political philosophy

Estlund’s first argument against epistocracy

1. The truth tenet: there are correct answers to (at least some) political questions

2. The knowledge tenet: some citizens know more of these truths than others

3. The authority tenet: when some citizens have greater knowledge, this justifies granting them political authority over those with lesser knowledge.

We should accept the truth and knowledge tenets.

But we should reject the authority tenet. The authority tenet commits the ‘expert/boss fallacy’.

To commit the expert/boss fallacy is to think that being an expert is sufficient reason for one person to hold power over others.

But possessing superior knowledge is not sufficient to justify having any power, let alone greater power than others. We can always say to the experts ‘You may know better, but who made you boss?’.

Knowledge doesn’t give anyone authority

Amartya Sen’s strategic argument for democracy

“no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press.”

• understands democracy as including the democratic institutions of regular, free and fair elections + a free press which can engage in uncensored criticism of the government + opposition parties allowed freedom of speech

• the incentive role of democracy

The causal connection between democracy and the nonoccurrence of famines is not hard to seek. Famines kill millions of people in different countries in the world, but they don't kill the rulers. The kings and the presidents, the bureaucrats and the bosses, the military leaders and the commanders never are famine victims. And if there are no elections, no opposition parties, no scope for uncensored public uiticism, then those in authority don't have to suffer the political wnsequences of their failure to prevent famines. Democracy, on the other hand, would spread the penalty of famines to the r u b groups and political leaders as well. This gives them the political incentive to prevent any threatening famine, and since famines are in facteasy to prevent (the economic argument dicka into the political one at this stage), the approaching famines are M y prevented.

• the informational role of democracy

democracy contribute greatly to bringing out information that can have an enormous impact on policies for famine prevention (for example, information about the early effects of droughts and floods and about the nature and impact of unemployment). The most elementary source of basic information from distant areas about a threatening famine are enterprising news media, especially when there are incentive provided by a democratic system-for bringing out facts that may be embarrassing to the government (facts that an authoritarian government would tend to censor out).

Virtue argument

focused on intellectual virtues of the arguer

Epistocracy

a system of government where political power is allocated based on knowledge or political competence. Unlike a democracy where every citizen has an equal vote, epistocracy gives more weight to the votes of citizens who are considered more informed, or it may involve restricting the right to vote to those who can prove their knowledge.

Mill’s virtue argument for universal suffrage

“These twofold requisites are not fulfilled by the expedient of a limitation of the suffrage, involving the compulsory exclusion of any portion of the citizens from a voice in the representation. Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country. … People think it fanciful to expect so much from what seems so slight a cause—to recognize a potent instrument of mental improvement in the exercise of political franchises by manual laborers. Yet, unless substantial mental cultivation in the mass of mankind is to be a mere vision, this is the road by which it must come. If any one supposes that this road will not bring it, I call to witness the entire contents of M. de Tocqueville's great work, and especially his estimate of the Americans. Almost all travelers are struck by the fact that every American is in some sense both a patriot and a person of cultivated intelligence; and M. de Tocqueville has shown how close the connection is between these qualities and their democratic institutions. No such wide diffusion of the ideas, tastes, and sentiments of educated minds has ever been seen elsewhere, or even conceived as attainable. … If, even with this alloy, democratic institutions produce so marked a superiority of mental development in the lowest class of Americans, compared with the corresponding classes in England and elsewhere, what would it be if the good portion of the influence could be retained without the bad?”

“Strategic arguments” make the case for democracy on the grounds that democracy forces policy-makers to take account of at least the important interests of a much wider range of people than alternative forms of government.

Democracy is more likely than other forms of rule to protect the important interests of all or most members of society

Mill’s strategic argument for universal suffrage

“And even in a much more improved state than the human mind has ever yet reached, it is not in nature that they who are thus disposed of should meet with as fair play as those who have a voice. Rulers and ruling classes are under a necessity of considering the interests and wishes of those who have the suffrage; but of those who are excluded, it is in their option whether they will do so or not; and, however honestly disposed, they are, in general, too fully occupied with things which they must attend to to have much room in their thoughts for any thing which they can with impunity disregard.”

“But it is not even necessary to maintain so much in order to prove that women should have the suffrage. Were it as right as it is wrong that they should be a subordinate class, confined to domestic occupations and subject to domestic authority, they would not the less require the protection of the suffrage to secure them from the abuse of that authority. Men, as well as women, do not need political rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may not be misgoverned.”

Mill’s argument for unequal suffrage

The twofold danger posed by universal suffrage: “Yet in this state of things, the great majority of voters in most countries, and emphatically in this, would be manual laborers, and the twofold danger, that of too low a standard of political intelligence, and that of class legislation, would still exist in a very perilous degree.”

People who only look after the interests of their class

The solution to these dangers: But (though every one ought to have a voice) that everyone should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition. When two persons who have a joint interest in any business differ in opinion, does justice require that both opinions should be held of exactly equal value? If with equal virtue, one is superior to the other in knowledge and intelligence—or if with equal intelligence, one excels the other in virtue—the opinion, the judgment of the higher moral or intellectual being is worth more than that of the inferior; and if the institutions of the country virtually assert that they are of the same value, they assert a thing which is not. One of the two, as the wiser or better man, has a claim to superior weight …”

Two votes for the intelligent

One vote if you can read and right

Estlund’s second argument against epistocracy

Estlund agrees with Brennan that ‘removing the right issues from democratic control and turning them over to the right experts would lead to better political decisions, and more justice and prosperity’. BUT ‘The trick is knowing, and publicly justifying, which experts to rely on for which issues’. He does not think we can pull this trick off.

The qualified acceptability requirement (a widely accepted principle of justice) requires that any basis for distributing political power has to be acceptable to all qualified points of view.

