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What's Morally Special about Free Exchange?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Allan Gibbard
Allan Gibbard
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Michigan
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Extract

Is there anything morally special about free exchange? In asking this, I am asking not only about extreme, so-called “libertarian” views, on which free exchange is sacrosanct, but about more widespread, moderate views, on which there is at least something morally special about free exchange. On these more compromising views, other moral considerations may override the moral importance of free exchange, but even when rights of free exchange are restricted for good reason, something morally important is lost. For some, free exchange may preserve liberty, in some morally significant sense, or realize some such moral value as “to each his own.” Alternatively, a system of free exchange may have a special moral status by virtue of the kinds of pragmatic arguments that economists give, arguments that free exchange produces good social results. Whether free exchange has any such virtues as these is the broad question I address in this paper. I offer what I have to say somewhat in the spirit of an overview. Philosophical scrutiny and economic analysis combine, it seems to me, to delineate fairly clearly what is, and what is not, morally special about free exchange.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Spring 1985 , pp. 20 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1985

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References

1 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

2 See especially Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

3 Gibbard, Allan, “Natural Property Rights,” Nous, vol. 10 (1976), pp. 77–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Nozick, Anarchy.

5 See, for example, Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh, 1976, and New York: The Modern Library, 1937)Google Scholar, and Varian, Hal R., Microeconomic Analysis (New York: Norton, 1978).Google Scholar

6 See Varian, Microeconomic Analysis, p. 147, and Varian, , “Distributive Justice, Welfare Economics, and the Theory of Fairness,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 4 (1975), pp. 223–247.Google Scholar

7 For a review of fallacies involving the Pareto principle, see Sager, Lawrence G., “Pareto Superiority, Consent, and Justice,” Hofstra Law Review, vol. 8 (1980), pp. 913–938.Google Scholar

8 See Varian, “Distributive Justice.”

9 I draw this from Dworkin, Ronald, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10 (1981), pp. 283–345Google Scholar, and from recent unpublished work of Hal Varian.

10 This is argued in Gibbard, Allan, “Health Care and the Prospective Pareto Principle,” Ethics, vol. 94 (1984), pp. 261–282.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

11 See, for example, Gibbard, Allan, “Social Decision, Strategic Behavior, and Best Outcomes,” Gottinger, H. and Leinfellner, W., eds., Decision Theory and Social Ethics (Boston: Reidel, 1978), pp. 153–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Social Choice and the Imperfectability of a Legal Order,” Hoffstra Law Review, vol. 10 (1982), pp. 401–413Google Scholar; and Groves, Theodore and Ledyard, John, “ Some Limitations of Demand Revealing Processes,” Public Choice, vol. 29 (1977), pp. 107–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar