Acts and Rules

David Reisman

Chapter 6 in James Buchanan, 2015, pp 74-86 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Act utilitarianism is short-term, reactive and piecemeal. It is a pragmatic response to a here-and-now challenge. Act utilitarianism ‘plays it by ear’ and lives for today. It focuses on the one-off choice and the case-by-case assessment. It is a short-term patch rather than a long-term solution. It is the standard approach of the maximising economics. It is the window on the world of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes (1923: 80) calls the long run ‘a misleading guide to current affairs’: ‘In the long run we are all dead’. Keynes recommends that economists should rank the ad hoc in the hand above the unknowable in the void.

Keywords: Classical Liberal; Constitutional Political Economy; Rule Utilitarianism; Pragmatic Response; Distributional Coalition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gtechp:978-1-137-42718-2_6

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137427182_6

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