“This is an important book, a high hurdle for the soft-minded. In clean prose and clear arguments, Patrick Burke makes a formidable case that much of what is done today in the name of compassion and good intentions causes harm. And he offers a clearly stated alternative.”–Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute
Provides a valuable and illuminating
synthesis
“Burke offers compelling arguments that the
free market is not only more efficient, but is morally superior to central
planning and regulation. The book provides a valuable and illuminating
synthesis of economies, political theory, political philosophy, and ethics.”–Fred
Miller, Director, Center for Ethics and Public Policy, Bowling Green State
University
A rousing defense of individual
liberty
“No Harm is a rousing defense of individual
liberty, especially as it bears on our economic lives, on production, commerce,
trade, and related business endeavors. The work should be a major contribution
to the advance not only of the understanding of the free society but its
eventually triumph in the contest among political economic ideals.”–Tibor
R. Machan, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Alabama
Written with verve and authority
“A spirited defense of marketplace economics
written with verve and authority.”–Murray Friedman, Director
of the Center for American Jewish History
Free from
government regulation
In this hard-hitting but measured and carefully reasoned book, Burke
contends that the economic marketplace should be completely free from
government regulation, except for third-party effects, such as the environment.
Government defends its regulation of the market mainly on ethical grounds,
especially the need for fairness.
Burke powerfully argues that this reasoning is misguided, that buyers
and sellers should be free to make or not make whatever agreements they
wish, so long as fraud and force are avoided.
No Harm illuminates the economic issues with insightful emphasis on the moral dimension. Basing his argument on the Principle of Mutual Benefit and the Principle of No Harm, Burke contends that buyers and sellers make exchanges only because they expect to benefit, a truth which must apply to both sides of every exchange. This applies even where the benefit is small, unequal, or even merely relative. Through his detailed examination, Burke vindicates the Principle of Mutual Benefit against the numerous attempts to restrict and eviscerate it.
The Principle of No Harm as Burke formulates it states that persons
who cause no harm ought not to be harmed, that those who cause harm to
the innocent deserve to be punished, and correspondingly that those who
do not cause harm deliberately ought not to be punished. This threefold
principle, he argues, represents our most
basic ethical intuition.
A valuable feature of the book is Burke’s detailed examination of the
concept of causation as it applies to the causing of harm–a concept widely
used in law, and widely distorted in modem liberal analyses of economic
relations. No Harm offers a compelling case that a free market economy
is essential to sound political and
social ethics.
T. PATRICK BURKE is professor of religion at Temple University
and author of The Fragile Universe and The Reluctant Vision