Epistocratic systems (including the sort of restricted suffrage system which Brennan proposes – an elite electoral system, in which voting rights are restricted to those who can demonstrate competence), would (in practice) violate the qualified acceptability requirement.

Therefore, the practice of epistocracy is intrinsically unjust.

“There would be no pretense for applying this doctrine to any case which can with reason be considered as one of individual and private right. In an affair which concerns only one of two persons, that one is entitled to follow his own opinion, however much wiser the other may be than himself. But we are speaking of things which equally concern them both; where, if the more ignorant does not yield his share of the matter to the guidance of the wiser man, the wiser man must resign his to that of the more ignorant. Which of these modes of getting over the difficulty is most for the interest of both, and most conformable to the general fitness of things? If it be deemed unjust that either should have to give way, which injustice is greatest? that the better judgment should give way to the worse, or the worse to the better? … Now national affairs are exactly such a joint concern …” Mill’s argument for unequal suffrage

This system is unobjectionable: “There is not in this arrangement any thing necessarily

invidious to those to whom it assigns the lower degrees of influence. Entire exclusion from a

voice in the common concerns is one thing: the concession to others of a more potential voice,

on the ground of greater capacity for the management of the joint interests, is another. The two

things are not merely different, they are incommensurable. Every one has a right to feel

insulted by being made a nobody, and stamped as of no account at all. No one but a fool, and

only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are

others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration

than his.”

The competence principle

Moral principle that it is unjust to deprive citizens of life, liberty or property, or to alter their life prospects significantly, by force and threats of force as a result of decisions made by an incompetent or morally unreasonable deliberative body, or as a result of decisions made in an incompetent and morally unreasonable way.

Brennan’s argument

An elite electoral system in which voting rights are restricted to those who can demonstrate competence

• not everyone gets a vote

• No one gets more than one vote

  “the way in which democracy violates the competence principle is intrinsically worse than the way in which epistocracy (at least the type of epistocracy that he’s proposing) violates the qualified acceptability requirement”

The qualified acceptability requirement

Any basis for distributing power has to be accepted by all qualified points of view (e.g. a voter exam)

Objection: there is no way that all qualified points of view can agree on one test, epistocracy violates this requirement, will cause disadvantages

why does democracy violate the competence principle more unjust than epistocracy violating the competence principle

• Universal suffrage allows for incompetent people to vote, causing more harm

• Restricted suffrage isn’t any worse than voting age requirements

political obligation

The moral duty to obey the law because they are the laws

pro tanto obligation/duty

it is wrong to not-pi unless there is sufficiently weighty countervailing consideration

duties/natural duties

a class of moral requirements which all persons owe to all others irrespective of their voluntary acts or social roles and relationships the duty to obey the law is or derives from some natural duty which all persons are thought to owe to all others irrespective of their voluntary acts or social roles and relationships

The standard argument

• States are morally necessary institutions: states alone can rescue us from the ganders of the state of nature. They have the unique ability to settle conflicts peacefully and prevent rights violations, they alone can stand between us and the horrors of pervasive, escalating violence and rape

• States can out carry out such morally essential tasks unless their laws are obeyed by most people. i.e. widespread obligation to their laws is necessary to maintain the stability of states and their ability to perform their morally essential functions

• All persons have a natural duty to (for instance) rescue others from peril when the costs of doing so are not unreasonably high

• Thus, all persons have a natural duty to join together with others to do what is necessary to establish and maintain states capable of performing morally essential tasks when the costs of doing this are not unreasonably high

• Therefore, each of us has a pro tanto duty to obey the law

The objection from sufficiency of partial or selective compliance

Premise (2) is false, maintaining the state’s stability and ability to perform morally essential functions does not require widespread compliance with very many of its laws; widespread compliance wi5 a small subset of its laws would suffice, only certain laws are needed to complete morally essential tasks

Assumption

There is a moral right to an equal democratic say. That is, every adult member of a political society has a right to run for political office and vote for representatives, and so via such democratic decision-making procedures, determine the content of the laws and policies to which she is subject

Aim

What I aim to establish is that if there is such a right, the duty to respect it grounds a general duty upon the citizens of democratic states to obey their laws

Swarup argument

Assumption: There is moral right to an equal democratic say, That is, every adult member of a political society has a right to run for political office and vote for representatives, and so via such democratic decision-making procedures, determine the content of the laws and policies to which she is subject.

If there is a moral right to a democratic say, and thus, to the democratic decision-making process which is constitutive of according all such a say, then this process has a special status. It is not just any old procedure – it is a procedure to which people have a moral right.

Everyone has a duty to respect the rights of others, and so everyone has a duty to respect this right.

Respecting a right requires more than simply refraining from violating it.

Fully respecting one’s fellow citizens’ right to a democratic procedure requires that one obey the laws which are the outcome of that procedure. In a democratic state, our duty to respect our fellow citizens’ right to an equal democratic say implies a pro tanto duty to obey the law

We violate a right insofar as we

1) prevent or stop the bearer from enjoying or achieving a good to which she has a right to or performing an activity she has a right to perform or, at any rate, (2) interfere with or impede her access to that good or ability to perform the activity by attaching significant burdens to or placing significant obstacles in the way of that access or performance.

When we violate a right in either of these ways, we disrespect it.

That is, respect – “appropriate consideration” – for a right requires

that we refrain from violating it in either of these ways

1. My claim: “Appropriate consideration” for a right may require more than merely refraining from violating it. That is, even if one does not violate a right in either of the above ways, one may still disrespect or fail to respect the right. Genuine respect may require something more of us –

   that we acknowledge further constraints on our actions, and indeed that we acknowledge an imperative to act or extend our own efforts in certain ways.

