It has been said that the best government is the least, or least intrusive, government and in particular that the government of business is no part of the business of government. I want to examine these ideas, for they seem simplistic, and they seem to lead ultimately to the view that the best government would be no government at all. I wish to examine, particularly with regard to economics, what a reasonable role of government ought to be, and will contrast my position with that of Milton and Rose Friedman's as stated in Free to Choose.

First, however, let me make a distinction between a country's formal government and any other non-business, national society-wide organization established to meet societal needs that business seems unable or unwilling to address or to address satisfactorily. A government or society may establish or give special privileges to an organization, such as a utility, even though the government may not own or operate the organization itself. There may not even be special privileges for the organization. I will use the terms "societal organization" or "social organization" to describe these sorts of entities as well as government entities that act in the same way. If a society perceives a need that business does not supply, and the people in that society collectively establish some mechanism to meet the need, then I am not concerned about whether they do it through government. The point is that they are doing it outside of the normal economic or business mechanism of the society. It may be that neither government nor business is the proper mechanism to meet society's needs or desires in a certain arena, but that some societal collective⁽¹⁾ effort is needed. That is the issue I want to discuss; not whether government itself is necessary for these kinds of enterprises, but whether business alone is adequate to do so.

Now one often sees the argument that governments are often totally unproductive at meeting a given need, or they are much less efficient, and more wasteful, than private business would be. The reason given is that government officials and agencies do not have a vested interest, as a businessman would, in meeting the needs of the people he serves. He will get paid regardless of how well or ill he performs his job. Taxes are regularly and forcibly collected en masse and distributed without regard for whether the taxpayer is actually getting enough for his money or not. Without competition, and without sales or income that is a mirror or measure of how satisfyingly and satisfactorily an organization is doing its job, there is no indicator for how well it is performing, and there is no penalty for performing poorly. There is not even an indicator of how much need or demand there is for the service or product. In business, there is a direct penalty for not performing well or meeting a demand -- business failure. Thus there is incentive for a company to satisfy its customers and to perform a desired task in a desired way.

Of course, any government or societal agency that is not doing its job well or that is not performing a needed or desired service ought not to be allowed to continue in the way it is operating. The claim that a social mechanism needs to exist for any particular purpose is never meant to be the claim that an organization ought to exist even if it does not have a meaningful function or does not do the function it was meant to, or does not do it very well at all when there are far better ways for that function to be done. No honest and sincere person would argue for the existence of a government or social organization that collects tax money, dues, or contributions of any sort, that does not do the job very well that it is designed to do or that does not do a job that is in any way important. The claim that the government or society ought to have a postal service, educational system, armed forces, criminal justice system, welfare system, or whatever is never meant to be the claim that society ought to have those things whether they perform well or not and whether they serve a needed function or not. Good performance, for a useful function, is the intent. The question is whether there can be mechanisms outside of economic or business ones that can work, work better than business mechanisms, or work where business mechanisms cannot work at all. Are there organizations society needs that cannot be established on a business model or that cannot work as well as they should if set up on a business model? Why or why not?

I have pointed out elsewhere that government does not have the monopoly on incompetent or lazy workers or managers. Nor are government organizations the only ones with workers who spend money they do not directly have to earn from a customer. In any large business organization there are many people who do not ever work directly with customers. There are managers, accountants, clerks, buyers, etc. who may never actually sell anything to a customer of the company. They do their particular job and collect their paycheck, but they do not directly take in any money for the company. The measure of their value has to be determined by means other than how much money they take in. And today, even CEO's are sometimes judged not only by how much profit the company is earning presently, but what the prospects for the future are (which cannot be judged or measured by current income). And all people can be judged not only in comparison with competitors or their predecessors, but against some expected ideal. A person may not retain a job if they are making millions of dollars for a company if the company believes someone else could make tens of millions. So the question is not one about whether individuals who work for the government are somehow different or do different kinds of things, or are judged differently from individuals who work for private business, but whether there are fundamental differences between business agencies and societal agencies that make it difficult or impossible for the societal agencies to work as well as business ones. And the question is also whether there are any functions that society ought to perform that business cannot provide or cannot provide very well. And if so, why, and what sorts of functions are they?

