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Owning oneself is not owning the world

Owning myself does not hand me the Earth: no one produced alone the resources or the cooperation their wealth depends on.

Objects to Libertarianism

G. A. Cohen · Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality · 1995

1. The argument moves from 'I own myself' to 'I own the fruits of my labor', as if the second followed from the first.
2. But producing always presupposes a matter I did not create, the land, the resources, and a whole world of institutions, language, and inherited knowledge, without which my labor would be worth nothing.
3. To appropriate these common resources without limit is to deprive those who had as good a claim to them as I did: my ownership of myself does not by itself extend to what belonged to no one.

Therefore So full ownership of what one acquires does not follow from ownership of oneself: part of all wealth traces to a common world, over which the collective retains a legitimate title.