Global Ethics Final IBA

Lecture 8: 1-14 Lecture 9: 15-23 Lecture 10: 24-39 Lecture 11: 40-57 Lecture 12: 58-70 Lecture 13 71-84

Fairness

The quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable

Justice

Fairness in the way people are dealth with

Two senses of organizational justice

1. Top-down: Just organization designed by employers

2. Bottom-up: Employee’s perception of fairness

Three kinds of organizational justice

1. Distributive justice: Fairness of rewards, focus on outcomes

2. Procedural justice: Fairness of the rules and procedures by which the rewards are distributed, focuses on the process

3. Interactional justice: People are interested not only in outcomes and procedures but also in the quality of the interpersonal relationships

Discrimination

Treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way, from how you treat other people, because of their skin color, sex, sexuality

Positive action

Measures external to the hiring process to redress existing disadvantages

(Removing the shackles from the runner)

Positive discrimination

Specific characteristics become valid criteria for assessing candidates

(Removing the shackles and bringing the runner level with their competitor)

Pros of positive discrimination

• Justice involves addressing manifested injustices rather than striving to create the perfect society

• Justice as iustari, ‘to adjust’, to repair something wrong

• Takes into account discriminations of the past that have an effect on the present

Cons of positive discrimination

• Hiring the less qualified or unqualified

• Not meritocratic

• The perceptions of others regarding someone hired due to positive discrimination, along with the individual's self-perception

• Reverse discrimination

Tie-break system

Use positive discrimination to choose between two equal qualified candidates

Threshold system

Minimum qualification above which other features can be taken into account

Diversity

Refers to who is represented

Inclusion

Refers to how people are treated once they are part of the organization

(Being invited to dance, not just to the party)

Arguments for diversity and inclusion

• Moral argument: Everyone deserves fair opportunities

• Justice argument: To correct structural inequalities

• Epistemic argument: Diverse perspectives foster better problem-solving and innovation

Incentive

Something, especially money, that encourages a person or organization to do something. Incentives make individual agent’s goals (intrinsic) converge towards one objective set by the principal (extrinsic)

Spontaneous incentives

They emerge in the market and drive human behavior

Planned incentives

There is someone who prepares and creates the incentives

Human Economicus

100% Rational: 100% capable of maximizing our own utility. The more money I have, the more I can buy products and services that I think are useful for me

Extrinsic motivation

The reason for acting lies ‘outside’ the action itself, it is imposed (command) or proposed (incentive)

Intrinsic motivation

The reason for acting lies in the action itself. Challenge or fun within the action

Motivational crowding-out

A higher monetary compensation crowds out this intrinsic motivation in important circumstances. Offering higher pay makes people less committed to their work and may reduce their performance.

Why should we problematize planned incentives?

• Moral reason: Intrinsic motivation expresses the essential aspect of human life. Their reduction is undesirable

• Economic reason: If extrinsic motivations undermine internal motivations, leading to decreased performance, then we face an efficiency problem

Distinctions Awards vs Incentives

• Incentives: Monetary, Ex-ante (given based on outcome), Often private, aligned with employer interests

• Awards: Non-monetary/symbolic, ex-post, public, promotes actions with positive externalities

Free Market

An economic system where prices for goods and services are determined by open competition between privately owned businesses, with minimal or no government intervention

Free Market Characteristics

• Voluntary Exchange: Buyers and sellers freely and willingly engage in market transactions

• Competition: Multiple sellers compete to offer the best products at the best prices

• Private Property Rights: Individuals and businesses have the right to own and control resources

• Limited Government Role: The state primarily protects property rights and enforces contracts

• Price Mechanism: Prices are determined by supply and demand dynamics

6 Argument why markets are great

1. Freedom argument

2. Public good argument

3. Happiness argument

4. Knowledge argument

5. Utility - Ophelimity Argument

6. Peace Argument

Freedom argument

Markets are good because they give people more control over their lives. Instead of relying on the charity (benevolence) of the powerful, people can earn their living through their own efforts

Public good argument

Markets are good because they turn private ambition into public benefit, not through planning or good intentions, but through the natural operation of self-interest and competition

Happiness argument

Markets are good because they help generate economic goods and wealth, which in turn enable people to live better lives and access sources of deeper happiness (religion, family, and friendship)

Economic goods

Those that can be measured by a money price

Knowledge argument

Markets are good because they handle complex, scattered knowledge more effectively than any centralized system can by using prices as signals

Ophelimity

Refers to how much satisfaction or usefulness an individual personally gets from something

Utility - Ophelimity argument

Markets are good because they let individuals decide for themselves what brings them satisfaction and they help match goods and services to those personal desires