The question in a free market economy comes down to what sorts of things, if any, people and communities want and need that they cannot purchase on their own --that individuals or families, or even large corporations cannot afford to purchase-- and which therefore must either be purchased collectively or done without. Examples generally given, even by "conservatives" are things such as armies, police departments, judicial systems, roads and highways. Milton Friedman says, following Adam Smith for the first three of the four items, that government(s) should provide (1) protection from foreign violence and invasion, (2) a system of justice, (3) public works and public institutions which benefit all but not in a way that would financially profit a smaller group that would finance them on their own, and (4) protection for those individuals in a community that "cannot be regarded as 'responsible,' " such as children. But in the United States there are a host of other programs and services the government promotes, one of the largest being the various public school systems for kindergarten through twelfth grade and the subsidization of state universities in some cases. Friedman is one who argues the government ought not to operate schools or universities because they do not do it well and will not do it well, and that the government supports and props up schools which fail to meet their students needs, and which would thereby be forced out of business if they had to operate in a free market economy, having to meet the needs of their customers or not have sufficient customers and income to continue. On the other hand, countries like Japan believe it is important to help and subsidize certain industries in order to help them have a competitive edge in the world market.

There are at least four different issues involved in this whole question. The first is whether private business really could meet the needs of clients with anything less than government ownership, organization, control, or subsidy. The second is whether private business could do a better job than a societal or government organization. The third is whether the product or service is worth the cost at all. And the fourth is whether or not the product and service simply ought to be provided just to those who can afford it -- such as are private schools, private medical insurance (and thus coverage for expensive medical treatments), private security guards, etc. -- leaving out those who cannot afford it.

One proviso at this point is that if there are certain kinds of goods and services that an economic system, say a market system, seems unable to provide because of the financial mechanisms customary to it, that does not mean a new financial practice cannot be invented that would solve the mechanism problem and thus allow private business to provide the product or service desired. The invention and feasibility of long term mortgages allowed people to borrow sufficient money to buy homes they could not otherwise afford. Balloon mortgages allowed people to buy homes at a time that rampant inflation made fixed term mortgages too risky for lenders. Some financial inventions work better than others, but one should not be too quick to say the private sector or market cannot find a viable mechanism to provide a particular good or service; one can only say that at a given time such a mechanism does not exist.

Throughout the book I make mention of services I argue that a society ought to provide. That is not intended to mean government ought to provide it, nor that business could not provide it. It simply means that if business does not provide it, society should find some mechanism or organization to provide it. Non-school, community youth baseball, football, soccer, and basketball programs or organizations are examples of non-government, non-business organizations that provide a public service. Some charitable or service organizations are other examples, although many charitable organizations tend to be run as a business and are not what I have in mind. Some industries or groups of businesses organize auxiliary groups such as chambers of commerce, industrial or business boards (like the board of Realtors), or, in the case of physicians, medical societies. These are privately funded or volunteer organizations which meet a need the market can not or does not provide, and which are not operated under business or market principles. Their value is judged by means other than the amount of money, if any, or profit the organization makes. One can argue how well or ill such groups serve the general public instead of the people that pay for them, but in principle at least, they are established to meet a need the market seems unable to.

I will leave the questions of whether private business can best, or at all, meet some particular need for others to decide with particular arguments or empirical demonstrations. Whether, for example, an expanded version of Federal Express or UPS could deliver all mail better than the Postal Service does is not primarily a philosophical matter, but an empirical one. And I will leave for particular arguments the question of whether particular products or services are worth the cost at all. I give such arguments about some services throughout the book. My concern here is the question of whether societal organizations (government or otherwise) ought to provide goods and services for people who cannot afford them, at the expense of those who can. I wish to consider the issue of the reasonableness of community services for those who cannot afford them. Why should people of means help those in a community without such means?⁽²⁾

The main arguments against what is essentially a redistribution of funds are that (1) taxes restrict freedom of choice about how to spend what one has earned; the government will decide for you how to spend your hard earned money; and (2) if people have not contributed enough to society to earn sufficient money to pay for what they want and need, then that is too bad, but it is not the problem of those who are working, and cooperating with other workers, to actually make their lives better. This latter argument is not dissimilar to Hayek's view of what a market is -- the arrangements by individuals to trade in certain ways, that has nothing to do whatsoever with those not involved in the particular trade. If you and I want to trade clothes for food, and someone else wants to get clothes and food from us, then let him earn it by providing something we both want. If he does not do that, we do not need to give up what we have worked for in order to provide him a gift of clothes and food. We have no obligation to help out a neighbor just because he lives near us, if he is not doing anything to help us out or earn our help. We are not being selfish to keep what we make; he would be selfish to expect us to do otherwise. [Endnote #1]

Since I am not arguing that social programs need to be government programs, and since I am not arguing, and do not believe, that all government programs need to be funded by tax dollars (state lotteries, for example, raise money for some government programs on a voluntary participation basis, not tax collections), I will not address the first argument, which is in essence the complex and difficult political philosophy question of what constitutes fair and justified governmental rule, in this case with regard to taxation and expenditure. That is an issue that even those who support taxation for particular purposes, such as funding a military, might raise with regard to a vote that plunges the military into a particular war particular taxpayers do not believe is justified. This first argument is about a problem that is neither primarily economic nor one about freedom versus compulsion. It is a question of the best and fairest form of (social) organization of any sort, once it is decided that an organization is necessary or important.

I wish to answer the question of why goods and services which people cannot earn in a market economy need to be provided for them at all. There are a number of different reasons.

First, however, there are different conditions under which this issue might be raised. And they will yield different results. If there is plenty of reasonable opportunity for people to work in order to be self-supporting or to contribute to society in a reasonable way at a fair profit⁽³⁾ (I will explain what I mean by a reasonable way, at the end of this section) and those opportunities are disdained by a person able to do the work, or he voluntarily and intentionally squanders his profits from his labor in an unreasonable way, it seems to me there is no reason to share with him the fruits of other people's labor⁽⁴⁾.

The only issue that arises in such a case is how to make certain that his sloth does not punish his children or other people dependent upon him, by keeping them from goods and services they, as innocent bystanders, need in order to live a decent life and become financially able.

If there is not much opportunity for someone to work or to be self-sufficient, and resources are so scarce that people cannot viably part with the little they do have, then it just may be too bad for the individual in question. Nature is sometimes cruel, and does not always provide enough resources for everyone to survive. 

If there is not much opportunity for work or to be self-sufficient at a given time, and resources of the whole community are not so meager as to preclude reasonable sharing, then I believe a community should help those less fortunate for the reasons I give below. In short, I am concerned primarily with the reasonable economic policies of a society of abundance, which may be quite different from the reasonable economic policies of a society of scarce resources. [Endnote #2]

The issue as it pertains to children in part involves what a society ought to provide to those who cannot contribute to the economic well-being of society and who do not have private means, such as savings, family or friends, willing and able to meet their needs. Furthermore, the case of children is in some way like the case of anyone temporarily unable to work, rather than the case of someone who is permanently unable to work. Although children cannot generally contribute much economically to society (particularly a society whose economy depends on knowledge or technical expertise) while they are children, they will in most cases be able to in the future, with the right upbringing and training. So supporting children, or anyone temporarily unable to contribute much economically to society, is not a totally charitable enterprise. Some "return" for such support will generally occur.

It seems to me there are many different reasons the more economically advantaged in society should aid those far less advantaged, and that society would want to establish feasible, fair, efficient, and effective mechanisms to bring this about. Some of these reasons have to do with the potential benefit involved for those who are economically advantaged, though not all of them involve such a "return" for one's efforts.

1) It seems to me that one is normally better off living in a good community than in a bad community, even if one has less personal money in the good community than in the bad community. Insofar as helping others helps them (someday) make a contribution to the community, rather than being a continuing drain on the communities resources, or worse, being destructive to the community, giving such help raises the chances one will be living in a better community in the future, and therefore be better off. Someone once said that Paris attracted so many striving artists and writers because in Paris you could have little money and yet not feel poor. Insofar as that kind of environment then has enriched mankind through the contributions these people were able to create because of the help they received, there was an overall return on the investment. The same is true with regard to supporting research or education. Insofar as a company or a society supports people who are trying to become more creative and productive, benefits will accrue as the people being supported are successful. Individual support may not "pay off", since not all research leads to useful discovery; but the overall system of support should produce overall benefit, as the value of the individual successes far outweighs the costs of the failures. With regard to researchers and students, one is supporting them to work, but at work that may not end up individually being useful. It is not that students and researchers are idle, but that their labor is not necessarily beneficial to the community at the time.

