39 results
1 - The State of the World
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 1-30
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Summary
THE JUSTICE QUESTION
What do we owe other people? An ancient answer is: their due. This is helpful only to the extent that it can be determined what that due may be. The simple answer advanced in this book is that what is primarily owed to others is to leave them aloneWe say “primarily” because requirements of justice extend in addition to particular performances owed to particular others. For example, to one's children, business partners, clients, students, friends, and lovers, one bears responsibilities that do not extend to people in general.
Exceptional circumstances engender obligations to anonymous others that also go well beyond noninterference. Following an example offered by Peter Singer, suppose that while treating yourself to a recreational walk, you encounter a young child face down in a puddle. You can easily wade in to pull her out; otherwise, she will drown. What should you do? We trust that our readers will not find this an especially challenging dilemma. Not to rescue the child would be wrong; more specifically, it would be to wrong the childYou owe her more than merely leaving her alone, even if the cost to you of rescue is wet toes and ruined shoes. Who would demur from saving a life at so minimal a cost? According to Singer, nearly all of us do. Around the world, there are tens of millions of children (and former children) who, in effect, are face down in smothering waters and cannot help themselves. These are the unfortunate others who live on the edge of exigence, where the absence of food or shelter or health care imperils survival. Minimal aid expenditures by those of us who are comparatively wealthy, alleges Singer, could extricate these people from their various puddles. Yet, for the most part, they are left to drown.
This sort of challenge inclines many theorists to think about the demands of justice as requirements to do something to ease the plight of the less well-off. Because well-being levels differ profoundly across borders, the urgency of aid provision will seem most acute in the domain of global justice. Succeeding pages examine various global-justice theories that take up this strategy. We begin, though, by announcing that this presumption is precisely to misconstrue the issues at stake.
2 - What Do We Owe Distant Others?
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 31-58
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Summary
Before sitting down to write this chapter, one of the authors fortified himself with a freshly brewed tall latte. The cost was a reasonable $3.75 plus tax – reasonable, that is, relative to prices on the American specialty coffee market. From other perspectives, however, the purchase is an extravagance. Over half the world's population subsists on a daily income of less than the cost of that one coffee. That is not how much they spend on food and drink; it is the amount available to spend on everything. Those who have $3.75 per day are fortunate compared with the world's truly poor. The World Bank has established the global poverty line at the equivalent of $US1.25 per day. The number who are accounted poor by this standard is not trivial; more than 1 billion people live at or under this level. It might be more accurate to say instead that they die under this level. All measures of mortality and morbidity are much worse for the global poor than they are for Western latte drinkers. Life expectancy at birth is dramatically lower. In large measure, this is so because the children of the poor die at distressing rates; almost 10 million children under the age of five perish each year. The vast majority of these deaths are unnecessary; the diseases that produce the carnage are almost entirely treatable in societies that possess modern health-care systems. Hunger, dispossession, infirmity, and death: this is the lot of the world's poor.
Only someone slow or callous could fail to reflect in the light of these data that it would be a wonderful boon to the global underclass if only some small fraction of the plenty enjoyed by the world's upper stratum could be used to relieve their misery. The simplest strategy that might seem to bring about this change is a direct transfer from the well-off to the poor. This could be done by governments taxing their citizens, the proceeds going abroad. Alternatively, generous individuals could of their own free will give to those in need. One way or the other, transfer might present itself as a moral imperative. How many cups of Starbucks' coffee is a young life worth? The question may seem to be obscene.
3 - Choosing Wealth, Choosing Poverty
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 59-89
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Summary
Hundreds of millions of people live in desperate conditions of bare subsistence or worse. Hundreds of millions of others enjoy enormous wealth, enormous at least compared to the lot of their unfortunate brethren. That so many are poor is a terrible misfortune. Does it, however, signify an injustice?
An affirmative answer can take either of two forms. First, the inordinate incidence of poverty in Africa, Asia, and the world's other misery spots can be held to be the result of unjust actions that cause the poverty under which so many labor. Second, though, the disparity between rich and poor can be said to constitute an injustice. That is, the fact of wealthy people retaining possession of nearly all their holdings while refusing to transfer more than a pittance to the less-well-off is itself a failure of justice, specifically a failure of distributive justice.
