312 HERMENEUTICAL REASON

individual claim. Individuals make the law, insofar as they make claims’ (see Leoni 1963).

31For a discussion of the emergence of law as defining salient points for strategic interaction, and the normative status such rules can attain, see Postema (1982). For a game-theoretic approach to the spontaneous emergence of property rights, see Sugden (1986). For a juristic approach to the spontaneous emergence of law, see Leoni (1972). For a legal historical approach, see Trakman (1983).

32For a brief discussion of the kinds of ignorance (‘optimal’ versus ‘sheer’ ignorance) relevant to discussion of the market process, see Thomsen (1987) who notes that:

the market system is, at any time, full of regrettable inefficiencies and mistakes (many of which will be in the process of being entrepreneurially discovered and corrected). But it is scientifically invalid simply to assume the existence of a government authority in possession of all the knowledge necessary for their solution. The analysis should, more appropriately, consider which social arrangement has the means for the discovery of such knowledge. Viewed in the light of such a standard, the market has at least one major advantage over other systems: through its translation of innumerable inefficiencies and mistakes into opportunities for pecuniary profit it alone seems to have the power to awaken and mobilize the entrepreneurial alertness of market participants and thus to promote the discovery of these inefficiencies and their solutions.

(Thomsen 1987, p. 1–17)

33 Schelling found consistently uniform responses to simple questions asked in various co-ordination games played by experimental subjects. The games played included asking two isolated respondents to name a number, such that if they name the same number, they would receive a prize. A remarkable number (given the infinite choice set) chose the same number, i.e. 1. The number one has a kind of natural prominence, as has, for example, the choice of Grand Central Station at noon as a meeting place and time for two people to meet in New York. As Sugden (1986) shows, such prominent points can provide the foundation for the spontaneous emergence of conventions.

34On the significance of private property and contract for the creation of a public sphere, see Grace Goodell’s (1980) anthropological study.

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