... we have gone far enough, I believe, to document my point: justice is not a consistently applied principle, however arbitrary its choice; nay, justice is for Keeton and O'Connell a suitcase full of bottled ethics from which one freely chooses to blend his own type of justice.

The economist accepts the basic values of the community-- subject to whatever minor distortion and persuasion he thinks he can get away with-- and these values are almost outside the range of serious debate. Very few public policies are uniquely determined by these basic values, however. If the basic value is the elimination of destitution, the policy which is chosen may be a homestead act or a minimum wage or a tariff or a food stamp plan or a negative income tax. The basic question of policy formulation for the economist is not whether the goal is desirable but whether the means are efficient. Is the end in view actually achieved, and at the least cost? This criterion of efficiency perrnits the economist to assert that a minimum wage law and a tariff are perverse in their effects upon the very poor and therefore such policies should be abandoned or used only to serve other values. The dividing line between efficiency in reaching an end, and the desirability of the end itself, is not so sharp as a terse statement will suggest, hut an unusually disciplined economist could discuss economic policy for an hour without spending more than ten minutes on preaching.

We are highly aroused by specific outrageous instances of what we believe to be injustice but an injustice is a showing of a need for policy change much more than a guide to the method and sometimes even ihe direction of change. The disinterested motive, I suggest, that gives rise to the largest and most frequent departures from self-interest in public policy formation is sympathy. The compassion for the harshly treated readily overwhelms our sense of justice: the society would willingly add to the injustices heaped upon a millionaire if thereby the meager lot of an undeserving pauper is improved. Sympathy has been a generous source of public policy on labor relations, on the treatment of the indigent, and on the provision of public education. We are a highly sentimental people.