The Moral Status of Profit

2019 ◽  
pp. 336-357
Author(s):  
Joseph Heath
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Profit Maximization ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Efficient Allocation ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Market Clearing ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Labor Resources

There is a common fallacy, among critics of capitalism, that because firms are licensed to pursue profits, the purpose of the economic system as a whole must be to facilitate the realization of such profits. This is manifestly not the case, because the design of markets, including the insistence on competition between firms, is intended to bid profits down to zero. The lure of profit is what leads firms to compete with one another, which creates an institutionally enforced collective action problem that drives prices toward the level that allows for a more efficient allocation of labor, resources, goods, and services. The achievement of these “market clearing” prices is the actual purpose of the system. This explains why many people find the profit orientation of firms to be morally counterintuitive. Most of everyday morality is aimed at getting people to act more cooperatively, whereas profit-maximization is essentially a free-rider strategy.

The Measles and Free Riders

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHARINE BROWNE
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Free Riders ◽  
Free Rider Problem ◽  
Free Ride ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Parental Decisions

Abstract:This article takes up a game-theoretic perspective on California’s recently passed bill (SB 277) that closes all nonmedical exemptions for school-mandated vaccination. Such a perspective characterizes parental decisions to vaccinate their children as a collective action problem and reveals the presence of an incentive to free ride—to enjoy the benefits of others’ efforts to vaccinate their children without vaccinating one’s own. This article defends California’s legislation as a reasonable means of overcoming the free rider problem and of ensuring that the burdens of vaccination are shared equally.

A Unified Spatial Model of Congress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Disciplinary System ◽  
Sincere Voting

This chapter presents a unified model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting, built around a party leadership election. First, a legislative caucus selects a party leader who campaigns based on a platform of a disciplinary system. Once elected, that leader runs the legislative session, in which roll call votes occur. Then elections occur, and incumbents face re-election with the positions they incrementally adopted. When the caucus is ideologically homogeneous, electorally diverse, and policy motivated, members will elect a leader who solves the collective action problem of sincere voting with “preference-preserving influence.” That leader will threaten to punish legislators who bow to electoral pressure to vote as centrists. Consequently, legislators vote sincerely as extremists and get slightly lower vote shares, but they offset that lost utility with policy gains that they couldn’t have gotten without party influence. Party leaders will rarely pressure legislators to vote insincerely.

The Role of the Business Sector in Global Health Politics

2018 ◽  
pp. 385-408
Author(s):  
Kelley Lee ◽  
Julia Smith
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Business Sector ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Health Politics ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Health Related

The influence of for-profit businesses in collective action across countries to protect and promote population health dates from the first International Sanitary Conferences of the nineteenth century. The restructuring of the world economy since the late twentieth century and the growth of large transnational corporations have led the business sector to become a key feature of global health politics. The business sector has subsequently moved from being a commercial producer of health-related goods and services, contractor, and charitable donor, to being a major shaper of, and even participant in, global health policymaking bodies. This chapter discusses three sites where this has occurred: collective action to regulate health-harming industries, activities to provide for public interest needs, and participation in decision-making within global health institutions. These changing forms of engagement by the business sector have elicited scholarly and policy debate regarding the appropriate relationship between public and private interests in global health.

scholarly journals Production Theory and Community Services Planning: Application to Solid Waste Disposal

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
Marlys Knutson ◽  
Michael Boehlje ◽  
Dean Schreiner
Keyword(s):  
Solid Waste ◽  
Waste Disposal ◽  
Community Services ◽  
Service Planning ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Solid Waste Disposal ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Transportation Services ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Labor Resources

A basic management responsibility in community service planning is to evaluate alternative methods of providing various public goods and services such as transportation services, sewage and solid waste disposal, and water for home and industry. These alternative methods frequently involve new or different technologies and various combinations of inputs such as capital and labor.For example, in the disposal of solid waste, the use of different sizes and types of bulldozers, compactors and cranes may lead to significantly different combinations of capital and labor resources. For accurate analysis, the quality and quantity of the service that can be provided with limited amounts of the various resources or inputs must be considered. Thus, the basic concepts that have been used in private business to allocate limited resources to obtain the desired output are equally applicable to the management and planning of community services.

scholarly journals Climate Change Inaction and Optimism

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Philip J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
Ideological Fantasy

The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.

scholarly journals The collective action problem in primate territory economics

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1759) ◽  
pp. 20130081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Willems ◽  
Barbara Hellriegel ◽  
Carel P. van Schaik
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Collective Action Problem

Politikberatung der Öffentlichkeit?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Pitlik
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
General Public ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Academic System ◽  
Countervailing Power

Abstract Due to the incentives of both suppliers and users of policy advice the influence of economists on government decisions is almost negligible. This paper aims to explore the prospects of policy advice addressed to the general public as a countervailing power. It is argued that in order to have some impact on public opinion economists must rely primarily on propaganda and have to overcome a serious collective action problem. Yet, the organization of the academic system provides no incentives for economists to fulfil the role of general-public-oriented advisers.

scholarly journals Antimicrobial Footprints, Fairness, and Collective Harm

2020 ◽  
pp. 377-387
Author(s):  
Anne Schwenkenbecher
Keyword(s):  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Real Difference ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Individual Behaviour ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Collective Harm ◽  
Discernible Difference

Abstract This chapter explores the question of whether or not individual agents are under a moral obligation to reduce their ‘antimicrobial footprint’. An agent’s antimicrobial footprint measures the extent to which her actions are causally linked to the use of antibiotics. As such, it is not necessarily a measure of her contribution to antimicrobial resistance. Talking about people’s antimicrobial footprint in a way we talk about our carbon footprint may be helpful for drawing attention to the global effects of individual behaviour and for highlighting that our choices can collectively make a real difference. But can we be morally obligated to make a contribution to resolving a collective action problem when our individual contributions by themselves make no discernible difference? I will focus on two lines of argument in favour of such obligations: whether a failure to reduce one’s antimicrobial footprint is unfair and whether it constitutes wrongdoing because it is harmful. I conclude by suggesting that the argument from collective harm is ultimately more successful.

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