Self-Interest in Times of Revolution and Repression

Abstract

In Professor Tullock’s hands, axioms about rationality once again prove their fertility in generating arresting empirical hypotheses, which emerge from the very womb trailing plausible theoretical connections. I speak of ‘axioms’ in the plural, because there is a whole family of axioms to draw from. It will suffice, however, for my purposes in discussing the present example of Tullock’s work, to have just one in mind: what I shall call “the gross axiom of rational action”. Suppose that the alternatives to be chosen are reduced to two categories of action, exhaustive and mutually exclusive: doingA or not- doingA; the gross axiom of rational action says that a person acts rationally only if he eschews the alternative for which the algebraic sum of the costs and benefits to himself is smaller. The axiom is gross not for want of delicacy, since among the benefits and costs the most refined philanthropic pleasures and the most delicate conscientious scruples may be counted. It is gross simply for want of the detail that other members of the same family of axioms bring into play: for example, one of the marginal principles for equilibrium in a consumer’s budget.