Jim Buchanan to John Rawls: "Dude, your favored political-economic regime would have massive moral hazard, corruption, and rent seeking."
Rawls: "Nah, dude, I'm doing ideal theory. I'm asking how the system would work if we imagine people are fully motivated by a sense of justice. So that stuff won't happen."
Buchanan: "Oh, okay. Well then why not favor what you call welfare-state capitalism over property-owning democracy?"
Rawls: "Because in that system the rich could use their money to buy power and use it for corrupt ends!"
Buchanan: "But didn't you just say we're doing ideal theory and asking how institutions would work if only people were fully motivated by a sense of justice? And by hypothesis isn't that unjust and so they wouldn't do that under ideal..."
Rawls: "Nah nah nah nah nah, I can't hear you!"
Rawlsians: "Nah nah nah nah nah, we can't hear you."
Buchanan: "Huh. Political philosophers kind of suck at political philosophy."
See JaF, 137-8.
