2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 Years of Clever and Contradictory Arguments that Inequality is Natural and Inevitable

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS v
3. PREFACE vii
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x
5. 1. Introduction 1
6. Part One The inequality hypothesis
7. 2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 Years of Clever and Contradictory Arguments that Inequality is Natural and Inevitable 13
8. 3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two: Natural Inequality in Contemporary Political Philosophy and Social Science 42
9. 4. How Small-Scale Societies Maintain Political, Social, and Economic Equality 55
10. Part Two The market freedom hypothesis
11. 5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy 77
12. 6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band Economy 100
13. Part Three The individual appropriation hypothesis
14. 7. Contemporary Property Theory: A Story, a Myth, a Principle, and a Hypothesis 125
15. 8. The History of an Hypothesis 147
16. 9. The Impossibility of a Purely A Priori Justification of Private Property 162
17. 10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis 178
18. 11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies 194
19. 12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities 209
20. 13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States 227
21. 14. The Privatization of the Earth, 1500–2000 ce 240
22. 15. The Individual Appropriation Hypothesis Assessed 258
23. Conclusion
24. 16. Conclusion 269
25. References 274
26. Index 295