[Footprint] Justice and Exploitation

Following up a fundamental point in Footprint Fundamentals I would like to expand on Justice and Exploitation.

We see many things which are attempts to correct for underlying unfairness: Trade Unions, Fair Trade, Employment Law etc. But what is the underlying fairness? Well, it probably isn't one thing but there does appear to be one very major factor: Lack of rights to natural resources.

The Earth is humankind's inheritance, it is not privately one person's or another's, but it exists for all. No one can survive without access to the resources of nature in the world around them. However, some have more and better access to these resources than others.

Imagine, if you will, two people - one of them has ownership of the environment that they live in: the land, the water, the crops, etc. The one who doesn't have ownership is then at a trading disadvantage to the one who does - in order to survive the 'have not' will basically do what he has to do to survive.

So by denying people their right to share the wealth of nature (land, water, crops, minerals, oil etc.) puts them in a poor bargaining position and leads to their unfair exploitation.

This is extremely prevalent throughout virtually all societies and leads to issues of involvement in exploitation in most people's activities. What's our responsibility in all this? Well that is less clear, it appears hard to draw a line between what is acceptable and what isn't. Perhaps it is more important that we aim to live our lives for those on the exploited side of the bargaining table.