Low Wages and Lousy Jobs

This chapter addresses some principal questions about labor market justice. Some of these are old concerns about the persistence of poverty due to the forces that keep wages low among unskilled workers. This leads to worries about exploitation. It will also examine the concern, most often associated with Marx, that much paid work is of a character that is detrimental to human flourishing, or serves to “alienate” workers from their labor. The focus then moves to more recent trends, such as the rise in executive pay and other aspects of “labor market polarization.” These motivate some discussion of whether it’s unjust for a few people to earn so much more than everyone else.

Do Markets Wreck the Planet?

This chapter looks at some ways in which capitalism impacts the natural world. While capitalism and markets can never be solely to blame in general for environmental harms, there are some specific objections to markets that call for special attention. It is important to distinguish between the role of markets in causing environmentally destructive human conduct and the role that markets could and, in a few cases, might already be playing in bringing about a constructive response. There’s no getting away from the fact that an effective global response to climate change is both urgently needed and distressingly hard to achieve. The goal here is to help avoid distracting conclusions about what’s to blame for this and to acquaint readers with a more robust approach to the problem as one of political economy.

Keeping Up with the Joneses (and the Kardashians)

This chapter identifies and examines problems posed by positional goods. These are goods that confer relative or “competitive” advantage, and whose supply is therefore limited as a matter of logic. Early theoretical work on positional goods by Fred Hirsch in the 20th century led to some very general worries about the long-term prospects for capitalism. This contrasts with the optimism of figures like Hayek and Smith. Having discussed this general perspective, the chapter then looks at some important specific cases, such as education, before ending with a discussion about some proposals for taking the heat out of current positional competition.

Capitalism Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

This chapter seeks to convey the way in which political economy, as an academic discipline, attempts to unify what are now recognized as the distinct disciplines of economics and political philosophy. This will be done largely by way of a historical narrative, one that details the rise of political economy and the authors behind it, such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, before providing some reasons for its decline in the 20th century as academia underwent increased specialization and fragmentation. This will provide some background for appreciating the comeback that political economy is now enjoying, as another golden age is perhaps approaching.

Why Are We Still Working So Hard?

This chapter discusses various questions about how a market society might develop, such that its citizens spend less time in paid employment. This can occur by way of an increased displacement of labor by technology or “automation” in the production process and/or by government regulation that limits the amount of time that people spend working. Discussion of these matters leads to some interesting questions about the place of technology in labor markets (particularly whether it should be feared), the value of leisure time, and the overall future of work (including whether work even has a future).

Boldly Going Where No Market Has Gone Before—Should Some Things Not Be for Sale?

Many of the questions covered in earlier chapters of this textbook have been undergoing philosophical and economic analysis for decades or centuries. This chapter examines questions that have arisen more recently, though the philosophical literature on them is already very lively. More specifically, it focuses on the sorts of exchanges that might be “off limits” to markets, due to reasons of “commodification.” This involves the idea that putting a price on a good or service is morally disrespectful to that good or service, and/or to whomever might be buying or selling it. Here there is an opportunity to compare and evaluate intuitive reactions to a number of interesting cases.

We Are the World; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Trade

This chapter examines some concerns about capitalism with respect to relations between different countries, or people within them. The main focus is on trade across borders and its connection to problems of global justice, such as inequality between rich and poor nations and the abject poverty that continues to afflict such large swathes of the global population. As with many of the themes in this book, it is noted that early defenses of capitalism from the golden age saw trade as a force for prosperity, and possibly justice. Once again, the reasons behind this view prove useful for evaluating how things have turned out since, and for working out how things might be better. This helps with the assessment of contemporary “economic nationalism,” which is a rising force in politics but makes some of the old mistakes addressed during the golden age. Attention will also be given to important questions facing pro-trade views, particularly justice in the structure of global institutions.

The Welfare State and Its Rivals

This chapter looks at some leading proposals for dealing with the fact that the labor market confers rewards unequally. Over the years, governments have made various attempts to correct for this by regulating or intervening with the labor market, such as the minimum wage and the welfare state. After discussing these familiar solutions, the chapter examines some proposals that have not (yet) been widely implemented through labor market legislation, such as universal basic income. These proposals have interesting philosophical arguments behind them and which seek to improve on what governments currently do. They also raise a number of interesting questions about the nature of work and ideas of meritocracy in the workplace.

Market Order and Market Failure

This chapter presents and discusses the most influential argument in favor of a capitalist economy characterized by widespread economic freedom as opposed to central government planning. Capitalist ecnonomies, on this traditional view, are better than planning because they are efficient. Normatively this is important since human welfare is important. Capitalism delivers the goods better than the alternative in terms of both the goods that are produced and the welfare that it generates. This is argument relies on the importance markets and trade to produce price signals disperse private, often implicit knowledge through a public signal. Capitlist markets are, in this sense, spontaneous orders that work best when left alone. The chapter then examines some counterarguments that emphasize the limits of price signaling and other alleged cases of “market failure.”

Getting Out of Feudalism— and Staying Out!

This chapter expands on the concept of feudalism as an economic system distinct from both capitalism and socialism. The focus will be on what feudalism’s central injustices are and how early work on the moral foundations of capitalism sought to emphasize the role of markets in rescuing people from feudal servitude. Later sections of the chapter look at some important contemporary concerns about the resurgence of some elements of feudal economic order and the sorts of economic injustices to which they give rise, particularly with regard to inherited wealth, access to housing, and alleged employer domination in labor markets.