The End of Socialism by James R. Otteson

Author:James R. Otteson [Otteson, James R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

First Argument: Knowledge.

The first is based on Smith’s Local Knowledge Argument (LKA): given that everyone has unique knowledge of her own “local” situation, including her goals, desires, and opportunities, each individual is typically therefore the person best positioned to make decisions about what courses of action she should take to achieve her goals. As we saw in Chapter 2, that does not mean that people are infallible in judging their own situations, but rather that individuals have a better chance of knowing how best to use their own resources and what courses of actions to take to achieve their own goals than do third parties because they are more likely to possess the knowledge (and motivation) required to make such determinations reliably.

The LKA applies here in the following way: because of the relative straightforwardness of “negative” justice, and the relative ease of discovering and punishing violations of it, the state’s centralized apparatuses are competent to administrate it. By contrast, because of the open-endedness and local-context specificity of beneficence, the state’s centralized apparatuses are incompetent to administrate it. Thus incorporating beneficence into justice overextends the state’s competence and compromises what seems to be the only effective means there are to effect proper beneficence, namely localized and decentralized initiative.

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