Politics, Poverty, Patriotism Exam 2

Argument for open borders?

Equal worth of persons

States have a duty to respect equal worth of persons
Closed borders violate equal worth of persons
Therefore, we should have open borders

What does Carens mean by birthright citizenship is like a feudal privilege?

The problem is not citizenship at birth by itself
The problem is the inability to change citizenship

What argument does Carens give for extending birthright citizenship to children of (1) citizens, (2) emigrants, (3), immigrants, & (4) irregular migrants?

1) Citizens- value political community
2) Emigrants- substantial interest

3) Immigrants- political community
4) Irregular- undocumented migrant rights increase over time, state right to deport decreases over time

What is Putnam’s thesis?

Gentrification induced displacement is pro tanto unjust

First order gentrification?

Landlord-tenant relationship

Higher order gentrification?

Dependence on arbitrary preferences that determine domination at the first-order level

How does higher order gentrification happen? The cycle?

Gentrifiers influence whether residents are dominated by landlords
Potential gentrifiers, critical mass, desiredness begets desirability.

Features of loop is higher order?

Potential gentrifiers: awareness of property, feasibility
Critical mass: potential becomes actual, if preference was formed; market rates would exceed affordability
Desiredness: actual desires (reinforce)
Desireability: of the neighborhood (Cava)

Why is housing a special commodity?

Basicness- housing is a basic good
Relationality- obtained by a relation with high exit cost, like food
Non-fungibility- equally priced units cannot be substituted without costs

What policy interventions does Putnam propose?

Subsidies- if we decide to keep landlord pricing
Rent control- if we decide to remove landlord pricing
Increase supply- decommodification, make public

Who is morally responsible for gentrification?

The state- special obligation to not enable domination
Landlord- when rent prices are arbitrarily increased
Gentrifiers: incur special obligation to mitigate displacement
Citizens- may be complicit in gentrification happening near them

What’s Friedman’s thesis?

The social responsibility of business is to make profit and abide by the rules of the game.

Three arguments that Friedman gives against social responsibility?

Social responsibility is vague
Only individualism is coherent
Social responsibility undermines the scope of the political mechanism

Two moral arguments against social responsibility?

Non-consequentialist: the socially responsible executive is essentially imposing taxes- a government function
Consequentialist: knowledge objection- executives have the knowledge to help business but not make society better.

What is F&F’s thesis?

Wealth without limits, reject limitarianism

What is limitarianism and the argument?

Officials should enforce an upper limit on wealth, abolish billionaires.
_officials should enforce taxes to benefit the poor
-Taxing billionaires would benefit the poor
-Therefore, we should tax billionaires to abolish them

What is F&F method of argument?

Comparative- public officials vs. private billionaire
Incentive-based- billionaires have better incentives than public officials
Egalitarian- consistent with distributive equality; abolishing billionaires would make the world less equal

What are two arguments F&F give in defense of billionaires?

Collective action- billionaires are in a better position to solve collective action problems than public officials
Accountability- billionaires are more accountable than public officials

Why is the government bad at collective action?

Poor incentives- they spend your money, not their own.

Exacerbate harm- defense spending

Why are billionaires good at collective action?

Take risks- driving moral progress
Hedge- against wasteful government spending
Increase opportunity- computers, iPhones
Are “status equal”- people treat billionaires like normal people, Elon & twitter

What are 3 primary reasons why are billionaires more accountable?

Consent is given by the public
Scope of accountability is greater
Responsive to democratic movements

What are two secondary reasons?

Symmetry- people vote with their dollar
Non-citizens- billionaires are accountable to citizens and non-citizens

What is the remedy for social ills?

Regulation- passing policies that address the specific harms of particular industries
Reject Cronyism- stop wealthy people from using wealth to buy influence
Meh- not the most pressing problem

What is capitalism?

Self-ownership of labor
Private ownership and control of means of production
Markets are the mechanism of input and output

Progression to and from capitalism?

Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism

Where does profit come from according to Marx?

Theory of surplus value: the price of goods - cost of labor= surplus value (profit)

How does Marx arrive at TSV?

Labor theory of value, subsistence-level wages, theory of surplus value, surplus value

What’s Marx’s moral critique of capitalism?

Exploitation- using the worker as a means to an end
Alienation- A violation of Marx’s perfectionist view of human flourishing

4 types of alienation?

From products of labor

From self- work sucks, long, wanna do other things
From others- people are just a means to an end
From species-essence- alienated from our human nature

Flannigans thesis?

Unacceptable and unavailable alternatives cannot justify sweatshop conditions.

What is the choice argument?

-Gov should not interfere with permissible and valuable choice
-Sweatshop conditions are permissible and valuable choices
-Regulations interfere with permissible and valuable choices
-Therefore, public officials should not enforce sweatshop regulation

Two objections to the choice argument?

Unacceptable alternatives- Exploitation; If there aren’t acceptable alternatives, then the choice is involuntary, government may interfere.
Unavailable alternatives- Workers would choose better conditions if given the chance

What is Flanigan’s argument against unacceptable alternatives?

Idealistic- fails to consider whether there are feasible policy prescriptions
Regulations- don’t provide more opportunities for employer and employee
No special obligations- employers don’t’ need to provide a certain wage
No double disadvantage- if employers have duties to their workers, they have double duties to the unemployed, as they have already employed people with a job.

Flanigan’s argument against unavailable alternatives?

Positive sum- the workers and employer benefit from the exchange
Non-group- workers are not acting as a group
Repetition- workers make the repeated decision to stay employed.

Why do workers choose sweatshop conditions?

Tradeoffs- long hours vs low pay, preference
Ranking- workers might collectively value higher wages and fewer hours, but they would disagree about with is more valuable.