And Lettuce Is Nonanimal: Toward a Positive Economics of Voluntary Action

Abstract

This paper sets out a positive conception of voluntary action as a unified type of economic activity, grounded in human group expe rience and based in autonomous, self-defining and self-regulating communities of nonmarket actors with shared mutual interests in identified common goods. Such common goods include many types of social services; community action; religious, scientific, and artistic endeavors; amateur athletics; and a broad range of other nonprofit activities. Key implications of the common goods approach, also known as endowment theory, include rejection of efficiency, maxi mization, Pareto-optimality, and other economic criteria as necessary and sufficient standards for evaluating rational choice and rational organization in the Commons, and substitution of more appropriate rational standards.