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132 CHAPTER EIGHT PUBLIC VALUES The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of himself. —T. H. HUXLEY, Collected Essays I: Method and Results While public interest as ideal provides a good starting point for public affairs deliberation, any move from deliberation to action requires a tangible concept. “Public value” serves well in this capacity. Since its introduction in chapter 1 public value has not received much attention. As used here, “public values” are those providing normative consensus about (a) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be entitled ; (b) the obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another; and (c) the principles on which governments and policies should be based. As noted in chapter 1, the chief concern in this book is with a society’s or a nation’s public values. However, it is certainly the case that individuals hold public values. Public value can operate at the level of the individual for much the same reason that altruism can operate at the individual level. Citizens can hold a public value that is not the same as their own self-interested private value. Thus an individual may hold a preference for high-quality public education even if he or she is unlikely to benefit personally and even if it will require him or her to pay more taxes. When octogenarians who do not have grandchildren vote higher millage, it is not because they expect personally to benefit from improved education. Similarly, one may have a self-interested value in privately saving for one’s retirement to ensure a high standard of living during retirement, while at the same time supporting public policies that ensure some sort of minimal social security provision for others. When the wealthy vote for Social Security, they do not expect personal benefit upon retirement, but do expect public value of such policies. When older people vote to spend their resources on children’s education or when the rich support Social Security, is this a matter of altruism or enlightened self-interest? Generally, are public values “more altruistic” than private values? One could argue, for example, that people who choose to pay higher millage rates or vote for Social Security benefits when they will not receive direct benefits may have a rational preference for a better educated society, and this is in their indirect self-interest. Or it is possible that there is a direct benefit, a feeling of self-satisfaction. Ultimately, the answers to these self-interest versus altruism questions are not particularly relevant to policy or management or even to public values. Discussions about the possibilities of altruism easily descend into an infinite regress, but that does not affect charitable giving or other behaviors that show regard for others’ well-being (Sawyer 1966). More important than the motivational basis of public value is the relation (or lack of relation) of public values to social institutions. A theory of public value is not a theory of government or politics. There is no necessary correspondence between public value and either public policy, politics, governance, or markets. Individuals, groups, and institutions can ignore, serve, thwart, or achieve public policies. In some cases and for some individuals there may be a very close correspondence or even an identity between their own values and society ’s public values, but for other individuals there may be no correspondence at all. Moreover, there is no necessity that the aggregate individual values or individual public values in a given society coalesce into a normative consensus (however, if there is no discernable social agreement about important public values that is the very definition of anarchy). Finally, we observe that taking private value into careful account may itself be an important public value. Thus libertarians might be viewed as having a strong public value for enhancing private value and minimizing the public sphere. In economic individualism, enhancing private economic values is essentially the only public value. LOOKING FOR PUBLIC VALUES A beginning question for anyone interested in public values is “How do we know them when we see them?” In the case of individual values, including individual public values, identification poses no substantial problem: we can simply ask people. Assuming knowledge, self-awareness, and a willingness to reveal information (common assumptions in opinion polling and survey research ), we can determine these values...

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