Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Insights connecting history, policy, and everyday rights.

Call the kids Earthlings, and the conversation changes utterly 

by David Giesen   July 20, 2026 

 “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the world” -Archimedes 

It’s been too long since America’s sat down and bit into the meat of the Declaration of Independence’s mighty lines that “all [people] are created equal” and that all people are endowed with the unalienable right to life, so let’s do that here and now, and see what it does for our approach to solving the equity in education challenge. 

What does it mean to say all people are equal? It certainly doesn’t mean they have an equivalency of expressed being. No two people are clones. There is a great range amongst human beings in their relative physical and mental powers. There is a marvelous range in their held interests—some love to paint, others enjoy fishing, a good many revel in both painting and fishing—but it is sure that the hobbies and interests and inclinations and aptitudes of individuals vary widely within families, communities, and cultures. It is not in the sort of person that we are that we are equal. Instead, it is in our fundamental dependency upon use of the earth by which to exist that we are equal. Each and every human is equal in needing the Earth in order to exist. There is not a single human being who would exist were it not for the stuff and circumstances that are this planet we inhabit. The pages of science fiction stories are themselves made of this world’s trees or read on screens made of this world’s petroleum and which are digitally apparent through mico-chips made of this world’s silicate. It is a material fact that humans are made of this world and eat this world, and that they use this world in sustaining their lives. 

My argument then is that equality of access to the substance of this world is the starting point of sound and just public policy. It is precisely this objective of equality in access to the Earth that the 20 Black ministers in Savannah, Georgia in 1865 demanded when the Lincoln Administration prudently asked them, “What do Blacks want after this terrible Civil War?” The answer was sure, succinct, and practical:  We want 40 acres, and you can supply a mule, too. Forty acres of arable land was, with an average amount of labor, sufficient to keep a family in good stead and able to capably join the ranks of the USA’s yeoman citizenry. Equipped with what every white family considered its birthright in the “land of opportunity,” Black Americans felt they would be squarely prepared to take care of themselves without any further economic adjustment. The same can be said for any human being. Enough of this world by which to turn a livelihood from honest labor is all any human requires to sustain dignity. An equal claim with all others upon this world’s natural gifts and the exercise of one’s animal capabilities—both physical and intellectual—is surely enough and even all that an earthling can demand as a justice consideration. 

But what do we see? All over the world there are those who claim an unequal share of the world’s natural gifts. They may use the rationale that they bought an unequal portion of the world by their might and savvy, but that does no good for the child born with less or no legal claim to an equal share. And if for those who claim a disproportionate share of this world we are all born into for whom buying a legal title is offsides, then there is the claim of God’s special consideration for the claimant. Or there is the brutal recourse to “tough luck, I’m bludgeoning you for it.” Justice is to be found in the USA’s founding document’s logic that each is born equal in their right to use this earth upon the same terms as anyone else. Genuine justice requires public policy that works towards that condition in which one can use their native capabilities in an equality of use of this world. Somehow public policy must so arrange things that no persons have a greater claim to the economic use of this world than others. That doesn’t mean all have an equal claim to the labor value of others or to the productions of others. Justice is not me taking from you what you have produced. Justice is you getting an equal share of the economic value of the footprint of the USA.  

Looked at this way, youth and their families need not begrudge a pound of effort or a synapse of the mind of those who have it better than them. All that’s wanted for justice to prevail is for the footprint of San Francisco, of California, of the USA to be treated as a commonwealth. Anyone wishing to legally preempt others’ use of the world must pay the value of the assigned footprint of the city, state, and nation to society for the right to keep others off that part of the Earth. Looked at this way, public programs and services would be paid for directly out of the footprint value of the USA. Streets and roads and public transport and public education and public health care would be paid for directly out of the footprint value of the USA. The enormous advantage that comes with legacy in the land would be a legacy henceforth distributed generously to all. No more renters/peasants and land owners/masters in the land. This is no “tax the rich” campaign. This is no “tax those who produce goods and services” campaign. This is a “recognize the dignity of everyone’s equal right to use of this Earth campaign. With the economic footprint of the USA value no longer a private advantage, but “an equal share in the land value,” a huge piece of the systemic, structural dissonance that currently and historically abides would soon attrite. The power of the Declaration of Independence’s co-equal earthling manifesto is at hand. It’s implementation is not as easy as merely speaking it, but its potential lives in its open and dogged discussion. All the youth of America deserve this discussion, and action commensurate.