Distributive Justice

One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...) ‘need’. In this case, carbon dioxide removal, these values may well conflict. Strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in a cost-effective manner would tend to support siting it in regions where there are significant oil and gas operations. In contrast, strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in response to need would tend to support siting it in regions where expected demand for the technology is required for development. [Open access]. (shrink)

This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how (...) a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. (shrink)

In political philosophy, reflective equilibrium is a standard method used to systematically reconcile intuitive judgments with theoretical principles. In this paper, we propose that survey experiments and a model selection method—i.e., the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)-based model selection method—can be viewed together as a methodological means of satisfying the epistemic desiderata implicit in reflective equilibrium. To show this, we conduct a survey experiment on two theories of distributive justice, prioritarianism and sufficientarianism. Our experimental test case and AIC-based model selection method (...) demonstrate that the refined sufficientarian principle, a widely accepted principle of distributive justice, is no more plausible than the prioritarian principle. This tells us that some changes of certain intuitions revolving around sufficientarianism should be examined (separately) based on the findings of the survey experiment and AIC model selection. This shows the potential of our approach—both practically and methodologically—as a novel way of applying reflective equilibrium in political philosophy. (shrink)

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 exacerbated two distinct concerns about the independence of central banks: a concern about legitimacy and a concern about economic justice. This paper explores the legitimacy of independent central banks from the perspective of these two concerns, by presenting two distinct models of central banking and their different claims to political legitimacy and distributive justice. I argue primarily that we should avoid construing central bank independence in binary terms, such that central banks either are, or (...) are not, independent. I will argue that we should instead construe central bank independence in scalar terms, so that independence admits of degree, thus allowing us to develop an account of independence in which central banks can retain it to the extent necessary for economic efficiency, while meeting reasonable concerns regarding democratic legitimacy and economic justice. (shrink)

A central feature of experimental development economics is the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effectiveness of prospective socioeconomic interventions. The use of RCTs in development economics raises a host of ethical issues which are just beginning to be explored. In this article, I address one ethical issue in particular: the routine use of the status quo as a control when designing and conducting a development RCT. Drawing on the literature on the principle of standard care in (...) medical research ethics, as well as considerations of distributive justice in non-ideal circumstances, I argue that the practice of using the status quo as a control is ethically justifiable. However, I add an important qualification based on the natural duty of rescue to address the concern that my account is overly permissive. (shrink)

It is often argued that relational egalitarianism has a fundamental problem with intergenerational justice when compared to other theories of justice such as utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and luck egalitarianism. Recently, Timothy Sommers argued that there is no such comparative disadvantage for relational egalitarianism. His argument is quite modest: it merely aims to reject the claim that there could be no way to extend relational egalitarianism to intergenerational justice. This may be called the ‘No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis’. The present article challenges Sommers’s (...) argument in two ways. First, I show that Sommers fails to provide a reasonable constraint on causal efficacy, which is crucial to his argument for our relation (not relationship) to future generations. Second, I show that the chain-relatedness problem casts a shadow over Sommers’s argument for the No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis. More specifically, compared to the other theories of justice, relational egalitarianism (as it stands) can less easily justify that present persons have duties to future others. This is because relational egalitarianism cannot appeal to a specific principle in regard to the duties in question, because its principle is sensitive to current context and practice. I conclude that the No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis does not hold much promise. (shrink)

Suppose that the basic structures of two societies conform to Rawls’s principles of justice. One of these societies, however, includes—in addition to a just basic structure—an egalitarian ethos that further reduces inequalities that do not benefit the least advantaged. G. A. Cohen and others have argued that the second society is more just, thus rejecting any restriction of Rawls’s principles of justice to the basic structure. Andrew Williams has revived the basic structure restriction in the form of a publicity requirement. (...) This paper highlights various problems with this attempt. In addition, it shows that an egalitarian ethos admits various plausible reformulations that could meet Williams’s publicity requirements. This only amounts to a partial victory for Cohen, however. In fact, the Rawlsian position could come out of this discussion strengthened, not because it can resist the egalitarian critique, but because it can incorporate its essence in the form of a set of more precise and specific public rules. (shrink)

Wenn es um „den Kapitalismus“ geht, regieren schnell die Gefühle. Die Philosophen Sabine Döring und Lars Neth appellieren an die Vernunft. -/- Interview: Wolf Lotter.

