All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Interesting piece from Reason on Thomas Nagel's argument that market transactions can only be instantiated within the framework of a governmental legal and taxation system;
"they go beyond Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein's relatively straightforward observation that all private rights incur public costs. Nagel and Murphy attempt to show that private property rights not only lack protection without government but are actually nonexistent until the state and its tax system create them."
In some ways I find it odd that this should be controversial, given that it is not entirely dissimilar to Lockean possessive individualism, as opposed to the Hobbesian state of nature (given that Hobbes only recognises a natural right to self defence, rather than any right to property). The piece raises some interesting questions; for instance, concerning the origins of the state in terms of market systems predating the advent of the nation state. But on the whole, Nagel seems to have the better of the philosophical argument; establishing natural rights of any kind is a difficult matter at best, and generally speaking rights must be guaranteed by governments (if only because the tendency for rights to conflict requires a legal system). Particularly since, it must be noted that taking a wholly libertarian argument on such areas, can lead to some rather unpleasant consequences.
