----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Dawson" <MDawson at pdx.edu>
Well, Nozick is stupid then. You don't get to own the sea that (or any) way because the sea is immense and not the product of anybody's labor, and also because pouring orange juice into doesn't improve it. What an irrelevant example.
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No it isn't. It demonstrates the intractable conflicts over the *creation* of property via an interesting thought experiment.
The point is that Doug Henwood's books would not exist without Doug Henwood's labor, and Doug Henwood deserves to be compensated for that labor, up to the point where the income loses contact with labor-input accounting and becomes a sheer artifact of Henwood's market power.
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And there is no transhistorical accounting method that is not itself the result of class struggle. At least you admit the issue is about power and the unintended consequences and fickleness of market demand...........
Stealing is wrong. Capitalism is a sly form of stealing from workers. Rather elementary point.
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No, it's not elementary *at all* because stealing is an essentially contested and polysemous concept.