There are many ways to commit acts of injustice, and several of these will be addressed shortly. However, in the burgeoning literature of global justice, it has become common to focus nearly all attention on distributive justice and its absence. One reason for this emphasis is that in canvassing world populations, the most obvious disparity between countries such as the United States and Sweden, on the one hand, and Burkina Faso and Bangladesh, on the other, is that citizens of the former enjoy so many of the goods that make life go well, whereas those in the latter do without. What is good for us and bad for Burkina Faso is, then, how wealth is distributed. Another rationale for the focus on distributive justice is that when wealthy citizens of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are called on to take note of the plight of the world's wretched, the one means by which they are told they can make a difference is to redistribute either privately or through political means to the less-well-off. For the fraternity of moral philosophers, however, the single most compelling reason to focus on issues of distributive justice is the towering example of John Rawls. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues that justice requires society's basic structure to be organized so as maximally to benefit the least-well-off stratum.
7 - States
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 172-215
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Summary
In October 2011, the Libyans, with aid from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), overthrew and killed Muammar Qaddafi, their ruler for more than forty years. Between 1969 and 2011, the world treated the Libyan government in all important respects as the genuine representative of the Libyan people. Under Qaddafi's rule, Libya enjoyed the fundamental powers that international law grants to every state: diplomatic immunities, treaty-making capacity, the right of self-defense, and most important, plenary jurisdiction, that is, the right to enact and enforce laws in its territory. Libya participated normally in regional and global organizations, often in positions of leadership. Qaddafi's envoys were received as proper ambassadors in the United Nations and in foreign capitals. Qaddafi's Libya was, in short, a member in good standing of the international community. This regal treatment continued even after it became obvious that the Libyan regime was responsible for the bombing in 1988 of Pan American Flight 103 that killed more than 200 innocent people. Two staunch antiterrorist Western leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, rejoiced at Qaddafi's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction and welcomed an apparently redeemed Qaddafi to the family of nations. And in 2009, U.S. Senator John McCain (not known for his softness toward dictators) praised Qaddafi for his peace-making efforts in Africa and recommended expanding U.S. relations with Libya.
However, as soon as the rebels grew stronger and popular support for Qaddafi subsided, observers changed their tune: they started using the words “tyrant” and “dictator” to refer to Qaddafi. These words, of course, were as accurate in 2011 as they had been during the forty-two years of Qaddafi's rule. We do not think that it is an exaggeration to say that the Qaddafi regime was a criminal outfit that ruled by sheer force and intimidation. Yet, for more than four decades, outsiders treated this regime with deference and respect. They might not have liked Qaddafi, but they accepted him as the legitimate representative of Libya. What accounts for this phenomenon? Was there anything that justified this presumption of legitimacy of a state that, on any reasonable philosophical account, was (to use St. Augustine's words) no more than a den of thieves? Was there anything about Qaddafi that gave him the right to be obeyed by the Libyans and the right to be treated with respect by foreign dignitaries?
4 - Immigration
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 90-120
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Summary
However else one may choose to evaluate the argument of Chapter 3, it should not be taken as an apologia for rich countries' impositions on the poor. Just the reverse: although it is always and everywhere impermissible to wrong others, all the more so is this the case with inflictions on those already down and out. Duties of special care are owed to those who are most vulnerable, and this surely includes the billion or so people who live under the $1.25 per day poverty line. Saying, “We are not the ones who put them there!” is not an adequate defense. Response to a further question is called for: “Do your policies and actions help to keep them there?” Unfortunately, the answer far too often is yes.
Beyond Rawlsian Global Justice
Traditionally, the search for a theory of justice across borders began with consideration of jus ad bellum, conditions that must be met in order to wage a just war. This is also pretty much where it ended, with a few codicils thrown in concerning reception of diplomatic emissaries, extension of princely courtesies, and fidelity to pacts duly sworn between sovereign entities. Although in Law of Peoples, Rawls' concerns extend beyond those of predecessors such as Grotius and Pufendorf, the genre is the same: duties owed by one state (or in Rawls' preferred locution, people) to another. That is, the parties involved are political collectivities, not the individual citizens of which they are comprised. However one appraises, then, the success of Rawls' account as far as it goes, it is facially incomplete. Along with an appraisal of state-to-state relations, the fuller account of global justice will include actions across borders that involve (1) states acting on private individuals, (2) private individuals acting on private individuals, and (3) private individuals acting on states. Further complicating the taxonomy is existence of entities such as international organizations (the United Nations, the World Trade Organization [WTO], etc.) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which are not sovereign states but neither are they purely voluntary assemblages of private parties. Some NGOs operate mostly to serve the philanthropic and other ends of private parties: Oxfam is an example. Some straddle the public/private divide. It is not our intention to offer a comprehensive global-justice account that fills in each of these boxes.
