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⁴ For an elaboration, see my “Public and Private Interests in Liberal Political Economy, Old and New,” in Public and Private in Social Life, ed. Benn, S. I. and Gaus, G. F. (New York: St. Martin's, 1983), pp. 199–203.Google Scholar

⁵ Goodin, Robert E., Reasons for Welfare (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 11–12Google Scholar. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized more clearly than most the broader ideal of the welfare state: “If, as our constitution tells us, our Federal Government was established among other things, ‘to provide for the general welfare,’ then it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends.” Quoted in Gutmann, Amy, “Introduction,” in Democracy and the Welfare State, ed. Gutmann, Amy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 3.Google Scholar

⁶ Regarding the term “government house,” Goodin writes: “This is after all a term usually applied, usually derisively, to the closing chapters in [Henry] Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, where he recommends that enlightened (implicitly, colonial) rulers govern according to utilitarian principles that are not necessarily … accessible to those subject to their rule” (Goodin, , Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, pp. 61–62).Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., pp. 10–11.

⁸ Oakeshott, Michael, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 156.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., p. 159.

¹⁰ von Hayek, Friedrich A., The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ I vary the spelling from the traditional “Rechtsstaat” to indicate my slightly deviant use of the term. As I understand it, the traditional notion of the Rechtsstaat is consistent with rules of law that are justified as ways to achieve welfare. On the traditional view of the Rechtsstaat, see Kelsen, Hans, The Pure Theory of Law, trans. Knight, Max (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 312–13Google Scholar. The variation in spelling was suggested to me by von Hayek, Friedrich A., The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 88, n. 2.Google Scholar

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¹³ In the terminology of ethics, the Liberal Rechtstaat is a deontological view of the state.

¹⁴ Perry, Ralph Barton, Realms of Value (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Throughout I will be supposing that legislators, when deliberating about legislation, are taking up a genuinely public perspective, rather than using their public position to advance their private ends.

¹⁶ For a fuller treatment, see my essay “The Conflict of Values and Principles,” in Conflicting Values, ed. Magnell, Thomas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming).Google Scholar

¹⁷ In addition to ibid., see my essay “The Rational, the Reasonable, and Justification,” Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 3 (09 1995), pp. 235–38Google Scholar; and Hampton, Jean, “The Failure of Expected-Utility Theory as a Theory of Reason,” Economics and Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 2 (10 1994), p. 198ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²¹ If the goal is understood in terms of specific goods, “lumpiness” can also be a problem; it may well be that we only have use for goal G in certain “lumpy” increments, and an extra amount that does not get us to the next increment is of no use.

²² Although I have defended one elsewhere; see my Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Part 1.Google Scholar

²³ See Hausman, Daniel M., The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Ludwig von Mises's claim that “there is no question of any such thing as a law of increasing marginal utility” (i.e., marginal utility never increases over the range of possible quantities). von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, 3d ed. (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1966), p. 125.Google Scholar

²⁴ See Freud, Sigmund, “The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis,” in On Psychopathology, ed. Richards, Angela (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), pp. 134–44Google Scholar. Cf. Green, Thomas Hill, “On the Different Senses of ‘Freedom’ as Applied to the Will and to the Moral Progress of Man,” in his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, ed. Harris, Paul and Morrow, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 228.Google Scholar

²⁵ Brennan, and Lomasky, , Democracy and Decision (supra note 18), p. 9Google Scholar. This is distinct from F2. According to decreasing marginal reasons, if we hold constant the cost of obtaining G, our reason to secure it decreases as we obtain higher levels; according F4, holding constant the level of G, our reasons for pursuing it decrease as the cost of obtaining it rises.

²⁶ For the present, these can be treated as synonymous, though in fact the idea of a utility function is usually interpreted in a way that is more demanding than a system of trade-off rates. See Benn, Stanley, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also my Value and Justification (supra note 22), p. 182.Google Scholar

²⁷ Sir Robert Giffen pointed out that when the price of bread rises, the very poor may purchase more of it; the increase in the price of bread has a significant effect on the real incomes of poor people, causing them to substitute bread for more expensive foods they can no longer afford, thus increasing the total amount of bread they consume. Status goods also can be considered as exceptions to downward-sloping demand — if they do not cost a great deal, they do not serve their purpose of showing that you can afford them. I am grateful to Julian Lament for pointing these exceptions out to me.

²⁸ See, e.g., Becker, Gary, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 3.Google Scholar

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³¹ Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 121Google Scholar. I shall not consider permissive rules here.

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³⁶ This is a familiar claim in a huge body of utilitarian literature. As Goodin puts it: “The best way to coordinate our actions with those of others, and thereby maximize the utility from each of our actions as well as from all of our actions collectively, is to promulgate rules (themselves chosen with an eye to maximizing utility, of course) and to adhere to them.” Goodin, , Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy (supra note 2), p. 18.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Ibid., Book VI, ch. xii, section 2. I consider Mill's view in depth in my essay “Mill's Theory of Moral Rules,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 58 (09 1980), pp. 265–78.Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ Benn, , A Theory of Freedom (supra note 26), p. 8.Google Scholar

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⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 360.

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⁹³ See ibid., pp. 209–11.

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⁹⁶ I am indebted here to Julian Lament, whose forthcoming work on this topic promises to clear up a variety of confusions about efficiency judgments of real-world economies.

⁹⁷ I believe my views here are consistent with the “middle ground” of Austrian economics as well as the radical views of G. L. S. Shackle. For a defense of the middle ground, see Kirzner, , The Meaning of Market Process (supra note 20), ch. 1Google Scholar. For Shackle, see his Epistemics and Economics (supra note 55), and his Decision, Order, and Time in Human Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Hutchinson, Terence W., “Philosophical Issues that Divide Liberals: Omniscience or Omni-nescience about the Future?” in Subjectivism, Intelligibility, and Economic Understanding, ed. Kirzner, Israel M. (New York: New York University Press, 1986), ch. 10.Google Scholar

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