Free Market Fairness

John Tomasi is professor of political science at Brown University, where he is also the founder and director of Brown's Political Theory Project. Tomasi holds degrees in political philosophy from the University of Oxford and the University of Arizona. He has held visiting fellowships and positions at Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford universities, and at the Freedom Center at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Liberalism Beyond Justice (Princeton).

"This book provides an original defense of classical liberalism. Tomasi argues that the high liberal conception of free and equal moral persons requires robust economic liberties as a condition of individual independence and self-authorship, while also justifying social supports for the less advantaged. Free Market Fairness is an important contribution to liberal thought."--Samuel Freeman, University of Pennsylvania

Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Chapter 1: Classical Liberalism 1 Property and Equality 1 Market Society 6 America 11 Hayek 16 Classical Liberalism 22 Chapter 2: High Liberalism 27 Property or Equality 27 The Decline of Economic Liberty 32 Rawls 37 The Libertarian Moment 46 Liberalismus Sapiens Sapiens 51 Chapter 3: Thinking the Unthinkable 57 The Great Fact: Economic Growth 57 Populism, Probability, and Political Philosophy 60 Economic Liberty and Democratic Legitimacy 68 Endings, and Beginnings, Too 84 Chapter 4: Market Democracy 87 The Conceptual Space 87 Breaking Ice 99 Market Democracy as a Research Program 103 Institutions 106 The Challenges to Market Democracy 118 Chapter 5: Social Justicitis 123 The Distributional Adequacy Condition 123 Hit Parade: Property and the Poor 127 Hayek's Critique 142 Benadryl for Free-Marketeers 151 Chapter 6: Two Concepts of Fairness 162 Warming up to Market Democracy 162 Applying the Theory 172 The Argument Ipse Dixit 177 Justice as Fairness: Status or Agency? 180 Chapter 7: Feasibility, Normativity, and Institutional Guarantees 197 The Twilight of Left Liberalism? 197 Realistic Utopianism 203 Aims and Guarantees 215 Chapter 8: Free Market Fairness 226 The Difference Principle 226 Fair Equality of Opportunity 237 Political Liberty 247 Generational, Environmental, and International Justice 254 Free Market Fairness as a Moral Ideal 264 Conclusion 267 Notes 273 Bibliography 315 Index 333