ABSTRACT
The irrepressible discrepancies between civil needs and market supply and demand, the linkage of unemployment and overproduction, and the ineluctable recurrence of monopolies and economic inequality all cast their shadows upon the enforcement of economic welfare. If the just economy cannot free itself of these complications to the exercise of economic autonomy, how can it retain validity when its justice lies in providing the fairest possible economic opportunity in consonance with noneconomic rights? Does the abiding presence of economic disadvantage, which calls for a ceaseless public intervention upon market institutions, condemn economic justice to a hollow ideal, incapable of realization, and therefore, since ought implies can, to a contradiction in terms? Or, if the problems besetting the public enforcement of economic welfare do not rule out a just economy, how can they be handled without turning economic freedom against itself?
