Social Contract, Free Ride

by De Jasay, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780865977372
• ISBN10: 0865977372
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-30
• Publisher: Liberty Fund

Summary

This book provides a novel account of the public goods dilemma. The author shows how the social contract, in its quest for fairness, actually helps to breed the parasitic 'free riding' it is meant to suppress. He also shows how, in the absence of taxation, many public goods would be provided by spontaneous group co-operation. This would, however, imply some degree of free riding. Unwilling to tolerate such unfairness, co-operating groups would eventually drift from voluntary to compulsory solutions, heedless of the fact that this must bring back free riding with a vengeance. The author argues that the perverse incentives created by the attempt to render public provision assured and fair are a principal cause of the poor functioning of organised society.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Surrender of Autonomy
Commitment to Co-operation	p. 13
Promise, Performance, and Enforcement	p. 25
State-of-Nature Co-ordination	p. 44
Social Contract	p. 75
Social Choice	p. 102
Publicness: Solution and Result
The Foundations of Voluntariness	p. 133
Constructive Risk	p. 166
An Ethics Turnpike	p. 192
The Unfairness of Anarchy	p. 218
The Return of the Free Rider	p. 233
Works Cited	p. 261
Index	p. 265
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.