Natural resources, especially land, play an important role in many economic problems society faces today, including the climate crisis, housing shortages and severe inequality. Yet, land has been either entirely neglected or seriously misunderstood by contemporary theorists of distributive justice. I aim to correct that in this paper. In his theory of original acquisition, Locke did not carefully distinguish between the value of natural resources and the value that we add by laboring upon them. This oversight led him to the (...) mistaken conclusion that labor mixing gives the laborer an entitlement to both the improvement and the resource. I explain how Locke's false belief that the proviso was satisfied in his time was the fundamental cause of this error. -/- Instead, we should think, following Henry George, that the community is entitled to the economic value of natural resources, because the community created the value of resources, not the individual improver. I discuss an argument from George's "Progress and Poverty" that selfownership is actually inconsistent with (rather than the ground for, as Locke thought) private appropriation of natural resources. I present George's argument that private appropriation of natural resources is akin to forced labor, which is remarkably similar to Nozick's infamous argument that taxation is akin to forced labor. -/- I then develop my own view of original acquisition, inspired by George. The selfownership of improvers gives them an entitlement to improvements that they generate. But the self-ownership of everyone else precludes an entitlement to natural resources value. Natural resource rents should not be enjoyed only by those who improve the resource, but rather, by all community members in proportion to the share of demand for natural resources they are responsible for. In the last section, I consider and refute an objection from the luck egalitarian claiming that natural talents are relevantly similar to land. (shrink)

This paper analyses the temporal unit of egalitarian concern. In the intertemporal context, the differences between egalitarian views can be appreciated not only in inequality analysis but also as regards the ideal egalitarian distribution to be established. In this paper, three intergenerational egalitarian principles (Complete Lives Egalitarianism, Corresponding Segments Egalitarianism and Simultaneous Segments Egalitarianism) are analysed and CSE is argued to be the appropriate egalitarian benchmark. The relations between the three principles and other moral ideals, namely maximin and utilitarianism, are (...) also analysed. It is proved that CLE and CSE are compatible with a concern for the worst off and, partially, with a utilitarian concern, while the adoption of SSE implies a worse trade-off between egalitarianism and the other moral ideals. (shrink)

What are the distributive implications of utilitarianism? Is it compatible with a concern for equality, as many utilitarians have argued? We analyse these questions in the context of a pure allocation problem. We consider an infinitely-lived economy and, drawing on the behavioural literature, assume that individuals have reference-dependent preferences: agents’ utility is a function of current consumption and a reference point which captures consumption habits, or the agents’ upbringing. Assuming a history of inequalities in consumption, we show that the utilitarian (...) allocation is equalising: starting from an unequal distribution, inequalities decrease over time at the utilitarian optimum. However, even though agents are in a relevant sense identical, equality does not obtain at any finite time. (shrink)

This paper analyses exploitation and class formation in a dynamic context. An intertemporal model of a subsistence economy is set up and, among other results, it is proved that, in an interior equilibrium, Differential Ownership of (Scarce) Productive Assets is an inherent feature of a capitalist economy, while exploitation tends to disappear in the long run. Asset inequality is therefore proved to be a normatively secondary (though causally primary) wrong. It is also argued that these results raise several doubts about (...) the possibility of providing robust micro-foundations to Marxian concepts by means of Walrasian general equilibrium models. (shrink)

An axiomatic analysis of the concept of unequal exchange (UE) between countries is developed in a dynamic general equilibrium model that generalises John Roemer’s (Central Planning and the Soviet Economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1983) economy with a global capital market. The class of UE definitions that satisfy three fundamental properties—including a correspondence between wealth, class and UE exploitation status—is completely characterised. It is shown that this class is nonempty and a definition of UE exploitation between countries is proposed, which is (...) theoretically robust and firmly anchored to empirically observable data. The full class and UE exploitation structure of the international economy is derived in equilibrium. (shrink)

