> This desert island argument is not good. A libertarian who believes that > the basis of property is desert would say that what I deserve is not just > what I can create on my own on a desert island, but also what I can > bargain for, using resources I have or have developed, and also that I > should be rewarded for the contribution that my special skills make to > social production. But I think this libertarian response is incoherent. For example, one's ability to bargain depends in part on pre-existing wealth differentials and therefore has at least suspect status as a basis of desert. [Roemer has an article on this somewhere.] To go further in this I'd have to get into arguments such as might be launched against Nozick, which you probably know better than me. I'll just say this his freedom-based argument ignores the necessary anti-freedom externalities created by private property in a world of scarcity. On this cf. Locke's stipulation of "still enough, and as good left." Gil
