Time: Sun Dec 14 03:26:15 1997
To: 
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: economics and justice (fwd)
Cc: 
Bcc: sls
References: 

<snip>
>
>   "The most important part of the case for economic freedom is
>   not its vaunted efficiency as a system for organizing
>   resources, not its dramatic success in promoting economic
>   growth, but rather its consistency with certain fundamental
>   moral principles of life itself.
>
>   "I say 'the most important part of the case' for two
>   reasons. First, the significance I attach to those moral
>   principles would lead me to prefer the free enterprise system
>   even if it were demonstrably less efficient than alternative
>   systems, even if it were to produce a slower rate of economic
>   growth than systems of central direction and control. Second,
>   the great mass of the people of any country is never really
>   going to understand the purely economic workings of any
>   economic system, be it free enterprise or socialism. Hence,
>   most people are going to judge an economic system by its
>   consistency with their moral principles rather than by its
>   purely scientific operating characteristics. If economic
>   freedom survives in the years ahead, it will be only because
>   a majority of the people accept its basic morality. The
>   success of the system in bringing ever higher levels of
>   living will be no more persuasive in the future than it has
>   been in the past."
>
>     -  Benjamin Rogge
>
<snip>
      

Return to Table of Contents for

Supreme Law School:   E-mail