Suchergebnisse

In the next term the EU can advance an eco-social future which values participation in care and enables access as a universal basic service.

The decarbonisation of Europe must be accelerated—which requires a new European social model.

Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute In his treatise on justice, The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen explains that from Hobbes through Kant to Rawls, the theory of justice is concerned principally with the task of elucidating the hypothetical social contract or ideal social arrangement under which people of diverse world views […]
The post Measuring social injustice under climate shocks to persons with disability appeared first on Global Development Institute Blog.

Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute In his treatise on justice, The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen explains that from Hobbes through Kant to Rawls, the theory of justice is concerned principally with the task of elucidating the hypothetical social contract or ideal social arrangement under which people of diverse world views […]
The post Measuring social injustice under climate shocks to persons with disability appeared first on Global Development Institute Blog.

Big Tech firms flagrantly disregard the implicit social contract—the time has come to curb their market power.

In 2015 the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 but real change demands a green social contract.

A world in turmoil, Jan Zielonka writes, needs a democratic Europe, with a new social contract, offering hope to the helpless.

This week we discuss social contract theory and the illustrious career of Professor Albert Weale.

I'm delighted to report that Prof. Nicholas Nugent (Univ. of Tennessee) will be guest-blogging this week about his new Washington Law Review article, The Five Internet Rights. The Abstract: Since the dawn of the commercial internet, content moderation has operated under an implicit social contract that website operators could accept or reject users and content as…

To really end labour shortages, Ankita Anand writes, Europe must transform its contract with the global south.

Drawing on an analysis of academic contracts and the numbers of ethnic minority staff in the UK, Roxana-Diana Baltaru argues the value gained from strategic commitments to race equality in UK universities is limited by precarious and unequal job prospects offered by some institutions. Find a UK university that has not committed itself to achieving … Continued