   To support this claim, I offer four cases. In each, an agent falls short of adequately respecting a right even though she does not straightforwardly violate it.

   1. Drunk driver

   2. Polluter

   3. Maid

   4. Breastfeeding employee

   The commonality in these cases: In each, an agent behaves as though it is a matter of little importance, and in any case, none of his concern, whether or under what conditions others are able to exercise a right or enjoy the goods that a right protects or is meant to furnish. Insofar

   as one evinces such indifference to a right, one does not respond appropriately to its significance. Respect involves a willingness to help facilitate others’ exercise of their rights – a willingness to expend one’s own efforts in service of this end – at least when one can do so at a low cost to oneself

The right to a democratic say

In light of these observations, let us turn to the right to a democratic say.

The right to a democratic say is held not only against the state, but also against individuals – it places demands on individuals, and may be disrespected by individuals.

Respect for democratic rights requires of both states and individuals that they refrain from violating them. But it also requires more.

I argue that part of what respect for the right to a democratic say requires of individual citizens of democratic states is that they abide by the laws which are the outputs of the procedure which is constitutive of according that right to all. Such obedience is partly constitutive of appropriately valuing their fellow citizens’ right to a democratic say.

Stage 1

In order to successfully argue against immigration restrictions, it’s not enough to appeal to the value of freedom of choice

Basic freedoms vs. bare freedoms

It needs to be shown there is a right to migrate

Canvasses three arguments to justify an unlimited right of migration between states and argues each of them fails

The first argument defending a pro tanto right to migrate/choose one’s country of residence

starts with the general right of freedom of movement and claims that this must include the freedom to move into, and take up residence in, states other than one’s own

Millers response:

There is indeed a basic human right to freedom of movement

But that right does not entail a right to move into and take up residence in any state one chooses

Freedom of movement is restricted in many ways, such as private property, traffic laws, parks, police controlling movements

Basic rights or human rights are justified by pointing to the vital interests that they protect. They correspond to conditions in whose absence human beings cannot live decent lives, no matter what particular values and plans of life choose to pursue

In a world of decent states – states that were able to secure their citizens’

basic rights to security, food, work, medical care, and so forth – the right to move

across borders could not be justified in this way.

a person

can legitimately demand access to is an adequate range of options to choose between

– a reasonable choice of occupation, religion, cultural activities, marriage partners,

and so forth.

The second argument defending a right to choose one’s country of residence

The right to exit is certainly an important human right. But that right does not entail an unrestricted right to enter/migrate to any society of a persons choice. It can be exercised provided that at least one other society is willing to take one in

there are many rights whose exercise is contingent on finding partners who are willing to cooperate in the exercise, and it may be

that the right of exit falls into this category. Take the right to marry as an example.

This is a right held against the state to allow people to marry the partners of their choice (and perhaps to provide the legal framework within which marriages can be contracted). It is obviously not a right to have a marriage partner provided – whether any given person can exercise the right depends entirely on whether he is able to find someone willing to marry him, and many people are not so lucky.

The right of exit is a right held against a person’s current state of residence not to prevent her from leaving the state (and perhaps aiding her in that endeavor by, say, providing a pass-

port). But it does not entail an obligation on any other state to let that person in, just like no one is obligated to have a partner.

It’s wrong to force people to stay in association

The third argument defending a right to migrate appeals to international distributive justice.

Fundamental moral equality of all human beings

Given the huge inequalities in living standards that currently exist between rich and poor states, it is said, people who live in poor states have a claim of justice that can only be met by allowing them to migrate and take advantage of the opportunities

we should play our part in ensuring that their basic rights are respected, where these are understood as rights to a certain minimum level of security, freedom, resources, and so forth – a level adequate to protect their basic interests, as suggested earlier in this chapter. These basic rights can be universally protected and yet some people have greater opportunities than others to pursue certain aims, as a result of living in more affluent or culturally richer societies.

Millers response: Embracing the moral equality of all human beings—accepting that every human being is equally an object of moral concern—does not yet tell us what we are required to do for them as a result of that equality

But before jumping to the conclusion that the way to respond to global injustice is to encourage people whose lives are less than decent to migrate elsewhere, we should consider the fact that this policy will do little to help the very poor, who are unlikely to have the resources to move to a richer country.

in most instances they should contribute to improving conditions of life on the ground,

as it were, rather than bypassing the problem by allowing (inevitably selective) inward

migration.

Indeed, a policy of open migration may make such people worse off still

One answer might be that we should attempt to provide everyone with equal opportunities to pursue their goals in life.

But another, equally plausible, answer is that we should play our part in ensuring that their basic rights are respected, where these are understood as rights to a certain minimum level of security, freedom, resources, and so forth

Allow equal opportunities so we should allow people to move to access opportunities that are available to them

All of us ought to have our equal rights secured

Macroanalysis

General trends in literary data

Equivalent to macroeconomics

Analyzes over reading, de-emphasizes the more interpretive act of reading

Mill

Miller’s argument in favor of limits for immigration

• Aiming to establish (and does he establish)

• That nation-states have the right to exclude at least some immigrants (have the right to impose at least some limits on immigration)?

Stage 1: In order to successfully argue against immigration restrictions, it’s not enough to appeal to the value of freedom of choice

In order to successfully argue against immigration restrictions, it needs to be shown that there is a pro tanto right to migrate

He

Caren’s argument

Will argue that borders should generally be open and that people should normally be free to leave their country of origin and settle in another, subject only to the sorts of constraints that bind current citizens in their new country

He draws on three well-articulated contemporary theoretical approaches that many people find persuasive to construct a variety of arguments for relatively open borders

Each of these theories begins with some kind of assumption about the equal moral worth of individuals

Caren’s argues that all three approaches lead to the same basic conclusion there is little justification for restricting immigration

The fact that all three theories converge upon the same basic result with regard to immigration despite their significant differences in other areas strengthens the case for open borders.

