This is quite a late development flowing out of the capitalist idea. It contains many dangers - not least, catastrophic crop failure and mass starvation - and is morally repugnant, as well as socially destructive. It will end with the collapse of all present monetary economies, but by then, there may not be much left to fight over.
Not necessarily. Monetarism (capital, ‘the market’ and consumerism), dominion (humans as the apex of creation, with unlimited prerogative) and territorialism (control and defence of an area and its resources) are concepts from different stages of human evolution. You might want to study and deal with them separately, and trace how each stage builds upon the assumptions and expectations developed in the previous stage.
Many primitive religious systems were based on this idea. The religions of civilization encouraged the dominion idea at the expense of balance, harmony and humility. The civilizations that did this were extremely successful organized predators. Success is difficult to argue with (especially when it’s heavily armed, touchy and aggressive), so the only way back to those values is over the ruins of civilization.
They did! Everywhere. And multiplied like there was no tomorrow.
True. But that’s how they want it. If they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t so enthusiastically co-operate in their own and one another’s incarceration, oppression and exploitation.
It’s a bit more complicated than this.
So, which is it? Never was any freedom, or it eroded? I can see different kinds and degrees of individual freedom in different societies, and different kinds of social organization. I don’t see a traceable progression of more overall [global] freedom in any specific period of the past to a less generally free present. I do see the overpopulation and increasing consumption straining the relations among tribes, territories, cultures and commercial interests.
They’ve always done that, and people don’t seem to mind.
Some are. The form of governance has little effect on religious bigotry or conflict. People will give it up when/if they find something that satisfies the same need more effectively.