Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals

by Tyler Cowen

As argued above, a sustainable increase in economic growth, properly understood, will boost many plural values in the medium and long runs. To be sure, some people will be worse off, and some values, in the short to medium run, will not be favored. In these respects, aggregation problems do not disappear. Nonetheless, the competing options do not generally offer a deadlock of roughly equivalent values and interests on each side of the scale, with one side looking better by some moderate amount. South Korea is much better off than, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo by a considerable margin. The higher growth alternative will eventually offer a clear and ongoing preponderance of plural values in its favor, whether it be living standards, women’s rights, freedom of choice, the fight against poverty, or other important values. So why not choose that option and recognize that we have rational grounds for preferring it?2 This approach to the aggregation problem coincides with common sense morality. Not everyone can be happy about everything all of the time, but we should nonetheless choose the option that makes a strong preponderance of people much better off. Most important plural values will come along for the ride.

Why pro-growth policies are fundamental.