Property rights theories

One popular position on immigration goes something like this: "It's our country. We can let in or keep out whomever we want."

This could be interpreted as a claim that the right to exclude aliens is based on property rights, perhaps collective or national property rights.

Do theories in which property rights play a central role support such a claim?

Carens: No

Nozick’s View

Individuals in the state of nature have rights, including the right to acquire and use property.

The assumption about moral equality that underlies this tradition:

All individuals have the same natural rights.

The "inconveniences" of the state of nature justify the creation of a minimal state whose sole task is to protect people within a given territory against violations of their rights.

The state has no right to do anything other than enforce the rights which individuals already enjoy in the state of nature.

Individuals have the right to enter into voluntary exchanges with other individuals.

The state may not interfere with such exchanges so long as they do not violate someone else's rights.

Suppose a farmer from the United States wanted to hire workers from Mexico. The government would have no right to prohibit him from doing this. To prevent the Mexicans from coming would violate the rights of both the American farmer and the Mexican workers to engage in voluntary transactions. Of course, American workers might be disadvantaged by this competition with foreign workers. But Nozick explicitly denies that anyone has a right to be protected against competitive disadvantage.

Note what this implies for immigration:

- Nozick’s theory provides no basis for the state to exclude aliens.

- Nozick’s theory provides no basis for individuals to exclude aliens that could not be used to exclude citizens as well

People only have a right to exclude as individuals not as members of a collective

Nozick explicitly says that the land of a nation is not the collective property of its citizens.

Rawls View

Activist state with positive responsibilities for social welfare

Rawls asks what principles people would choose to govern society if they had to choose from behind a "veil of ignorance," knowing nothing about their own personal situations (class, race, sex, natural talents, religious beliefs, individual goals and values, and so on).

He argues that people in this hypothetical “original position” would choose two principles:

The first principle would guarantee equal liberty to all.

The second would permit social and economic inequalities so long as they were to the advantage of the least well off (the difference principle) and attached to positions open to all under fair conditions of equal opportunity.

People in the original position would give priority to the first principle, forbidding a reduction of basic liberties for the sake of economic gains

Caren’s response to Rawls’ theory

The purpose of the "veil of ignorance" in Rawls’ theory is "to nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds" because natural and social contingencies are "arbitrary from a moral point of view" and therefore are factors which ought not to influence the choice of principles of justice.'

It ensures that the resulting agreement is fair.

Whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one is arbitrary from a moral point of view.

A fair procedure for choosing principles of justice must therefore exclude knowledge of these circumstances, just as it excludes knowledge of one's race or sex or social class.

We should therefore take a global, not a national, view of the original position:

Those in the original position would be prevented by the "veil of ignorance" from knowing their place of birth or whether they were members of one particular society rather than another

Given that parties in the OP don’t know these things about themselves,

would they regard freedom of movement among states as a basic

liberty?

Carens argues that they would. Carens argues that in the original

position, the parties would insist that the right to migrate be included in

the system of basic liberties for the same reasons that one would insist

that the right to religious freedom be included: it might prove essential to

one's plan of life. … the basic agreement among those in the original

position would be to permit no restrictions on migration (whether

emigration or immigration).

The public order restriction

Restrictions would be

justified only if there were a "reasonable expectation" that unlim-

ited immigration would damage the public order and this expecta-

tion would have to be based on "evidence and ways of reasoning

acceptable to all."

Utilitarianism

If more immigration would hurt some citizens economically, that would count against a more open immigration policy in any utilitarian theory.

But that would not settle the question of whether restrictions on immigration were justified.

In the utilitarian calculation, current citizens would enjoy no privileged position. The gains and losses of aliens would count just as much

The dominant view among both classical and neoclassical economists is that the free mobility of capital and labor is essential to the maximization of overall economic gains. But the free mobility of labor requires open borders. So, despite the fact that the economic costs to current citizens are morally relevant in the utilitarian framework, they would probably not be sufficient to justify restrictions on immigration.

Economic consequences are not the only ones that utilitarians consider.

But whatever consequences we consider, and whatever method of calculation is used, the concerns of aliens must be counted equally.

Under current conditions, when so many millions of poor and oppressed people feel they have so much to gain from migration to the advanced industrial states, it is unlikely that a utilitarian calculus which took the interests of aliens seriously would justify significant restrictions on immigration

Nonideal theory

priority should be given to those seeking to immigrate because they

have been denied basic liberties over those seeking to immigrate simply for economic opportunities

Second, one could not justify restrictions on the grounds that immigration would reduce the economic well-being of current citizens

the effect of immigration on the particular culture and

history of the society would not be a relevant moral consideration,

so long as there was no threat to basic liberal democratic values.

This conclusion is less apparent from what I have said so far, but

it follows from what Rawls says in his discussion of perfection-

ism.19 The principle of perfectionism would require social institu-

tions to be arranged so as to maximize the achievement of human

excellence in art, science, or culture regardless of the effect of such

arrangements on equality and freedom

Prostitution

In this article, the term ‘prostitution’ refers to a kind of occasional, limited transaction in which a person purchases “live” physical sexual recreation from someone who provides it in order to receive tangible, nonsexual benefits as compensation, either directly from the purchaser or through an intermediate party (e.g., a pimp or procurer). Because prostitution necessarily involves at least two parties, and often a third, when this article discusses prostitution, it should be understood to include the combined activities of all of these parties and not just those of the prostitute

Prohibition

Anderson uses this term to describe:

- full criminalization (including the criminalization of the purchase of sexual services and the sale of one’s own sexual services).

