Abstract
One of the key tenets of James Buchanan’s political thought was the centrality of the status quo, embodied in Buchanan’s frequently heard axiom that “we start from where we are.” There is practical political value in “starting from where we are,” because we are in fact there, and not someplace else. Buchanan’s normative concern is that starting from where “we are” means that changes are more likely to be voluntary, and therefore Pareto-improving. The history of this notion of the status quo in contractarian thought is developed briefly, and then a particular example, the Chilean Constitution and its problematic implementation, is discussed.
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Some thinkers have been quite scornful of the idea of hypothetical consent. See, for example, Hume (1978), who says of tacit or implicit consent implied by residency:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her. For some thinkers, the (hypothetical) agreement to a set of rules is actually the beginning of society itself, as in the case of Montesquieu, who conceived of humans as living timidly in the wild, fearful of having contact with other humans. For such theorists, the origins of society both causes, and is caused by, the agreement on how individuals will be governed.
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Because ($1 billion * (1.0055)) = $25 million. That’s the difference between 2% growth rate and a 2.5% growth rate compounded over five years.
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Voting members were (1) the president of the republic, (2) the president of the Senate, (3) the president of the Supreme Court, (4) the 3 commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and (5) the director general of the national police force (Carabineros de Chile). Consequently, the military had a large majority on any COSENA vote. Nonvoting members included the ministers of defense; economy, development and reconstruction; finance; foreign relations; and interior. For details, see Hudson (1994): http://countrystudies.us/chile/87.htm.
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Munger, M.C. (2018). Starting from Where We Are: The Importance of the Status Quo in James Buchanan. In: Wagner, R. (eds) James M. Buchanan. Remaking Economics: Eminent Post-War Economists. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03080-3_3
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