We model opportunities in society as ‘chances of success’, that is as they are commonly described by practitioners. We show that a classical liberal principle of justice together with a limited principle of social rationality imply that the social objective should be to maximise the chance that everybody in society succeeds. Technically, this means using a ‘Nash’ welfare criterion. A particular consequence is that the failure of even only one individual must be considered maximally detrimental. We also study a refinement (...) of this criterion and its extension to problems of intergenerational justice. (shrink)

Sufficientarianism is a prominent approach to distributive justice in political philosophy and in policy analyses. However, it is virtually absent from the formal normative economics literature. We analyze sufficientarianism axiomatically in the context of the allocation of 0–1 normalized well-being in society. We present three characterizations of the core sufficientarian criterion, which counts the number of agents who attain a “good enough” level of well-being. The main characterization captures the “hybrid” nature of the criterion, which embodies at the same time (...) a threshold around which the worst off in society is prioritized, and an indifference to equality in other regions. The other two characterizations relate sufficientarianism, respectively, to a liberal principle of noninterference and to a classic neutrality property. (shrink)

We analyse the liberal ethics of noninterference in social choice. A liberal principle, capturing noninterfering views of society and inspired by John Stuart Mill's conception of liberty, is examined. The principle expresses the idea that society should not penalise individuals after changes in their situation that do not affect others. An impossibility for liberal approaches is highlighted: every social decision rule that satisfies unanimity and a general principle of noninterference must be dictatorial. This raises some important issues for liberal approaches (...) in social choice and political philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of work that we use today does not describe or explain the modern working format. This outdated concept makes it impossible to approach such a solution as universal basic income (UBI). Exploring the pairs of terms that describe the concept of work in several languages, we discover two distinct semantic levels of the concept of work — the toi ling and the creating concepts. The phenomenon of work occurs in two areas and on two levels — as a (...) life process and as a social process, on the mental and physical levels. The anthropological work concept by Arendt is unsuitable because it is not complete for modern comprehension of working. In contrast, I will develop a new concept of work as creating that contains all the necessary components of work, allowing me to include the freedom concept into work and eliminate the labor suffering from the concept of work. This revised concept of work is more suitable for describing intellectual work, making it possible to consider work as a basic human need. Hence, work is no longer a mere trait of animal laborans but a means to attain fun, satisfaction, and autonomy. (shrink)

Distributive justice is the paradigmatic philosophical position regarding matters of contemporary justice. Distributive justice often focuses on issues of resource allocation and/or welfare allocation. In this essay I argue that this paradigm has ‘the cart before the horse’ because issues of productive justice—logically and normatively—are of antecedent concern. The way in which people work, and the nature of the productive workplace, conditions the conceptual and concrete possibilities of obtaining distributive justice, thus productive justice is of antecedent concern for realizing justice (...) overall. Contra Rawls, it is productive justice which in the ‘first instance’ ought to provide ‘a conception of social justice’. But even if this claim is hasty, it remains the case that distributive justice theorists have not allowed productive justice into their considered judgments and thus are operating with something short of serious reflective equilibrium. Productive justice therefore deserves unprecedented analysis and philosophical consideration. (shrink)

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios (...) literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being. [Can be freely read by clicking the ReadCube link below.]. (shrink)

The case for reparations for grievous acts of historical injustice has been getting a lot of attention lately. But I aim to broaden the discussion in two ways. First, I am not only going to talk about reparations as a means of rectifying the injuries inflicted by slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of their land, and the ongoing ripple effects of these historic wrongs. I am also going to talk about reparations for a wider variety of (...) historical injustices, including, most importantly, the long-term economic oppression of women, and the historical exploitation of labor. Second, I am not going to base my argument on the principle of equality, as most people currently do, but on the principle of liberty, as it is understood by libertarians on both the right and the left, at least as long as they believe what they say they believe. Not because I think that egalitarian demands for reparations are wrong. Rather, my point is that the principle of liberty, which is often raised as a defense to claims based on the principle of equality, actually leads to exactly the same place. Finally, I will discuss one possible form of reparations that has largely been ignored, but which has a special connection to libertarian principles, and I will show how it can provide some real relief without provoking the opposition that society-wide redistributive remedies usually face. (shrink)