- as well as the reform position advocated by radical feminists, who would retain and even strengthen penalties on customers and middlemen, though not, perhaps, on prostitutes themselves. Partial criminalization (partial decriminalization): Purchasing sexual services and profiting off other’s sexual services are criminalized (among other things), but selling one’s own sexual services is not criminalized.

Normalization

Liberal feminists advocate what Anderson calls the “normalization” of prostitution, which involves at least making it legal (whether legalizing it or decriminalizing it) and perhaps going so far as to treat it as just another sort of commercial enterprise (though one to which age restrictions apply).

Anderson defends the radical feminist position.

He argues that the prohibition of prostitution is of a piece with a wide range of social regulations that serve to protect sexual autonomy. By showing how, for us, sexual autonomy depends on a range of social restrictions on our individual practices, he sets out what he takes to be the strongest set of considerations in favor of prohibiting prostitution. He does not take himself to show that, all things considered, the prohibition of prostitution is justified, since this stronger result would require consideration of a large number of factors, many of them empirical.

But this article undercuts one of the main motivations for normalizing prostitution

dates continue to occur, we may suppose, because each party gets something he or she wants from them. This creates the appearance that what we have here is a transaction, like any other, where accepting the man’s lavish expenditures means that the woman also accepts a subsequent obligation to let the man have sex with her.

the example of the expensive date in order to suggest that some of the restrictions that govern our sexual practices serve to prevent certain kinds of pressures or incentives from being used against a person to alter her sexual choices.

Objections to sex as just another use of the body

Treating sex as just another use of the body in commerce would undermine perhaps three different aspects of sexual autonomy, illustrated by examples of the following sorts.

Category A: Incentives to Have Sex

1. Employees now shielded from performing sexual tasks as part of their conditions of employment may find their job descriptions re-defined to include sexual duties. Also, some employees may be required to provide sexual services to other employees for either hiring or promotion.

2. Agencies dispensing welfare or unemployment compensations should be able to expect those who are capable of doing sexual work to take such work if it’s available rather than to seek public relief.

3. One may make enforceable contracts to perform or obtain sexual services. Courts will be required to treat such contracts as they treat other personal-services contracts and uphold penalties or restrictions

on nonperforming parties.

Category B: Control over Sexual Practices

4. Large, aggressive corporations may legitimately develop sexual services for consenting adults using whatever business practices are acceptable for other sorts of consumer goods (at least those such as alcohol or gambling, which are age restricted). In so doing, they may closely monitor and supervise the workplace sexual practices of those workers with sexual duties.

5. Workers with sexual duties may be required to adhere to standards of nondiscrimination with respect to their clients or coworkers.

6. The government may be entitled to inspect the health and sexual practices of prostitutes as this affects their safety and the safety of their clients. Risky sexual or other safety-affecting practices may be subject to blanket prohibitions, both while on the job and off.

Category C: Pressures on Sexual Attitudes and Values

7. Those large, aggressive corporations may, as part of their free-speech rights, market their product aggressively with the aim of overcoming prejudices against paying for sex or having sex outside of a relationship, as well as other marketing objectives.

8. To the extent that special training may help prepare one for such a career, public schools, vocational schools, and colleges may/should offer such training. High school career counselors may/should advise those who seem differentially suited for this kind of work to consider it as a career.

Liberal argument in favor of prostitution

• Even at the lowest rungs of voluntary prostitution, women still gain some benefits from it, and it may well be the best overall employment option they have. Eliminating prostitution might make things worse for the poorest women by denying them the benefits, small or large, that they gain from it.

• There is great diversity of activity and participation within the bounds of prostitution.

• There is no legal restitution for sex work, so it needs to be legalized in order for it to be regulated, it can be subjected to the legal process

Prostitution is a bad institution

(1) that the good purchased from a prostitute is frequently, in part, her own degradation, being reduced to a sexual object being perceived as dirty, experiencing violence (e.g. Dworkin) these harms are inseparable and are akin to other forms of sexual violence such as rape and harassment, objectification, target of contempt + hatred

(2) that the existence of prostitution depends on the existence of an inequality in social or economic power between prostitutes and their customers; and

Exploitation of poor women

(3) that prostitution contributes to the perpetuation of the inequalities of women that underlie the practice

It does so by defining women in general as sexual objects, available to any man who desires them. One of the most obvious facts about prostitution in our society, yet perhaps the hardest to take into account, is the degree to which prostitution and prostitutes attract our interest and serve as a stimulus for talk, jokes, stories, gazes—in short, as a source of our common titillation. Women’s bodies are viewed as commodities according to Carole Pateman

The liberals’ third rejoinder to radical feminists

Liberal feminists agree with radical feminists that prostitution is the site of many serious harms that merit social redress. What they dispute is that these harms derive specifically from the decisions of individuals to engage in sexual commerce, either as buyers or providers.

Liberals can agree with radical feminists that prostitution as it exists now is a harmful, degraded institution, but they resist the conclusion that prostitution is necessarily a bad institution.

According to liberals, the harms of prostitution arise in virtue of its criminalization by the law and its stigmatization by society. We can remedy the harms of prostitution by changing the laws that regulate it and our attitudes towards it. The liberal proposal is that we “normalize” prostitution, which includes making it legal, but further involves treating it as just another recreation-oriented service industry.

Sybil Schwarzenbach argues for legalization on the grounds that it is a necessary step to help destroy prostitution as we know it and to aid its metamorphosis into “erotic therapy”

Lars Ericsson argues that prostitutes might “fulfill a socially valuable function by, interalia, decreasing the amount of sexual misery in society.”

Nussbaum’s “bold claim“

Sex is not especially different from other ways one can use the body to make a living.

Anderson will investigate what it would mean to take the bold claim seriously. What would it mean to actually treat sex as just another use of the body?

