A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Category: Economics

Democracy / Distribution / Economics / Rights

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Can Someone Be Too Rich?

In this post, Dick Timmer discusses their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on why we should limit people’s wealth.

How we think about wealth has a profound impact on the world in which we live. Some years ago, philosopher Ingrid Robeyns proposed a new perspective on wealth, which she dubbed limitarianism. Robeyns argues that once people can live a fully flourishing life, additional wealth lacks moral value for the holder because it does not contribute their flourishing. And because such wealth threatens political equality, leaves many people’s urgent needs unmet, and could be used to address the current climate crisis, such wealth should be redistributed.

In my paper, I defend a version of this view. I argue that there are good political and ethical reasons to prevent people from having more than a certain amount of wealth. Above some point, wealth has little if any value for the holder, yet it could have huge value if redistributed.

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Animals / Children / Climate / Democracy / Distribution / Economics / Education / Gender / General / Liberty / Migration / Moral values / Punishment / Rights / War / Work

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Introducing Political Philosophy with Public Policy

What is a good way to learn about political philosophy? Plausibly there is a variety of reasonable answers to this question, depending on what and why one wants to know about the subject, and it is some testament to this that there are excellent introductions that focus on the issues, concepts, and key thinkers in the field.

In our recent book – Introducing Political Philosophy: A Policy-Driven Approach – Will Abel, Elizabeth Kahn, Tom Parr, and I offer an approach that focuses on introducing the subject through the lens of public policy.

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Children / Climate / Democracy / Distribution / Duties / Economics / General / Governance / Health / International / Liberty / Public Philosophy

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Political Philosophy in a Pandemic (Book Announcement)

We have some exciting news to share: the first ever Justice Everywhere book is on its way. Entitled Political Philosophy in a Pandemic: Routes to a More Just Future, it will be published in  print in September by Bloomsbury Academic (pre-order here). We are hoping that the e-book version will be out in the summer. Edited by Fay Niker and Aveek Bhattacharya, two of the convenors of the blog, the idea for the book developed out of the ‘Philosophers’ Rundown on the Coronavirus Crisis’ that we published here in April last year.

Political Philosophy in a Pandemic contains 20 essays on the moral and political implications of COVID-19 and the way governments have responded to it, arranged around five themes: social welfare, economic justice, democratic relations, speech and misinformation and the relationship between justice and crisis. Almost all of the contributors have featured on Justice Everywhere in recent years in form or another, either as authors or interviewees. (more…)

Distribution / Economics / Governance / Health

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The Political Power of Food as Medicine

What is the inter-relationship between food and medicine? At various points in history, such as in the Byzantine empire, food and medicine were seen as almost the same thing. The basic idea was that medicine and food both performed the same function of balancing bodily humors. In contemporary countries, such as the US, many people are aware that food has a significant impact on health. But, I think that it’s fair to say, food and medicine are increasingly construed as very different things. Crudely speaking, medicine is a public good that requires great scientific expertise; food is a private affair that depends on different people’s cultures, whims, and private financial resources.

I want to discuss a new policy development that raises questions about what the inter-relationship between food and medicine could and should be. This policy development has largely been overlooked by philosophers. But, I will argue, it raises interesting theoretical questions about the framing of public policies, feasibility, and justice. (more…)

Distribution / Economics / Work

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Should Uber Become a Worker Cooperative?