We cannot know the missed opportunities we may have had by denying some people and groups access to a better education or better work opportunities simply because they were poor or in some way merely the subject of malevolent prejudice. I cannot but think that if we could divine the opportunities we have missed, we would find chilling ironies involving individuals holding back the very people who would have solved the problems that most sorely and sorrowfully afflicted those who held them back --the woman who could have saved the company from financial ruin, the black person who would have found a way to heal the paralysis caused by spinal cord injury, the rural child of inferior schools who would have discovered the means for his state or region to escape its poverty, the Hispanic that might have discovered ways to make large, heavily populated urban areas substantially more livable and desirable. It is not so impossible to imagine how much better off we would likely be if we quit seeing others simply as potential mouths that would take some meager portion of the bread we do not zealously and self-righteously safeguard, and began instead to see them as potentially creative minds and working hands that would help create more bread for all of us. 

And just on a more ordinary level, apart from the idea of valuable inventions and discoveries, people who are treated decently are more likely to treat others decently. Crime, distrust, and emotional torment are less likely in a helpful, "neighborly" society than in one where everyone tends to be isolated, self-absorbed, greedy, and opportunistic in the sense of taking unkind advantage of others in order to increase one's own well-being. All the police, army, and private security forces, along with the entire criminal justice system --all at immense cost-- cannot provide the kind of security and peace of mind and more productive channeling of resources possible in a kind, decent, "neighborly, community.

1a) Community health is a particular case of this idea, since epidemics often know no artificial boundaries once unleashed. It behooves a community to provide at least the kind of health care to everyone to try to avoid such epidemics that cannot be controlled by mere isolation, separation, deportation, alienation, or incarceration.

2) The first reason was an empirical claim about how a community which treats everyone decently, compassionately, and helpfully will end up being a better community. There is a moral claim that accompanies that as well. Even if someone you befriend when they need help, does not help you out, they at least have an obligation to do so, incurred because of your assistance to them. If you do not help others when you can, and when they need help, it seems to me you then forfeit any deservingness for their assistance when you might need it. Someone you mistreat or do not help when he could use your help, and you are in a position to give it, may voluntarily be kind to you when you need help, but he has little, if any, obligation to do so. And especially, you have no claim to his assistance if the things you did needlessly and selfishly caused a burden to him.

3) Since no one is immune from infirmity and calamity, making certain that everyone's basic needs are met insofar as is possible, is a form of insurance for you. Having private insurance does not necessarily do that. Such insurance may be insufficient or inadequate for any of a number of reasons that are not necessarily the buyer's fault or that the buyer may be unaware of until too late. What you want is for a community to do the best and fairest they can for you if calamity befalls you; and that may be something that is hard to provide for yourself in a purely business, legalistically structured policy with a private company.

4) Similarly, business success and reversals are not totally within an individual's control or efforts, particularly when one does good work, but is part of a company or industry that his or her efforts alone, no matter how good, cannot make successful. Particularly in a rapidly changing, technological, and global society, one's product or service could be unforeseeably rendered obsolete or uncompetitive in a time too short to make adaptations. Again, a community that helps each other out with the resources they have available, offers a form of insurance to help people get back on their feet and become contributing and self-sufficient again.

5) Compassion. It seems to me that compassion is an admirable trait that ought to be cultivated, and exercised when necessary. As I have argued, people are not necessarily greedy and self-centered; they can be compassionate. And it is better to be compassionate than selfish. Compassion does not require martyrdom, however, so this is about helping each other when it is possible and reasonable, not unreasonably and unjustifiably sacrificing what one needs for oneself.

6) The joy and satisfaction of helping others when you reasonably can. Helping others in many cases is not necessarily sacrificing, nor an effort that is totally of one-sided benefit. There is frequently a pleasure or satisfaction in doing things for other people. This is particularly true when they are obviously appreciative of your efforts.

