Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-c654p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-31T09:17:49.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - ECONOMIC MAN'S ESCAPE FROM MALTHUS'S POPULATION TRAP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2009

Harold Demsetz
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Get access

Summary

The pursuit of one's narrowly defined self-interest may sometimes come at the expense of the group to which one belongs. It is easy to give examples of this. A person in possesion of important military secrets finds it in his or her interest to offer them for sale to an enemy nation, putting his or her own country into jeopardy; at the other extreme, a person, too lazy to look for a trash can, tosses gum wrappers onto a public sidewalk. Between these two examples is the driver who enters a freeway without concern for the added congestion this causes others. These examples illustrate that Adam Smith's most important insight might not always hold under some circumstances. This insight – the invisible hand that transforms private actions into social benefits – would seem to require a set of constraints whose effects are to put private actions to the service of the larger public, and, in Smith's defense, he discovers the invisible hand in the context of the constraints imposed by the legal arrangements that underlie a market-based economy. These discourage theft and disregard for the property of others. The world being as it is, strict conditions of ownership and contract cannot be satisfied perfectly, and, so, situtions do arise in which private interests may fail to serve the interests of others in the group to which one belongs.

Type
Chapter
Information
From Economic Man to Economic System
Essays on Human Behavior and the Institutions of Capitalism
, pp. 51 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×