Frontmatter
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp i-iv
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6 - Trade
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 149-171
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Summary
The thesis we defend in this chapter was well put by a young John Maynard Keynes:
We must hold to Free Trade, in its widest interpretation, as an inflexible dogma, to which no exception is admitted, wherever the decision rests with us. We must hold to this even where we receive no reciprocity of treatment and even in those rare cases where by infringing it we could in fact obtain a direct economic advantage. We should hold to Free Trade as a principle of international morals, and not merely as a doctrine of economic advantage.
This passage underscores two related claims: that trade is widely beneficial at the national and global levels and that tariff barriers unjustly hurt many while unjustly benefiting a few. The argument for trade, like the argument for open borders, is thus overdetermined. It is supported both by sound economics and by commonsense political morality, and it is a crucial staple in a humanitarian policy that seeks to alleviate poverty.
We have argued that justice requires us not to interfere with the pursuit of personal projects. We discussed in Chapter 5 governmental interference with mobility and association. Governments also frequently interfere with voluntary agreements. Justifying such interference is a large topic in political philosophy that we do not fully address here. This chapter addresses one form of governmental interference with contract: the enactment of protectionist laws. These laws assume various forms: tariffs, import licenses, export licenses, import quotas, subsidies, government procurement rules, sanitary rules, voluntary export restraints, local content requirements, national security requirements, and embargoes. All these trade barriers, while different in a number of respects, have this in common: they raise the cost (sometimes prohibitively) of importing goods and services.
We argue that, with very few exceptions, protectionist laws are indefensible on two grounds. First, they are indefensible on principle because they interfere with contracts for no plausible moral reason. Second, protectionist laws have objectionable consequences: they harm persons generally (they cause more harm than good), and they particularly tend to harm the poor. Following a robust consensus in the economic literature, we claim that liberalizing trade would contribute significantly to global and national growth and, mainly for this reason, will help in reducing poverty.
9 - Beyond Justice at a Distance
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 261-278
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The persistent theme of this book is that the first precept of justice toward distant others (not to mention those who are close at hand) is to leave them alone. Much of the misery of the world's downtrodden is attributable to violation of this precept. The lion's share of baleful interference is produced domestically, but wealthy countries are not without their own share of blame for creating avoidable distress. It is not acceptable to block trade activities that cross borders or peaceful mobility by persons who wish to work, study, or reside in a country other than the one whose citizenship they hold. Nor is assistance tendered to foreign despots in service of oppressing their own nationals consistent with respect for rights. We have also insisted that these wrongs to foreign nationals simultaneously violate the rights of nationals. A Michigan employer who is prevented from hiring a willing Mexican national is interfered with in his projects just as much as if he were not allowed to contract with someone from Massachusetts. Trade protectionism harms would-be consumers of goods produced abroad. And so on. These restraints are so drearily familiar that they are not apt to impinge on our consciences with the vivacity of a mugging, yet our policies toward distant others – and toward our own conationals – constitute literally millions of muggings annually.
However, although noninterference is the first precept of justice, there are others. One is compensation for prior violations. For example, a wedding party rained on by errant drone missiles deserves recompense for harms done. This sort of case is clear-cut. More arguable are claims to compensation for historical wrongs such as American slavery or African colonialism. Our view is that these are doubtful for at least two reasons. First and most important, many of those who were the direct victims of these practices have long since passed from the scene, so it is beyond the capacity of any earthly justice to make them whole. Second, the assessment of historical counterfactuals is pervasively conjectural and thus is not capable of strongly supporting claims for compensation. Let us assume that, say, French occupation of Algeria constituted wrongs to the inhabitants of that territory; do contemporary Algerians stand as victims of that episode or perhaps as beneficiaries?
Index
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 279-285
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Justice at a Distance
- Extending Freedom Globally
- Loren E. Lomasky, Fernando R. Tesón
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015
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The current global-justice literature starts from the premise that world poverty is the result of structural injustice mostly attributable to past and present actions of governments and citizens of rich countries. As a result, that literature recommends vast coercive transfers of wealth from rich to poor societies, alongside stronger national and international governance. Justice at a Distance, in contrast, argues that global injustice is largely home-grown and that these native restrictions to freedom lie at the root of poverty and stagnation. The book is the first philosophical work to emphasize free markets in goods, services, and labor as an ethical imperative that allows people to pursue their projects and as the one institutional arrangement capable of alleviating poverty. Supported by a robust economic literature, Justice at a Distance applies the principle of noninterference to the issues of wealth and poverty, immigration, trade, the status of nation-states, war, and aid.