7) It seems to me that many people have interests they would like to pursue, which in some cases we refer to as "callings", and that some interests turn out to be more profitable than others purely by accident or chance. One can imagine Ben Hogan's or Jack Nicklaus' mother voicing the concern as they were teenagers whether they ought not be spending their time more usefully than on the golf course. Had either been born a hundred years earlier, they would not likely have become as financially successful if they stuck to golf, and ignored such maternal admonitions. Some people like to work in an area of research or engineering that may or may not be particularly popular at the time, but the work interests them, not the glamour, profitability, or popularity of the field. I worked with a man when I was in college who did genetic research when the field was fairly new. He was a physician, and it would have been much more lucrative for him to practice private medicine than to do university medical research. But he ended up winning the Nobel Prize for his work. At the time I knew him, he had not yet done the work for which he won the prize, and there were periods of external pressure to abandon the not very lucrative endeavor of research. Not every researcher, however, wins the Nobel Prize or receives much social reward, recognition, and external gratification for their work. The lack of such reward or recognition can sometimes be an impediment to their doing the work (for long). The financial success of a given endeavor is often more a matter of fate and fad than of any demonstrable usefulness or importance. The fact that a gifted hard-working basketball player can make more money, in a given society at a given point in history, than a talented, hard-working public health physician is more a matter of historical circumstance than design or desert. I am not suggesting that society pay for everyone's pursuit merely of their own desires. But I do believe everyone would be better off if there were some sorts of mechanisms or at least social sanctioning for people to be able to pursue their interests, research, and "callings" as much as possible -- particularly those interests which have a potential contribution to society -- instead of having to make money at something one does not particularly care for or see as socially useful, but which earns a living. I don't know what percentage of the population foregoes its callings or interests in order to make a living at something they dislike or find rewarding only in a financial way, but if many people do, society might be better off if there were some systematic mechanism for giving people opportunity to explore areas that they believe to be worthwhile. The people who get to explore would be individually better off; and the rest of us might be better off if their explorations prove socially fruitful. Many of the great inventions and discoveries we wouldn't want to do without today, came from people who had to pursue their quest in spite of obstacles for doing so. I do not think it was the obstacles that made the effort work out; and I wonder how many things have been lost because people didn't really have a fighting chance to pursue their interests simply because their interests were not popular at the time they had them. As things stand now, only people who work for employers that understand the potential for research and development, or people who can win over investors, or win grants, have the luxury to pursue ideas outside of their own basements. I would think a society of abundance could set up other, and more accessible, avenues for such pursuits, whereby those who pursued interests that were lucrative (especially by chance) could help those pursue interests which are not popular at the time.

8) We do help each other out within a given company or even within industries, by sharing health insurance, allowing reserves for sick pay and paid vacations, sharing work when others are ill or on vacation, etc. It is not that philosophically large a jump to do the same thing for the bulk of society, other than it might be somewhat more difficult to "police" and weed out real malingerers, an important issue for many, but different only in degree from the problem of catching malingerers in any given company, particularly a large company. 

9) In much of modern society, there are not the freely available raw resources for those who will only take the risks, and make the effort, to tap into, and labor on, them. One can no longer head west and homestead property or start farming on unowned vacant land. Most, if not all, the resources are owned or spoken for, or if they are publicly owned, they have rules and regulations about how they can be utilized. Those who own the properties or who control the (resource) rights to properties, control access to whose labor, and what labor, might be applied to those resources. Insofar as that is true, there are constraints, often financial ones, put on people who might otherwise apply their efforts and talents to those resources. A society with abundant resources, that, through whatever mechanisms, purposely or unintentionally, denies some of its inhabitants opportunities for productive labor is not morally neutral in regard to responsibility for those they do not let reasonably contribute in order to make a decent living. They are responsible because they are unnecessarily and unjustifiably forcing certain kinds of idlness, not just simply permitting it. People that control access to abundant resources deny people opportunity when they deny them access to those resources. They are causing harm, not just being uninvolved with their neighbors' life, and they need to redress that harm in some reasonable way.

