… is from page 10 of the 2000 Liberty Fund edition of Geoffrey Brennan’s and James M. Buchanan’s 1985 book, The Reason of Rules:
[T]he rules that constrain sociopolitical interactions – the economic and political relationships among persons – must be evaluated ultimately in terms of their capacity to promote the separate purposes of all persons in the polity. Do these rules permit individuals to pursue their private ends, in a context where securing these ends involves interdependence, in such a way that each person secures maximal attainment of his goals consistent with the equal liberty of others to do the same?
DBx: Or, at any rate, such is the truly liberal criterion for assessing the value of rules.
Non-liberals – left, right, and center – are united in their insistence that socioeconomic rules must incite all individuals to act, as much as possible, in ways that promote particular collective goals. Liberals alone judge the worth of rules by how well or poorly the rules enable as many different individuals as possible each to pursue, with real prospects of success, his or her individually chosen goals.
