When Jack and Jill Make a Deal

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Hausman
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Human Interactions

In ordinary circumstances, human actions have a myriad of unintended and often unforeseen consequences for the lives of other people. Problems of pollution are serious examples, but spillovers and side effects are the rule, not the exception. Who knows what consequences this essay may have?This essay is concerned with the problems of justice created by spillovers. After characterizing such spillovers more precisely and relating the concept to the economist's notion of an externality, I shall then consider the moral conclusions concerning spillovers that issue from a natural rights perspective and from the perspective of welfare economics supplemented with theories of distributive justice. I shall argue that these perspectives go badly awry in taking spillovers to be the exception rather than the rule in human interactions.I. ExternalitiesEconomists have discussed spillovers under the heading of “externalities.” To say this is not very helpful, since there is so much disagreement concerning both the definition and significance of externalities.

scholarly journals A DEFENSE OF HUMEAN PROPERTY THEORY

Legal Theory ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Ira K. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Humean Theory

ABSTRACT Two rival approaches to property rights dominate contemporary political philosophy: Lockean natural rights and egalitarian theories of distributive justice. This article defends a third approach, which can be traced to the work of David Hume. Unlike Lockean rights, Humean property rights are not grounded in pre-institutional moral entitlements. In contrast to the egalitarian approach, which begins with highly abstract principles of distributive justice, Humean theory starts with simple property conventions and shows how more complex institutions can be justified against a background of settled property rights. Property rights allow people to coordinate their use of scarce resources. For property rules to serve this function effectively, certain questions must be considered settled. Treating existing property entitlements as having prima facie validity facilitates cooperation between people who disagree about distributive justice. Lockean and egalitarian theories endorse moral claims that threaten to unsettle property conventions and undermine social cooperation.

Natural Rights and Distributive Justice: Nozick and the Classical Contractarians

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Ron Replogle
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Classical Form ◽  
Entitlement Theory ◽  
Formal Properties

AbstractRobert Nozick seeks to extract a substantive theory of distributive justice (“the entitlement theory”) from what he takes to be the formal properties of natural rights (or rights-based) theory. The unsoundness of his arguments supports the longstanding suspicion that all such theories are conceptually confused and ideological biased. Yet upon examination, the classical (chiefly Lockean) views that Nozick regards as a prototype of natural rights theory withstand that suspicion precisely in so far as they lack the formal properties of his own theory. I conclude that theories of the classical form are better equipped to resolve political arguments.

Rationality and Alienation

1989 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 449-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Ripstein
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Theory ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
English Speaking

Two decades ago, problems of alienation and fetishism were the focus of most English speaking studies of Marx’s philosophy. More recent work on Marx and Marxist themes has tended to avoid these questions in favor of discussions of explanation, exploitation, distributive justice and problems of class formation and co-ordination. The latter set of problems seem more readily addressable, if not always more tractable, using contemporary tools drawn from the philosophy of science, as well as methods of decision theory, game theory, and welfare economics. But the change in emphasis has not been without costs; gains in clarity and rigor have come at the price of abandoning Marx's most fundamental criticism of capitalism as a way of life. I shall argue that it is no coincidence that the shift to ‘rational choice’ Marxism has had precisely that cost.

Distributive Justice for Behavioural Welfare Economics

2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (628) ◽  
pp. 1114-1134
Author(s):  
Michael Mandler
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Welfare Economics ◽  
Pareto Optimal ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
Pareto Optima ◽  
Individual Preferences

Abstract The incompleteness of behavioural preferences can lead many or even all allocations to qualify as Pareto optimal. But the incompleteness does not undercut the precision of utilitarian policy recommendations. Utilitarian methods can be applied to groups of goods or to the multiple social welfare functions that arise when individual preferences are incomplete, and policymakers do not need to provide the preference comparisons that individuals are unable to make for themselves. The utilitarian orderings that result, although also incomplete, can generate a unique optimum. Non-separabilities in consumption reduce this precision but in all cases the dimension of the utilitarian optima drops substantially relative to the Pareto optima.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document