10) In a society divided into groups with quite different incomes or sources of money, that labor which is able to will often tend to gravitate toward serving the more affluent members of society for higher prices, rather than increasing volume at lower prices. Poorer members of society will find themselves shut out from certain services or products because those who provide them will find sufficient income just serving the more affluent. Providers will seek more leisure rather than additionally serving the needs of those whose payments would only be marginal. A doctor, for example, might close his office on some days rather than treat those who could only pay a limited amount for treatment. A car dealership might cater only to the luxury car market rather than also keeping a supply of less expensive models. Though in one country, the two societies will find themselves the equivalent of side-by-side countries, one of which is wealthy and the other poor. In this case, the less affluent members of society get squeezed out of goods and services they otherwise would have had and would have been able to earn. It is not as if they cannot work or do not work, but their work does not earn them the benefits it would have if the more affluent were not, in a sense, siphoning off goods and services that would otherwise be available for customers at lower prices. In such a case, some form of redress or accommodation would, I believe, be justified because the wealthy are thereby keeping services from the less wealthy, although they are not doing so intentionally and may not even realize they are doing it.

And it seems to me not a feasible mechanism to simply allow only those who can afford the time and money to re-train or return to school. There need to be more effective and more encouraging mechanisms than that. People with great potential to contribute do not always have the time or money to get additional training, particularly college training, if they also need to work for immediate wages and if they have other kinds of family responsibilities. Scholarships, for example, may not be sufficient incentive or use if there is no way for someone to meet living expenses while in training; and loans may not suffice if they are too costly to pay back even if one is able to get work in the new field once he finishes training. 

There need to be mechanisms that make retraining more feasible or mechanisms that help pay for the person to use their skills, if those skills are important but not just fashionable or in enough current demand to be economically feasible without some sort of subsidization. 

I am not espousing "a free ride" for people, since that is often unproductive and since society does not have the obligation to provide a free ride, when less assistance will accomplish just as much, and be fairer to the people paying the bill. Nor am I espousing some huge, inflexible, centralized program that ends up causing more trouble than it is worth. I am basically saying that society should see the cultivation of human resources and abilities as an investment with potential good return, not just as something that helps an individual improve his own financial circumstances at society's expense. And I am saying society should try to develop mechanisms that channel that view into action. And since the incentive to train or retrain is made even more unappealing if society seems generally hostile or indifferent to whether one tries to actualize one's capabilities or not, the mere societal appreciation of the efforts of those seeking to improve themselves should even prove more encouraging.

Endnote #1 It seems to me this argument only has merit in cases of institutions that do not adversely affect those people who do not participate in them, especially those who cannot participate in them. If I and others form an organization that does not harm you in any way if you do not participate in it, but you have no service to offer us to make it worth our while to let you join with us, we have no obligation to make you part of that organization or to give you any of the benefits of that organization. However, if we have an organization that causes burdens or hardship to non-members, than it seems we have some sort of obligation either not to exclude anyone or to at least ameliorate or prevent the hardship we cause. I believe a case could be made that modern society is such that not to be a part of the economic system is a severe burden, and not just a disappointment or inconvenience. Most people are not born on farms or in the kinds of communities where they could be reasonably self-sufficient. To be on one's own in a large city or any other environment where self-sufficiency is difficult because all the good resources are divided among members of a group, is a severe liability, not just an inconvenience or the absence of a luxury. If, through no fault of one's own, one does not have reasonable opportunity for an education leading to a reasonable job, that is a severe burden today, not just an inconvenience or inconsequential bad luck.

Part of the problem with exclusive clubs that cater only to certain kinds of people (e.g., wealthy white males) is that many business dealings go on in them that therefore exclude people that some dealings ought not to exclude. John Kennedy pointed out, when asked about the propriety of press club functions that excluded women reporters, that he thought it was all right for male members of the press club to merely fraternize without having women members present if they so chose; but that it would be wrong for them to hold working meetings or to socialize in ways that influenced their professional success, and exclude the female members from them. I think there is merit to such a distinction. I believe that a distinction can be made between organizations that cause non-members undue harm, and those which simply do not let them participate in benefits that are in some sense "extras" or luxuries. (Return to text.)

Endnote #2 The view of many conservatives is that (government) redistribution of resources robs a society of incentive to work, and that socialism and communism are significantly less productive than a free market system, since without the incentive to work, few people will do it. Hence, the whole economy becomes weaker as more and more people try to sponge off the labor of fewer and fewer workers. Finally the system will collapse altogether. Churchill put it succinctly when he said that in capitalism there is unequal distribution of abundance whereas communism allows for the equal distribution of scarcity. For many, the notion of a communist or socialist work ethic is a contradiction, with ample historical example to support that view. 

