You can't own a pen

Here’s a thing that I believe: individual ballpoint pens do not rise to the level of personal property.

One cannot ‘own’ a pen.

Really?

I’m serious here. 85% serious. Let’s explore this idea, and why I might have stolen* your pen.

* Wait a minute: stolen? You’re right. I reject this idea. If an individual pen cannot rise to the level of personal property, then it cannot be stolen. I’m using the term colloquially here, not legally.

There’s an old saw from the early internet days that Information Wants to Be Free. So do pens.

Let me explain.

First of all, I’m talking about cheapo ballpoint pens. This thesis excludes nice pens (fountain pens, felt tips, exotic stuff you got from that Japanese stationery store). I’m talking about a Bic, a Biro, a Papermate. Blue, black, red. There are billions of these manufactured every year. And while inexpensiveness itself does not disqualify a pen from becoming property, it’s a start.

Also, we’re talking individual pens. Yes, you could send a crack team of Biro Burglers into a warehouse, and I’d consider that theft. If you knock over a BIC Clic Stic® Delivery Truck, you’re probably going to jail. But individual pens? The single pen where you sign your receipt at the coffeeshop? Not property. It belongs to no one.

Pens are disposable. They last a short time. Maybe you can keep one for a few years if you aren’t actually using them, but as designed, cheap pens come and go like the changing of the seasons. Do you own this morning’s sunshine?

Cheap ballpoint pens are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. Sure, you’ve been momentarily stuck without a pen in hand. But is anywhere in particular running out of pens? No: they are everywhere. Just think: where do pens go? Pens naturally slip through our fingers, flowing with the tides of human activity. Pens may gather in flocks, they may be locally scarce, but they’re a dynamic public resource whose movement shouldn’t be restricted by ownership. As Milton wrote in Comus:

Beauty is nature’s coin; must not be hoarded, but must be current.

Cheap ballpoint pens are 21st century industrialism’s coin - millions minted every day - and should be flow like currency.

What about branded pens, marked with a logo or business? Logo-marked pens are even more obviously not property. When Elmer at ‘Elmers Plumbing’ puts his company logo on a cheap pen, he’s not trying to keep them at the office. That pen is now an advertisement, and it exists to be seen by as many people as widely as possible.

Elmer WANTS you nab that pen. He wants others to see it. He wants you to leave it around. He wants it to migrate through the community. He wants it to rattle around a kitchen drawer and remind someone about Elmer and his professional plumbing service, his capable, hypercompetent mien and calming sinkside manner.

And yet

Despite all of the above, I regularly purchase ballpoint pens, especially my favorite styles, and I probably have five hundred cheap ball point pens squirreled away in drawers, desks, pants pockets. My giant pile of used sketchbooks is filled with ballpoint scribbles.

One of my wife’s favorite jokes is, “Matt do you have a pen?”, because I always keep a ballpoint pen in my pocket. Always. It’s part of getting dressed, it’s something I check before leaving the house. It’s part of my manly leaving-the-door checklist.

SpectaclesTesticlesWalletandWatch… and a pen.

My point is, even as a personal POWER USER of cheap pens, I believe that their essential non-property-ness is a fundamental true fact about them.

Objections

You may say: if I needed a pen for something important (to sign a document, to fill out a form at the doctors office, to dash off a cryptic note that helps the detectives find my killer) and someone TOOK my pen, I would sure FEEL like it was my pen.
But I say: you’d have the same reaction if someone took ‘your’ parking space. But you don’t own that slice of curb; street parking is part of our glorious shared commons. Your need does not create ownership.

You may say: what about the collection of ballpoint pens I’ve gathered from every hotel I’ve ever visited? They are meaningful to me and they represent a nontrivial expenditure of time and effort. They definitely feel like they are ‘mine.’
But I say: you took each pen from the hotel in the first place (exactly as they wanted you to), thus supporting my thesis. But now they are no longer individual cheap pens, they are a collection, and they have sufficiently risen to the level of personal property. Congratulations, you may keep your pens.

You may say: New Yorkers have been saying this about umbrellas for a while now.
But I say: OK.

You may say: Matt, this sounds like an excuse to be careless with the possessions of others.
But I say: No, just pens.

Have I convinced you?