The absolutist status Mill assigns to his liberty principle (LP) is incompatible with standard utilitarian maximizing reasoning. But LP is compatible with his non-standard utilitarianism, whose extraordinary structure is clarified using a “consequentializing” lens. This involves enlarging outcomes to include not only the downstream consequences of self-regarding actions but also the actions themselves and the agent’s liberty of choosing them using his own agent-relative evaluation criteria. Self-regarding liberty is protected by indefeasible moral right and, according to the higher pleasures doctrine, the moral sentiment of justice has a pleasant quality that is infinitely superior in value as pleasure to any conflicting kinds of pleasure. Infinitesimal value attaches to any pleasures enjoyed by those who wrongfully interfere to compel competent but foolish or reckless agents to take self-regarding actions with the most expedient consequences. Absolute weight is thereby consistently given to LP over all competing considerations in the course of maximizing general happiness in point of quantity and quality.

John Stuart Mill does not contradict himself in On Liberty with respect to the issue of piecework, contrary to Dale E. Miller's charge that he does. Miller fails to understand that the liberty principle (LP) limits society's authority to regulate trade in that society has no legitimate authority to prohibit or make unduly expensive a buyer's post-trade use of his purchased product in self-regarding ways. LP gives an employer who has purchased labor under a trade contract in a free and fair competitive labor market a right to conclude a separate mutually consensual self-regarding piecework contract with any skilled worker already in his employ.

This review article provides the state-of-art research and developments of the rectenna device and its two main components – the antenna and the rectifier. Furthermore, the history, efficiency trends, and socioeconomic impact of its research are also featured.

The rectenna (RECTifying antENNA), which was first demonstrated by William C. Brown in 1964 as a receiver for microwave power transmission, is now increasingly researched as a means of harvesting solar radiation. Tapping into the growing photovoltaic market, the attraction of the rectenna concept is the potential for devices that, in theory, are not limited in efficiency by the Shockley–Queisser limit. In this review, the history and operation of this 40-year old device concept are explored in the context of power transmission and the ever increasing interest in its potential applications at terahertz frequencies, through the infrared and visible spectra. Recent modeling approaches that have predicted controversially high efficiency values at these frequencies are critically examined. It is proposed that to unlock any of the promised potential in the solar rectenna concept, there is a need for each constituent part to be improved beyond the current best performance, with the existing nanometer scale antennas, the rectification and the impedance matching solutions all falling short of the necessary efficiencies at terahertz frequencies. Advances in the fabrication, characterization, and understanding of the antenna and the rectifier are reviewed, and common solar rectenna design approaches are summarized. Finally, the socioeconomic impact of success in this field is discussed and future work is proposed.

III-V on Si multijunction solar cells represent an alternative to traditional compound III-V multijunction cells as a promising way to achieve high efficiencies. A theoretical study on the energy yield of GaAs/Si tandem solar cells is performed to assess the performance potential and sensitivity to spectral variations. Recorded time-dependent spectral irradiance data in two locations (Singapore and Denver) were used. We found that a 4-terminal contact scheme with thick top cell confers distinctive advantages over a 2-terminal scheme, giving a yield potential 21% higher than the 2-terminal scheme in Singapore and 17% higher in Denver. The theoretical energy yield benefit of a 4-terminal device emphasizes the need for further technology development in this design space.

I continue my argument that Millian qualitative superiorities are infinite superiorities: one pleasant feeling, or type of pleasant feeling, is qualitatively superior to another in Mill's sense if and only if even a bit of the superior is more pleasant (and thus more valuable) than any finite quantity of the inferior, however large. This gives rise to a hierarchy of higher and lower pleasures such that a reasonable hedonist always refuses to sacrifice a higher for a lower irrespective of the finite amounts of each. Some indication of why this absolute refusal may be reasonable is provided in the course of outlining the content of the Millian hierarchy. It emerges that Mill's hedonistic utilitarianism has an extraordinary structure because it gives absolute priority over competing considerations to a code of justice that distributes equal rights and correlative duties for all. His utilitarianism also recognizes that certain aesthetic and spiritual pleasures may be qualitatively superior even to the pleasant feeling of security associated with the moral sentiment of justice. Thus, for instance, a noble individual may reasonably choose to waive his own rights so as to perform beautiful supererogatory actions that provide great benefits for others at the sacrifice of the right-holder's own vital interests.

Geoffrey Scarre has recently argued that the version of qualitative hedonism which I attribute to Mill is unsatisfactory for various reasons. In his view, even if it is formally compatible with value monism, ‘the Mill/Riley line’ involves non-hedonistic elements and offers an implausible account of the relationship between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures. In this paper, I show that his objections, which are similar in spirit to those pressed earlier by Bradley, Moore and others against Mill, are unfounded where not confused. The Mill/Riley line does not rely on non-hedonistic standards and has sufficient flexibility to account for many different kinds of pleasures and pleasing activities. It remains a coherent version of qualitative hedonism, worthy of further consideration and study.

John Stuart Mill argued, in his Principles of Political Economy (1848, 7th edn., 1871), that existing laws and customs of private property ought to be reformed to promote a far more egalitarian form of capitalism than hitherto observed anywhere. He went on to suggest that such an ideal capitalism might evolve spontaneously into a decentralized socialism involving a market system of competing worker co-operatives. That possibility of market socialism emerged only as the working classes gradually developed the intellectual and moral qualities required for worker co-operatives to succeed against private firms. Workers would tend to reject the hierarchical wage relation as they developed the requisite personal qualities, he believed, and capitalists, facing escalating wages for skilled labour as a result of the diminishing supply of high-quality workers for hire, would tend to lend their capital to the worker co-operatives ‘at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to exchange their capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such mode’, he speculated, ‘the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who participate in their productive employment: a transformation which, thus effected, (and assuming of course that both sexes participate equally in the rights and in the government of the association) would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good, which it is possible at present to foresee.’