"It's mine!" It's one of toddlers' first battle cries. Our reflex is often to correct it: "You have to share." Yet that cry holds a precious idea. To be able to share, you first have to… have something of your own.
What's mine, I look after
Look at a school playground. The class football often ends up flat in a corner. The ball Leo bought with his pocket money goes home with him every evening.
It's not that Leo is selfish. It's that when something is ours, its ups and downs come back to us. If we damage it, we lose. If we look after it, we benefit.
A very old idea
More than 300 years ago, the English philosopher John Locke wondered where the right to say "this is mine" comes from. His answer: from our labour. When I pick a wild apple or till a field, I mix my effort with the thing. It becomes mine because I've put something of myself into it.
In the 20th century, the economist Harold Demsetz looked at hunters on the Labrador peninsula in Canada. As long as game was plentiful, the forest belonged to everyone. When the fur trade pushed up the value of beavers, families began dividing up hunting territories. The result: each family had a reason not to hunt everything at once, so there would still be beavers the following year. Ownership protected the resource.
An example in numbers
Buddy and his cousin each get a bike costing CHF 400.
- Buddy treats his like treasure. He keeps it under cover, pumps up the tyres, and spends CHF 10 on oil and puncture patches. Four years later, he sells it for CHF 150.
- His cousin leaves his out in the rain. He sells it for CHF 40.
CHF 10 of care brought in CHF 110 more. And with his CHF 150, Buddy already has a good head start on his next bike.
Ownership and sharing go together
Having things of your own doesn't stop you being generous. Quite the opposite: you can only give, lend or swap what belongs to you. A child who is told "this really is yours, you decide" often shares more willingly than one who is made to hand everything over.
Try this tonight with your child
- Choose with them one thing that is truly theirs and that they're responsible for: a toy, a book, a plant.
- Put a little label with their name on it.
- Let them decide whether to lend it, to whom and on what terms.
- In a month, check in: "How's your treasure doing?"
Further reading
- Locke, J. (1689). Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, ch. V, "Of Property". London: Awnsham Churchill.
- Demsetz, H. (1967). Toward a Theory of Property Rights. American Economic Review, 57(2), 347–359.
Help them build what's theirs. Join the Mangosteen Buddy waitlist: Book 1 of the comic is free, and the first 500 families get their first year of Premium on us (worth CHF 150). Save my place