ABSTRACT
By now it should be evident that market relations, either alone or supplemented by civil law, economic interest groups, and the private efforts of individuals and households, cannot realize the economic freedom of all and eliminate the economic injustice consisting in unequal economic opportunity. Yet, does this failure justify a public welfare administration to regulate the market? As Hegel has pointed out, two antithetical views challenge its introduction. One holds that public authority has no need nor any right to intervene in the market because every commodity owner already directs his conduct according to the needs of others as a condition for engaging in market activity. 1 The other maintains that public authority should not just intervene in the market, but directly superintend all social affairs, excluding markets entirely. What gives these views their significance is that they represent two competing entitlements, both rooted in the freedoms of a civil economy. The first objection reflects the civil right of individuals to work for their chosen livelihood as they please, whereas the second reflects the civil right of the public to have properly done what is essential to the welfare of all. Taken together, these entitlements mandate that, to paraphrase Hegel, market freedom should not be such as to jeopardize the general good, which in civil terms, represents the exercised economic autonomy of all together with the secured realization of their other rightful freedoms. 2 Yet, why need these entitlements be combined?
