Law Commons^™

Myth Of Ownership / Myth Of Government, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Indisputably, the lives of all individuals, now and throughout history, have not been commensurate in every respect. No individual has the most of everything at all times - net worth, love, happiness, security, companionship, fame, food, land, grandchildren, or whatever else he or she values.1 Nevertheless, a utopian strain in intellectual thought, emanating as the Enlightenment afterglow,2 continues to place its faith in the public construction of an ersatz equality that has never existed naturally.3 The Myth of Ownership, a recent book by two New York University law/philosophy professors, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, is a striking exemplar of this …