 Since I am discussing Dorlin's Self-Defense I thought that I would use some pictures from old self defense manualsincluding this variation of nikkyo. Elsa Dorlin's Self-Defense: A Philosophy of Violence  considers, among many things, the role that self-defense played in social contract theory (and beyond). What follows bellow is a response to that particular provocation and not a review of the whole book, but it is very much worth reading.Even Hobbes who made violence, and force, in some sense the foundation of sovereign authority allows for a right to defend oneself.  As Hobbes writes, "If the sovereign command a man, though justly condemned, to kill, wound, or maim himself; or not to resist those that assault him; or to abstain from the use of food, air, medicine, or any other thing without which he cannot live; yet hath that man the liberty to disobey."As Dorlin argues this "right" is nothing other than the very fact that one will resist being put to death. As I often say when I am teaching Hobbes, "it is unclear if this right is anything more than the right to kick and scream on the way to the scaffold." It is a right that to some extent is rendered ineffective at the exact moment it is granted in that the alienable struggle to maintain one's own existence comes up against the insurmountable power of the sovereign. However, its de facto ineffectiveness does not undermine that it is recognized as a right, and that this de jure right returns us to the materialist basis of Hobbes's anthropology in which we are all equal in our struggle to maintain our existence. As Dorlin writes, "Hobbes's materialist anthropology considers the right of nature to self-preservation as a disposition, acting equally in everyone, and not just as an original right over one's self, enjoyed by some but not others."and then as she goes onto argue on the next page..."Through this reading of Hobbes's anthropology, our goal is to show how self-defense can be considered a manifestation--perhaps the simplest--of a relationship with oneself immanent in vital impulses of the bodily movements, particularly in the way they perpetuate over time. Subjectivity is made up of both bodily defensive tactics--skillful acts of resistance--against real and imagined interpersonal challenges, and material conditions that are unable to eliminate or conceal the establishment of a Subject of law who must be kept in line by the state."Dorlin contrasts Hobbes on this point to Locke, and I will get to Locke in a minute, but I thought it might be useful to consider Spinoza as well as Locke, considering the way in which all three can be understood through what rights or capacities cannot be alienated or surrendered in the constitution of the social contract. Read together it is possible to see different alternatives in terms of how the inalienable defines a particular vision of the social order and disorder, as the two constitute a rough dialectic. What is seen as inalienable, the struggle to survive, is intimately intertwined with the very alienation or exchange at the heart of the contract, which is an exchange of right for the very possibility of survival. Turning first to Spinoza, I have often considered the contrast between the different anthropologies of Hobbes and Spinoza to be a provocative point of demarcation within the history of philosophy. I have argued that Hobbes demands us to see freedom even in our fear while Spinoza argues that we are compelled even in our desires. I am always frustrated by those who see the two as the same, as two different versions of some kind of atomistic struggle for survival. On this point, in terms of what is inalienable, you do not need to take my word for it because Spinoza himself famously remarked in a letter that the difference between his thought and Hobbes is that he "always preserves the natural right in its entirety." This difference in part explains the revision of social contract theory in Chapter Seventeen of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in which Spinoza writes: "The picture presented in the last chapter of the overriding right of sovereign powers and the transference to them of the individual's natural right, though it comes quite close to actual practice and can increasingly be realized in reality, must nevertheless remain in many respects no more than theory. Nobody can so completely transfer to another all his right, and consequently his power, as to cease to be a human being, nor will there ever be a sovereign power that can do all it pleases...This is shown I think, quite clearly by actual experience; for men have never transferred their right and surrendered their power to another so completely that they were not feared by those persons who received their right and power, and that the government has not been in greater danger from its citizens, though deprived of right, than its external enemies"(I have said more about the rectification of contract and obedience in Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen of the TTP here.) Despite the invocation of a Machiavellian idea of resistance Spinoza spends most of the TTP writing not so much of the inalienability of power in general, but of the inalienability of the power to think and interpret. As Spinoza writes in Chapter Twenty,"If minds could be as easily controlled as tongues, every government would be secure in its rule, and need not resort to force; for every man would conduct himself as his rulers wished, and his views as to what is true or false, good or bad, fair or unfair, would be governed by their decision alone. But as we have already explained at the beginning of chapter 17 that it is impossible for the mind to be completely under another's control; for no one is able to able to transfer to another his natural right or faculty to reason freely and to form his own judgements on any matters whatsoever, no can he be compelled to do so."It is not the alienable right to self defense, to protect oneself from self harm or to struggle against the harm of others, that Spinoza focuses on, but the inalienability right to interpret or make sense of things. This is consistent with Spinoza's general view that we all make sense of the world through our own history that shapes our affects, imagination and sensibility. It is thought, the sense we make of the world, and not the struggle to survive that is inalienable. A little koshinage Where does this leave Locke, what is inalienable in his thought? The answer to this question is to be found in the way in which property preexists the social contract and to some extent is even pre-social. As Locke writes in Chapter Five ,"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself." Self-Possession is not only the condition of any and all future property it is prior to the very constitution of society. As Dorlin writes,In Locke's philosophy, "I am defending myself" means "I am defending my belongings, my property," which also means "my body." The body proper establishes and defines the person: it is therefore the object of any act of justice carried out by a subject of law. The subject in self-defense is an "I" endowed with rights, the first of which is the ownership of one's body. The establishment and constitution of such subjects occur through the property relation, which therefore preexists the act of self-preservation. The status of property owner--and of judge, its logical extension--is a condition of legitimacy (and also of  efficacy) of self-defense. As with Hobbes and Spinoza this inalienable property also sets a limit on the power of the state or sovereign. It is property rather than survival or thought that is inalienable. As Locke writes, "…neither the sergeant, that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon, or stand in a breach, where he is almost sure to perish, can command that soldier to give him one penny of his money…absolute power over life and death is not power over goods."Thus, to return to the subject of Dorlin's book these three different inalienable "goods" survival for Hobbes, thought for Spinoza, and property for Locke can also be considered three different strategies for self-defense, for checking the power of the state. One seeks defense in the struggle for survival, in maintaining enough force so that one can at least go out guns blazing, taking a few of them with you; the second in thought, in developing a different understanding, a different interpretation, a different way of thinking than the one put forward by the dominant forces (I will add parenthetically that I think that this would look different than the current imperative to do your own research); and finally, the last seeks its salvation in property, in maintaining self-possession through possessions. In this age of apocalyptic fears it is a matter of what is in your "bugout bag" a gun, a book, or a wad of cash. Of course framed in such stark terms any one option seems inadequate, and a combination of force and knowledge seems to be necessary for self-defense, especially against those who seem to be committed to holding onto their property even at the expense of their own survival and rationality. (You knew that Locke would be the bad guy, right?) It is also my hope that contrasting these different ideas of self-defense can shine light not only the poverty of the focus on property as a condition for survival, but also underscore the importance of thought and not just force as a tool for survival and creation of different ways of living outside of the control of Leviathan. 

Contract law in Europe currently has little grasp on the balancing of interests of social media users, their heirs, platforms, and society at large, which means that platforms play a key role in determining how digital legacies are handled. A human rights perspective can offer starting points for reforms that do more justice to the protection of digital identities of social media users.

The Bossier City Council's decision to allow plenty
of time to vet a propose four-year extension of its public-private partnership
with Manchac Consulting appears wiser than ever as more details and analysis
emerge about it – all of which buttresses the case that competitive bidding
take place to manage city most engineering, public works, and utilities
functions.

