>> Horwitz wrote:

>>
>> Is it not possible for someone to say of regime X that he or she thinks
>> policies A and B are good without also endorsing policies C and D?


Actually, no.  These kinds of trade-off of good for bad, cost-benefit
calculations of a utilitarian sort in ethical argumentation, are quite
dubious. That they commend themselves to economists is unfortunate.
"Exactly how many dead kulaks will it take to increase agricultural
yields by 5%, Mr. Stalin?"  "Just how much personal liberty should one
be deprived of to lower the probability of an airplane hijacking by
10%, Mr. Bush?" Rawlsian ideas suggest lexographic orderings of such
social choices, but there is a huge literature concerned with such
matters. And as someone wrote earlier, this was the pivotal concern of
the Nurenburg Tribunal.

-- 
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html