The problem for any economic system is to balance fairness and productivity, not to eliminate one at the expense of the other. This is difficult for a number of reasons. (1) Fairness is essentially a moral concept, not an empirical one -- although empirical results, such as strikes and insurrections occur, when people feel they are treated so unfairly that they will not willingly submit to it any more. And balancing empirical results with moral concepts is not always easy, particularly when what seems fair to one group or generation may not seem fair to another, (2) It is difficult to tell, without experiment sometime, which elements of a socio/political/economic system effect productivity either for better or worse; and the fear of making things worse tends to inhibit experiments seeking improvement. Many social changes occur after riots or such widespread and obviously bad conditions that there seems little to lose and much to gain, by such experimentation. It is in relatively good economic times that people in power and people of means are particularly loathe to make any changes they believe might result in a severe decrease in productivity to achieve more fairness. (3) Different economic conditions may need different principles of distribution, but it is apparently difficult for governments to implement temporary measures and to keep them only temporarily, or to tie their existence to particular conditions, so that they can be self-eliminating. Any law tends to take on an inertia, life, and constituency of its own that makes it hard to eliminate when its usefulness has passed. (4) Purist ideological mind-sets tend to make too many people think that any modification of any aspect of one economic philosophy (whether capitalism, socialism, communism, or whatever) moves them entirely into an abhorrent system or starts them on a slippery slope toward that system; and that any criticism of any capitalistic or socialist practice or principle makes one a socialist or a reactionary.

It is also difficult to balance fairness with productivity, since there are a number of mistaken views of what constitutes either. I discussed these issues earlier, but let me point out here that I certainly do not equate economic productivity with either GNP or with greater material wealth; and I do not equate fairness with equality of distribution of wealth, nor with "the going (market) wage rate" in a given occupation. Philosopher John Rawls believed that reasonable rules for fairness could be derived if people made them up without being able to tell what position in society one might have. If you did not know whether you were to be a doctor or a stockbroker or a teacher, the rules for distribution you would choose, Rawls thinks, would be likely to be fair ones. I disagree. Many people think that there is no reason for anyone to be poor in a capitalist, free market system other than one's own laziness or lack of ability. They also believe that ability for marketability is a fair determining factor for wealth. People who hold such a view will be inclined to vote for free market capitalism because they believe it will afford them the best opportunity of a good position in life, even though they may not know what that position may be⁽⁵⁾. So it seems to me that little is gained by voting for economic rules under Rawls' hypothetical veil of ignorance.

And although I do not believe that the most aggressive, acquisitive, fashionably talented, marketable, politically powerful, self-serving, or lucky people ought to have everything they can get, neither do I believe that we all ought to have equal profits regardless of effort. I tend to be inclined toward distribution rules that take into account effort; contribution; overall per capita wealth of the society; distinctions between distributions of luxuries, conveniences, and necessities; compassion; and fairness of real opportunity to contribute and to share in the distribution. And although the most reasonable principles of fairness may not yet have been discovered or widely agreed upon, that does not mean they could not be, or that the reasonable public pursuit of such principles would not be immensely economically beneficial.  (Return to text.)

1. A socially collective effort, in the sense I am using it, does not necessarily need to involve everyone. Just as there are charitable organizations that collect voluntary contributions for particular needs, businesses and governments could operate in the same way under certain conditions. Many utility companies, for example, have programs by which people can add an additional amount to the utility bills in order to assist paying for the utilities of poorer people. Not everyone contributes to such a fund. Governments could designate such funds for various projects that people wish to give voluntary contributions. Such voluntary taxes exist already in some states for people who purchase vanity license tags or special tags, such as those for supporting schools or the environment. Since voluntary contributions cannot always be counted on in the way taxes can be, then either programs served by voluntary funds need to be implemented on a pay-as-you-go plan, instead of by the expectation of contributions, and/or such programs, if they need long-term commitments, can be contractual ones for some particular span of time. Plans of this sort eliminate one of the major sources of friction of taxation - the forced contribution of one's money to a cause one does not support at all but for which a majority of citizens or representatives have forced them to pay.  (Return to text.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. There are circumstances under which democratic government (or any benevolent government) will be at odds with certain kinds of business practices. Those are the cases where fairness and other ethical or social values conflict with either productivity or with financial profit. The financial profit at issue may be the profit of the entire business or it may be the profit of certain individuals in that business. The fairness may have to do with distributing benefits and burdens fairly throughout society, or with regard to the workers in the business in question. These are cases essentially where constituencies of business conflict with those of government --business constituencies being those workers, investors, owner, suppliers, and customers who benefit from the products or services the business offers. Since governments may be concerned with fair distributions of burdens and benefits as well as productivity, and businesses may be only concerned with productivity or profit, government and business (or government and business ownership/management) may conflict. Conflicts also result where the profit motive conflicts with other ethical or social values, as in preventing the sale of donor body organs, company trade secrets, child labor, or good school grades.  (Return to text.)