Peace argument

Markets are good because they encourage peace through mutual economic dependence, replacing warlike passions with rational cooperation

Markets without limits

If it is permissible to give something away, it should be permissible to sell it

Wrongness comes from the thing, not the sale

If something is wrong to sell, like CP or slavery, it’s not because of the sale, but because it’s wrong to possess or do in the first place

Inherent wrongness

Something is inherently wrong if the act is morally wrong no matter the context, simply because of the nature of the act itself

Incidental wrongness

Something that is wrong because of the context or circumstances in which it occurs, not because of the act itself

Attitude-based goods

Love or friendship. Can’t be bought or given in the relevant sense because they depend on genuine attitudes

Easterlin utilized two databases to study happiness

1. The Gallup Survey: Asks “In general, how happy would you say that you are - very happy, fairly happy, or not very happy?”

2. Hadley Cantril: Asks participants across 14 countries to rate their own satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10

Easterlin results

1. Within a single country, at a given moment in time, the correlation between income and happiness is robust

2. In cross-sectional data among countries, however, the positive association between wealth and happiness, although present, is neither general nor robust. Poorer countries do not always seem to be less happy than richer countries

3. Time series analysis at the national level showed that in thirty surveys over 25 years, per capita real income rose by more than 60%, but the ratings about happiness remained the same

Feminist objection

Getting more by paying less

Why is a badly-paid nurse a good nurse?

• Care work is vocational work; it should not be performed with money as the first motivation

• Care is about self-sacrifice, authenticity, and genuineness: money corrupts care

• With lower wages for care work, the rightly motivated will be attracted

Consumer’s Manipulation Objection

• In surveillance capitalism, consumer preferences are not merely found; they are crafted and manipulated through the extraction of behavioral data

• Prediction —> Control

• Loss of autonomy

• Economic imperative

Behavioral data extraction

Platforms gather user data exceeding what is necessary for service enhancement – this data is utilized to forecast and influence future behaviors

Prediction —> Control

Data serves not only to foresee preferences but also to guide users toward favorable outcomes (such as purchases and clicks)

Loss of autonomy

Consumers remain oblivious to how their decisions are subtly directed, compromising their free will and democratic participation

Economic imperative

Surveillance capitalism flourished by converting personal experiences into profit, emphasizing behavioral modification rather than individual freedom

Growing marketization

More and more goods are treated as commodities or market goods

Fairness objection

Points to the injustice that can arise when people buy and sell things under conditions of inequality or dire economic necessity. Their agreement may not be really voluntary

Skyboxification

The more goods that are commodified, the more economic inequalities translate into social inequalities. The more goods that are available for sale, the more the rich can buy benefits that are not available to the poor

• Access to healthcare

• Military service

• Better education

The corruption objection

Certain moral and civic goods are diminished or corrupted if bought and sold.

• Markets corrupt expressions of friendship

Four parameters of noxious markets (Satz)

1. Harm to individuals

2. Harm to society

3. Weak agency

4. Vulnerability

Harm to individuals

Some markets lead to outcomes like destitution or exploitation, violating people’s basic welfare and agency interests (e.g., starving from unaffordable food prices)

Harm to society

These markets can undermine democratic governance and equal standing, promoting servility and dependence (e.g., child labor, bonded labor)

Weak agency

Participants may lack critical information about the nature and consequences of the market, or have others acting on their behalf (e.g., children in labor or surrogacy)

Vulnerability

Markets in a desperately needed good with limited suppliers create power imbalances and desperate conditions, which force people into unfair transactions. (e.g., selling organs due to poverty)

Objections to free markets (markets are terrible)

1. Inequality

2. Erosion of capital(s)

3. Exploitation

4. Alienation

Pikkety inequality formula

Wealth grows faster than income. r > g

• r = return on wealth

• g = economic growth (like wages or productivity)

• When r > g, wealth builds up at the top

What can be done against inequality?

If left alone, rich people will keep earning more form their wealth than other do from working so the gap grows.

Pikkety suggests a global tax on wealth to slow down rising inequality

Erosion of natural capital

Humanity is consuming natural resources faster than nature can regenerate them, creating a growing imbalance. This undermines the long-term foundations of prosperity, human well-being, and global sustainability

Erosion of spiritual capital

Suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related diseases - the so-called “deaths of despair”.