We examine the role of need satisfaction in non-comparative justice ratings about endowments with goods. As normative approaches, we discuss utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. Using a vignette experiment, we show that a need context increases the prevalence of prioritarianistic and sufficientarianistic justice ratings, which leads to an ethically problematic sigmoid shape of the justice evaluation function.

Scholastics were a group of Christian theologians mainly active in Europe during the 12th to 17th centuries. One of the notable teachings in scholastic literature is the theory of just price, which can be considered one of the most frequent theories in the history of economic ideas. This study tries to reassess the theory of just price in the economic thought of scholastic thinkers by referring to classical scholastic texts, through which it examines the general experiences of scholastic theology in (...) confrontation with economic phenomena. For this purpose, the theory of just price is examined from the roots of its formation in scholastic practical wisdom to its most superficial form as an economic institution. Through this investigation, the question of how theology can play a role in its practical field, up to the most superficial economic institutions can be answered. The results of this study show that scholastic thinkers in the theoretical field of practical theology had significant achievements in promoting theology through their writings and teachings in schools. In its practical field, they tried to implement theology in the human foundations of society by building various divine institutions such as a just price. In this regard, the theory of dual human happiness in scholastic theology has significantly impacted the formation of economic issues as part of scholastic practical wisdom. Despite these achievements, their thought is wanting from two aspects: (1) systematic lack of understanding of modern phenomena such as capitalism and (2) no effort to implement their teachings in the social and economic construction of society. -/- . (shrink)

It is widely accepted among political philosophers that distributive justice should be promoted by the state. This essay challenges this presumption by making two key claims. First, the state is not the only possible mechanism for attaining distributive justice. We could rely alternatively on the voluntary efforts and interactions of individuals and associations in civil society. The question of what mechanism we should rely on is a comparative and empirical one. What matters is which mechanism better promotes distributive justice. We (...) cannot settle the question a priori in favor of the state. Second, several considerations suggest a presumption in favor of relying on civil society. (shrink)

People benefit from activities such as heating a home, flying a plane, or eating cheese. Given current technology, greenhouse gas emissions are a side effect of these activities. These emissions cause harmful climate change over the coming decades and centuries. An effort must therefore be made to limit them. This presents us with large-scale and novel issues of justice with two questions at the core. First, a question of intergenerational justice: How much effort does the present generation have to make (...) to protect future generations from dangerous climate change? And second, a question of intragenerational justice: How must the effort to address climate change be distributed? As far as intergenerational justice is concerned, a minimal principle requires that the human rights of future generations are fulfilled. The fact that there is large scientific uncertainty about how precisely present actions affect future generations means that this translates into significant duties for the present generation. As far as intragenerational justice is concerned, a whole range of principles for the distribution of the various climate-related benefits and burdens have been proposed. The Polluter Pays Principle and the Ability to Pay Principle stand out as particularly plausible. Whatever principles are correct, there is also the question of implementation given that current political institutions – with their short-termist and national focus – are not well adapted to the intergenerational and global dimension of climate change. (shrink)

