Social contract, free ride : a study of the public-goods problem / Anthony de Jasay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Jasay, Anthony, 1925-

Series:

Collected Papers of Anthony de Jasay

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public goods.

Social contract.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (289 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Indianapolis, Ind. : Liberty Fund, [2008]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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

Contents:

Commitment to co-operation

Promise, performance, and enforcement

State-of-nature co-ordination

Social contract

Social choice

The foundations of voluntariness

Constructive risk

An ethics turnpike

The unfairness of anarchy

The return of the free rider.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-264) and index.

ISBN:

1-61487-817-X