(no subject)

[watertank]

Human dignity - individual self-esteem - rests upon the exercise of initiative and the acceptance of personal responsibility, but the potential for social disharmony demands restraint. Within a small group, this is achieved by trabal affiliation: there's a consensus upon objectives. In this context, social( or distributional) justice is meaningful, because the consequences of an action may be anticipated to a large degree. Actions may be appraised upon the basis of their anticipated results. This is not so within the extended order of modern economies whre every action has diverse and unintended consequences that extend far beyound any individual's comprehension. Just must then relate to the action per se rather tahn to its consequences.

Within the extended order of human society, freedom under the law relies upon the natural justice of civilised behaviour. Here is the root of Hayek's hostility to socialism: in its quest for distributional justice it seeks the unobtainable. Hayek condemns egalitarianism: 'that different treatment which is neecssary in order to place people who are individually very different into the same material position seems to me not only incompatible with personal freedom, but highly immoral'. Just rules can determine legitimate behaviour but not legitimate outcomes; they cannot secure entitlements. Just laws are abstract, general, prospective, known, certain, and equitable; they are beyound thime and place and their enforcement involves no coercion for, in observing them, 'we do not serve another person's end, nor can we properly be said to subject to his will.'

Keynes and Hayek: The money economy, by G.R. Steele.