Loren Lomasky

ABSTRACT The notion of consensus plays an important epistemological role in modern welfare economics, in that unanimous consent is a (unique) conceptual test for those changes that are ‘Pareto‐desirable’ (that is, make someone better off and no‐one else worse). In this paper, we seek to show that unanimous consent does not logically imply Pareto‐desirability—that a rational individual may fail to veto policy changes that make him/her worse off. The central element in the proof of this proposition is the observation that in social agreements involving a significant number of participants, any one individual's veto is decisive if it is the only veto. If the individual does not expect to be decisive, he will rationally exercise his vote ‘expressively’, and without sole regard to its consequences. When all individuals so act, a sort of prisoners' dilemma interaction may emerge, even under explicit consensus.

Although the architectonic of Plato’s best city is dazzling, some critics find its detailed prescriptions inimical to human freedom and well-being. Most notably, Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies sees it as a proto-totalitarian recipe, choking all initiative and variety out of the citizenry. This essay does not directly respond to Popper’s critique but instead spotlights a strand in the dialogue that positions Plato as an advocate of regulatory relaxation and economic liberty to an extent otherwise unknown in the ancient world and by no means unopposed in ours. His contribution to liberal political economy thereby merits greater attention and respect.

Virtue ethics is increasingly regarded as a viable alternative to consequentialist or deontological systems of normative ethics. This paper argues that there can be no such triumvirate of contending comprehensive ethical systems. That is not because virtue is unimportant but rather because genuine virtue is excellent and therefore rare. For most people in most morally salient situations there is no possibility of virtuous response because possession of the relevant virtues simply does not obtain nor can be usefully simulated. Instead, the much more universal and important moral requirement is suitable moderation of one’s vices. Nor should it be supposed that the absence of virtue(s) necessarily diminishes the quality of an individual’s life and that person’s value to others. Rather, moral deficiencies are compatible with other excellences and may indeed contribute to them. I conclude that virtue ethics is less worthy of pursuit than vice ethics.

Contract is the dominant model for political philosophy's understanding of government grounded on the consent of the governed. However, there are at least five disabilities attached to classical social contract theory: the grounding contract never actually occurred; its provisions are vague and contestable; the stringency of the obligation thereby established is dubious; trans-generational consent is questionable; interpretive methods for giving effect to the contract are ill-specified. By contrast, the biblical story of the covenant Israel embraces at Sinai is shown to be more adequately attentive to each of these five desiderata. The essay then focuses on the U.S. Constitution, arguing that in many ways it is more reflective of covenantal legitimating themes than those of social contract. The result is a promisingly different mode of understanding government by the consent of the governed.

Individuals care deeply about with whom they associate and on what terms. A liberty to avoid entanglement in the disfavored designs of others is counterposed by an entitlement not to be excluded from valued modes of activity. These interests generate not one but two freedoms of association, the former negative and the latter positive. Often they conflict. This essay begins by setting out several respects in which negative free association is crucial to a liberal order and then examines several pleas for positive association, at least one of which is judged to be compelling. Because the two freedoms of association are in conspicuous tension, the essay concludes with strategies for reconciling their competing claims.

A small puzzle: the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ initially present themselves as contraries, the one affirming what the other rejects. However, once removed from the dictionary, they function otherwise. The theory of capitalism is very much contained within the science of economics. The positive theory of capitalistic institutions, but also its normative superstructure, rest most easily within the language and methodology of the economist. What distinguishes the free market? It is efficient ; allocation of factors of production are optimized ; individuals maximize their utility ; and so on. These are the terms with which justifications of capitalistic production typically begin – begin, and often end.

The current global-justice literature starts from the premise that world poverty is the result of structural injustice mostly attributable to past and present actions of governments and citizens of rich countries. As a result, that literature recommends vast coercive transfers of wealth from rich to poor societies, alongside stronger national and international governance. Justice at a Distance, in contrast, argues that global injustice is largely home-grown and that these native restrictions to freedom lie at the root of poverty and stagnation. The book is the first philosophical work to emphasize free markets in goods, services, and labor as an ethical imperative that allows people to pursue their projects and as the one institutional arrangement capable of alleviating poverty. Supported by a robust economic literature, Justice at a Distance applies the principle of noninterference to the issues of wealth and poverty, immigration, trade, the status of nation-states, war, and aid.

Loren Lomasky is a leading advocate of a rights-based libertarian approach to political and social issues. This volume collects fifteen of his articles that have appeared since his influential volume Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community alongside one new essay. The volume represents Lomasky's more recent efforts at constructing the underpinnings of liberal rights theory, in which he formulates a series of questions about the nature and scope of rights and rights holders.Among the questions Lomasky addresses: In what way is classical utilitarianism fundamentally illiberal? To what extent might utilitarian cost-benefit analyses be admissible within rights-upholding political theory? Does it even make sense to speak of maximizing liberty? How can this be understood in Hobbesian, Kantian, and Rawlsian theoretical settings? In a world in which rights-talk is ubiquitous, what is the role of traditional virtues such as loyalty and charity? Is it inconsistent to espouse both an austere classical liberalism and a social safety net? Liberalism is most often presented as a theory about the internal contours of the state, but how does it speak to the relationships between one state and another? Between the state and would-be immigrants? In a world displaying massive cross-border inequalities, does justice require the extension of aid from the rich to the poor? The book opens with an unpublished essay, "Everything Old is New Again: The Death and Rebirth of Classical Liberalism," which features a history of the century-long decline of traditional liberalism and its remarkable, unanticipated return to vitality in the second half of the 20th century. It then offers the prospectus for a libertarian research program for the next half century.