You don't own anything

Imagine going to a school with two bullies. Two BIG, merciless bullies. They have no scruples. If they like your lunch, they take it. If they like your jewelry, they take it. If they want the shirt off your back, they will yank it off you. You can try going to school authorities, but the bullies retaliate by delivering punishing beatings and taking even more of your stuff while the glacially slow school justice system drags on. Talking to the principle doesn't work, nor does suspension. They merely catch you on the way home and beat you up then. Sound like a shitty situation to be in? Well guess what, you ARE in it.

The two bullies are big corporations and the government. And if you have what they want they are going to take it away from you. Of the two, the bigger, badder bully is the government. It already takes your lunch money every paycheck in the form of taxes.

Some people love taxes. But no one on the receiving end loves asset forfeiture. This is cute government legal tactic where the property is declared as being acquired by illegal means(usually drug sales) and the government takes it. The government is NOT required to prosecute the property owner, and the owner is put in the position where he/she has to take the government to court to get his property back.

Once the government establishes probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture, the owner must prove on a "preponderance of the evidence" that it is not. The owner need not be judged guilty of any crime.

Needless to say, asset forfeiture has become a VERY popular tool of government bully.

A tool used by both government and corporate bullies to separate you from your property is eminent domain. This used to be only for use by government, and limited to what was deemed "the greater public good", which usually meant government could only take your property for public works projects such as hydroelectric power dams and roads. Corporate bully didn't like being left out of this, LOUDLY shouted "ME TOO!!" and thanks to the Kelo decision by the supreme court he got his wish! So now Walmart or any other big corporation can use eminent domain to take your house. All they have to do is prove they can generate more tax revenue than you do, which of course, they can.

"I've got a web site! And golly gee, I own a domain with my VERY own name"!

No you don't. Just like a rug, that too can get yanked out from under you by either government or corporate bully. In this case, even when government bully takes it, it's at the instigation of corporate bully.

It works like this. Corporate bully goes to government bully, hands wringing, head hung low, tears beginning to well up in his sad, wide round eyes. "Government bully, I need your help, those bad old pirates are giving away my copyrighted material on their web site!" Now copyright infringement is a CIVIL matter, so in this case government bully should have told corporate bully to man up and deal with it himself, but government bully LOVES corporate bully, so instead had ICE seize over 80 internet domains.

Corporate bully grows a pair when he wants your web domain for himself. "How does this happen"; you ask? Well lets say Joe Sixpack gets his very own web site, and buys the domain name joesixpack.com. It's his family web site and he's had it for 15 years. Then along comes corporate bully, in the form of a multimillion dollar beer company named, not surprisingly, Joe Sixpack™. They want a web site but OOOOOPS!, it's taken already. They make Joe Sixpack the person a crappy offer, which he refuses.

"Oh ho", says corporate bully Joe Sixpack™, and accuses Joe Sixpack of cybersquatting, using that as an excuse to drag Joe Sixpack into court and have the judge force him to hand the domain over to Joe Sixpack™. Even with no real legal basis corporate bully has a LOT of money and can jerk Joe Sixpack through the court system, costing him a LOT of money. Money, most likely, he doesn't have. An example of this kind of bad behavior by corporate bully can be found here. Although in this case apparently Mr. Uzi Nissan had enough money to deal with the court system, so for once corporate bully Nissan™ had to eat shit. Most people however DO NOT have the money it takes to battle it out all the way to the supreme court and will wind up losing their domain name, which they paid for in good faith.

So there you have it, between government bully and corporate bully you don't own a thing, not even the shirt on your back. If government bully claims it was purchased with drug money or you owe taxes, he'll take that too.

Update! Just found out in some states you don't even own the RAIN that falls off your roof. So who does? Our old friend, government bully. Next they'll claim the sweat off your back belongs to the government too.

Update - 2023
Surprised it took me so long to add this. One more thing you don't own is your house. You rent that from government bully. Don't believe me? Government bully calls his rent "property tax" and if you don't pay the rent, you lose your home. When you have to pay someone money in order to live somewhere or you are forced to leave, that is not ownership. You are renting that property.