Synopses & Reviews
This book provides a novel account of the public goods dilemma. The author shows how the social contract, in its quest for fairness, actually helps to breed the parasitic free riding” it is meant to suppress. He also shows how, in the absence of taxation, many public goods would be provided by spontaneous group cooperation. This would, however, imply some degree of free riding. Unwilling to tolerate such unfairness, cooperating groups would eventually drift from voluntary to compulsory solutions, heedless of the fact that this must bring back free riding with a vengeance. The author argues that the perverse incentives created by the attempt to render public provision assured and fair are a principal cause of the poor functioning of organized society.
Anthony de Jasay is an independent theorist living in France. Jasay believes that philosophy should be mainly, if not exclusively, about clarifying conclusions that arise from the careless use of, or deliberate misuse of, language. There are echoes here of . . . Wittgenstein's later philosophy.” His books, translated into a half dozen languages, include Justice and Its Surroundings and The State.
[source/credit line] I. M. D. Little in Ordered Anarchy, 2007
Synopsis
This book offers a compelling new account of the public goods dilemma. Showing how the social contract, in its quest for fairness, actually helps to breed the parasitic free riding it is meant to suppress, De Jasay argues that the incentives created by the attempt to render public
provisions assured and fair are a principal cause of the poor functioning of organized society. This study will be of great value to political and moral philosophers, political theorists, and economists.
Synopsis
Social Contract, Free Ride is a cogent argument that strikes at the very foundations of traditional economic apologies for coercive action by the state to fulfill necessary public utility.
Anthony de Jasay is an independent theorist living in France.
Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
PART ONE — THE SURRENDER OF AUTONOMY
1. Commitment to Co-operation 13
Custom 14
Contract versus Command 17
Avoiding Freedom-Talk and Rights-Talk 22
2. Promise, Performance, and Enforcement 25
Defaults 28
Enforcement 30
Grounds for Enforcement 34
How Contract Breeds Command 39
3. State-of-Nature Co-ordination 44
Co-ordination, Pure and Non-pure 48
Approaching Strangers 50
Pure Co-ordination by Contract 51
Inequality of Character 54
Not Rocking the Boat 57
The Hardest Case 60
State-of-Nature Public Goods: The Standard Approach 64
Reliance on Enforcement 71
4. Social Contract 75
Institutional Darwinism 81
Reconciliation 86
Restricted Domain: The Hobbesian Asymmetry 91
Restricted Domain: The Minimal State 96
5. Social Choice 102
Unrestricted Domain 105
Enforcement of Domain-Restriction 108
Non-fatuousness 110
Predisposed Rules 112
Agility and Sluggishness 116
Equiprobability I 120
Accepting Command where Contract Fails 123
Appendix: Redistribution 124
PART TWO — PUBLICNESS: SOLUTION AND RESULT
6. The Foundations of Voluntariness 133
Exclusion 135
Free Riders or Suckers All 142
Stacked, Interlocking, and Straddle Rankings 146
No Free Riders, No Suckers 149
The Straddle Ranking: A Necessary Condition 152
The Straddle Ranking: A Suffi cient Condition 156
Equiprobability II 163
7. Constructive Risk 166
All or None 168
“Uncertainty” 176
A Spontaneous Solution through Risk 179
All Cretans Are Not Liars 183
Inconsistent Expectations 185
Appendix: Straddle or Chicken 186
8. An Ethics Turnpike 192
Homo Oeconomicus 198
Three Grades of Rationality 199
Public-Goods Forks 202
9. The Unfairness of Anarchy 218
Abuse, Outrage, Envy 222
The End of Anarchy 229
10. The Return of the Free Rider 233
Reverse Contribution 234
Pooling 237
The Game of “Ask” 239
The Game of “Deficit” 248
Free Riding on Fairness 257
Works Cited 261
Index 265