The economic and social systems have contributed to this crisis, such as:

• Decline in stable, well-paying jobs

• Lack of access to quality healthcare

• Weakening of community institutions

• Educational disparities

Exploitation (Wolff)

Making some sort of wrongful or unfair use of another person purely for your own benefit. This is normally only possible if that person is vulnerable in some way

Exploiter (Wolff)

Someone who uses another’s weakness for their own ends, without sufficient regard for how the other person may be affected

Origins of alienation

1.        Workers are alienated from the product of their labor (the worker’s added value is appropriated by the capitalist)

2.        Workers are alienated from the activity of their labor (merely to survive, no longer to flourish)

3.        Everyone (workers and capitalists) is alienated from their own essence, which is creative and social

4.        Everyone (workers and capitalists) is alienated from their fellow human beings

5.        Everyone (workers and capitalists) is alienated from nature itself

Instrumentally motivated

Motivated to do something for someone because of what you get out of it

Intrinsically motivated

Motivated to do something for someone for the sake of the person

Fitting motive

You are non-instrumentally motivated by the fact that the option would positively impact (that person’s) needs

Exclusionary

It excludes one’s actions being motivated by caring

• When a manager always makes decisions based on profitability, they are not acting from care, even if they care privately

• It doesn’t mean the manager is a bad person or incapable of care

Fetishistic

Treating profitability as an end in itself, even though it isn’t inherently valuable

• The market encourages people to treat profit like it’s valuable for its own sake, rather than as a means to something valuable (like well-being or fairness)

Meritocracy

A social system, society, or organization in which people get success or power because of their abilities, not because of their money or social position

• Meritocracy represents an ideal of social justice based on the concept of merit

Five features of meritocracy

1. Meritocracy and power

2. Meritocracy and social progress

3. Merit = success

4. Social value = market value

5. Inequalities legitimized by the winners/victims

Meritocracy and power

Meritocracy holds that the most qualified should hold power. From Plato’s philosopher-kings to Brennan’s epistocracy, the idea is that decision-makers should be the most capable—especially those with expertise

Meritocracy and social progress

Meritocracy contrasts with aristocracy by rewarding individuals based on ability rather than birth or privilege. Ideally, it promotes equality of opportunity (Sergiu, 2012), creating a new elite based on merit rather than heritage (Wooldridge, 2021).

• While it emphasizes freedom and individual achievement, critics note unequal starting points in life hinder true equality of opportunity.

Merit = success

Success is often mistaken as the sole result of merit. Victor Hugo criticized this illusion, warning that success can disguise the role of luck and privilege. Frank (2016) and Rawls (2009) also argue that success is frequently supported by hidden advantages, not just effort

Social value = market value

Michael Sandel (2020) critiques modern meritocracy for equating economic market value with social and moral worth. People’s contributions are judged by how much they earn or produce, reducing the idea of merit to pure market outcomes

Inequalities legitimized by the winners

“The discourse of meritocracy and entrepreneurship often seems to serve primarily as a way for the winners in today’s economy to justify any level of inequality whatsoever while peremptorily blaming the losers for lacking talent, virtue, and diligence” (Piketty, 2020)

Inequalities legitimized by the victims

“When confronted with data that contradicts this view, they try hard to ignore, reinterpret, distort, or forget it – for instance by finding imaginary merits to the recipients of fortuitous rewards, or assigning blame to innocent victims” (Benabou & Tirole)

Belief in meritocracy

Support for the market system depends on the perception that rewards are fairly earned

False belief in meritocracy

Hayek warns that while people believe market rewards reflect merit, this belief is misleading. In reality, compensation is tied to the value of one's services to others, not to individual effort, need, or moral worth

Market value and merit

Market remuneration is based on perceived value by others, not on personal merit. As Hayek (1998) puts it, what someone earns may have no relation to their actual merit—creating a disconnect between moral deservingness and economic reward

Critique of Sandel’s view on meritocracy (Sugden)

Sugden challenges Michael Sandel’s claim that meritocracy is a market-driven ideology. He argues that markets do not inherently promote merit as a moral value – they simply coordinate voluntary exchanges

Reframing the dignity of labor (Sugden)

Rather than eroding dignity, markets can affirm the dignity of labour by enabling individuals to contribute meaningfully through voluntary participation and exchange

Agent contributive justice ideals (Sugden)

Sugden finds Sandel’s call to reward people based on their “true” social contributions impractical and incoherent, as real-world value is context-dependent and cannot be objectively measured

Markets are not great arguments

• Feminist Objection

• Consumer’s Manipulation Objection

• Marketization

Sen’s Happy Slave Argument

People who have lived in poverty or hardship for a long time may learn to accept their difficult lives and find joy in small things just to survive. Just because someone appears content in tough conditions doesn’t mean their well-being is actually good

Marketization

• Growing Marketization

• The Fairness objection, including skyboxification

• The Corruption Objection

Alienation

• Instrumentally motivated

• Intrinsically motivated

• Fitting motives

• Exclusionary

• Fetishistic