Jason J. Crawford

I finally gave in and decided to watch Avatar. Since the film has been seen by all the cool kids and it won a Golden Globe Award, it must be something right? Because there’s no better range for greatness than a Hollywood coddle-fest and a trending topic that was on Twitter for weeks.

Avatar finally caught my interest when I read a few articles crediting the movie with giving bold examples to justify private property. One such review by Stephan Kinsella at the libertarian think-tank the Mises Institute, lauded the film for it’s ideals of private property:

… the plot is about property rights. In particular, the property rights of the Na’vi, in an established tree-city that they have clearly homesteaded. The Na’vi are not just some uncivilized savages as some curmudgeonly reviewers imply; they live they way they do because of the wondrous bounty of their strange world and some unique features it has–which, again, I can say little of without spoiling, but suffice to say it’s grounded in reality and extrapolative science fiction, not some quasi-mystical nonsense. They even have a sophisticated homesteading technique worked out for ownership of the wild, pterodactyl-like creatures known as Banshee or ikran. In addition, the main Na’vi character, Neytiri, although she is betrothed to another Na’vi, is permitted to change her mind and choose someone else–respect for individual choice and autonomy.

Another review by Matt Bogard at AgWeb credited the film with explaining the role of private property to protect means of scarce resource:

Property rights were not just an invention of western culture. Demsetz looks specifically at various groups of Native Americans and the relationship between resources, scarcity, enforcement costs, technology, and property. In cases where technology is insufficient or enforcement costs are too great, property rights may not evolve. In other cases, when resources become scarce, there are not technological barriers, ( or there are technological breakthroughs) and enforcement costs are low, more extensive systems of property rights may develop.

It appeared from the movie, that on Pandora, resources were relatively abundant. There appeared to be no need to develop more complex and intricate forms of property than what they had. As I mentioned above, property rights often evolve to make sure that we are living in harmony with others and the environment. It appears in the movie, that the limited forms of property that the Na’vi had adopted were sufficient to keep the balance. It doesn’t mean that they rejected the idea of property, or that they wouldn’t develop more complex systems in the future if necessary.

Now there are a lot of things pointed out in both of the aforementioned.

In Kinsella’s review we assume the film conforms to the parameters of our world, that they have homesteaded in the same tradition as Western settlers who made a nativist declaration of manifest destiny and are morally justifiable because they are “first settlers”. However in the film it’s the “quasi-mystical nonsense” that Kinsella disregards that puts this into question. What can be said is that the Na’vi are not a nomadic species as they hearken to rooted “eco-tropolises” that are marked by either being a spiritual space or one of evolutionary sustenance. As Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) points out, the Na’vi have a genetic and neural connection with the land which operates as a biological and social network. This raises the question whether their conception as a species and society is attached to a biological-botanic component on the planet that is inherently tied to a specific geographic locale. Now there is no clear background to this in the film but it certainly isn’t clear this particular clan “homesteaded” their way to a mystical tree where their ancestors go back to becoming one with the environment which in turn sustains and protects them.

As for the point about the “homesteading” of the wild animal-like species, or a supposed domestication, this is also suspect. All of these species exhibit freedom of choice in their ability to make a connection with the Na’vi — or in other words it’s the species that chose the Na’vi. This is pointed out by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) when Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is told the process of finding a banshee. This marks a companionship of mystical qualities unlike homesteading where settlers put species to work as strictly labor or as a commodity for consumption. The “animals” of Pandora are never used in the way of oxen or cattle were for developmental and herding purposes. There is also no economy to the species because it’s impossible. Once species like banshees make a connection to a certain Na’vi, no one else can interfere with that bond, much like no one else can inject themselves as someone else’s avatar — the exact reason why only Jake could replace his twin brother in the avatar experiment because of their matching genomes.

In the case of Bogard’s review, the question of property rights to manage scarcity and a tragedy of the commons is raised. However we never see scarcity to be a problem with the Na’vi. Instead it’s the humans who we find out have “eliminated the green” in their world and are now going to become free riders on Pandora by carving it up for unobtainium. To the Na’vi there is no indiciation that unobtainium has any value to their society. However for the humans the barrier to get unobtanium that is in place is a natural barrier (and not a barrier to manage it’s scarcity), a barrier of the commons because the common value of the hometree has a greater common value than the unobtainium that sits underneath it. The Na’vi have not adopted limited property rights to manage this. Instead it’s a right to preserve a common space that protects it by happenstance.

Now the question is this: do we observe Avatar as strictly promoting the commons or a film promoting private property?

Ultimately like any fiction, most of the time you have to play by the rules of the fiction. One critical separation from making this film an allegory about property is that by the end of the movie we witness that Eywa is an active being who is conscious to the destruction going on. This means property may have his own managerial mechanism. As Neytiri explains, Eywa won’t take sides but will always strive for balance and eventually that balances tips over when the humans intend to launch a series of “daisy cutters” in a bombing raid. Species that once existed separate from the Na’vi (and that also attacked Jake) come to assist them in their fight to stop the attack. This might not seem to have anything to do with property based on our understanding of it but in the end we have to remember this world operates by a completely different set of rules. Perhaps a tragedy of the commons is not even possible on this planet and perhaps the war launched by Jake wasn’t even necessary (and is a reflections of mankinds own errant perception that property must always be defended) as in the end it was inevitable that Eywa would control the planetary balance.