This land is my (Mudede) land!

This piece of land is in West Seattle. My father planted those crops. The soil not only has nutrients for plants but my very name is in it (the bank says so). And if I were to find an extraordinary fossil in this soil, some bone or tooth preserved from the early stages of life, it would be all mine. The Mudede's would own that ancient history. That's the American way. (I learned this incredible fact from a paleontologist interviewed on Futures in Biotect—"Rats Will Inherit the Earth").

If, however, we were in another, less property-crazy country (meaning, most countries in the world), the important fossil would not belong to me but to the state. Why bring this up? Because it exposes the limits and also core absurdities of what many Americans believe to be an absolute and even holy right—private property. Ownership of land (and of anything) can only be shallow. It has no real history or reality.