The Recovery of Self-Interest Well Understood as a Regime Value

Abstract

Understood in economic terms, interest elevates baser human impulses and degrades higher human potential as it motivates individuals to value material gains over moral ones. Because of this influence, it is difficult to consider interest as a regime value. But just because it is beleaguered does not mean it ought to be abandoned, especially because interest is placed front and center in the constitutional order. Providing a perspective of the merits of interest, Alexis de Tocqueville offers a conceptualization that allows this regime value to be relevant even for contemporary administrators operating in spaces of diffused public responsibility.