Deirdre McCloskey wrote: > > I am as the British say gobsmacked. > > What's our next move? > As there have been no responses to this question as yet, let me give it a try. I presume the question means, "What do we, as people with an interest in economic history, do?" The answer is, "Explicate the history of property." The reason OUP and others can get away with this is that they are asserting a private property right, and property rights tend to be regarded, quite properly, as more or less "sacred." So there is a sort of "the govmint ought to leave property alone!" and "a property owner can do whatever he likes" mentality that surrounds such questions. However, while private property is proper to man, the particular forms of property are always conventional. It is the community that states the rights and obligations of any particular form of property. In a tribal society, the "community" means whatever social arrangements govern that village; in a nation-state, the community means, in large measure, the government. We depend on the government to record our titles and defend our rights, and without government (of whatever form) there can be no private property. Therefore, "private" property is, paradoxically, a government question and cannot exist without gov't. Indeed, property is the most basic of all economic relationships, and everything else depends on the particular form of property. Property has had any number of forms throughout history. Our own forms are of somewhat recent vintage. Property as radically private only gets codified in English law with the Statute of Frauds in 1677. The property rights of corporations, in their current form, only go back to 1876 and the /Santa Fe v. Santa Clara/ case, an egregious example of legislating from the bench. Private property has its most secure justification where exclusive use of property is necessary to make it useful. If everybody has a right to use your living room, your living room will be useful to no one. Property has its weakest justification where common usage enhances rather than limits property. Knowledge is property of this sort; the more that people use it the better it gets. The only justification for "privatising" knowledge is to ensure that those who worked to produce it get a fair reward. But surely, this is a temporary right, asserted only for as long as is reasonable, and not perpetual. By merely explicating the different forms and justifications for property, we show that there are other possibilities and assert than any particular form must have a specific justification. This, I think, is a beginning of a response. John M?daille