‘socialist conservatism’.^20 It was in such a vein that Martineau had, long
before, sourly observed that Australian rum drinkers insisted on also receiving
any reduction in duty that wine drinkers received (Martineau 1869, p. 141).
But the looming illustration of‘socialist conservatism’is the intense legislation
for‘wage margins for skill’across the Australian labour force. We come back
to paradox of fraternity: we cannot all be members of the‘in’group.
Hancock successfully addressed a paradox: that Australia appears to be
simultaneously preoccupied by the economic andflouting of the economic.^21
It is preoccupied with the economic as an individual end, butflouts it as an
aggregate goal.^22
3.4 Societal Technology and A. F. Davies
Hancock’s starting point was that the bureaucratized systems so distinctive of
Australia—the massive state-owned utilities in transport, communication,
and water—were instrumental to her economic development. Yet, before
many pages, he was allowing they were not instrumental to the economy
but burdensome to it. Perhaps these bureaucratized systems are not instru-
mental to the economy, or anything else, but only to themselves. We are
drawn to Alan Fraser Davies’saperçuthat‘the characteristic talent of Austra-
lians is not for improvisation, it is for bureaucracy’and‘the gift is exercised on
a massive scale’(Davies 1958, p. 3). This characteristic talent is the epitomiza-
tion of that province of human existence born of an impulse to order and
organize, steered by the considerations of the objective and quantifiable, and
constrained to bristle at the anomalous, which ultimately precipitates in
procedure and regimen that may or may not have a social value. The concrete
(^20) The‘Austrawlsian’social welfare function of‘socialist conservatism’should be distinguished
from the Rawlsian social welfare function. The‘Austrawlsian’states,
SW¼minðyiyiÞ
where y*iis the normal income of the ith person. Thus, contrary to Rawls, a policy which increases
the size of the lowest income, but does not increase the size of the highest, is not an improvement. 21
‘Australia is a thriving country to which capitalists come to increase their wealth and workers
come to 22 find higher wages’(Métin [1901] 1977, p. 10).
The maximization of the aggregate of utility:
U¼uðy 1 Þþuðy 2 Þþ...uðyNÞ u’> 0 ;u”< 0
subject to an‘income possibility frontier’, f(y1,y 2 ...) = 0, will plausibly be costly to the size of
aggregate income, y 1 +y 2 +y 3 +.... But the maximization of the aggregate ofenviousutility
functions:
U¼uðy 1 EYÞþuðy 2 EYÞþ...uðyNEYÞ
subject to f(y1,y 2 ...) = 0 and EY[y 1 +y 2 ...]/N, will surely be still more costly.
Theories of Australian Exceptionalism