Last
week, the Council stalled an attempt to begin the process of considering
the no-bid extension. As
originally cued, the Council could have signed off on a rate representing
an increase of 50 percent over the deal that started in mid-2021, or $195,000
monthly, as early as Nov. 21. Instead, it will deal with the deal at the beginning
of 2024, about three weeks prior to the agreement automatically extending for the
existing three years at $169,000 monthly, starting mid-2024.

The extra time will give the city time to work through
some issues, beginning with city ordinance
allowing for only a three-year maximum on the life of a contract. However, state law allows local
governments to use five years as a maximum, and as state law takes precedence
over ordinance, the city could violate its ordinance and still have a legal
contract as long as it doesn't span more than five years. When the city
initiated the arrangement in 2016, which then only covered utilities, it
was for five years, and when
it renewed in 2021, incorporating previous amendments and adding others, a
three-year term was used after initially
setting it at another five and a whopping increase to more than $303,000
per month that the Council quickly
yanked.

In other words, because it has a legal excuse to
do so, as written the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration and the
Council simply would ignore city ordinance. No elected official has presented a
compelling reason why it should do so, and such an adequate defense of a
four-year term must be made to justify treating the ordinance as if it didn't
exist.

Then there's another ordinance
that requires the city to have competitive bidding. By its wording, it appears
to link to the state's Public
Bid Law unless mayoral directive overrides, which doesn't appear to exist. Another
ordinance
excepts no-bid contracts such as the previous two and now proposed Manchac
deals when, under regulations, the purchasing agent or his designee above the
level of purchasing agent determines in writing that there is only one source
for the required service.

Yet there's no evidence that the previous two or
current proposed contracts received this determination, which would be ludicrous
to suggest in any case. Plenty of contractors exist for these functions
worldwide; in fact, one with an office in Bossier City, IBTS, runs almost the entire
government of Central, LA.

However, yet again, there may be an out for the
city. State public bid law is silent on whether local government must employ it
in the case of professional services, as Manchac performs for the city. The
competitive bidding ordinance, in that it covers "Contracts for supplies,
services and major repairs exceeding the amount established by applicable state
law" implies the city opts in for public bid law for services, yet that law
specifies local government adherence only for supplies and repairs. At the very
least, the Council should seek an outside legal opinion and from the Attorney
General – after all, a majority on it didn't shy away from telling City Attorney
Charles Jacobs, who can do this on his own anyway, to seek such things in
regards to the certified
petition calling an election on term limits for elected officials – clarifying
whether the city has to bid competitively for this service, which in any event the
Legislative Auditor highly recommends that it do, especially when talking about
a $9.12 million dollar deal.

Then there's a question kicked around over the
years, most recently by Republican Councilor Chris Smith,
about whether hiring Manchac and installing one of its functionaries, currently
Ben Rauschenbach, as city engineer violates the city
charter in its requirement that the mayor appoint, subject to Council
confirmation, that official. The same is true for director of public utilities,
which Rauschenbach holds by virtue of his Manchac employment. Plus, the charter
gives the mayor the right to fire any department head "as provided for by, or
under, this Charter or other law except as otherwise provided by law, this
Charter, civil service or other personnel rules adopted pursuant to this
Charter."

Both Jacobs, as recently as last meeting, and his
predecessor have sworn up and down that this arrangement doesn't violate the charter.
But the arrangement is at best ambiguous and questionable, despite their
reassurances.

Until mid-2020, the city had its own appointed
engineer, but he "retired" (in actuality, forced out) and Rauschenbach
assumed the post in Jun., 2020 by Council confirmation. At the time, the
city attorney then opined that this conformed to the charter, since the mayor
had the power to fire that individual.

But under the proposed renewal, which bakes in engineering
functions of the city, that no longer would seem to be the case. That's because
the terms of the last 2021 renewal jettisoned the city's ability to leave the
contract at will. This means under the new deal that Manchac has full control
over who it assigns as the engineer to oversee the contract, thereby who
becomes the city engineer. Apparently, because the charter doesn't give terms embedded
in a contract as a reason to override its assigning the mayor removal power, nor
is there an ordinance in place that overrides that part of the charter, a mayor
who objects to that choice in fact cannot fire that individual.

Further, this negates the mayor's power to appoint
and Council to confirm. As if, of course, this process had happened during
Chandler's term, as the charter says the terms of appointed key officers – Director
of Finance; Director of Public Works; Director of Public Utilities; Chief
Administrative Officer; City Attorney; City Engineer; Director, Parks and
Recreation Division; Director, Fleet Services Division; Director, Human
Resources Division; and Director, Civic Center Division – must coincide with
the mayoral term. An exception in the charter is for Director of Arena
Division, in case as it is presently of contracting out that function.

