Economic Efficiency versus Egalitarian Rights: A Response

As a first point of agreement, let me declare my acceptance of Hurne’s law (no prescriptive conclusion can be deduced from positive analysis alone). However, I believe that there is some general agreement among the public (but less so among academic economists, and even less so among philosophers for some deplorable reasons on which I have no space to go into; but see N c 1988 b) that it is desirable to maximize the general welfare. My 1988 a paper thus takes welfarism as its normative basis but refers readers not convinced by welfarism to my defence of it elsewhere [NG 1981, 19851. While the disagreement about the acceptability of welfarism may be due to different basic value judgments not reconcilable by discussion, in my view, it is more likely due to unclear reasoning such as the confusion of non-ultimate considerations with basic values, as argued in NG [I988 b]. I am not against some form of egalitarianism. I f goods were to materialize by an act of God taken as non-repeatable, I would hope they go to the poor ( I believe in interpersonal comparable diminishing marginal utility of income; welfarism does not preclude interpersonal comparison). I am against inefficient egalitarianism that ignores the disincentive and distortive effects of redistribution (but I accept some tradeoff between efficiency and equality in income). If the same degree of equality in real income can be achieved, why use a less efficient method? Personally, I am also against egalitarianism that cannot be justified ultimately by utilitarianism, but this is going beyond the scope of my 1988a paper which tolerates any degree of efficient egalitarianism. There are quite a few specific points made by ROTHSCHILD with which I agree but they are not precluded by my 1988 a paper. Apparently, ROTHSCHILD reads a lot more ‘between the lines’ than is really implied. For example, 1 am not against the taxing of drinking and smoking on the grounds of external costs or even demerit goods (due to consumer ignorance or irrationality). In Fact, my brief discussion of demerit goods based on the divergence of preference and welfare in my 1979/83 book was criticized (this time on the right; it is somewhat reassuring to be criticized from both sides) as illiberal by a reviewer, despite my caution that the undesirable side effects of intervention have also to be taken into account. However, I have no difficulties whatsoever ‘in sticking to this principle of subjective welfarism’ in my defence of banning slavery. How could I be interpreted otherwise as I explicitly stated: ‘If slavery.. . would not