Well-Being and the State

TL;DRAbstract

Some people think that there is a deep opposition between intervention and free markets. But the opposition is too simple. No one is really opposed to intervention. Markets depend for their existence on law, which is necessary to establish property rights and to set out the rules governing contracts and tort. Short of anarchy, a system of legal entitlements, set by the state, is inevitable.1 If we are asking whether the state is an important part of the solution to current social problems, there can be only one answer: it had better be. But what is the relationship between the state and social well-being? This question assumes special significance in light of the original aspiration of the American founders to create a deliberative democracy.2 Public officials would be accountable to the citizenry at large, but they were also supposed to engage in deliberative tasks, and to profit from and to encourage deliberation among the people as a whole. Both the structure of the national governm

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