The Epistemology of Popularity and Incentives

This chapter examines the neglected epistemology of markets. It argues that we often get useful information from markets concerning popularity and incentives, and that these should inform our decision-making. The popularity of a service provider despite being located in a dangerous neighborhood or being considered unattractive, for example, is an important signal that should guide our thinking. So should the incentive structure a service provider faces, for instance, whether he or she can take customers for granted or not. Both constitute evidence that we are likely to receive comparatively good service, since their popularity comes despite marked disadvantages, and their incentive structure is aligned with our own aims as consumers. Applications include dining, art, education, and law.

Libertarianism

Traditionally, libertarians have assumed that individual rights are absolute, and that these are what ground criticisms of the welfare state. This chapter argues that libertarians can appeal to the much weaker notion of thresholds against harm. These thresholds can be overcome, but only at some margin, and doing so imposes various residual obligations on us, for example of restitution. We cannot generally take people’s property without incurring these obligations, e.g., to repay money we have taken from our neighbors in order to deal with some threat we face. The existence of thresholds and of residual obligations supports libertarian opposition to an expansive welfare state.

Dilemmas of Political Correctness

Political correctness plays an important role in debates about poverty, work, and desert, and thus in debates about libertarianism. This chapter shows that there are legitimate reasons to uphold norms against impugning the public status of historically victimized communities, which is central to political correctness. However, upholding such norms also incurs costs, meaning that political correctness often confronts us with dilemmas. These costs are not merely expressive but crucially involve a form of collective irrationality. This manifests itself in Orwellian discourse in how we use terms like “diversity,” in the analysis of causal structures like the attribution of airline accidents that we are reluctant to associate with stereotypes, and in backfire, as when Europeans are reluctant to discuss problems with the project of a currency union.

Justice and the Wealth of Nations I

This chapter argues that recent economic growth represents a species-historical phenomenon that philosophers writing in political economy must not neglect, and one which raises difficult questions for critics of capitalism. It further argues that criticisms of capitalist-style economic systems are mistaken to focus on global poverty. For the most part, this poverty reflects the default position of nations that have not stumbled onto economic growth yet. Alternative accounts grounded in imperialism or imperfect global institutions neglect key structural facts about economic growth. These include its long-term development, its cross-cultural character, and its independence from the onset/ending of practices like imperialism and slavery. The causes of growth with these characteristics are unlikely to be morally suspect.

Luck and Opportunity

Classical liberal views about the state are often held to be incompatible with a sober appreciation of the role of luck in determining social outcomes. But it is surprisingly rare to see the case made for supposing that considerations of luck alone support redistribution. Instead, most arguments drawing on the role of luck depend on strong background assumptions compared to which luck plays a relatively minor role. And once we do focus on pure considerations of luck, it turns out to be difficult to marshal these toward an argument for redistribution. The chapter further reviews evidence on intergenerational mobility and shows that we can acknowledge that such mobility may sometimes be limited while denying that redistribution is the proper remedy, especially in light of the continued effectiveness of choice suggested by the evidence.

Property and the Creation of Value

Philosophers have tended to see property through the lens of natural resource acquisition. Discussions often focus on agrarian models inherited from Locke in which income and wealth derive from land use. But these models no longer make sense in a service-sector economy. In advanced societies, wealth overwhelmingly derives from the activities of lawyers, chefs, designers, coders, or teachers providing services to others. And once we recognize that in modern economies services are at the core of wealth creation, it becomes more difficult to reject (traditional) libertarian claims about redistribution. In particular, so-called left-libertarian views that attempt to defend redistribution on natural resource grounds become much harder to defend.

Property as a Moral Phenomenon

Libertarians emphasize the significance of private property, but explaining the moral foundations of property is notoriously difficult. This chapter argues that property does not rest on a single factor such as labor, as Locke proposed. Instead, property emerges from a wide array of morally significant factors that support someone’s claim to control over an asset, including not just labor but discovery, creation, and many other actions. On this view, Locke misunderstood his own theory and cast it far more narrowly than he should have. The resulting picture vindicates private property as a moral phenomenon and not merely a social convention, as Hume and his followers maintain.

Morality and Markets

Philosophers by and large have not been enthusiastic about markets, often concentrating only on their drawbacks or limitations. This chapter argues that frequently this has been done without a clear appreciation of the benefits of markets, especially for the fact that markets allow trading parties to improve their positions for free. The chapter argues that this creates a standing (if defeasible) reason to promote markets, and to resist third parties trying to block an exchange. It also shows that many of the reasons people have put forward to limit markets would also limit many other social activities if they were taken seriously, such as the arts, and are thus suspect.

Morality and the State

This chapter argues that moral norms constrain the state. It rejects the idea that a group of people forming a polity can appeal to emergent norms that contravene the morality we accept at the interpersonal level. This means that the state may not do things to individuals that appropriately situated individuals may not do to each other. It also argues that we should ignore revisionist versions of utilitarianism when doing political philosophy. Revisionist utilitarianism may be true, but that truth would upend so much of what we believe that we are better off setting it aside in a book that is about political organization.

Introduction

This introduction lays out the key claims of the book. It contrasts versions of libertarianism grounded in absolute rights with the approach taken in this book, which appeals to everyday moral beliefs we have about shifting our burdens onto others. This difference can be illustrated in different kinds of speeches we might make to our fellow citizens containing different sorts of demands. The introduction also emphasizes the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary nature of this endeavor, in contrast to more conventional political philosophy in the Anglophone tradition. History, economics, and philosophy are all relevant to the sort of political economy this book represents. Finally, there is a precis of the chapters to come.