waves/light/physics/flows as recorded by land registries and other ground state registries)

Between the one:

(insert here the occupier: My name/my family/ my company/my nation/ my heirs and assigns)

And the other:

(insert here community recipients: i.e links to all other earth occupiers/ trusted community administers/ means to a universal earth citizen’s income)

 

The terms:

The one pays the other a rent (here called an Earth Rent), volunteered and agreed today and to be re-volunteered and re-agreed termly into the future.

 

The earth rent Is a market valuation based on, placed on, and traded on, the desire of all and any to use or occupy the said portion of ground state Earth. This rent funds the links to the rest of ground state Earth.

 

There are only two T’s and C’s

that apply:

The one complimenting the other:

1. To take up our own place as carers-in-chief of the ecologies of the ground state we occupy. That is, to look after our bit of our planet. This may be called the Husbandry / Stewardship clause.
2. With our ground rent payments, to take up our joint places as carers-in-chief of the links between our ground state planet. That is, to look after our community connections to the other parts of the planet. This may be called the community contribution clause.

 

 

To my fellow earth occupiers, all of you,

I hold a piece of this earth as mine. I have a legal tenancy. UK law says so.

My realisation – today –  is that I no longer wish to remain under the military protectorate that guarantees that tenure.

I need to secure my home directly with you.

So, I am assessing the use-value of the space on this earth I take up at present. This is the value any of you might put on the right to use the space I take up. I wish this to be paid to you – to you all – directly.

This today feels a more dignified way to hold the place I occupy from you than the armed threats of violence that have till now secured my tenancy.

My assessment of the value today that I or any of you might put on the right to use my piece of the earth is £300.00 GBP per month.  (This is the ground rent I am volunteering, not the rent of my house.)

The algorithmic means to transfer this to you is yet to be built. However, I now declare that goods and services to the value of £300 each month are available to you from me. This is your direct dividend resulting from my pleasure in occupying my place.

With love and trust to y’all directly,

Jonty from Devon

PS My declaration is that this payment is of higher priority than my acquiescence to the enforced payments demanded of me by the power-hungry governments who at present are failing to protect my family’s security.