Uber Eats worker – Pixabay License

The rapid growth of the ‘sharing’ or ‘platform’ economy, with the rise of well-known brands such as Zipcar, Uber, Airbnb, or CouchSurfing, has generated enthusiasm and concerns about precarious work. In my new article in the Journal of Social Philosophy, I investigate, from a broadly liberal egalitarian perspective, how public administrations should regulate these new kinds of economic organizations in a way that respects principles of justice and maximizes the prospects of the least advantaged. In particular, I argue that preventing unfair inequalities could require changing the kind of organizations running these platforms. (more…)

Distribution / Duties / Economics / General / Public Philosophy

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Who should pay the costs of pandemic lockdowns?  

the costs of pandemic lockdowns should be disproportionately covered by a narrower group, consisting of those individuals and businesses who have already acquired vast amounts of economic resources and have substantially prospered as a consequence of the pandemic lockdowns

 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to play a central role in the lives of many people around the world. While initial governmental responses to the pandemic were often forceful, with lockdowns that lasted for several weeks or even months being widely introduced in March and early April, there seems to be little political appetite for renewed lockdowns of the same scale. Even so, several European countries have once again imposed lockdowns in the past few weeks, following a swift rise in cases starting in late-September. (more…)

Academia / Distribution / Economics / Gender / General / Rights

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“Level playing fields”: a misguided complaint about discrimination against well-off women

This is the third, and last, of a series of three posts about gender justice and conflicts of interest between women who belong to different classes. In the first post I argued that priority should be given to the worse off women: When a particular policy (which is otherwise justified) would benefit poor, or working class, women, there is a strong presumption in favour of that policy even if it would, at the same time, set back the interests of better off women. Many care-supporting policies are like this: The very mechanism that makes them work in favour of those women from low socio-economicbackgrounds who are saddled with care duties leads to the reinforcement of statistical discrimination and other biases against professional women. (more…)

Animals / Children / Climate / Democracy / Economics / Gender / International / Migration / Punishment / War

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From the Vault: Journal of Applied Philosophy

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2019-2020 season. This post focuses on the launch of our collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

In 2019-20, Justice Everywhere began a collaboration with the Journal of Applied Philosophy. The journal is a unique forum that publishes philosophical analysis of problems of practical concern, and several of its authors post accessible summaries of their work on Justice Everywhere. These posts draw on diverse theoretical viewpoints and bring them to bear on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from the environment and immigration to economics, parenting, and punishment.

For a full list of these posts, visit the journal’s author page. For a flavour of the range, you might read:

Stay tuned for even more from this collaboration in our 2020-21 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing on 7th September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to contribute a guest post on a topical subject in political philosophy (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Distribution / Economics / Rights / Technology / Work

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Intellectual Property and the Problem of Disruptive Innovations

In this post, Sam Duncan discusses his recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the rights and duties of intellectual property.

Intellectual property is perhaps the most valuable form of property in the modern economy, and many recently minted multimillionaires and billionaires owe their fortunes to some sort of intellectual property claim. But why think that the creators of intellectual property deserve such outsized rewards? The most obvious answer seems to be to invoke some kind of Lockean or labor-based theory of intellectual property, which are usually taken to grant strong property rights to intellectual property with few obligations. However, as I argue in my recent article, these theories actually entail that those who claim many forms of intellectual property have very strong obligations to those made worse off by them. In fact, they would rule popular solutions to the job losses that many forms of intellectual property bring about, such as the universal basic income, to be entirely inadequate.

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Distribution / Economics / Gender / General / Rights

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Feminism and the top end of the payscale

Class is a deep dividing line in feminism for two, mutually compatible, reasons: One is about the strategic use of limited time and energy in the feminist movement. The interests of poor and working-class women often diverge from the interests of the more privileged, hence the need to set priorities. This is what my previous post was about.

But the more important reason – captured these days by the agenda of the Feminism for the 99% movement – is that the problems of women who make it to the top are parasitic on a structure of the labour market and schedule of rewards that should not exist in the first place. This second complaint against lean-in feminism (sometimes and, I think, mistakenly, identified as “liberal feminism”) is not merely about misplaced priorities, but about identifying feminism with the gender cosmetisation of deeply unjust existing arrangements. The worry with the upper class feminism is, as Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser put it, that “[i]ts real aim is not equality, but meritocracy. Rather than seeking to abolish social hierarchy, it aims to “diversify” it, “empowering” “talented” women to rise to the top.”
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