John Rawls and Deep Economy

John Rawls was concerned with what we call distributive justice and the question of what we should do about inequalities in society. Should goods be distributed equally to everyone? Should we permit vast differences in social and economic status? How are justice and socioeconomic opportunity tied to each other?

This is relevant to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy in two ways.

1. First, we can use the justice framework to make the case that our social system (that is, our system of social policy, ethics, and economic exchange) is conventional. We have a certain social/political/economic system and it produces certain results. But we don’t have to have that system. It might be the most just system, or it might undermine justice. If it does not produce the maximum degree of justice, then we should try to change it so that it is more just. In particular, we should always be working to try to improve the status of those that have the least, and we should always try to give people equality of opportunity.

This observation supports McKibben in his attempt to rethink economics, and in particular in his attempt to replace some market trends with a deeper concern for community. He argues very much like someone in the justice framework would: he argues that deeper and more robust communities will make people happier and will be more economically stable. This last point is important, because in the justice framework, people are risk-averse.

2. A second way that Rawls’s justice framework can be linked to the book is McKibben’s recognition that for people who are living at a subsistence level, access to global markets makes more sense than pursuing deeper, local economies. That’s because McKibben, like Rawls, knows that the concerns of people who have the least social status and economic goods will be different than those who have plenty.

If you're interested in more of my thoughts about what Deep Economy gets right (and wrong), you can read what I've written here.

Hyper-Individualism

"All for One, and One for All": we discussed the benefits of tight communities--and the disadvantages, such as a loss of privacy, of options, and (sometimes) freedoms.

We can see McKibben's argument as being implicitly utilitarian: that local economies produce more satisfaction and less harm for more people than our current economy. How would someone argue with him on this point? Probably, it would have to be done on the basis of showing that his calculation of the benefits and disadvantages left something out.

One such disadvantage (which we did not discuss) is the possibility that tighter communities are related to higher levels of conflict between different communities--nationalism, racism, and the policing of ingroup/outgroup loyalties.

It's also plausible to see McKibben as relying on an argument from virtue ethics. You might read his argument not as a strict calculation of utility or preferences, but rather as an argument that says that certain qualities make for more virtuous communities and certain communities lend themselves to the flourishing of a certain kind of good character. He thinks our material and economic culture value things, people, and services that are "fast, cheap, and easy." Instead, he thinks we should build cities and economies which are deliberate, valuable, and lasting. This would promote virtues which are currently neglected, such as loyalty, responsibility, creativity, etc.

A question to consider is whether the only way to achieve the postive results that McKibben attributes is to cultivate cohesive communities that are local in geographical terms. Does technology permit us to participate in communities that are tight and supportive but distributed in space? Although McKibben is concerned with the transport of goods and the environmental toll of transportation, our economy is increasingly based in services, and knowledge and communication are no longer bound by space.

Along these lines, last fall I heard a report on NPR that, for a variety of reasons, local banks are much less affected by the banking crisis than the large conglomerates are. You can listen to the story here.

Also, a former student passed along this interesting timed map of WalMart's spread.

Virtue Ethics

This week we talked about the ethical framework that guides moral actions based on evaluations of moral character. That is, right moral action is based in virtue, and wrong moral action is based in vice.

In contrast to modern theories, it asks not what we should do, but what should we be? Of course,
as Tom pointed out, a virtuous character is based in good acts. One can't be virtuous merely by believing the right thing. But by calling this the "morality of being," we are highlighting that how you act is constitutive of the kind of person you are. If you say you believe in charity for the poor, but never give of your own time or money, then we would not say that you are a charitable person.

By contrast, modern theories focus on decision-making. A utilitarian sizes up a problematic moral situation, calculates the total harms and benefits that would be produced by different courses of action, and picks the one that produces the greatest overall good. Then the utilitarian's moral faculty can go on holiday until the next crisis of decision arises. Not so for the virtue ethicist. She recognizes that ethics has to do with how we live our lives--every day. She sees virtue as a potential that has to be actualized over the course of a whole life. This is a theory of moral development.

The scope of morality includes these questions:
How do you choose your friends?
What do you do on the weekends?
What books do you read?
How have you chosen to live your life?
Is it an admirable life?

Some modern theories influenced by virtue ethics are “the capabilities approach” to ethics, care ethics, and communitarianism.

Virtue ethics is useful for understanding Bill McKibben's views because he seems to be arguing for living well, with virtue, in strong communities--even if he doesn't use that language. Virtue ethics can help to understand the normative aspects of everyday actions of the sort that are often advocated when people are talking about “going green”.

The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

Utilitarianism has become so entrenched in modern life, and particularly in public policy, that we often don't even realize that an ethical framework is being deployed. Instead, we just assume that the best action is going to be the one that produces the best consequences, and that what counts as the best consequences is human welfare. However, unlike Mill, I think that contemporary society is not very reflective about what outcomes make up "welfare." Bill McKibben makes many controversial points, but one point that is not controversial is that welfare cannot be reduced simply to material possessions (e.g., "Can't buy me lo-o-ove"). Still, what welfare is exactly, is a question worthy of discussion.

It's worth distinguishing utilitarianism from several nearby positions.
1. ETHICAL EGOISM. The ethical egoist claims that morality demands that individuals always act in their own best long-term self-interest. Utilitarianism, similarly, evaluates what is good based on people's interests (Mill referred to the total sum of happiness of all people affected by an action, but modern utilitarians refer to an aggregate of "preferences"). However, the utilitarian does not say each individual should act in their own self-interest. Rather, individuals should do what is required for the good of the group as a whole, and it is the total welfare that determines what that desired consequence is.

2. EPICUREANISM: Utilitarianism does share some elements with ancient Greek epicureanism. For instance, both hold that pleasure and pain are the measure of what is good and bad. And both put a high value on empirical investigation. For both, “the good life” is a life that has a high ratio of pleasure to pain, and so pursuit of pleasure is a basis for moral action. However, one difference is that Epicurus thought that this evaluation of pleasure and pain would lead people to value and pursue tranquility or a state of mental peace. Pursuing tranquility would lead people to withdraw from politics and other stressful situations or concerns. In contrast, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were very involved in politics. Mill was a Member of Parliament for several years and an advocate for women’s rights.

3. COMMUNISM: It seems ironic that utilitarianism has close relations both with the evaluative practices of capitalist economics, particularly cost-benefit analysis--and also with communism. In structure, the socio-economic theory of communism resembles Bentham's utilitarianism in that both prioritize the good of the group over the good of the individual. However, the two theories differ at many points as well. For instance, redistribution of goods to create social and economic equality is a central tent of communism. But a common criticism of utilitarian theories is that they don't necessarily pay attention to distributive justice. Indeed, Karl Marx was a prominent critic of utilitarianism.

Kantian Ethics

Some key ideas from the lecture:

• Kantian ethics responds to the need for moral truths to have an independent justification which depends on reason and not just on intuition or implicit agreement.


• Kant argues that if a law is to be morally valid, then it must follow with absolute necessity.


• He provides such an algorithm in the form of the Categorical Imperative.


• The Categorical Imperative is similar to--but more universal and less subjective than--the Golden Rule.


• The core of morality is not what we do but why we do it. What matters is that an action is motivated by ethical reasoning. Acting out of duty is moral; acting in accordance with duty is not enough.
  


• Principle-based ethical theories are called deontological; Kant's ethical theory is the best known example but many contemporary ethicists are also deontologists.
  

If you have any questions, feel free to raise them in the comments section.

Now just for fun, what would a political attack ad against Kant be like?