Securing a good means protecting it, not maximizing its likelihood

Evidence

The best explanation of Paley’s misrepresentation of republicans may be that there is an ambiguity in the notion of safeguarding or securing something. Trying to secure a good may mean acting so as to maximize its expected realization. In this usage ‘secure’ has a purely probabilistic sense and is equivalent to ‘promote’. Alternatively, trying to secure a good may mean trying to ensure that no one can take it away from you: trying to devise things so that others are not able to deprive you of it. In this usage ‘secure’ does not mean ‘promote’, since the means of maximizing the expected realization of the good may involve leaving control of the good in the hands of another. Rather what it means is something like ‘protect it against others’. Paley’s mistake may be to imagine that when republicans speak of wanting to safeguard or secure non-interference—in particular, to secure the absence of arbitrary interference—they mean that they want to promote it, not protect it. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 372

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the distinction between probabilistic promotion and protective security of a good.
• XREF: connects to: Overt risk calculation can undermine the trust it is meant to secure — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 588; Securitization names a mindset that abandons actual security for risk-juggling virtuosity — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 258; Protected systems can replace trust with probability calculations (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Overt risk calculation can undermine the trust it is meant to secure #corroborates (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 588
• Protected systems can replace trust with probability calculations #corroborates (0.82)
• Securitization names a mindset that abandons actual security for risk-juggling virtuosity #corroborates (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 258
• Trust does not solve complexity but merely reshapes it as risk #corroborates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 166