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Measuring Opportunity: Toward a Contractarian Measure of Individual Interest*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Robert Sugden
Robert Sugden
Affiliation:
Economics, University of East Anglia
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Extract

Liberals have often been attracted by contractarian modes of argument— and with good reason. Any system of social organization requires that some constraints be imposed on individuals' freedom of action; it is a central problem for any liberal political theory to show which constraints can be justified, and which cannot. A contractarian justification works by showing that the constraints in question can be understood as if they were the product of an agreement, voluntarily entered into by every member of society. Thus, no one is required to give up his freedom for someone else's benefit, or in the pursuit of someone else's conception of the social good.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 34 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1998

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References

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42 Ibid., p. 174.

43 Ibid., p. 62.

44 Ibid., pp. 93–94.

45 Ibid., p. 95.

46 For example, if I own shares in a company, the value of those shares on the stock market is (part of) my wealth. The dividends I receive from the shares is income. But the market value of a share is just the capitalization of the expected flow of future dividends. Income and wealth are just different ways of describing the same underlying source of value: I can realize the capital value of my shares only by forgoing the dividends.

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