The Dominican Pedro de Ledesma was educated at the University of Salamanca, where he became a professor. He is considered one of the last members of the famous School of Salamanca. This work studies his contribution to economic thought as regards tax doctrine. In Ledesma’s thought almost a century of moral reflections developed by the Salamanca professors (such as Vitoria, Azpilcueta, Soto…) crystallises, who were echoed by other Spanish authors. Ledesma recapitulates this reflection by providing his personal point of view (...) on the subject in a historical period in which the Spanish influence had reached global dimensions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Studies on development and fairness judgments in resource allocations have mainly addressed the distribution of reward. However, the distribution of responsibility also requires exploration in the context of research on development and distributive justice. For an integrated understanding of reward and responsibility distributions, we briefly reviewed the studies on children’s fairness judgments in reward and responsibility distributions. We then discussed the theoretical basis and methodological framework to further our understanding. After reviewing a study which considered both reward and responsibility (...) distributions in the same experiment, we also discussed the questions to be solved to understand children’s fairness judgments in both types of distributions. Individual developmental process of fairness judgments, (in)consistency of judgments in reward and responsibility distributions, and generous judgments in allocations were discussed by referring to theoretical discussions of culture and reciprocity. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the non-reciprocity problem does not apply to intergenerational justice. Future generations impact, here and now, on the well-being of people now living. I firstly illustrate the economic-synchronic model of direct intergenerational reciprocity (DIR): future generations allow people now living to maintain the economic system future-oriented and capital-preserving. The rational choice for people now living is to guarantee transgenerational sufficiency to future generations. I then analyse the axiological-synchronic model of DIR: future generations give meaning and (...) value to many of the activities that people now living carry out, and this is a compelling reason for the latter to worry about the former. I argue that only the economic-synchronic model of DIR can consistently explain why we need future generations. I conclude by discussing the limits of indirect intergenerational reciprocity. (shrink)

Highlighting a progression of exercises, this paper develops a pedagogical model aimed at giving students tools to deliberate about justice from within the Original Position and to debate the broader goals and limitations of justice as fairness. The approach focuses on the idea of a “distribution” of primary goods without relying on caricatures or being intimidated by the more technical features of the presentation. The series of exercises shows students how to move from more intuitive to less intuitive deliberative situations—a (...) move that depends on seeing a just distribution as a product of a pure procedure. In particular, the exercises show the importance of distinguishing carefully between a distribution and an allocation of goods. Finally, it suggests ways in which we may use the theory to engage with our own distributive practices in democratic societies by focusing on the moral significance of persons as equals. (shrink)

Modern Monetary Theory and Distributive Justice shows how the macroeconomic framework called modern money theory (MMT) is relevant to the field of political philosophy called distributive justice. Many of the macroeconomic assumptions of distributive justice are unstated and unexamined. The framework of MMT illuminates these assumptions and provides an alternative vision of distributive justice analysis and prescriptions. In particular, MMT holds that modern money is a nominal state issued token (fiat), there is a distinction between nominal assets and real assets, (...) that state money as a nominal token can cause changes in real terms, and that the macroeconomy has historically not operated at capacity. The upshot of these assumptions held by MMT is that state spending can bring about changes in persons’ well-being without traditional redistributive measures via taxation. This is in contradistinction to standard assumptions in the distributive justice literature, which holds that the macroeconomy is at capacity and, thus, redistribution is the necessary mechanism for enacting improvements in well-being. This is a fundamental shift in how distributive justice can be conceived. (shrink)

L’accident nucléaire de Fukushima a engendré une série de problèmes nouveaux. Comme il s’agissait d’une responsabilité stricte, les victimes n’ont pas eu à prouver la négligence mais ils ont entamé une action pour obtenir davantage de dédommagements pour atteinte morale. Ceci conduit à poser la question de la culpabilité pour négligence et stricte responsabilité. Je propose de ne pas entendre culpabilité au sens moral mais d’y voir une déviation par rapport à la norme. Plus grande sera la déviation, plus grande (...) la culpabilité, sans se soucier de ce qui a entraîné la responsabilité. Quant aux dommages, lesquels peuvent être compensés et lesquels ne le peuvent pas, voilà la question. Il était important de trouver des critères pour étayer cette décision et de les justifier. Pour cela, il faut étudier la structure de la responsabilité pour faute (négligence aussi bien que stricte responsabilité) et voir comment les principes fondamentaux de la justice distributive et de la justice commutative s’appliquent à cette structure. (shrink)