8 - War
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 216-260
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Summary
The Anarchical Society
War is the most terrifying and destructive form of violence. A war of aggression inflicts a great injustice on others; it is a major crime. But not all wars are criminal. Most people believe that a state that is unjustly attacked has the right to defend itself. If these were the only truths about the morality of war, the right to wage war (jus ad bellum) would have a binary structure. A war is either unjustified aggression or justified self-defense; there would be no moral space between the two. This is the traditional view about jus ad bellum, supported, with variations, by most governments and scholars.
In this chapter we argue that the traditional view is too coarse, not granular enough, and that once the rationale for a just war is properly analyzed, it turns out that it is possible to think about wars that are not in defense to aggression but that nonetheless can be just. The issue is extremely thorny because the justice of a particular war will depend not only on the cause but also on its consequences. Even a war fought for a just cause may turn out to be unjust for other reasons – for example, because it brings about the death of many innocent bystanders. This is true even if one accepts the binary traditional view. In lawfully resisting an attack, a state nonetheless may inflict an unacceptable amount of harm. But before addressing these issues, we must see why war has such a special place in international relations.
Each sovereign state establishes the monopoly of force within that state. States have police, courts, and armies, and individual violence is narrowly confined. Sometimes these arrangements fail, and states plunge into anarchy, and often the monopoly of force plunges into oppression. But the ideal role of the state is to protect citizens against one another and to tame violence through the prism of the rule of law, accepted procedures, and constitutional guarantees. The modern state, when it works well, outlaws interpersonal violence by monopolizing force. It prohibits both opportunistic plundering and private retribution while providing means of redress to those wronged by the aggressive behavior of others.
5 - Emigration and the Brain-Drain Objection
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp 121-148
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The brain-drain argument in its purest form maintains that when wealthy countries open their borders, the predictable effect is to induce the brightest and most productive citizens of poor countries to transfer their labor to a location where it will be more personally remunerative. Economies that already enjoy the benefits of ample human capital will be piling up yet more at the expense of those that have precious little. It is not nice to abscond with the widow's mite, but neither is it very neighborly to entice away her daughter, the computer programmer. In the interests of justice, the rich should refrain from acquiring precious personnel from the poor. The brain drain is, on this view, a curse for developing countries because it hurts those left behind. Because human capital is an important determinant of economic growth, the loss of skilled individuals, it is thought, undermines the economic performance of the country. Taking this empirical claim as true, critics deplore the brain drain as unfair and suggest that governments should try to stem it. But are these claims sound?
We argue that they are not. The brain drain is not as harmful as critics believe, and to the extent that it does harm some people, the harm is permissible for two reasons: first, the state does not own its citizens, and second, the right to leave is central to the pursuit of personal projects. Critics of the brain drain make problematic empirical and philosophical claims. The empirical assumption that the brain drain invariably hurts developing countries is controversial. Although a number of authorities endorse the conventional view, a contrarian literature suggests that the brain drain may help those left behind in various ways. We show that the philosophical claims associated with the objection are flawed as well. The claims we reject are as follows: because natural talents are morally arbitrary, those who have them are not entitled to the income those talents generate, and talented persons owe duties of reciprocity or gratitude.
We first examine the facts and summarize various proposals to stem the brain drain. The evidence shows that it is far from clear that the brain drain always, or most of the time, harms those left behind. In general, because the brain drain allocates resources efficiently, it is likely to benefit many people globally, especially the world's poor.
Contents
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp v-viii
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Acknowledgments
- Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia, Fernando R. Tesón, Florida State University
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- Justice at a Distance
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- 05 November 2015
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- 29 September 2015, pp ix-x
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LIBERTY AFTER LEHMAN BROTHERS
- Loren E. Lomasky
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- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 28 / Issue 2 / July 2011
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- 31 May 2011, pp. 135-165
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- July 2011
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The financial Crunch of 2008 was easily explained by both the left and right–too easily. Each insisted that events thoroughly confirmed its own long-held views and utterly refuted those of the opposed camp. This essay argues that there are indeed new lessons to be drawn from the Crunch, lessons that involve balancing the bounty of the Invisible Hand against perils of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Liberal moral imperatives are traced to variables of Personal Choice and External Cost that are typically in tension with each other and thus generate needs for institutional reconstructions that change according to time and circumstance. Personal bankruptcy protection, limited liability corporations, and intellectual property are cited as examples. It is argued that the Crunch occurred because of failure adequately to balance these variables. Three paradoxes came to a head in 2008: Paradox of Efficient Markets; Paradox of Reduced Risk; Paradox of Hard-won Knowledge. The essay concludes with suggestions concerning specific lessons to be drawn from the Crunch and a corresponding list of lessons not to be drawn.
