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In this book, Daniel Shapiro argues that the dominant positions in contemporary political philosophy - egalitarianism, positive rights theory, communitarianism, and many forms of liberalism - should converge in a rejection of central welfare state institutions. He examines how major welfare institutions, such as government-financed and -administered retirement pensions, national health insurance, and programs for the needy, actually work. Comparing them to compulsory private insurance and private charities, Shapiro argues that the dominant perspectives in political philosophy mistakenly think that their principles support the welfare state. Instead, egalitarians, positive rights theorists, communitarians, and liberals have misunderstood the implications of their own principles, which in fact support more market-based or libertarian institutional conclusions than they may realize. Shapiro's book is unique in its combination of political philosophy with social science. Its focus is not limited to any particular country; rather it examines welfare states in affluent democracies and their market alternatives

Abstract:I have been asked to write personally of John [Merryman]. Not of him as scholar,
educator, author, nor even as father of the fields of art and cultural property
law, but as the person who did these things, and more. To present an inclusive,
all-embracing picture of John, the universalist, both in himself and what he has
done.First, I owe my interest, career, and whatever contributions I have made as
lawyer, teacher, and writer on art and cultural property law to John. Nearly 30
years ago, as a corporate litigator and neophyte collector interested in the
connection between art and law, I read Law Ethics and the Visual Arts.1 In chapters entitled "Plunder, Destruction, and
Reparation" and "An Artist's Life,"
I was taken by its commitment to culture, its questions—such as, Can
art be more valuable than a life?—and its overarching ethical yet
concrete approach to them. I became a fledgling in the fields of art and
cultural property law. A few years later I met John at a conference in
Amsterdam. He became a mentor, model, and friend.

A central idea of contemporary philosophical egalitarianism's
theory of justice is that involuntary inequalities or
disadvantages—those that arise through no choice or fault
of one's own—should be minimized or rectified in
some way. Egalitarians believe that the preferred institutional
vehicle for fulfilling these obligations of justice is some
form of a welfare state. Of course, contemporary egalitarians
disagree about the best way to interpret or understand their
theory of justice and institutions: Which inequalities are chosen
and which are unchosen? What form of a welfare state will best
serve justice? However, no contemporary egalitarian denies that
egalitarian justice requires a welfare state that will redistribute
income and wealth to aid the involuntarily disadvantaged.

Socialism is dead, though many of its academic proponents take no notice of its demise. With its death, private property in the means of production is not generally in dispute, and the action in political philosophy centers on the justification of the welfare state. The heart of the welfare state is social insurance programs, such as government managed and subsidized health insurance, retirement pensions, and unemployment insurance. The arguments about health insurance will arguably be among the most ferocious, difficult, and important of the welfare-state debates: Ferocious, because proposals to alter government managed or subsidized health care strike at people's fears and concerns in a way matched by few other proposals. Difficult, because people can often not even conceive of a (genuine) market alternative to the status quo in health insurance, and there is no real existing alternative to hold up as a model. Important, because if an intellectually solid case for market health insurance can be established, then supporters of the welfare state should be on the defensive, since social health insurance is an institution central to their vision of the just or good society.

While in America most people think of "welfare" as means-tested programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in reality in the United States and other affluent democracies the heart of the welfare state is social insurance programs, such as health insurance, old-age or retirement pensions, and unemployment insurance. They are insurance programs in the sense that they protect against common risks of a loss of income if and/or when certain events come to pass (illness, old-age or retirement, unemployment); they are "social" because unlike market insurance they are not run on a sound actuarial basis, the premiums are not voluntarily incurred but compulsory, and there is very limited choice or flexibility concerning the type of policy one can purchase. Why have social insurance rather than market insurance? In this essay, I take up this question with regard to old-age or retirement pensions, which at present absorb around 9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 25 percent of government spending of the affluent industrial countries comprising the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). My aim is to show that old-age or retirement social insurance (henceforth "SI") is worse in virtually every relevant normative respect than its alternative, some form of market or private pensions. By relevant normative respect, I mean those values or principles which are used by contemporary political philosophers in their discussions and justifications of welfare-state policies, and which are applicable to assessments of different systems of old-age or retirement pensions. (Although they areapplicable, almost no contemporary political philosophers have in fact applied them—an amazing state of affairs which I hope to remedy here.)

The socialist calculation debate is a debate about whether rational economic decisions can be made without markets, or without markets in production goods. Though this debate has been simmering in economics for over 65 years, most philosophers have ignored it. This may be because they are unaware of the debate, or perhaps it is because they have absorbed the conventional view that one side decisively won. This is the side represented by economists such as Oskar Lange and Fred Taylor who, in opposition to free-market economists like Fredrich Hayek, allegedly showed that their version of market socialism is, in principle, as efficient as capitalism.

AbstractA conflict management program developed to support the transition from a closed to open society in postcommunist eastern and central Europe focuses on the future leaders of this region: adolescents.