I’ve been planning to write something here on the arguments around lowering the voting age, for a few months now. Then Nicolas Brando beat me to it, in a very clearly argued post setting out the main positions last month. I highly recommend Nicolas’ post, which provides an excellent overview of the debate. I’m going to try to avoid covering the same ground by approaching the question from a slightly different angle.
In 2017, US-scientists succeeded in transferring lamb foetuses to what comes very close to an artificial womb: a “biobag”. All of the lambs emerged from the biobag healthy. The scientists believe that about two years from now it will be possible to transfer preterm human babies to an artificial womb, in which they have greater chances to survive and develop without a handicap than in current neonatal intensive care. At this point in time, developers of the technology, such as Guid Oei, gynaecologist and professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, see the technology as a possible solution to the problem of neonatal mortality and disability due to preterm birth. They do not envisage uses of it that go far beyond that. Philosophers and ethicists, however, have started thinking about the use of artificial womb technology for very different purposes, such as being able to terminate a risky pregnancy without having to kill the foetus, or strengthening the freedom of women. If we consider such further going uses, new ethical issues arise, including whether artificial womb technology could promote gender justice. Should we embrace this technology as a means towards greater equality between men and women? (more…)
In many countries, governments impose legal duties on citizens regulating their interactions with unauthorized immigrants. It is for example forbidden to provide them with access to employment, housing or transportation, and even sometimes to merely assist them in some way. In France, for example, there has been a lasting debate about the so-called “délit de solidarité” (offense of solidarity) – a law forbidding citizens to bring assistance to illegal immigrants.
Are we, citizens of rich countries, under a moral duty to obey or disobey such laws? (more…)
Today – the 22nd of April – hundreds of millions of people across the globe will come together to participate in Earth Day. This is a day dedicated to political action, activism, and engagement, on matters of climate justice, environmental rights, and environmental protection. However, the theme this year – Protect Our Species – raises important questions: Should we be concerned about protecting our species, rather than nonhuman individuals?
Photo by Frans Van Heerden
Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. (C) www.kremlin.ru
The debate on lowering the age of enfranchisement has become a hot topic during the last couple of decades. Countries like Argentina, Austria, Brazil or Scotland, for example, have lowered their voting age to 16. Many others, such as Estonia, Malta or some German Landen, have lowered it for local elections. Arguing for the need to enfranchise 16- and 17-years old seems like a very reasonable claim. Recent research on adolescent brain development has shown that a 16-year-old has the same abilities for cold cognition as any adult. Thus, adolescents are equally equipped to make an informed choice when voting. Why, then, would it be justified to limit their rights as political citizens just because of their age?
I think few would disagree with the arguments in favour of a 16-year-old’s right to vote. But what if we go a bit further, and were to abolish age-thresholds for enfranchisement altogether? Is it such an absurd idea to claim that a 6-year-old should be allowed to vote, as David Runciman argues? What reasons do we have to justify her exclusion? And, what are the reasons for claiming that she should have this right ensured? (more…)
Most moral objections to nudging–the practice of altering choice environments in order to subconsciously steer behavior–have been grounded in the value of personal autonomy. The autonomy of the nudged are claimed to be undermined because the control individuals have over their evaluations, deliberations and decision-making is effectively reduced, if not fully bypassed. More so, nudging seems autonomy-threatening because the architects look to supplant the wills of their targets with their own.
When nudging was first discussed by its main proponents Thaler and Sunstein in their book Nudge in 2008, it was proposed as an innovative supplement to government policy-making. In response, most of the autonomy-related objections focused on the paternalism of governments carrying out the nudging. Surprisingly, few have paid much attention to similar forms of influences in the market setting–behavioral techniques used in advertising, pricing, and other market interactions. I claim the standard autonomy-based objections against nudging raise more worries about current market practices than emerging and prospective policy practices. (more…)
In this post, Joseph Heath responds to three critical engagements with his paper, which have been published over the previous three weeks on Justice Everywhere (and in full in this EJPE symposium).
