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Public Policy

In: Thomas Robert Malthus

Author

Listed:
  • David Reisman

    (Nanyang Technological University)

Abstract

Malthus like all classical liberals looked in the first instance to self-stabilising mechanisms and the free market to solve the economic problems of supply and demand. The State should ensure a stable framework of law and order to prevent the reappearance of Hobbes’s state of war. Bad governments in the past had been predatory and insensitive, open to the special pleading of interest groups that seek to redistribute the national wealth when they ought to increase it. The inference is a constitution reflecting the damage-containing rule of minimax. In spite of that Malthus called for pragmatic intervention in forms such as the Corn Laws to exclude cheap imports and the legalisation of trades unions. Education for citizenship was also important to inculcate in the masses a resistance to demagogues and revolutionaries.

Suggested Citation

  • David Reisman, 2018. "Public Policy," Great Thinkers in Economics, in: Thomas Robert Malthus, chapter 0, pages 77-96, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gtechp:978-3-030-01956-3_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-01956-3_4
    as

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