Abstract
This paper examines David Hume’s concept of justice as a social convention and its relation to public goods. It points out that it is one of two distinct types of public good discussed in A Treatise on Human Nature. These goods are indeed treated separately in modern economic theory. We examine the assertion that the “justice” type of public good, which is provided by discrete actions performed by individuals over time, is less likely to be sustainable by individual action in a large community, formalising ideas clearly outlined by Hume himself. We find, consistent with Hume’s own ideas, that in a large community agents might be more likely to provide “justice”, but that this outcome may depend critically on the assumption of complete information.
I am grateful to a referee as well as to Ted Bergstrom, Marisa Ratto and Mich Tvede for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Bruni and Sugden (2000) discuss the nature of trust in the writing of Hume, Smith and Genovesi. Here by contrast, the public good nature of the actions considered, with no possibility for sanctions against individuals, means that trust and reputation play no direct role. The motive for performing the acts we consider is to preserve the social convention itself. Our first quotations suggest this was the important consideration for Hume. It also appears in the quotation they give on pages 30 to 31.
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Dawkins (2003, pp. 24–25) comments on the discrete nature of lawyers’ minds. Here is an explanation! Hume emphasises the often arbitrary nature of the judgements that will need to be made in implementing “justice”.
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Those sceptical of the ability of the state to provide goods and services efficiently will probably smile at this example of apparent naivety! However, Hume does not develop a concept of optimality. It is likely that what he actually had in mind was something very different: institutions can be developed under which self-interested individuals really do provide collective benefits. The very familiarity of this feature of modern democracies prevents us from seeing that perhaps it is a rather “subtle invention”.
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To some small extent our model might possibly help explain why Hume, somewhat inconsistently, can be thought of as both a proto-game theorist and a proto-behavioural economist. The choice agents face is binary, so intransitivity is not a problem, and if we suppose that the situations we analyse are sufficiently similar so as to induce similar states of mind then the considerations discussed at length by Sugden (2006) are less likely to apply. Hume’s use of “game theory” examples to make general points about how societies work seems in line with this procedure.
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Yellin (2000) points out that in his Political Essays Hume does admit that there may sometimes be a case for re-distribution (but not equality).
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Quite clearly, one would want to co-ordinate in this sense whatever number of agents one interacts with, and in the case of roads the individual benefit from so doing almost certainly increases with the size of the community. Hardin (2007, p. 94) points out that the legal requirement on which side of the road to drive seems in many cases to have arisen spontaneously.
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This question has caused debate amongst philosophers, and is related to the question of how we treat the “true interest” of the sensible knave. According to Baron (1982) and Gauthier (1992) Hume has an “error” theory of virtue in that it is not in the interest of all (notably the sensible knave) to be virtuous, although “moralists and politicians” must inculcate the view that it is. Baier (1992) counters by employing Hume’s ideas on the evolution of moral thinking as societies develop. Culp (2013) surveys the issue, concluding that that Hume was wrong if he really argued that adherence to justice is in the interest of literally everyone, but that he probably didn’t think this himself. (The final section of the Enquiry, at the end of which the sensible knave appears, aims to “inquire whether every man….will not best find his account in the practice of every moral duty”. The answer to this question is not explicitly given.) His reluctance to spell matters out probably came from the danger of undermining adherence to justice itself. However, if the sensible knave is a sufficiently small exception to the generality of mankind, education for justice is indeed in the true interest of (nearly) all and in that sense an honest policy. It would surely make little difference to Hume’s thinking in the Treatise to allow for the fact that the application of the law provides incentives even for a sensible knave to conform to conventions and possibly even thereby develop the moral qualities of which he approves. We are dealing with a public good: free-riding sensible knaves benefit even if they do not properly contribute.
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It is not too difficult to extend our analysis to the case in which a subset of the community is in a position to perform the act. This encompasses the bystander problem of social psychology. The conclusions in this case are strengthened by the fact that with a larger group of potential helpers the expected minimum cost is lower and the task more likely to be performed.
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Both Kandori and Ellison produce Folk Theorems for cases where, in a prisoner’s dilemma context, punishment strategies are less harsh than simple grim, but where, at each stage, play is anonymous. The implications of community size are less clear than in the circumstances we analyse here.
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In the literature on organisational behaviour there is evidence indicating that the efficiency of teams is adversely affected by commitment shown by the least co-operative individual of the team. See Raver et al. (2012) and the references contained therein.
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Our conclusions extend, without much difficulty to the bystander problem of social psychology. As observed in one recent textbook (Hewstone et al. 2005, p. 387): “Numerous studies indicate that the willingness to intervene in emergencies is higher when a bystander is alone.” Explanation for this failure to act runs along three different lines: diffusion of responsibility; ignorance of how others interpret the event; and concern about how one’s own behaviour will be interpreted. These considerations all reflect confusion about the nature of the situation people find themselves in.
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Vicary, S. (2017). Community Size and Public Goods in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature . In: Buchholz, W., Rübbelke, D. (eds) The Theory of Externalities and Public Goods. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49442-5_8
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