Decision-makers increasingly invoke equity to motivate, design, implement, and evaluate strategies for managing flood risks. But there is no objective definition of equity. This pluralistic setting calls for transparency about underlying values, but this practice is uncommon. Here, we review how equity is measured by surveying peer-reviewed publications that explicitly state an interest in equity in the context of flood-risk management. We develop a simple taxonomy for how transparent measurements can be defined. We map reviewed measurements to this taxonomy. Finally, (...) we offer guidance on how the pursuit of a clear and consistent quantitative evidence base about equity can become more widespread in flood-risk research and beyond. (shrink)

In Anarchy, State and Utopia Robert Nozick criticizes a broad range of theories of distributive justice using a thought experiment that involves the financial incentives for playing basketball. In this paper, I defend the so-called “patterning” conceptions of justice that are the targets of Nozick’s “Wilt Chamberlain” argument, via the development of an extended analogy between the distribution of politically relevant resources and the playing of games, as this latter activity is characterized by Bernard Suits in his influential book on (...) the subject, The Grasshopper. I argue that the plausibility of this analogy makes possible a more decisive refutation of Nozick’s argument than those suggested by Thomas Nagel and G.A. Cohen. I also briefly speculate about the implications of my game analogy for how philosophers should think about particular types of economic utopianism, especially those that involve conjectures about what human life would be like in a post-scarcity environment. (shrink)

Ideal carbon tax policy is internationally coordinated, fully internalizes externalities, redistributes revenues to those harmed, and is politically acceptable, generating predictable market signals. Since nonideal circumstances rarely allow all these conditions to be met, moral issues arise. This paper surveys some of the work in moral philosophy responding to several of these issues. First, it discusses the moral drivers for estimates of the social cost of carbon. Second, it explains how national self-interest can block climate action and suggests international policies—carbon (...) border tax adjustments and carbon clubs—that can help address these concerns. Third, it introduces some of the social science literature about the political acceptability of carbon taxes before addressing a couple common public concerns about carbon taxes. Finally, it introduces four carbon revenue usage options, arguing that redistributive and climate compensation measures are most morally justified. [Open access]. (shrink)

Highlighting a progression of exercises, this paper develops a pedagogical model aimed at giving students tools to deliberate about justice from within the Original Position and to debate the broader goals and limita- tions of justice as fairness. The approach focuses on the idea of a “distribu- tion” of primary goods without relying on caricatures or being intimidated by the more technical features of the presentation. The series of exercises shows students how to move from more intuitive to less intuitive (...) deliberative situations—a move that depends on seeing a just distribution as a product of a pure procedure. In particular, the exercises show the importance of distinguishing carefully between a distribution and an allocation of goods. Finally, it suggests ways in which we may use the theory to engage with our own distributive practices in democratic societies by focusing on the moral significance of persons as equals. (shrink)

Joseph Heath sometimes plays the role of a gadfly in climate and environmental ethics. He often defends conventional, economics-focused claims which rub many philosophers the wrong way—claims that are at the heart of issues raised in these pages, claims such as that discounting is justifiable, growth is good, or cost-benefit analysis is appropriate in liberal democracies. I think we can all agree that sophisticated defences of conventional positions play an important part in the ecosystem. For philosophers, a gadfly can challenge (...) entrenched conceptions. If we agree that these goals are worthwhile, then this book serves as a useful summary and synthesis of the ways Heath has ably defended conventional claims about climate policy. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

Public goods are goods that are non-rival and non-excludable. One person enjoying the benefits of a public good will not reduce the value of the good for others. And nobody within a particular population can be excluded from enjoying those benefits. While we often think of the relevant population being co-citizens of a state - national defence is taken to be the archetypal public good - in recent years the importance of public goods that benefit individuals across different countries has (...) increasingly been recognised. We can refer to these as "global public goods". When global public goods are supplied, various costs and benefits are generated, and these costs and benefits can be shared among countries in different ways. This thesis explores how justice requires us to share them; I develop a theory of distributive justice for global public goods. I begin by developing two principles for assigning the costs and benefits of supplying public goods within a state, and then argue that these should, for the most part, also govern the distribution of costs and benefits arising from global public good production. Finally, I assess how certain private goods that the supply of public goods make possible should be shared among states. The fact that these goods rely for their production on the supply of global public goods, I argue, will affect the principles of distributive justice that should govern these. (shrink)

