The Market and Social Order - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages As it is, a commonwealth or a civil society is imperatively necessary to administer any property regime. There must be collective national standards (Sen, 1996, pp. 148-163). As a matter of fact, the free market system necessitates an array of public institutions and standards to shore it up (Fried, 1998). From this standpoint, the free enterprise system is in itself a type of "commons regime," that is, a collaborative undertaking to improve and develop well-being founded on rights of private property, contracts and market exchange.
The concept that some types of property are intrinsically public has its origin in Roman law (Lee, 1956, pp.109-110). Some forms of property, the Romans believed, due to its nature and character, should not be under individual ownership and control. These types of property were called res extra commercium, in contrast, properties that could only be used in common because they were indivisible (e.g. waterways, ocean, land) were known as res communes.
Derived from this belief, courts came up with a unique line of "public trust" analysis to categorise certain forms of property, like natural r...
nd" pertained to deep seabed minerals, human genetic structures, the global atmosphere and other resources that should not lawfully be appropriated by any one individual or state (Buck, 1998).
The Enclosure Movement in England The allegory of market enclosure was taken from the enclosure movement in England, which took place several times beginning in the late 1400s, specifically in the 1500s and during the Industrial Revolution. All throughout the Middle Ages, the conventional use of land was known as the open-field system, wherein arable lands were not fenced and jointly managed by everyone in the community. Peasants communally held rights to sizeable sections of meadow, moorland and forests. The commons utilised these to feed geese/sheep/cows, grow crops, furnish firewood and peat, and cultivate beehives and fruit trees (Williams, 1973, pp.96-110). As a means of supervising and handling lands in stable, pre-modern communities, the common lands did not lend themselves to new, more productive processes of agriculture. With these lands being employed for survival and not market purposes, the incentives were visible. Nevertheless, the lands were an important communal resource for coping with daily needs in many communities - and a complementary resource in other villages. Likewise, these lands had emotional and psychological significance to the villagers because these were community resources of which they had some direct measure of control. As the landed classes of England realised that wealth could be had by developing common lands, they began to push Parliament to permit the seizure of the lands, on the pretext that there is a need of "improving" them. Basically, enclosure appealed to these proto-capitalists because fresh breeding procedures for sheep made ...Download file to see next pagesRead More