Radfem vs libfem on prostitution

Although almost all favor exempting the activities of prostitutes from legal penalties, they advocate prohibiting the activities of the middlemen and customers. By contrast, while allowing for regulations with the health and safety of prostitutes and the public in mind, liberals do not in general aim to eliminate commercial sexual recreation as a way of making a living or as a pastime for those who can afford it.

Objection to liberal feminists third rejoinder

Anderson sets out the basis for an answer to this third rejoinder by looking at ways our society aims to keep sex and commerce separate, giving rise to protections for a special form of autonomy in sex.

He will argue that normalizing prostitution will not suffice to render it an innocuous institution

Normalizing prostitution would tend to undercut claims that sexual autonomy is a right and instead would make a prostitute’s loss of sexual autonomy appear to be a matter of her choice of career —in part, a matter of just how much she values her sexual autonomy. In the absence of a prohibition on prostitution, working in prostitution may come to be seen as just a career choice, appropriate for people who prefer other goods to sexual autonomy.

Normalizing prostitution would greatly obscure the extent to which becoming a sex worker means, for many people, trading off control over their sexual choices for some measure of economic security.

Normalizing prostitution will, for this group at least, amount to surrendering sexual autonomy as a distinctive good to which they should be entitled as a matter of basic social justice

Lawmaking

any activity that has the effect of making or changing the laws

Legislation

the business of making or changing law explicitly, in an

institution and through a process publicly dedicated to that task

Legislature

an institution publicly dedicated to making and changing the law

Waldron thinks that legislation is “attractive” compared to other types of lawmaking (such as lawmaking by judges or lawmaking by decree or executive agency).

He aims to explain why legislation is superior to other types of lawmaking.

He considers 4 candidate features that might explain its superiority to other kinds of lawmaking:

1. The fact that legislatures are (usually) associated with democracy

2. The fact that legislatures are bodies publicly dedicated to making and changing the law

3. The fact that legislatures are (typically) large assemblies

4. The fact that legislatures are representative bodies

He sets out a positive vision of good lawmaking: He thinks that lawmaking by a legislature (a body publicly dedicated to making and changing the law) which is populated by a large number of representatives who are democratically elected is preferable to other types of lawmaking

The legitimacy of a political system

4. The fact that legislatures are representative bodies

Direct democracy:

Citizens can vote directly on the laws.

The ancient Greeks had a version of direct democracy (without inclusive citizenship) in their city states.

Representative or indirect democracy:

The authority to enact laws is vested in representatives elected by citizens.

Citizens have the right to decide which officials to elect on the basis of a policy platform, but then it’s those elected officials who have the right to decide which laws to enact.

Citizens vote on common interests

Many theorists

(1) Direct democracy allows citizens opportunities for engaging in the process of governing themselves (participants gathered in a popular assembly can discuss and debate the issues they think important).

• Representative democracy in a large political unit cannot provide such opportunities.

(2) Citizens get to make decisions of great importance themselves; they do not have to delegate those decisions to representatives. In contrast, under representative democracy, citizens must delegate decisions of great importance to their elected representatives. In representative democracy, the decision-making of those who govern retains a considerable degree of independence from the wishes of the electorate.

But, (unfortunately, in these theorists’ view), direct democracy is

unworkable in large political units. Representative democracy is

practically necessary in large political units.

On this view, lawmaking by a representative assembly must be

regarded—at least from a democratic point of view—as a distant “second best.” The democratic ideal is some sort of plenary legislature of the people in which every citizen can vote directly on the laws. Lawmaking by all citizens would be preferable to lawmaking by an elected representative legislature.

A number of philosophers (including Waldron) have challenged the view above. They argue that representative democracy is not and should not be viewed as an inferior form of democracy that we are forced to adopt because it’s the only workable method in a larger political unit.

They argue that representative democracy has certain virtues that make it morally preferable to direct democracy.

Waldron thinks that legislation is a function for which representative democracy, rather than direct democracy, is the better democratic alternative.

(i) Content abstraction: “the abstraction that is exhibited by enacted laws, insofar as they satisfy requirements of generality”

(ii) Agent abstraction: “the abstraction that is involved in the task of representation whereby a single political actor may represent a certain kind of constituent, a constituent from a given locality, for example, or a constituent who holds a party allegiance of a certain sort.”

Waldron’s hypothesis: The abstraction that representation involves [i.e. agent abstraction] is particularly appropriate for lawmaking, which is a domain in which we are striving to produce abstract norms [i.e. in which we are striving for content abstraction], abstract in the sense of general, rather than directives focused on some particular person or situation in the way that a judicial decision might be focused, at least in the first instance

1. The fact that legislatures are usually associated with democracy

Legislatures are mostly elective and accountable bodies.

This fact gives their lawmaking a legitimacy that lawmaking by (unelected) judges lacks.

BUT:

In many American jurisdictions, state judges are democratically elected officials; And the same might be said of an elected president.

So, if we are faced with a choice between rule by legislation and rule by presidential decree, we are not choosing between democratic and nondemocratic lawmaking; we are choosing between two different sets of democratic credentials.

Further, in many countries, some legislatures have non-elective components.

Legislatures are transparent about the fact that lawmaking is their (primary) function. These are institutions publicly dedicated to lawmaking.

This is in contrast to courts. Judges are lawmakers. Courts make and change the law all the time. But they do not do so transparently.

Granted that transparency is a feature that distinguishes legislatures from courts, why does this fact make lawmaking by legislatures better than lawmaking by courts? Why is transparency a virtue?

Legislatures are transparent about the fact that lawmaking is their (primary) function. These are institutions publicly dedicated to lawmaking.

This is in contrast to courts. Judges are lawmakers. Courts make and change the law all the time. But they do not do so transparently.

