Sticks or Carrots? The Emergence of Self-Ownership

Abstract

It is demonstrated that under plausible conditions promising rewards is the rationally preferable commitment strategy for soliciting benefits from others, whereas threatening punishments is the rationally preferable commitment strategy for warding off harm by others. Market societies, therefore, relying on promising rewards for benefits will outperform slave societies relying on coercive threats, especially in bringing out creativity and innovation from its population. The result is used to argue that for mutually advantageous cooperation to be possible, “self-ownership” as defined by David Gauthier’s interpretation of the “Lockean proviso” need not function as a rational constraint on individual value-maximizing behavior.