Throughout the first five months of Chandler's
term, all of these positions were filled, although the Civic Center director
was shoveled in to the job of Chandler's secretary Carol Andersen – except for Engineering
and Utilities. The Council apparently never received a nomination from the Chandler
for these posts, and therefore never confirmed Rauschenbach, who even though he
was referred to as "city engineer" as early as Oct.
25, 2021 in Council minutes apparently technically must operate only on an
interim basis, over two years later, in both posts.

Regardless, approval of the renewal appears directly
to violate the charter because a contractual obligation would conflict with it.
Again, at the very least Jacobs should ask for an outside opinion and one from
the Attorney General on the issue.

Finally, not a legal matter but one which raises questions
about Manchac's suitability to perform adequately its duties comes from its subsummation
into Waggoner Engineering
earlier this summer. Manchac is a wholly-owned subsidiary of and by all
accounts in day-to-day operations is let alone by its owner Waggoner and by the
Waggoner chief executive officer Emad al-Turk.

But recent actions by al-Turk call into question the
fitness of any organization part of Waggoner to manage optimally Bossier City
operations. Al-Turk has a long history of political activism especially as it
relates to politics of the Levant, specifically Israel and the quasi-state of
Palestine. Largely through his affiliation as one of the two officers of the
International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, he publicly
has advocated at the very least for complete independence of the three
pieces of territory currently with largely autonomous existence but overseen by
Israel. He also has posted on social
media links to arguments that question the right of Israel to possess as
much territory as it does or even to exist as a state.

At best, on this subject al-Turk argues with
selective use of information; at worse, he displays ignorance about the entire
picture. That has nothing to do with his performance as an engineer and
manager, which by all accounts is competent.

However, concerning the recent attack by the non-state
international actor Hamas, categorized by most states as a terrorist group including
the U.S., on Israel's territory and people through means
that violate international law, he has remained silent on the atrocities
committed by Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip with an iron hand, while
condemning Israel's counterreaction that, by all accounts, is violent but adheres
to international law. He
calls that a "genocide" and in his most recent social media post linked to
a cartoon with Democrat U.S. Pres. Joe Biden
cradling Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sucking from a bottle labeled
"Gaza Blood."

Again, even as emotive and biased as his opinion
here may be, as long as it doesn't interfere with his running of Waggoner, it's
not an issue pertaining to Council action concerning the Manchac contract. But
the problem is that al-Turk's activism has become an impediment. Almost three
weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas assault, apparently in a state of emotional distress,
al-Turk notified Waggoner employees that the events of the war so traumatized
him and compelled him to engage in political and cultural advocacy on the issue
that he would take a 30-day leave of absence from his duties (whether from
accumulated paid time off or forgoing pay was not mentioned).

Bossier City needs a partner that is on-call
around the clock. Having its partner's CEO out of pocket for reasons of
political activism when crucial decisions may have to be made disserves the citizenry
and calls into severe question whether the partnership with Manchac should
continue.

As has become evident, there are many unresolved issues with renewing
the Manchac contract. The Council was wise to tap the brakes on the move and
needs to resolve these before any proceeding with a renewal, which may include
introduction of competitive bidding for the job.

Contributor(s): Professor John Hills | This episode is dedicated to social policy giant Professor Sir John Hills, who died in December 2020.
In this episode, John tackles the myth that the welfare state supports a feckless underclass who cost society huge amounts of money. Instead, he sets out a system where most of what we pay in, comes back to us. He describes a generational contract which we all benefit from, varying on our stage of life.
His words remain timely after a year of pandemic which has devastated many people's livelihoods. Many of us have had to rely on state support in ways that we could not have anticipated, perhaps challenging our ideas about what type of person receives benefits in the UK.
This episode is based on an interview that John did with James Rattee for the LSE iQ podcast in 2017. It coincided with the LSE Festival which celebrated the anniversary of the publication of the 'Beveridge Report' in 1942 - a blueprint for a British universal care system by former LSE Director William Beveridge.
Professor Sir John Hills CBE, was Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at LSE and Chair of CASE. His influential work didn't just critique government policy on poverty and inequality, it changed it. He advised on a wide range of issues including pensions reform, fuel poverty, council housing, income and wealth distribution.

Contributors
Professor John Hills

Research
Good Times Bad Times: the welfare myth of them and us. Bristol: Policy Press by John Hills (2015)