Some brief comments, Sumitra

Sumitra Shah wrote:
>Pat, it is not that you may be misunderstanding me, I think we 
>talking about different things. As the cliche goes, we are not on 
>the same page. I believe what you called legal rights could be 
>interpreted as formal rights/freedoms.

I suppose that the phrase could be interpreted in this way. But that 
is not what the words say and it is not what I meant.


>As for the sexual division of labor, it exists. In a system of 
>natural liberty it does not get mentioned because it is nor part of 
>the analytical framework Smith had created. T

You will have to define a sexual division of labor lest I say 
something else that could be interpreted in a way that is different 
from what I mean. I thought that I dealt with this issue in my message.

My point is that the "system of natural liberty" and the "spontaneous 
order," function to eliminate differences in the demand for human 
resources that are not based on value productivity. However, since 
value productivity refers to consumer wants, if individuals in the 
consumer role have preferences with a sexual dimension, those 
preferences play a part. It is possible that the existence of such 
preferences would result in, for example, goods produced by men being 
more valuable than identical goods produced by women. Then, other 
things equal, women with the same abilities would be paid less than 
men or perhaps not even hired. This is a simple analytical conclusion 
based on marginal productivity theory. Smith did not go this far, of 
course, but it is the direction to which his theory of the natural 
liberty system was leading.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you are promoting a critical 
agenda. If so, what would you suggest should be done to correct for 
the sexual division of labor you perceive as a problem? Surely, you 
are not suggesting that we discard Smith's or Hayek's image of the 
hypothetical pure market economy, are you?

Pat Gunning