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position". Since anyone can be a victim of a social accident, these two groups cf people cover "all citizens" in the potential sense. The basic justification for the entitlement of the two groups of people to social security is "social justice". However, "social justice" is not a self-evident concept, and one is not sure whether the same justification applies equally to those two groups. This paper, with the "efficiency criteria" of welfare economics as the sole guide for the legitimisation cf social security, therefore attempts to explore separately the meaning of entitlement of each group to a socially guaranteed minimum level of living. With reference to the first group, the concept of hazard or accident becomes paramount. A hazard refers to an adverse chance (contingency in the language of social security) that tends to create or increase the possibility of loss and that befalls individuals and their families through no fault of their own and with no forethought ΟΙ design on their part. By limiting attention to "social" hazards or accidents,

one is assuming that these are normal by-products of a socio-economic system in which individuals and families are inter-dependent upcn one another through a sensitive matrix of exchange relationships so that a breakdown in one of these relationships, whatever the cause, has adverse repercussions of varying degrees on everyone else in the system. Of course, society's daily routines are also filled with favourable chances that may work to the advantage of certain individuals and families. On-going societies usually have the guantum of favourable chances of this nature outweighing the quantum of adverse contingencies. Otherwise, socio-economic progress as an average historical tendency with the good overwhelming the bad would not be possible. It is this simple calculus of net advantages in teras of chances that makes social security feasible. To a Transcendent Being who can see through everything at one glance, all the necessary equations that determine а society's capability to compensate for the consequences of socio-economic hazards should be transparent. No living human beings can ever hope to attain as high a degree of prescience as this Being. But the social security technology (which is a short expression for the totality of techniques for ascertaining socio-economic hazards and mobilising resources to make amends for them) implies a successive approximation to the wisdom of this mythical Being.

The Rys definition quoted above is explicit about the question of individual cr family responsibility for anti-hazard action. He speaks of victims of a social accident through no fault of their own. The question that immediately arises is whether the phrase implies a distinction between those who cannot be blamed fcr their social accidents and those who can, or whether all victims of social accidents are presumed innocent of any fault of their own. In the thrust of Rys's argument, the latter must be the case. A "no fault social security system" makes sense because socio-economic hazards relevant to protection by social security arise from the same roots of a particular socio-economic system which also generates favourable chances for many individuals. It is at this point that the "efficiency criteria" cf welfare economics become useful. Welfare economics defines an increase in society's aggregate economic welfare in two steps. The first step is the definition of a clear-cut case in which society's aggregate economic welfare can be said to rise in association with a socio-economic change. This is the case in which after the change some people are better off while no-one else is worse off than before the change. The second step is to adapt the first to cover cases in which a change makes some people better off while making some others worse off. In these cases, society's aggregate economic welfare increases if those who are made better off can in principle fully compensate those who are made worse off and still are better off than before the change. A full compensation means that the status quo ante in terms of well-being is fully restored. Likewise, a socio-economic change under which gainers are made worse off than before upon making full compensation to losers is a change for the worse in terms of society's aggregate economic welfare. If the political process of decision making with respect to society's aggregate economic welfare is rational, such a change should be voted out.

Welfare economics has no practical advice for how the compensation should be implemented in the real world. (This question arises again in connection with income distribution later in this paper.) However, this should not be held against welfare economics, because general criteria advanced by

any general system of analysis cannot specify in advance all concrete cases of socio-economic changes. The discovery of an appropriate machinery for implementing the compensation belongs to the domain of politics and administration. Since the political process in the real world is not necessarily guided by the "efficiency criteria" of welfare economics, there are many cases of socio-economic change which are promoted by the government even against the "compensatory justice" suggested by welfare economics. "Compensatory justice" cannot be served in full in cases where changes promoted by the government violate the "efficiency criteria" and where therefore the aggregate

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