Jan 30, 2026
by Purpose Foundation
Did he really say it? Yes, he did: ownership. Donald Trump, real estate tycoon, former TV celebrity and current US President, has been talking about obtaining Greenland – either by buying it or by force – for quite some time. But now he was using the ownership-term to justify his plans.
So there we were last week, sitting in front of our laptops with pencils at the ready, following Trump's much-anticipated speech in Davos to flesh out a new blog post with (quasi) live quotes. And then this: The ever unpredictable President surprisingly withdrew all his Greenland threats, even his favourite foreign policy leverage (tariffs). So we thought that there’s no story here anymore, and left the blog post be.
In the meantime, Rutger Claassen, Professor of Political Philosophy & Economic Ethics at Utrecht University, has picked up the thread, and we found his LinkedIn post on the “Battle between Three Models of Ownership” hugely inspiring.
Claassen identifies three models of ownership: a “modern model” that grants owners absolute control and mastery over “a piece in the world” (a defined object so to speak), a “feudal model”, in which kings both govern and personally own land, and a traditional, Indigenous model based on use-rights rather than private property. This latter view parallels modern national sovereignty, where states govern territory without owning it.
Claassen’s first dimension is familiar ground for us, as it refers to the notion of ownership in an economic context and its dominant understanding of absolute control over a “piece in the world” (like a company). However, this picture remains incomplete: in theory and practice, many forms of alternative ownership challenge this notion – such as steward-ownership. So, is there maybe something we can learn from these alternatives also for the political context? What can the concept of steward-ownership contribute to discussions about national sovereignty and international politics?
In his Davos speech, Trump had initially reiterated his demand to take over Greenland for security reasons:
“All we’re asking for is to get Greenland, including right, title and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it. You can’t defend it on a lease. Number one, legally it’s not defensible that way, totally. And, number two, psychologically. Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?”
The following may come as a surprise: We agree. But only on a little part of Trump’s utterance: Ownership does, in fact, have a psychological quality to it, at least when it comes to corporate ownership. We’ll come back to this later.
First of all: By mixing up private ownership and national sovereignty, Trump reveals an absolutist, monarchical approach to politics. In a rule-based world, the concept of ownership in economics and property law is not to be confused with the sovereignty of nations and states. This is very clearly a matter of international law and politics. However, Trump’s conflation of the two is not accidental.
Since taking office, Trump has always pursued a business approach in his politics. He talks about political deals as if nations were companies, he lets his old real estate business buddy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiate the fate of the Middle East and Ukraine, also for business and money-making reasons. And parts of the American tech elite would like nothing better than to shrink the state in the US and place the country's fate in the hands of powerful CEOs. This king-like approach neglects the difference between economics and international law, resulting in a revival of hegemonic ambitions and colonisation, something that’s unfortunately been a common pattern in Europe’s history as well.
After all, within this logic, Trump’s demands for ownership are consistent in a way. If countries are enterprises and territory is just an asset, you can buy it. At least in the predominant business logic that applies in most countries and regions of this world. Companies are usually seen as assets, which is reflected in the famous Shareholder Value paradigm with all its shortcomings: Money equals power, short-term profit maximisation beats long-term mission and purpose, companies become assets for private wealth maximisation.
However, this pattern is not universal. As Rutger Claassen also points out, Indigenous approaches to ownership differ greatly from Trump’s absolutist view. Interestingly, they also differ from the outlined common understanding of ownership in business. Of course, this common understanding was not always a given.
In his keynote at the SO:25 conference, Purpose co-founder Armin Steuernagel ventured a brief philosophical-historical digression on the subject of ownership, which was first codified in law in the Roman Empire around 100 b.c., at a time when philosophers were increasingly turning their attention to the inner life of human beings and began to distinguish between the world and the self – a phenomenon that the philosopher Carl Jaspers centuries later described as the subject-object split. Without this theoretical distinction, ownership would actually not be conceivable.
One result of this is, as the philosopher Hartmut Rosa has put it, that humankind has made the world ‘available’. Leading to a kind of disconnection and loss of resonance and proximity, with the world becoming objectified and alien to us. In ancestral cultures, however, nature and Mother Earth cannot be owned, they can only be ‘borrowed’. To use Trump’s words, it’s like a “licence agreement” or a “lease”. So from this perspective, humans can truly only be stewards, at least when it comes to nations and territories – a principle that, in a way, is also reflected in modern international law.
This way of thinking is also present in the steward-ownership concept. As an alternative ownership form, steward-ownership treats companies not as personal assets, not as objects, but more as social and cultural constructs with a purpose. To keep companies independent and purpose-driven, steward-ownership separates money from power. Profits always serve the purpose, and control is never for sale. The purpose cannot be sacrificed to short-term profit goals, as corporate value and profits cannot be personalised. They serve the greater good, after all. Beneficiaries are the company itself and with it, all different kinds of stakeholders, and, after all, the economy and society as a whole. And hopefully also Planet Earth, home to all of us. Also to Donald Trump.
Steward-ownership is still private ownership, but a different version of it. Stewards own control, they own responsibility. This psychological level that also Trump refers to (but, not to be forgotten, in a totally different context) is important. But psychological ownership cannot simply be bought, it comes, rather, with responsibility and proximity. And research shows that entrepreneurial responsibility and motivation are largely driven intrinsically (1), not merely by extrinsic factors like financial compensation. If the latter are overemphasized and a company is merely treated like an objectified asset that anyone can buy, this often leads to what we know as distant or ‘absentee ownership’ – with no connection, no real responsibility. And that’s the exact opposite of what Trump assumes.
To be honest: The question of how countries and nations should be organised is a pretty complex one, and looking at all of this through the ownership-lens has its limits. But maybe one reason why European leaders sometimes seem to stand like a deer in headlights when dealing with Donald Trump may be that the common understanding of ownership in the economy is still largely dominated by a money-equals-control mindset. But this isn’t God-given. It’s a cultural pattern, and it’s up to us to imagine and bring to life alternatives. Steward-ownership is one of them, and it has already proven its potential.
So maybe politics, and even Donald Trump, can learn from such models and ways of thinking. In politics, we believed that we had already left behind the era of absolute ownership, monarchy, land-grabbing, and colonization. At least, this seems to be a reality that even Trump now somehow acknowledges (though we never know what comes next). And on a side note: In a democracy, leaders serve as elected representatives of the people, and power – and also national sovereignty – usually cannot be bought.
Sounds pretty much like stewardship.
(1) Deci, E., Koestner, R. und Ryan, R. (1999). A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation. American Psychological Association, 125(6), 627–668; Davis, J. H., Schoorman, F. D., & Donaldson, L. (1997). Toward a stewardship theory of management. Academy of Management Review.