Chapter ǴǺ: Rights, Contract, and Utility in Policy Espousal ȃȈȆFor present purposes it matters little whether these different labels
apply to exactly the same doctrine; if not identical, the doctrines do share a
common orientation. Ļeir adherents try to form a conception of the good
society by contemplating and comparing alternative sets of mutually com-
patible social institutions. Ļeir ideal is whatever arrangements best facil-
itate the success of individuals seeking to make good lives for themselves
in their own diverse ways. (Strictly speaking, their ultimate criterion is
human happiness, however best served. It is a researchable and discussable
empirical judgment that happiness is served by institutions that facilitate
voluntary cooperation, including ones that secure the rights mentioned in
the U.S. Declaration of Independence.)
Ļis approach recognizes the importance of mutually beneficial coop-
eration among individuals—through peace and security and through the
gains from specialization and exchange. (Adam Smith pointed out that
man is a social animal: he makes contracts. As Scott Gordon,ȀȈȆȅ, p.Ȅȇȅ,
notes perceptively, “the most important feature of that word is the final
letter, which makes it plural. Ļere is a world of difference between the
conception of society as consisting of contracts and the conception of it as
based upon a contract.”)
Ļe approach recommended here appraises particular principles, rules,
institutions, and policies according to whether they are likely to serve
or subvert social cooperation in the sense just indicated. (Ļe concept if
not the term is prominent in the philosophies of Ļomas Hobbes and,
as F.A. Hayek has emphasized, of David Hume. See Hobbes,Leviathan,
ȀȅȄȀ/ȀȈȄȁ, chap.ȀȄ, and KempȀȈȆǿ. Ļe term “social cooperation” is promi-
nent in the writings of Herbert Spencer, Ludwig von Mises, and Henry
Hazlitt.)
Social cooperation counts as a near-ultimate criterion, since it is an
indispensable means to individuals’ effective pursuit of their own happi-
ness in their own diverse ways (HazlittȀȈȅȃ, esp. p.Ȃȅ). Cooperation is
facilitated by rules that improve people’s chances of predicting each other’s
behavior and achieving coordination. Voluntary cooperation accords bet-
ter than coercion with each person’s having purposes and ideals of his
own and with his having only one life to live. Emphasis on voluntary
cooperation warns against authorizing any agency to impose unfair sac-
rifices on individuals for the supposed greater good of a greater num-
ber. But this approach does not simply postulate voluntary cooperation
and deplore coercion. It investigates and compares the types of society
likely to emerge from having alternative sets of institutions and rules and,