Lord Eustace Percy was a Conservative public servant but was better known as a serious thinker, indeed, as the “Minister of Thinking.” There is a remarkable and much-quoted passage in his 1944 Riddell Lecture The Unknown State.
Talk: A Tale of Two Invalid Contracts: Coverture and Employment
November 28, 2017 by
These are the slides for a talk that focuses on the parallel inalienable rights arguments against the now-outlawed coverture marriage contract and the yet-to-be-outlawed employment contract.
Labor theory of property and predistribution
February 17, 2017 by
This is the online-first publication in Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs of an article on the labor theory of property showing the superficiality of the inequality-debate framing in terms of distribution (i.e., how much is distributed by a firm to labor versus capital) in favor of a framing in terms of what is now called “predistribution”–in this case the question of who is to be the firm in the first place, Capital or Labor.
Reply to Commentators on Labor Theory of Property
October 31, 2016 by
My paper on marginal productivity theory and the labor theory of property in the on-line journal Economic Thought drew commentaries for Jamie Morgan and Ted Burczak. After some back and forth on the journal’s discussion forum, this Reply to Commentators paper was published as an article in the journal.
Talk on property theory at UMKC, Nov. 2014
November 20, 2014 by
These are the slides, with some minor additions and editing, for a talk On Property Theory given at the University of Missouri at Kansas City Economic Department November 17, 2014.
On Property Theory
November 25, 2013 by
This paper is an introduction to property theory including the invisible hand mechanism which handles the initiation and termination of property rights in an on-going private property market economy. The Fundamental Theorem is that when Hume’s conditions of no involuntary transfers and no breached contracts are fulfilled, then the Lockean principle of people getting the fruits of their labor, i.e., imputing legal responsibility in accordance with de facto responsibility is satisfied. The major application is to the current system of a private property market economy based on the renting of persons, i.e., the employment contract.
This is a reprint of the paper in the Journal of Economic Issues in Sept. 2014.
Inalienable Rights: A Litmus Test for Liberal Theories of Justice
December 12, 2012 by
This paper published in the European journal, Law and Philosophy, examines the intellectual history of inalienable rights theory, and critically examines the work of liberal philosophers of justice, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, from that perspective.
Introduction to Property Theory
December 12, 2012 by
This is yet another unpublished paper to introduce property theory to various audiences, particularly economists.
The Libertarian Case for Slavery: A Note on Nozick
December 12, 2012 by
This is a historically important paper, by one “J. Philmore,” arguing along with Robert Nozick from a free-market libertarian viewpoint that the self-sale contract and the current employment or self-rental contract are on the same moral footing.
The Market Mechanism of Appropriation
December 12, 2012 by
This is a non-mathematical treatment of the fundamental theorem about the laissez faire mechanism for property appropriation.