Only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. That fact, I suggest, bears on the morality of abortion. To illustrate and explain this point, I frame my discussion around Judith Jarvis Thomson's classic defense of abortion and Gina Schouten's recent feminist challenge to Thomson's defense. Thomson argued that, even assuming that fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, abortions are typically morally permissible. According to Schouten's feminist challenge to Thomson, however, if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, then abortions are (...) typically morally impermissible because there is a collective moral obligation to care for the vulnerable. The consideration that is my topic, however, poses a problem for that feminist challenge to Thomson. There is reason to believe, I argue, that it is unfair that only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. And, if that is unfair, it would undermine that feminist challenge to Thomson. I show, in other words, that there is a plausible and well‐motivated basis for believing that, even if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons and there is a collective obligation to care for the vulnerable, then abortions are nevertheless typically morally permissible. That is how fairness bears on the morality of abortion. (shrink)

Land-based climate mitigation schemes such as REDD+ imply the creation of ‘rights to carbon’ for actions that enhance carbon sinks. In many cases, the legal and normative foundations of such rights are unclear. This article focuses on special rights on the basis of improvement. Considering improvement in relation to carbon sinks requires asking what it means to ‘improve’ an environmental resource. Our answer departs in two significant respects from the standard conception of improvement, namely by reconceiving action in relation to (...) ecosystem services, and accordingly, making the case for a counterfactual baseline to be used to compare an improved and unimproved state. Our modifications potentially allow for a variety of agents to claim special carbon rights on the basis of beneficial interactions with land-based carbon sinks. We give three archetypical examples of agents who may claim pro tanto special rights to carbon based on their interaction with carbon sinks. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, complexity theory, which is designed to deal with systems of multiple interdependent variables, has been increasingly applied to analyse and shed light on various aspects of education. So far, however, complexity theory has rarely been used, if at all, to examine questions related to educational justice. This article offers a theoretical examination of some possible links between complexity theory and distributive justice in education. It asks how accepting the premise that education is a complex dynamic (...) system should shape the way distributive justice in education is conceptualized and approached. It is argued that complexity theory challenges many assumptions on which the dominant approach for dealing with distributive justice in education rests. The article focuses on three subjects that stem from complexity theory but have implications for dealing with distributive justice in education: system diversity, reductionism, and change. Each of these subjects is examined separately, and some possible contributions of complexity theory to illuminating these subjects in relation to distributive justice in education are discussed. The article ends with a brief illustration of where a complexity-based approach to educational justice leads that focuses on school choice and contrasts it with Brighouse's views on this issue. (shrink)

Ethics for Capitalists offers an accessible, comprehensive statement of the Market Failures Approach to business ethics. While the competitive context of the market economy provides economic actors greater freedom to pursue their interests, it also imposes moral constraints on the range of strategies they may employ. The pursuit of profit must be consistent with the overall objective of market institutions, which is to promote efficiency in the production and allocation of goods and services. Ethics for Capitalists draws out the implications (...) of this view for business strategy, corporate governance, managerial authority, and shareholder primacy. (shrink)

Recent philosophical accounts of discrimination face challenges in accommodating robust intuitions about the particular way in which it is wrongful—most prominently, the intuition that discriminatory actions intrinsically violate equality irrespective of their contingent consequences. The paper suggests that we understand the normative structure of discrimination in a way that is different from the one implicitly assumed by these accounts. It argues that core discriminatory wrongs—such as segregation in Apartheid South Africa—divide into two types, corresponding to violations of relational and distributive (...) equality; and that a pluralistic view of the internal structure of each type should be adopted. This normative structure serves to appropriately vindicate the mentioned intuitions; it also contributes to clarifying the normative underpinnings of legal concepts associated with discrimination (including the distinctions between direct and indirect, or ‘disparate treatment/impact’ discrimination, and intentional vs. unintentional discrimination), and developing a more productive public discourse around allegations of discrimination. (shrink)