Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Agreement: In philosophy, an agreement refers to a mutual understanding or consensus between individuals or parties regarding a particular concept, proposition, or course of action, often reached through discussion, negotiation, or argumentation. Whether an understanding has been reached can only be determined by a third party._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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James M. Buchanan on Agreement - Dictionary of Arguments
Boudreaux I 58 Agreement/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: A market order works well when the cooperation of only a few individuals is needed for them to achieve their goals. The protective state is sufficient to ensure an environment in which people interact with each other voluntarily, for their mutual benefit. >State/Buchanan, >Market/Buchanan, >Liberalism/Buchanan. When a large group of individuals is required to accomplish some goals, such as producing the public works that Adam Smith mentioned, the productive state has a potential role to play at coordinating the actions of everyone in the large group. Buchanan uses the same benchmark of mutual agreement to evaluate the role of government. Individuals should be in agreement on the government’s actions. Is it ethical for governments to coerce people into paying taxes, or to force them to obey government regulations? Buchanan argued that if government actions are truly in the public interest, people would agree to grant the government that coercive power. Taking this concept of mutually agreeable exchanges to the large-numbers case and to the coercive actions of government was a big part of Buchanan’s lifetime research program. Boudreaux I 59 He said, “Improvement in the working of politics is measured in terms of the satisfaction of that which is desired by individuals, whatever this may be, rather than in terms of moving closer to some externally defined supra-individualistic idea” (Buchanan, 1986)(1). >Exchange, >Liberty/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 77 Agreement/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Problem: In reality no [social] contract exists. People living under the jurisdiction of a government are subject to that government’s mandates without necessarily having agreed to them. Even if in principle they would agree, they had no actual opportunity to express their agreement or disagreement. This fact leaves two big questions for the social contractarian. First, in what sense could people be said to be in agreement with a social contract when there is no actual agreement? Second, what can usefully be said about the terms of that contract? Anarchy: In The Limits of Liberty(2) Buchanan began his approach to answering these questions by imagining Hobbesian anarchy. The relevance of this hypothetical journey to anarchy is that people in that situation lose all social status. In an anarchic condition, there are no social or economic institutions that determine how people interact with one another. No one is a legislator, a corporate CEO, a Princeton alumnus, a factory worker, or a welfare recipient. To design institutions that create social order and a foundation for productive activity, people hypothetically bargain with each other in a situation of relative equality. Buchanan imagined individuals negotiating a social contract from Hobbesian anarchy, and he imagined the likely outcome of such a negotiation. >Thomas Hobbes, cf. >Veil of ignorance/Rawls, >John Rawls. There is uncertainty about the detailed terms of an actual renegotiated social contract, but Buchanan argues that an individual hypothetically agrees with a social contract if its terms fall within the bounds of what might reasonably be expected as a result of such a negotiation from anarchy. Buchanan built his social-contractarian framework on this foundation of hypothetical unanimous agreement reached from anarchy. He counts people as being in agreement with the social contract if they would agree under these hypothetical conditions. Taxation: We could imagine, for example, that some financially secure individuals in the real world would not agree to a highly progressive tax system that would transfer a lot of their income to people with lower incomes. But in the hypothetical state of anarchy, people would be very uncertain about their income levels once a social contract was negotiated and life commenced under it. If those individuals would agree, while in a hypothetical state of anarchy, to income transfers under the social contract, then they are in agreement with such transfers in the real world, according to Buchanan’s criterion. Cf. >Anarchism, >Market anarchism, >Agreement, >Negotiations, >Contracts, >Contract theory. Boudreaux I 78 Thought experiments/fictions/Buchanan: Such mental exercises do not actually identify specific terms of the social contract. Buchanan recognized that we cannot know which particular contractual terms all individuals in hypothetical anarchy might agree to. But reasoning in this way can give some idea of the general “appropriate” scope of government. For example, because ( …) almost everyone would agree that people should not murder each other, the social contract would certainly empower government to prosecute and punish murderers. Almost as uncontroversially, most people would agree that a majority should not be empowered, absent good reasons, to appropriate the property of a minority - and so the social contract would feature restrictions on such majoritarian actions. 1. Buchanan, James M. (1986). “The Constitution of Economic Policy.” Nobel Prize Lecture (December 8), Stockholm, Sweden. 2.Buchanan, James M. (1975). The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. University of Chicago Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 Boudreaux II Donald J. Boudreaux The Essential Hayek Vancouver: Fraser Institute 2014 |
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