Quotes from The Calculus of Consent

By James Buchanan (1962)

• There is nothing in the operation of majority rule to insure that public investment is more “productive” than alternative employments of resources, that is, nothing insures that the games be positive-sum.#
  Politics
• If the terms of trade are set independent of the individual participant’s own behavior, no ethical question can arise concerning his “fairness” in dealing with other parties to exchange, ruling out fraudulent behavior. Thus we find that ethical issues about market behavior present themselves only when individuals or groups are in noncompetitive positions, when they possess some power to influence the terms of trade in their favor.#
  Economics
• A widespread adoption of Judeo-Christian morality may be a necessary condition to the operation of any genuinely free society of individuals.#
  NormsCulture
• Christian idealism, to be effective in leading to a more harmonious social order, must be tempered by an acceptance of the moral imperative of individualism, the rule of equal freedom. . . . “Love the neighbor, but also let him alone when he desires to be let alone” may, in one sense, be said to be the overriding ethical principle for Western liberal society.#
  NormsCulture
• The only purpose of science is its ultimate assistance in the development of normative propositions. We seek to learn how the world works in order to make it work “better”, to “improve” things: this is as true for physical science as it is for social science.#
  Methodology
• In an opportunity cost sense, the failure to take cooperative action when such is actually more “efficient” is precisely equivalent to the taking of positive private action that is detrimental to overall “efficiency”.#
  PoliticsMethodology