Foundational legal goals cannot be priced because they ground the market itself

Evidence

Seen in this light, the most critical question raised by costbenefi t analysis is not to be found in the details of evermorerefi ned modes of valuation, but rather in the initial staging decision regarding what is, and is not, a proper subject of instrumentalist trading via revealedpreference costbenefi t exercises. Perhaps a more powerful example of this distinction for the welfare economist would be the classical liberal principles of strong private property rights and freedom of contract: Should the content of these laws be determined through costbenefi t analysis? If so, how would the relevant valuations of cost and benefi t be derived, since the very laws under consideration are the ones that give rise to the market structure and exchange activities that enable revealedpreference analysis? Like the basic liberal protection of property rights and freedom of contract, many of the central goals of environmental law and policy also are of a foundational character and therefore cannot adequately be posed within the language of costbenefi t analysis. Instead, they must be answered through the more familiar discourses and procedures of constitutional democracy, a point returned to in the next chapter. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 570

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Statistical objectivity in environmental policy rests on unwarranted assumptions about the physical world — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 15; The market cannot by definition be a collective project — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 609; Justice, rights, and offices cannot be privately traded (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Justice, rights, and offices cannot be privately traded #corroborates (0.82)
• Existence cannot be exchanged, so welfare economics cannot price irredeemable loss #corroborates (0.80) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 515
• The market cannot by definition be a collective project #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 609
• State welfare cannot challenge market dependence without undermining capitalism itself #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 78