Chapter ǴǺ: Rights, Contract, and Utility in Policy Espousal ȃȇȂdown criteria for “goodness” independent of theprocessthrough which
results or outcomes are attained. Ļe evaluation is applied to the means
of attaining outcomes, not to outcomes as such. (ȀȈȆȄa, p.ȅ)
Many more passages of similar import can be found in Buchanan’s
writings. He would have us approve or disapprove of states of affairs or
sets of rules not primarily by considering their substance but overridingly
by appraising the process employed to reach decisions about them.
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Ļat idea seems odd to me. It resembles the idea that whatever people
freely choose is in fact good for them. Broome (ȀȈȆȇ) exposes this fallacy.
One of his examples concerns “Jane,” who, perhaps out of a sense of duty
somehow absorbed from her surroundings, chooses to sacrifice an inde-
pendent life of her own to care for her aged mother. It does not necessar-
ily follow that Jane’s free choice best serves her own interest or fulfillment
or happiness or even that it maximizes her and her mother’s utilities com-
bined. Broome is simply warning against an invalid inference, of course,
and not saying that some authority should impose on Jane the lifestyle it
thinks best for her.
Price theory and welfare economics may legitimately, as blackboard
exercises or for other purposes, assume that people make choices so as
to maximize their utilities on the basis of definite utility functions. It does
not in the least follow, however, that freedom of choice is the very criterion
of what to choose. A libertarian might deplore forcible interference with
the use of addictive drugs. Yet this attitude does not commit him to the
view that drugs serve the happiness of those who choose to take them. He
would not be inconsistent in wanting to legalize them while considering
their use harmful and deplorable.
Similarly, voluntary agreement is not itself the criterion of what to
agree on. To value voluntary agreement and the democratic process in no
way commits an economist or social philosopher to value whatever institu-
tions or policies such processes may grind out. Why should he feel obliged
to withhold any criticism? Decisionmaking procedure is itself properly an
object of approval or disapproval, but it cannot sensibly be taken as the
sole criterion of what to decide.
Rather than suppose that proper procedure exhausts the content of the
good society, it would seem reasonable to emphasize proper procedure as
an important part of that conception. But it is hard to see how a procedure