I have argued that business profit includes, or ought to include, more than financial profit, but insofar as businesses don't hold that view, and insofar as those who are disadvantaged are represented by the government, conflicts may arise. This is not to say that fairness should always outweigh profit, efficiency, or productivity, nor that profit, productivity, and efficiency should always outweigh fairness. It is merely to point out that this is a potential difference between government and business that may sometimes put them at odds with each other in a way that has nothing to do with accountability, idleness, bureaucracy, etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3. By a fair profit, I do not mean something like "the going rate". The going rate is not always a fair payment. The going rate of many jobs is well below the value of the work they produce, but for reasons such as oversupply of labor or systematic under-appreciation of the value of the work or of the person doing the job (such as when women or minorities get paid less for the same work as white males), it has to be accepted by those needing work. The more unfair the going rate is, the more the use of such labor approaches slavery or essentially theft of wages. When the only jobs available are those that have unfair wages, it seems to me that the people who eschew them are not being totally unreasonable or undeserving of some sort of help by the more powerful in society, and the people who take them deserve to be helped to have a better life than their wages alone will permit.  (Return to text.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4. The fable of the industrious ants who all summer stored food for the winter and warned the short-sighted, frivolous grasshopper to do the same, is well-known, and applicable here. The grasshopper had every opportunity to put food away for the winter, but did not. The ants had no obligation to feed him for the winter, though had they had enough food, they might have shared with him if they felt he really had learned his lesson and would not repeat the mistake. However, had the ants somehow cornered the market on food gathering before the grasshopper arrived on the scene, and had they taken far more than was necessary, and left nothing for the grasshopper to be able to gather, though he was willing to, I think that the fable would have turned out differently and allowed the grasshopper to take or to steal (back?) some of the food. Similarly, if people do not have access to decent jobs at decent wages in a given social order when such jobs and wages could be available, it seems to me that they have every right to at least peacefully try to change the social order into one which allows everyone who can work to have the opportunity to get a reasonable job at a reasonable wage.  (Return to text.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

5. I saw one wealthy businessman or government official (I forget who) say one time on television that if he lost all his money today, he could easily be a millionaire again in a relatively short time. And his implication was that anyone is easily able to become wealthy. If a Rawlsian-style "veil of ignorance" vote were taken, this man would vote for exactly the sort of economic system and society already existing. But I believe that is because he thinks of "position" as a particular career or job, which he thinks is unimportant. But "position" in society involves far more than one's career choice or result. It involves one's contacts, friends, family associations, knowledge of how to attract money or opportunity, desire to attract money or opportunity, knowledge of how to fit in, etc., etc., etc. To get a meaningful Rawlsian vote, you would have to disabuse anyone of the notion that nothing matters except one's own initiative and effort. Would, for example, the person who made the above claim, make it again if we not only took away all his money, but took away all his friends, took away his experience, turned him into a young minority person in an urban area with poor schools and high crime? If we count those things as "position", would he still vote the same way in a Rawlsian election? I don't know. He might be more likely to vote with the sort of "blindness" Rawls envisions; but I am not so sanguine about even that. It is easy to be wed to the view, when you have been successful, that anyone, under any conditions ought to be able to do what you did. If that view is not actually true (as I suspect it is not), then holding it is the sort of blindness to one's future position that will not yield the fair rules Rawls thinks blindness would give. People likely to hold that view will often point to the rare cases of individuals who rose from abject circumstances to become successful, wealthy, and powerful. They seem to miss the point that those cases are so much the exception that the conditions in which they occurred ought not to be the standard for which we strive in order to reproduce the results with any great frequency.  (Return to text.)