In order to answer this question [scroll down to the final paragraph of the previous instalment], I go on to distinguish three broad types of case. In the future society we are imagining, we start from a situation in which a significant number of people would like to be able to y, but there is a majority of others who not only reject y-ing for themselves but also oppose its being permitted for anyone else, for reasons to do with (or so those in the majority argue) demonstrable harm to others, or justice, or the rights of future generations, or the interests of non-human animals, or what have you. The negotiation of this division of opinion duly results in an authoritative decision against y-ing, taken by the appropriate decision-making bodies and following all laid-down constitutional or customary procedures. The three pertinently different cases are, then, as follows.
(1) Everyone in the community willingly accepts this authoritative decision, henceforth not y-ing. No one ever even attempts to y. So clear and evident is the universal acceptance of the decision against y-ing that there is no need actually to follow up by promulgating a law against y-ing, in the sense of a rule against it backed by the threat of sanctions. Individuals, indeed, are left free to y in the confidence that no one will. And no one does. On the part of some of those now left free to y, their motivation in not y-ing is not that they have no desire to y. The point of departure, remember, is that there are those who do want to y, even though most people in the society do not. No, the controlling motivation of the wanting-to-y minority is that they are socially responsible citizens and democrats. They willingly accept the decision against y-ing, allowing it to override their own desires and evaluations.
(2) In the next case, once the decision against y-ing has been made it is embodied into law, and it has to be. A rule against y-ing is enacted, backed both by the threat of sanctions and an appropriate apparatus of enforcement for applying these sanctions as and when needed. However, under the conditions just spelled out - the presence of a law against y-ing carrying penalties for non-compliance - no one in fact ever does y. The threat of sanctions suffices to deter all those who otherwise would y. Note that the motivation of those not y-ing but wanting to is different, in this second model, from the motivation of those not y-ing but wanting to in the first model. There, compliance with the law against y-ing was willing. It was motivated by public-mindedness and democratic commitment. Here, on the other hand, those wanting to y but falling into line with the law against y-ing do so because - or at any rate partly because - of the existence of that law and the sanctions attached to it. The compliers are influenced, deterred, by the prospect of being penalized for breaking the law.
(3) In the last of the cases, once the decision against y-ing has been made, it is embodied, as in the second case, into a law against y-ing, backed by the threat of sanctions and an appropriate apparatus for the application of these. The difference is that, though most people most of the time do not y, some people sometimes do y, in defiance of the law against y-ing – albeit fewer people than would if there were no such law. The law against y-ing has, consequently, to be enforced, and sanctions are sometimes brought to bear against delinquents. For the purposes of the exercise I am engaged on in this paper, there is no need to dawdle over the question of how common the delinquency is, of just how much law-breaking goes on, provided only that this is frequent enough to fit the third model as specified. An apparatus of legal enforcement has to be brought to bear against some members of the community from time to time.
I shall return to the discussion of these three models after a necessary digression to retrieve from earlier work of mine some matter concerning Marxist ways of thinking about the influences which shape human motivation and conduct.
[Part 3 will be posted tomorrow. Update: see now here.]