Human Needs: Welfare State V, Free Market
| Published date | 01 November 1981 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1981.tb00050.x |
| Author | Harry Lesser |
| Date | 01 November 1981 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
4
Peter
Morriss
The major theories of democracy have argued either that
if
a majority want
something
it
should be chosen, or that
if
21
majority think something ought to be
chosen then
it
should be chosen. They have carelessly assumed that the relevant
information can be gleaned
from
knowing for what the majority voted.
shown that this assumption
is
unwarranted.
voted as they have done, or we can train them
so
that they all vote for the same
sort of reasons, counting votes cannot tell us what we want to know.
It
there-
fore seems that there is no justification for the claim that
if
a majority of the
people vote for something then that something ought to be enacted as public policy.
I
have
Unless we can know why the people
References
Wollheim (1962),
'A
Paradox in the Theory of Democracy', in
P.
Laslett and
W.
Runciman, Philosophy, Pol itics and Society (Oxford: Blackwell).
-0-000-0-
~UMAN NEEDS: WELFARE STATE
V,
FREE MARKET
HARRY LESSER
Defenders of the welfare state are almost bound to appeal to its capacity
to satisfy needs
-
for food, education, health care, etc.
-
or at least to its
potential to do this
with
adequate political and economic support. In reply
defenders of the free market have tended to argue that the business of an econo-
mic system
is
to satisfy the wants, or desires, that people are aware of having,
and not the needs that those in power believe them to have. But in recent poli-
tical argument
it
has often been maintained that, although the satisfaction of
needs is not a primary aim of those involved in a free market system, the effect
of such a system, given the opportunity, is, or would be, to meet needs appre-
ciably more efficiently than can be done in the welfare state.
It
is
this dis-
pute over which system works better with regard to satisfying needs that
I
shall
try to examine
in
this paper.
For the purposes of the paper,
I
want to make certain unargued assumptions
about the nature of human needs
-
unargued not because they are self-evident or
indisputable, but because, although they are quite reasonable (in my opinion!),
they require another long paper to defend them, First, to call something a need,
as opposed to a mere desire, implies (a) that, ceteris paribus,
it
ought to be
satisfied and (b) that this is
so
because
it
is necessary for some good purpose;
hence what one classifies as a need depends on one's values and principles.
But some things are necessary for
3
purpose: these may be called 'human'needs,
and on any moral view there is some obligation to satisfy them. These needs
are fa) for survival and (b) for sufficient personal autonomy to form and carry
out goals and purposes: without this, moral action is impossible. What this
means in practice varies from society to society, and person to person; but in
all societies
it
involves sufficient health care, economic independence, free-
dom from arbitrary interference, governmental
or
private, and appropriate edu-
cation to function in that society as a goal-directed being.
system necessarily satisfy or thwart them, or does this depend more on the way
the system is operated rather than the system itself? We can divide this ques-
tion into four: (1) Does a free market necessarily satisfy human needs?
(2)
Does a free market necessarily prevent their satisfaction?
(3)
Does a wel-
fare state necessarily satisfy human needs?
prevent their satisfaction?
be
'No',
there
is
a further question of how either system needs to be adapted
in order to meet needs as well as desires.
If
we
assume the existence of these needs, does any particular economic
(4)
Does a welfare state necessarily
If
the answer to all these questions turns out to
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