Granted that transparency is a feature that distinguishes legislatures from courts, why does this fact make lawmaking by legislatures better than lawmaking by courts? Why is transparency a virtue?

3. The fact that legislatures are (typically) large assemblies

Aristotle: For the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a figure of their mind and disposition

Consider people from different backgrounds and the impact of laws

1) Diversity of opinion

2) Diversity of experience

3) Diversity of interests

Three types of diversity that Waldron thinks are important:

1) Diversity of opinion

who say that legislative deliberation should be addressed only to “the issues” forget that the impact on interests is often the main issue. Those who think that legislative discussion should be conducted at the level of high principle forget that it is the point of many of our principles to insist that certain interests be taken seriously or that certain interests should not be neglected. Even when we think a decision should not be made on the basis of pure consequentialist reasoning, even when the relevant principles are not utilitarian or wealth- maximizing, it is still a rare moral or political principle that makes no reference to interest at all or that is impervious to the impact on people’s interests of its being applied.

I say all this because it is often assumed that proportional representation along lines of political opinion is a good thing, with the proportion being entirely between popular support for general parties and numbers in the legislature. The Aristotelian diversity we look for is diversity of theory and moral viewpoint— like organizing a panel at a philosophy conference. But it is also important to see the point of other modes of representation as good-faith attempts to represent the diversity of various communities of interest in the society.

2) Diversity of experience

3) Diversity of interests

To whom are reparations owed?

reparations to victims of colonialism and their descendants

Why are moral reparations owed?

in order to compensate, and repair, the economic, cultural and political damage which has been inflicted on the affected communities and peoples,

we have a moral obligation to right past wrongs

WHAT KINDS OF REPARATIONS ARE OWED?

through inter alia, the creation of a special development fund, the improvement of access to international markets of products from developing countries affected by these practices, the cancellation or substantial reduction of their foreign debt and a programme to return art objects, historical goods and documents to the countries of origin

Reparations definition

Financial or cultural compensation to make up for economic exploitation and/or restore cultural objects removed during colonial rule

WHO SHOULD BEAR THE BURDENS OF REPARATIONS?

reparations to victims of colonialism and their descendants to be contributed to by States, companies and individuals who benefited materially from these practices

Claims of formerly colonized nations

The claims of formerly colonized nations are quite distinct from the claims for reparations by indigenous peoples who have been colonized.

The reparative claims that are made by formerly colonized countries normally do not involve territory and formal political autonomy (which were largely restored when these countries were granted independence) but rather involve claims of the sorts identified in paragraph 116:

I. Claims for financial compensation for the economic exploitation of colonialism in the form of debt relief, improved access to global markets, development assistance, etc.

II. Claims for cultural restoration in the form of restitution of cultural objects removed during colonial rule + in the form of the granting of special cultural rights to formerly colonized peoples.

Tans response to “It is sometimes argued that colonialism improved the material and economic conditions of the lives of colonized peoples and hence colonialism could not on the whole be an injustice because it introduced more good than harm.”

Tan’s response:

assumes a consequentialist framework of sorts in which the injustice of a practice is determined by whether it generates more harm than good.

The denial of self-determination, the imposition of an economic order on a people, and the supplanting of its culture and language could count as wrongs in themselves whether or not accompanied by greater material gains for the subjugated group.

Recognizing the damage of colonialism to be more than just economic can help reveal why colonialism could be an injustice even if it (as is commonly argued) improved the economic conditions of colonized peoples.

Another response to the claim that colonialism brought about a net improvement in the material/economic conditions of the lives of colonized peoples:

No, it didn’t, had social and political ramifications

Tan stresses that colonialism was not only an injustice against individuals but also

an injustice against a community or a people.

Denying a colonial subject the option of education in her own language or the option of higher education opportunities is a personal wrong in that it deprived that individual of certain opportunities; but the loss of a community’s language that this resulted in is a wrong against a people.

Denying a person the right of political participation is a violation of her basic political liberties, but the undermining of a people’s right to self-determination that results in a wrong not just against persons but against the collective.

This distinction between harms against persons and harms against a collective is important because the moral force for reparations for colonial injustices is better appreciated if we do not neglect the collective harms of colonialism

The argument from global equality/The egalitarian argument

A global arrangement that does not support the right to development, that treats the foreign debt of developing countries as acceptable market outcomes, and that does not recognize the cultural rights of peoples fails to live up to the ideal of treating individuals with equal respect and concern.

The duty of global justice to treat all persons with equal respect and concern grounds the claims to development assistance, improved or equal market access, debt relief, and special cultural rights for certain nations.

In short, the specific demands for economic and cultural rights advanced in paragraph 116 and elsewhere can be made on the basis ofwhat it means to treat contemporary individuals with equal respect and concern

In light of the egalitarian argument, some philosophers take the

following view:

If the disadvantages that some people are now facing are unjust disadvantages that cannot be condoned under defensible criteria of global equality, then these disadvantages should be criticized under these criteria, whether or not they are due to past injustices.

It is not the fact that individuals have been wronged in the past that we should be invoking in calling for greater global redistribution, but the fact that they are being wronged now by the imposition on them of unjust global arrangements (that is, arrangements that fail to treat them with equal respect and concern), independently of whether they were also wronged in the past

The fact of past injustices is not a necessary condition for our having a reason to remedy a present injustice. If a current distributive arrangement offends against our standards of egalitarian justice, then justice requires that we rectify the situation, independently of how the arrangement came about. Reference to past injustice may help us understand how the present unjust arrangement came about, but it plays no necessary justificatory role with respect to why we should do something about the current situation.

