Suchergebnisse

Abstract:Libertarianism is a controversial political theory. But it is often presented as a resting upon a simple, indeed commonsense, moral principle. The libertarian "Nonaggression Principle" (NAP) prohibits aggression against the persons or property of others, and it is on this basis that the libertarian opposition to redistributive taxation, legal paternalism, and perhaps even the state itself is thought to rest. This essay critically examines the NAP and the extent to which it can provide support for libertarian political theory. It identifies two problems with existing libertarian appeals to the NAP. First, insofar as libertarians employ a moralized understanding of aggression, their principle is really about the protection of property rights rather than the prohibition of aggression. Second, the absolutist prohibition on aggression, which libertarians typically endorse and which is necessary to generate strongly libertarian conclusions, is grossly implausible. The essay concludes by setting forth a version of the NAP that does not suffer from these problems. It argues that this more moderate and defensible version of the NAP still has important libertarian implications, but that a full defense of libertarianism cannot rely upon appeals to nonaggression alone.

The US welfare system is a disaster. The federal government alone spends well more than $600 billion each year on more than 120 different antipoverty programs. Add in another $284 billion of welfare spending at the state and local levels, and you have almost $1 trillion of government spending on welfare -- more than $20,000 for every poor person in America (Tanner 2012). That's a lot of money and a lot of bureaucracy. All of which might be excusable if the welfare state were effective at doing what it was supposed to do -- helping the poor escape poverty. But it isn't. In this essay, the author wants to defend a more ambitious claim. Though he still believe that libertarians should regard the basic-income guarantee (BIG) as a sound political compromise, he does not think that they should regard it merely as a compromise. Instead, they should see the BIG as an essential part of an ideally just libertarian system. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIt is commonly claimed that workers in sweatshops are wrongfully exploited by their employers. The economist's standard response to this claim is to point out that sweatshops provide their workers with tremendous benefits, more than most workers elsewhere in the economy receive and more than most of those who complain about sweatshop exploitation provide. Perhaps, though, the wrongfulness of sweatshop exploitation is to be found not in the discrete interaction between a sweatshop and its employees, but in the unjust political and economic institutions against which that interaction takes place. This paper tries to assess what role, if any, consideration of background injustice should play in the correct understanding of exploitation. Its answer, in brief, is that it should play fairly little. Structural injustice matters, of course, but it does not typically matter for determining whether a sweatshop is acting exploitatively, and it does not typically matter in a way that grounds any kind of special moral responsibility or fault on the part of sweatshops or the Multinational Enterprises with which they contract.