Human autonomy: concepts, ethics, and implications

Human Autonomy and Economics

The modern day economists John Kenneth Galbraith and Frederick Hayek possessed contrasting views of human autonomy, or the ability of human beings to successfully direct their economic lives. Galbraith saw human agency as at least partially subject to the whims of the business cycle and other individual's economic choices, thus the state had a right to intervene in human economic life. Hayek stressed the unpredictability of human economic choices and the need for liberty from state interference, given that the state could not predict the responses of human economic life to changes in the business cycle.

Galbraith stated that when faced with a precarious job, humans stored their money, and thus caused a recession-mired economy to father contract, requiring government spending to stimulate the economy and thereby extricate society as a whole from a potential depression that could occur in this phase of the failed business cycle. While Hayek did not reject all forms of state regulation, welfare provision, or institutional reform, he believed that the preservation of human choice and liberty, not security or even economic stability, was the primary purpose of government (Ransom, 1996)

Hayek would thus see the case of the G. Heilman Brewing Company as clear-cut. Individuals have the ability to chose whether they imbibe alcohol or not, as promoted by Heilman's advertising. Heilman thus had the right to market its products to specific groups, such as African-American inner city youths, if the company believed these groups to be likely purchasers, regardless of the morality of such an advertising campaign. (Greyser & Schiller, 1994) Hayek would also suggest that Galbraith's theory of state responsibility for a better society would require suppression of the company's freedom of advertising speech and hence the corporation's right to make money from its product, although it is important to remember that Galbraith did not believe in all forms of state intervention in the marketplace, any more than Hayek was in favor of repressing all forms of state intervention at all times.