Contract, Covenant, Constitution
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- By Loren E. Lomasky, University of Virginia
- Edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Fred D. Miller, Jr, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Jeffrey Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
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- What Should Constitutions Do?
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- 05 June 2012
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- 31 January 2011, pp 50-71
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INTRODUCTION
The authority that states claim for themselves is so sweeping and unaccommodating to challengers that, absent a compelling justificatory account, it verges on despotism. An imaginative story offering a less heavy-handed representation of the state will, therefore, be welcome. In the liberal tradition, the protagonist of that story has usually been social contract. There are, of course, numerous variations on the contract narrative, but in each the state is deemed to be not the master but rather the creation of individual citizens. More precisely, to the extent that the state does exercise mastery, it does so in virtue of a status freely conferred on it by those over whom rule is exercised.
The social contract story yields several morals. First, it implies that private citizens are not the mere chattels of their rulers; they are not slaves or unemancipated minors or inferiors by nature. Rather, they are self-determining agents who have exited the state of nature and formed a civil order through an exercise of their own wills. Second, the state is in the service of its citizens. It owes them those performances for the sake of which it was created. Third, the bounds of obedience are not without limit. Should the regime fail to uphold the terms of the social contract, it can justifiably be cashiered. Running through the narrative, then, is a commitment to the dignity of ordinary human beings.
CONTRACT, COVENANT, CONSTITUTION
- Loren E. Lomasky
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- Journal:
- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 28 / Issue 1 / January 2011
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- 30 November 2010, pp. 50-71
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- January 2011
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Contract is the dominant model for political philosophy's understanding of government grounded on the consent of the governed. However, there are at least five disabilities attached to classical social contract theory: (1) the grounding contract never actually occurred; (2) its provisions are vague and contestable; (3) the stringency of the obligation thereby established is dubious; (4) trans-generational consent is questionable; (5) interpretive methods for giving effect to the contract are ill-specified. By contrast, the biblical story of the covenant Israel embraces at Sinai is shown to be more adequately attentive to each of these five desiderata. The essay then focuses on the U.S. Constitution, arguing that in many ways it is more reflective of covenantal legitimating themes than those of social contract. The result is a promisingly different mode of understanding government by the consent of the governed.
A Plural Theory of Property - Stephen R. Munzer: A Theory of Property. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. x, 491. $55.00.)
- Loren E. Lomasky
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- The Review of Politics / Volume 54 / Issue 3 / Summer 1992
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- 05 August 2009, pp. 497-500
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The Logic of Electoral Preference: Response to Saraydar and Hudelson
- Geoffrey Brennan, Loren E. Lomasky
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- Economics & Philosophy / Volume 3 / Issue 1 / April 1987
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- 05 December 2008, pp. 131-138
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How may we best understand the motivational structure that stands behind individuals' acts of voting? In “The Impartial Spectator Goes to Washington” we suggested that expressive concerns swamp narrowly consequential motivations, in contradistinction to normal market transactions in which the priority is reversed. A striking consequence of this fact is that individuals will be led to vote for outcomes that they would reject were they in a position to act decisively. In this regard we found the moral psychology Adam Smith develops in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) (and, to a lesser extent, in The Wealth of Nations) remarkably fecund in suggesting alternatives to what we call the standard theory of electoral behavior.
THE PARADOX OF ASSOCIATION
- Loren E. Lomasky
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- Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 25 / Issue 2 / July 2008
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- 02 June 2008, pp. 182-200
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- July 2008
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Individuals care deeply about with whom they associate and on what terms. A liberty to avoid entanglement in the disfavored designs of others is counterposed by an entitlement not to be excluded from valued modes of activity. These interests generate not one but two freedoms of association, the former negative and the latter positive. Often they conflict. This essay begins by setting out several respects in which negative free association is crucial to a liberal order and then examines several pleas for positive association, at least one of which is judged to be compelling. Because the two freedoms of association are in conspicuous tension, the essay concludes with strategies for reconciling their competing claims.