Locke goes on to attempt to quell a potential concern that be could be raised about those who might try to take too much from what is held in common (Section 31):

There may come an objection that someone gathering some fruit of the earth may decide to make a claim to as much of it as they want. This is not okay — The same law of nature that grants us property does also bound that property, too. God has given us all things richly, but to what end? To Enjoy! As much as one can — we should make use of any advantage of life before it spoils. As nothing was made by God for us to spoil or destroy, you can have as much as you can work to obtain. No one could extend their labor or work so much that they could claim a resource at a level others would deem offensive.

This argument is obviously not as strong as the previous one, and that makes sense because it doesn’t hold up in practice either. This vision was short-sighted because our ability to acquire is not limited only to that we can obtain through our physical labor. But you can see Locke did not intend for there to be monopolies.

This argument does, however, give us insight into the role spoilage plays in Locke’s understanding of ownership. It is clear that Locke believes spoilage is a reason we should be able to own property, but it seems he would like to go so far, as to almost imply, that it’s our duty not to let anything that the earth provides spoil, if at all possible.

The cardinal sin of Late Capitalism is that it is wholly inefficient, and a large part of that inefficiency is derived from the massive amount of waste our system produces. Locke would almost certainly take offense at the idea that an industrialized food system could possibly end up wasting 31% of the food it produces.

In the 20th Century, small business owners that were primarily middle-men in our economy played a vital role in increasing consumers’ access to wares and producers’ access to new customers. But now the internet exists, and one of the primary benefits is that the producers and consumers of goods and content can find each other with little effort and exchange value with comparably little overhead. The producer can get far more money per sale, and the consumer can get a much fairer price for their goods than we could just a generation ago.

Efficiencies always lead to good developments for the people, and will always be initially bad for the economy, and that’s okay. Real markets adapt and react… this market only wants to keep things exactly as they are. This is made evident by the fact that between 1996 and 2016 the number of companies on the stock market decreased by half… primarily due to consolidation.

The stock market will take a hit when Bernie becomes the nominee, and when he wins in the general — because it’s no longer a barometer for the whole economy in the way it used to be. If it continues on this trajectory, it will soon only be a barometer of how the extremely well-off are doing.