Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market

Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market
Author: Joseph H. Carens
Publisher: Joseph H. Carens
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1981-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226092690

The book argues that by relying on moral incentives it is possible, in principle, to separate the organizational advantages of the market from its distributional disadvantages. In theory, we can imagine a politico-economic system that distributes income equally (or on some other principle) but has all the efficiency characteristics of a capitalist market system. This shows that the market can provide an institutional mechanism for realizing ideals of distributive justice. The book provides a theoretical model of the system, identifying its requirements. It then offers arguments from empirical social science about why the model should work under appropriate conditions.

What Money Can't Buy

What Money Can't Buy
Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1429942584

In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society. Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

Joseph Carens: Between Aliens and Citizens

Joseph Carens: Between Aliens and Citizens
Author: Matthias Hoesch
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030444767

This book offers a critical discussion of Joseph Carens’s main works in migration ethics covering themes such as migration, naturalization, citizenship, culture, religion and economic equality. The volume is published on the occasion of the annual Münster Lectures in Philosophy held by Joseph Carens in the fall of 2018. It documents the intellectual exchange with the well-known philosopher Joseph Carens by offering critical contributions on Carens’s work and commentaries of Carens as a reply to these critical contributions. With his various works on migration ethics, Joseph Carens must be seen as one of the leading academics in the political and ethical discourse of migration in the last years. The topic of migration raises questions not only regarding naturalization and citizenship but also cultural, economic and religious differences between aliens, citizens and persons whose status lies in between and calls for further determination. Such questions gain more and more importance in our globalized world as can be seen for example in the context of the refugee crisis in the European Union and the U.S. The book covers different systematic topics of Carens’s work as can be found in his widely read book “The Ethics of Immigration” but also in further publications. It provides papers with critical discussions of Carens’s work as well as his responses to these, thus enabling and documenting the fruitful dialogue between the contributors and Carens himself. The aim of this book is to sharpen and shed light on Carens’s arguments concerning migration by offering new and critical perspectives and fine-grained analyses.

The Ethics of Immigration

The Ethics of Immigration
Author: Joseph Carens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2013
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199933839

Eminent political theorist Joseph Carens tests the limits of democratic theory in the realm of immigration, arguing that any acceptable immigration policy must be based on moral principles even if it conflicts with the will of the majority.

Rescuing Justice and Equality

Rescuing Justice and Equality
Author: G. A. Cohen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674029658

In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality. In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for the state but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making. Cohen also charges Rawls’s constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality.

Equality and Efficiency REV

Equality and Efficiency REV
Author: Arthur M. Okun
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2015-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815726546

Originally published in 1975, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff is a very personal work from one of the most important macroeconomists of the last hundred years. And this new edition includes "Further Thoughts on Equality and Efficiency," a paper published by the author two years later. In classrooms Arthur M. Okun may be best remembered for Okun's Law, but his lasting legacy is the respect and admiration he earned from economists, practitioners, and policymakers. Equality and Efficiency is the perfect embodiment of that legacy, valued both by professional economists and those readers with a keen interest in social policy. To his fellow economists, Okun presents messages, in the form of additional comments and select citations, in his footnotes. To all readers, Okun presents an engaging dual theme: the market needs a place, and the market needs to be kept in its place. As Okun puts it: Institutions in a capitalist democracy prod us to get ahead of our neighbors economically after telling us to stay in line socially. This double standard professes and pursues an egalitarian political and social system while simultaneously generating gaping disparities in economic well-being. Today, Okun's dual theme feels incredibly prescient as we grapple with the hot-button topic of income inequality. In his foreword, Lawrence H. Summers declares: On what one might think of as questions of "economic philosophy," I doubt that Okun has been improved on in the subsequent interval. His discussion of how societies rely on rights as well as markets should be required reading for all young economists who are enamored with market solutions to all problems. With a new foreword by Lawrence H. Summers

Freedom, Efficiency and Equality

Freedom, Efficiency and Equality
Author: T. Wilkinson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2000-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230597939

This book defends equality against the objection that, due to its failure to provide incentives, it must conflict with either freedom or efficiency, or both. It explains the problem of incentives, the relationship between freedom, efficiency, and equality, and the difficulties of describing an ideal egalitarian economy, before concluding with its own radical solution, a scheme of social duty in a market system. Freedom, Efficiency and Equality combines techniques from across several disciplines in an accessible fashion in its discussion of a central topic in political theory and normative economies.

How to Make Opportunity Equal

How to Make Opportunity Equal
Author: Paul Gomberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 047069162X

This critical examination of racial equality takes a new approach to breaking down racial barriers by proposing a system of equal opportunity through shared labor and contributive justice. Focuses on how race and class inevitably structure vastly unequal life prospects Shows how human society can be organized in a way that does not socialize children for lives of routine labour Looks towards contribution, not distribution, as a way to promote racial equality Argues that by sharing routine and complex labor, social relationships would be transformed, eliminating competition for limited opportunities to develop and contribute abilities A discussion board for ideas and comments relating to the book can be found at: http://howtomakeopportunityequal.blogspot.com/

Markets without Limits

Markets without Limits
Author: Jason F. Brennan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2015-08-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317815629

May you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character. Or so most people say. In Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski give markets a fair hearing. The market does not introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the authors claim, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, they claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell.