Ownership ’s hidden rules: Q & A with ‘Mine!’ co-author James Salzman

In the new book“Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives” (Doubleday), UCLA School of Law professor James Salzman reveals the hidden rules that govern who owns what — from the reclining space behind airline seats to HBO passwords for streaming shows. Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at UCLA Law, a faculty member of theEmmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and one of the country ’s leading scholars of environmental law. His co-author is Michael Heller, the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School.“At its core, human society exists to help us deal with competing claims to scarce resources,” the authors write. Many maxims on property rights, like “first come, first served,” do not always play out in practice. Instead, property rights are frequently disputed, with competitors using pers uasive stories about ownership to claim their share.Below, Salzman talks about how consumers navigate situations where property rights are unclear and how the stories we learn about property as children are also embedded in complicated 21st century disputes like tax rules for wealthy Americans.How are the rules of ownership embedded in our lives?In every culture, “mine” is one of the first words that children speak. On playgrounds, all you hear is kids shouting “mine, mine, mine!” Ownership rules the sandbox. We assume ownership is natural, obvious, simple. But that’s ju...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news