Michael A. Heller - Mine: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives

James Beach is a large guy, over six feet tall. On a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver, after takeoff the businessman lowered his tray table from the middle seat of row twelve and attached his Knee Defender. The Knee Defender is a simple plastic bracket available for $21.95 that clamps onto the metal tray table support and locks the seat in front. Its website claims the Knee Defender will stop reclining seats on airplanes so your knees wont have to. Assured of his workspace, Beach opened his laptop.

The Knee Defender claims are real. When the passenger sitting in front of Beach tried to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight, her seat didnt budge. She complained to the flight attendant, who asked Beach to remove the clamp, but Beach was slow to comply. Outraged, the passenger slammed her seat back, popping out the Knee Defender and jolting Beachs laptop. He quickly jammed her seat back up and reattached the clamp. Thats when she turned around and threw her drink at Beach. Well never know how this might have escalated because the pilot took charge and changed course to Chicago for an emergency landing. Both passengers were removed from the plane, which then continued on to Denver, an hour and thirty-eight minutes late.

The same conflict keeps eruptingmost recently with video. On an American Airlines flight from New Orleans to North Carolina, Wendi Williams reclined her seat. The man behind was in the last row, so he could not recline. Instead, he pushed the back of Williamss seat repeatedly, like an irritating metronome. Her video of this high-altitude fracas quickly went viral.

With each incident, the blogosphere boomed back and forth with hundreds of self-righteous accusations, all equally certain of the correct rule. Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres defended the recliners: The only time its ever okay to punch someones seat is if the seat punches you first. Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian took an opposing view: The proper thing to do is, if youre going to recline into somebody, you ask if its OK first. Williams didnt ask.

So whos right?

Williamss view is simple: her armrest button reclines her seat. The wedge of reclining space therefore belongs to the front seat. This claim of attachmentits mine because its attached to something thats mineis one of the oldest justifications for ownership, dating back thousands of years. Beach was relying on a different attachment story, a maxim coined in medieval England that whoever owns the soil, owns up to Heaven and down to Hell. He claimed dominion over the vertical column of space attached to his seatstraight up to the luggage compartment and down to the crumb-coated carpeting. When the seat in front intrudes into that column, its a trespass, a jarring affront to good order.

Attachment is the most pervasive ownership claim youve never heard of. Its why landowners in Texas can extract underground oil and gas, why farmers pumping groundwater are causing Californias Central Valley to sink, and why Alaska can limit overfishing in the Bering Sea. Attachment translates two-dimensional boarding passes, land deeds, and territorial maps into three-dimensional control of scarce resources.

But attachment is not the only ownership claim in play for Beach and Williams. At the beginning of every flight, all seats are in their full, upright, and locked position, as the flight attendant commands. At that moment, Beach had exclusive use of the space in front of him. He had first dibs on the wedge. First come, first served is another primitive and visceral basis for claiming mine. Kids assert it on the playground; adults invoke it up in the air. And recall that Beach actually took physical possession of the wedge when he locked the Knee Defender in place and opened his laptop screen. As we hear so often, Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

Air travel brings into sharp focus this clash of conflicting stories about ownershipattachment, first-in-time, and possession.

When we ask audiences about the Knee Defender conflict, most respond with versions of Its obvious, Theres nothing to debate here. But when we press further and ask for a show of hands, generally people are split between Williams and Beachand both groups look at each other with incredulity. In a 2020