Social Contract, Free Ride
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
© 1989 by Liberty Fund, Inc. Originally published in 1989 by Oxford University Press. Published in 2008 by Liberty Fund, Inc.
This eBook edition published in 2012.
eBook ISBN: E-PUB 978-1-61487-218-4
Contents
PART ONE — THE SURRENDER OF AUTONOMY
Avoiding Freedom-Talk and Rights-Talk
2. Promise, Performance, and Enforcement
3. State-of-Nature Co-ordination
Co-ordination, Pure and Non-pure
Pure Co-ordination by Contract
State-of-Nature Public Goods: The Standard Approach
Reliance on Enforcement
4. Social Contract
Institutional Darwinism
Reconciliation
Restricted Domain: The Hobbesian Asymmetry
Restricted Domain: The Minimal State
5. Social Choice
Unrestricted Domain
Enforcement of Domain-Restriction
Non-fatuousness
Predisposed Rules
Agility and Sluggishness
Equiprobability I
Accepting Command where Contract Fails
Appendix: Redistribution
PART TWO — PUBLICNESS: SOLUTION AND RESULT
6. The Foundations of Voluntariness
Exclusion
Free Riders or Suckers All
Stacked, Interlocking, and Straddle Rankings
No Free Riders, No Suckers
The Straddle Ranking: A Necessary Condition
The Straddle Ranking: A Sufficient Condition
Equiprobability II
7. Constructive Risk
All or None
“Uncertainty”
A Spontaneous Solution through Risk
All Cretans Are Not Liars
Inconsistent Expectations
Appendix: Straddle or Chicken
8. An Ethics Turnpike
Homo Oeconomicus
Three Grades of Rationality
Public-Goods Forks
9. The Unfairness of Anarchy
Abuse, Outrage, Envy
The End of Anarchy
10. The Return of the Free Rider
Reverse Contribution
Pooling
The Game of “Ask”
