Love Thy Neighbour: How to Foster Cooperation

Abstract

Society is a collaborative effort: it works to the extent that we can get along with our neighbours, agree on common goals, and accept shared responsibilities. Even opponents of state taxation generally recognize that there are benefits to the collective financing of public services – we don’t want to build and maintain our own roads or hospitals. And because the growth of an economically disadvantaged ‘underclass’ can threaten the stability of society, a degree of redistribution of wealth benefits everyone. So while some of the most fundamental political divisions hinge on the question of where to draw the balance between collective responsibilities and individual liberties, all democratic societies acknowledge that their citizens have to some extent to find ways of cooperating with one another. In particular, liberal philosophers since the seventeenth century have concurred that civil peace and order come at the expense of individual restraint, including at the very least the renunciation of attempts to harm others.