Although he does not necessarily endorse the position himself, in his book, Public Goods, Private Goods , Raymond Geuss of Cambridge University notes that some people have suggested that there ought to be two ways to determine the value of consideration, one for contracts made with private individuals and another for contracts made with the government. Geuss explains it this way: “What is judged to be ‘good,’ ‘right,’ ‘valuable’ (and alternatively, ‘bad,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘nuisance’) in the public sphere is to be evaluated by different standards from what is ‘good’ in the private sphere. The standards and procedures for justifying a particular course of action or choice, and the audience in whose eyes the justification must be convincing, are often thought to differ depending on whether what is at issue is a ‘private’ act (e.g., individual purchase of food for one’s own consumption) or a public one (procurement of new trains for the municipal underground or new submarines for the navy).” This position sounds remarkably similar to the ethic of responsibility which we discussed in Chapter 1. Recall that the ethic of responsibility demands that the moral actor, in this case a national leader, consider his or her responsibilities to those people who depend on that leader for protection, safety, and sometimes even for their very lives. The ethic of responsibility is the morality of the nation-state and it is not the same as individual morality. The nation-state has a duty that outweighs all other duties and that duty is to promote the civil peace of the nation-state so that the lives its own people remain undisturbed. What this means from the practical perspective of governmental leaders is that, if the military needs a new weapons system to protect its people from a belligerent, aggressive, or suicidal rogue state, then the cost of that weapons system must be evaluated by a process that is divorced from the methods used to determine value in the private sector. In short, national leaders are not permitted to turn down a contract for this weapons system simply because it would “cost too much” in terms of money because doing so would endanger the innocent people they are duty-bound to protect.

Questions

 1. Do you agree or disagree with the premise that two different rules should apply to consideration, based on whether the transaction is private or public? Explain, 

2. Regardless of your answer to the first question, which of the two realms, private or public, should be valued higher? Explain.
3. How should this differentiation be determined? Is it up to governmental officials or should private citizens be consulted? Explain.
4. Should there be a different standard for military procurements, such as a weapons system, than for an administrative project, such as a new bridge, dam, highway, or hospital? Explain.
5. What if the cost of doing business includes an illegal action such as bribing the military personnel of a foreign nation to obtain permission for our bombers and fighters to fly through their airspace? Should such illegal payments be sanctioned under the ethic of responsibility? Explain.