Is It Just to Pursue Honest Income?

Abstract

Is it just to pursue honest income? Certainly it’s commutatively just. But is it a becoming use of one’s own? Is it distributively just? Presumptively, yes. The burden of proof should be on the one who denies that someone’s pursuit of honest income is distributively just. Drawing closely on Adam Smith, I argue for that presumption. I treat focal points and price signals: If you think prices are imperfect signals for universal benevolence, just think how imperfect the other signals are! Virtues are swallowed up by self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea, said La Rochefoucauld. We come to the commercial humanism Smith constructed, including his invisible parable of the poor man’s son, producing the Great Enrichment. Cameos are made by Humphrey Bogart and caveats to our maxim that it is presumptively just to pursue honest income.

Keywords: invisible hand, price signals, self-interest, markets, virtue, wisdom

JEL Classification: A10, A13, B12