My central objective in writing this paper (“On the Very Idea of a Just Wage”) was to respond to the reappearance of what Paul Krugman has referred to, somewhat abusively, as a “cockroach idea.” The thing about cockroaches is that, no matter how many times you kill them, they keep coming back. Similarly, there are some ideas that, no matter how many times they may be refuted, nevertheless keep reappearing, or get “rediscovered” by people who consider them fresh insights.
The idea that the marginal productivity of labour represents the “contribution” that an individual worker makes to production is a cockroach idea in this sense. It is something that many people would like to believe, because it implies that the natural tendency of markets will be to set wages at a level that corresponds to an intuitively plausible principle of distributive justice (i.e. “to each according to his or her contribution”). It was, however, intensively debated in the early 20th century and rather decisively rejected. (more…)
Peter Dietsch’s post is the third in our four-part series on “Just Wages.”
There are valuable human activities which require the motive of money-making and the environment of private wealth-ownership for their full fruition. […] But it is not necessary for the stimulation of these activities […] that the game should be played for such high stakes as at present. Much lower stakes will serve the purpose equally well, as soon as the players are accustomed to them. (John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, New York: Harcourt, 1953 [1936], 374)
This quote from John Maynard Keynes suggests that while a capitalist economy requires incentives to function, the magnitude of these incentives is variable. This suggestion puts Keynes at odds with the conventional wisdom in economics today. The latter includes the idea, eloquently presented by Joe Heath in his EJPE article, that there exists a rigid trade-off between economic efficiency and equity: If, as a society, we try to make wages more just, we will necessarily thereby undermine the efficiency of the market.
I shall argue that this conventional wisdom suffers from an important blind spot, which can explain why it overestimates the rigidity of the equity-efficiency trade-off. This blind spot lies in the fact that economists take as given the labour supply preferences of economic agents, rather than treating them as a variable of their analysis. To see why this matters, we need to introduce two concepts: reservation wages and economic rent. (more…)
Peter Boettke, Rosolino Candela, and Kaitlyn Woltz’s post is the second in our four-part series on “Just Wages.” It offers a reassessment of factor pricing and distributive justice.
Does the market generate just wages? This question has plagued the minds of those concerned with justice for centuries (Aquinas, 1485). In his recent (open-access) article, “On the Very Idea of a Just Wage,” Joseph Heath argues that the market does not generate just wages. Instead, he argues that factor pricing is irrelevant to normative issues like distributive justice. Heath argues that market forces will produce efficient wages, but not just wages.
We challenge Heath’s argument, arguing that his conclusion, while not invalid, is misplaced. His critique is of a model of the market and not the market itself. In particular, his critique is of equilibrium models of the market. (more…)
Andrew Lister’s post is the first in our four-part series on “Just Wages,” which will be running this month.
Gregory Mankiw argues that those who are more productive should get a higher income not only as an incentive, but because this income is rightfully theirs (295). In a competitive market, factors of production are paid the value of their marginal product (32), which is the change in output associated with adding an extra unit of that input. Firms hire workers of a given type up to point at which the revenue the firm gains from hiring an additional worker is equal to the cost of that worker. Thus, in competitive equilibrium “each person’s income reflects the value of what he contributed to society’s production of goods and services.” In this way, the theory of “just deserts” gives “a new normative interpretation” to the economic theory of competitive equilibrium (295).
Joe Heath responds that wages in a competitive market aren’t intrinsically fair. Wage-setting is not a unidirectional process from unequal skill and effort to unequal contribution to unequal wages. Where workers of a given skill-level are more abundant, they will be cheaper, and so hired for lower-value tasks, and so less productive even if equally skilled and diligent. The rationale for pricing labour according to supply and demand is that it directs people’s talents to where they can best be used, generating prosperity that can benefit everyone. As Heath says, “[t]he market has one job to do, and it does that job very well [allocating resources efficiently]. Producing ‘just’ wages, however, is not that job” (31). (more…)