Reparative arguments are at best superfluous and may also be distracting

Tan’s view

Tan agrees that the egalitarian argument can also ground many of the demands that have been made in the name of reparations. Nevertheless, he argues, arguments from reparation can be useful in three ways:

(1) Reparative arguments are better able to motivate action than more abstract egalitarian arguments. Even when egalitarian arguments are accepted, reparative arguments can supplement egalitarian arguments by providing additional motivation for compliance with the demands of egalitarian justice.

(2) Reparations may be necessary for repairing the relationships between former colonizers and the formerly colonized.

(3) Reparative arguments can step in to offer an alternative defence of the demands in question when egalitarian arguments are met with skepticism

Any claim for reparation has to fulfill the following conditions:

(2) The claimant who is entitled to reparation must be identified —to whom are reparations owed?

(3) The agent who has the obligation to provide the reparation must be identified—who owes reparations?

If there are no identifiable agents or claimants relative to any reparative claim, then the claim is quite meaningless.

(4) It must be shown that the reparations demanded can be offered without incurring further injustices.

If the reparative actions demanded will themselves bring about further injustices (to third parties or even to the parties who can be reasonably called on to make repairs of some form), the reparative demands may not be satisfiable.

The fundamental moral basis of the idea of reparation:

One has the duty to make good the wrong one does.

Conversely, a person has the right to demand repairs of sorts from a person who has harmed her.

The principle of righting one’s wrong is present in our ordinary conception of morality

The formulation as stated suggests that it is the wrongdoer who has to make good the wrong done, and that it is the victim who has the right to demand reparation.

However, for many interesting cases in which reparations are demanded, the situation is more complex. The wrongdoers are often no longer present to bear the burdens of reparation;

similarly, the victims of the past injustice are often no longer present to personally demand and to benefit from the reparations.

(a) [the problem of unfair entitlements] Why should individuals who did not personally suffer colonial injustice be nonetheless entitled to some form of reparation?

(b) [the problem of unfair burdens] Why should individuals who did not personally perpetrate colonial injustice nonetheless be responsible for repairing that past injustice?

2) To whom are reparations owed?

In the colonial context, it is the current members of the colonized countries who are demanding repairs for colonialism.

Why should present participating members of a nation have a right to reparations for injustices that are not necessarily carried out against them in person?

One way of responding to this question is to see the harm of colonialism [not as a harm done against individuals (?)] but as a harm done against a nation or a people, and so it is to the nation as a corporate entity that reparation is now owed

The problem of unfair entitlements

The denial of educational opportunities to an individual during colonialism is a wrong against the person; but the resulting loss of the intellectual and cultural tradition of the person’s community is a wrong against the collective and is a wrong that extends beyond the lives of the persons individually denied the opportunity.

Tan’s preferred corporate approach solution to “the problem of unfair entitlements” the problem of explaining why individuals who did not personally suffer during colonialism should nonetheless be entitled to some form of reparation:

If we accept that not only individuals but corporate entities may be harmed, we can avoid the problem of transferring occurred harms across generations or different individuals. If we treat the harm against a nation as a harm against a corporate entity, then what we’re saying is: the nation was unjustly harmed, and it is the nation that is now demanding compensation for this harm against it.

(3) Who should bear the burdens of reparations?

Just as it is a feature of ordinary morality that moral agents make good the wrongs they do, it is also central to most ordinary moral conceptions that moral culpability does not travel across agencies.

Passing the burden of reparative justice from the generation guilty of an injustice to another that is innocent seems to violate this basic moral dictum.

If reparations for colonialism have the effect of imposing some costs on present citizens of former colonial powers who were not themselves the perpetrators of the injustices of colonialism, this seems to be an unfair imposition of burdens

Tan’s preferred corporate approach response to the problem of

unfair burdens:

Framing the issue in terms of corporate responsibility will avoid the problem of unfair burdens. The idea of the nation as a corporate entity will help us to see why a country (and effectively its present citizens) can now be called on to make repairs for its past colonialist activities. It is the corporate entity that had done the wrong and it is the corporate entity that is now asked to make good the wrong. No responsibility is being passed on from a moral agent who committed the wrong to a moral agent who is innocent. The wrongful actor is the nation, and it is the nation that is now being asked to make repairs

(4) It must be shown that the reparations demanded can be offered without incurring further injustices

4A. The unreasonably heavy burdens objection

Another difficulty with reparative demands is that they sometimes seem to impose unduly

heavy burdens on the agents responsible for providing the reparations.

In many cases of past injustices, given the complexity of history, full reparations may not always be possible given their unjust implications on the persons expected to bear the costs.

What this means, however, is not that reparations per se are unwarranted; what may have to be limited against other considerations is the content of the demands for reparations. To put the point in a different way, it is not that the reparative principle no longer is valid in this case, but that the complexity of the situation renders salient other competing

principles that need to be taken account of.”

- At any rate, the types of reparations that are typically proposed for colonial injustice are not subject to the unreasonably heavy burdens objection. They are not demands that would incur further injustices if accepted and enforced; on the contrary they are quite modest demands that moreover would be required by other (independent) considerations of justice

4B. The passage of time objection

Some commentators might point to the amount of time that has

passed between the injustice committed and the present in which

reparations are being demanded. Perhaps there should be a moral

equivalent of a statute of limitations? Is it, after all, not unfair to

suddenly impose an unexpected burden of repair on a violator when

she could reasonably believe that bygones will be bygones because

a significant amount of time has passed since the violation?

Tan’s response to the passage of time objection:

Claims against colonialism have been ongoing, from calls for equal treatment during colonialism itself to calls for independence from colonial rule, and currently for reparations after independence. At no point in the history of colonialism could colonizing authorities pretend not to know that claims were being made against them during colonialism or that claims were going to be made against them even after colonialism by their subjects. Demands for reparations for colonial injustice are not subject to the passage of time objection because at no time could colonizing authorities in good faith assume that bygones will be bygones