Mine!

Chapter 1

First Come, Last Served

Line-­Standers

The best free show in Washington, D.C. is the Supreme Court. The courtroom is both ornate and intimate. You sit only steps from the justices of the highest court in the land and listen to America s top advocates. This is democracy at its best, open and accessible to all. If you want to witness the fate of abortion, gun control, or religious freedom, you can. But you need to get there early ­there are on average fewer than one hundred seats available for the public, and admission is first come, first served.

For high-­profile cases, people arrive a day or more ahead of time, armed with camping chairs, sleeping bags, ponchos, and extra batteries for their smartphones. Folks in line tend to look out for one another ­Supreme Court police officers refuse to monitor the line. If you have to go to the bathroom, those around you will hold your place. And they will also be on guard for people cutting in or adding friends. If someone does that, they are harangued with cries of no cutting and back of the line.

As the time to enter the Court approaches, though, a strange thing happens. Many of the disheveled people nearest the front of the line exchange their spots with gray-­suited men and women. A little later the well-­dressed enter the courtroom and take the best seats while those farther back in the line are not even admitted. What is going on?

Welcome to the line-­standing business. Companies are paying line-­standers, sometimes homeless people, to arrive days ahead, secure a spot at the front, and then wait and wait and wait. At the last minute, by the Court entrance etched with the words equal justice under law, the line-­standers give way to paying clients who have the money to get in first but not the time or patience to wait. Small start-­ups like Linestanding.com, Skip the Line, and Washington Express charge clients up to $6,000 for a free seat, while paying minimum wage to the hired line-­standers

Introduction: Who Gets What and Why

1  First Come, Last Served

2  Possession Is One-Tenth of the Law

3  I Reap What You Sow

4  My Home Is Not My Castle

5  Our Bodies, Not Our Selves

6  The Meek Shall Inherit Very Little

7  The Future of Ownership—and the World

Epilogue: The Toddler’s Rules of Ownership

Thanks
Notes
Index

MICHAEL HELLER is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.
 
JAMES SALZMAN is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law, with joint appointments at the UCLA School of Law and the UCSB Bren School of the Environment. He is the author of Drinking Water: A History.

Thought-provoking. . . . Mine! sets out to change the way we think about what we own, which is often decidedly at odds with reality. The New York Times

Mine! does for ownership what . . . Freakonomics did for money: it shows you the world through a different lens. The Sunday Times (London)

Challenges our assumptions about who owns what and explores how those assumptions can be manipulated, for good or for ill. The Boston Globe

Heller and Salzman examine a wide array of ways that people lay claim to things, both actual (as in treasure) and more abstract (as in ideas). Since ownership is constructed, it s always up for grabs. The New Yorker

Mine! is enjoyable, well-written and with a deftness of touch that belies the radical re-examination of property rights at its heart. Financial Times
 
This delicious book will guide you through the confusing maze of ownership disputes that bedevil our daily lives. Who owns your private information, your Netflix password, your yard s airspace, and the chair of your deceased parents that you and your sister now both want? It s often unclear: read and prepare yourself. Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
 
This book about ownership rights is incredibly detailed and includes amazing insights. The authors are writing about things like who owns the water beneath your house, but they include brilliant examples and anecdotes. Forbes
 
Mine! is one of those rare books that make you feel smarter and change the way you see the world. So much of the news I read makes more sense now. I haven t had an experience like this as a reader since Freakonomics. The authors deliver a rollicking good read, filled with amazing stories about the secret rules of ownership and why they work in unexpected ways. This is way too much fun for such an important book by leading minds in their field. Barton Gellman, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Angler and