PPE 2023

In Chapter 9, Satz argues that ethical issues arise in kidney markets. Currently, the US and every other developed country prohibit receiving monetary (or some sort of considerable non-monetary) gain for giving their kidneys. The WHO interprets Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees everyone “security of person,” as preventing the sale of organs. However, every day, more than a dozen Americans die because they cannot get a transplant in time. Tens of thousands more are forced to go on dialysis, an expensive and at times degrading experience. The logic, then, supporting the provision of financial compensation for kidney giving (in other words, legalizing the sale of kidneys) appears to me as apodictic: financial compensation for kidneys would increase supply, and more supply would save lives.  Nevertheless, Satz advances some concerns with legalizing the sale of kidneys, and while I certainly cannot address all of them in one blog post, I will addre...

     Satz argues that society must provide certain goods as they are fundamental rights in an egalitarian society. Satz operates on Marshall’s definition of equal citizenship, which posits that all citizens must have equal basic political rights, civil rights, and the equal right to a threshold of economic welfare. His account of which goods are necessary to achieve full inclusion in society includes education, healthcare, and a certain basic financial safety net. (101) The focus of my blog will be exploring her account of the importance of a public right to education and why it is essential to a functioning democracy and working toward egalitarian values.       Our seminar debated whether public education was truly as effective a tool as Anderson argued it was in breaking patterns of domination and working toward a more equitable society. Satz offers a compelling account of why education is such an effective tool. Satz argues that even if a worker ach...

In chapter 4, Debra Satz introduces noxious markets. She describes the problems behind noxious markets as those relating “to the standing of the parties before, during, and after the process of exchange” (93). Satz argues that noxious markets in which the parties of the exchange are not equal should be blocked or severely constrained.  Noxious markets differentiate from other types of markets because of four parameters characterizing the consequences and sources of noxious markets. First, Satz argues that markets are considered noxious if its operations lead to “outcomes that are deleterious, either for the participants themselves or for third parties” (95). She presents an example that illustrates how markets can be extremely harmful to individuals because these outcomes leave basic interests unsatisfied. Basic interests are the universal features of a minimally decent human life, thus, any market that leaves these basic interests unsatisfied is considered noxious. Secondly, noxio...

  While reading Satz’s The Moral Limits of Markets , I started thinking about some potential new criticisms to the Puritan work ethic ideology. Additionally, I started thinking about how Satz’ assessment of how the market shape us might apply to how we view present day divisions of labor. In Chapter 2, Satz draws heavily on Smith to explain how markets function in shaping our preferences and talents. Satz refers to Smith’s pin-factory example, in which workers lose their power for intellectual exertion and philosophical engagement, to illustrate the ways in which participation in the market can shape our capabilities. According to Smith, through this lack of mental exercise, individuals “lose their power of independent thinking and become ill equipped to judge or deliberate about the policies of their country” (45). Therefore, the division of labor can not only render workers talentless, but can also make them incapable in meaningfully engaging in political or social life. Satz als...

While reading through Satz’s “Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor,” her arguments for legalized and regulated prostitution reminded me of a few arguments for legalizing abortion.  Before I start, I wanted to provide a quick counter-argument to the legalization of prostitution from an economic lens (devil’s advocate!). From pure economic supply and demand laws, I’d be inclined to see that the legalization of prostitution would lead to an increase in demand for it. A main reason that comes to mind when it comes to men not wanting to buy sex is that the demand would be lower in a non-legalized country; people are less likely to want to go through the qualms and concerns of engaging with the black market of selling sex. Thus, an increase in demand would have to be met with an increase in supply, perhaps creating an influx of more vulnerable women who do not want to engage in the profession.  Back to the overlay, women’s bodies have been a main point of contention in both the moral an...

In their dialogue, both Cowen and Anderson fail to address important elements of each other's arguments. Cowen's failure is primarily empirical. He dismisses the significance of labor market monopsony out of hand (109). Although economists disagree about the relevance of employer labor market power, Cowen does not sufficiently address the credible evidence of its role in suppressing compensation. This evidence has only grown in the years since Private Government  was published. One consideration as to the relevance of monopsony is the pay-productivity gap. Although libertarian economists chafe immensely at any implication that workers do not benefit from higher productivity, and the popular understanding of the pay-productivity gap is indeed exaggerated, even the most pro-market economists are forced to admit to a degree of "delinkage" between the growth of labor productivity and the compensation of nonsupervisory employees. Interestingly, there is less evidence of de...

Cowen argues that work is a “source of worker dignity.” However, as Anderson counters, this might apply to white-collar jobs and in perhaps general to the feelings of inadequacy that come with unemployment, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the workplaces themselves are sources of worker dignity. Instead, the position of being employed, or perhaps of having money, is a source of dignity. The degree to which employers enhance this in particular cases can vary. Cowen’s assertion that “workplaces, overall, are significant sources of human dignity and fulfillment in today’s capitalist world” is perhaps contradicted by the large swaths of people that chose stimulus checks over employment during the pandemic. If low-wage workers derived so much happiness and fulfillment from their jobs, then many of those who were able would likely have returned to work when it became safe again. However, a large majority chose not to, perhaps because they derived dignity from having housing, food, and ...

At the beginning of Chapter 2, Anderson lays out an engrossing narrative about the modern workplace—comparing it with an authoritarian dictatorship. Her description is important to her argument about private government as a whole. Nevertheless, I’d like to make three important points about the analogy (two of which will be potential shortcomings of it).  First, I think Anderson’s argument would benefit from engaging with the idea of structural violence. Indeed, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force separates the state from private corporations, and really any other entity (a distinction that Weber makes and Anderson concedes). The use of violence is then employed in states to constrain negative freedom. Anderson posits that private “sanction” does effectively the same thing, but I think the underlying mechanism for why that is true depends on a broader definition of violence (one that includes structural violence, to be specific). If republican freedom is ultimately about non...

Chapter 6 features a response by Tyler Cowen challenging Anderson’s argument that “communist dictatorships” are private business firms. He applies an economical lens to frame his argument and begins by discussing the costs of worker exit. Cowen argues that when the costs of worker exits are relatively low, the dictatorial power of companies is also relatively low (109). Cowen argues that since many workers become attached to their workplaces – because of factors such as good relationships with their coworkers, preferred commute, etc – workplace issues are not about insufficient worker freedoms but wage depression. He acknowledges that the cost of exiting many jobs is high and therefore, public policy should focus on lowering these costs by leveling things such as health insurance and retirement benefits. When the cost of leaving a job is high, such as losing health insurance, retirement benefits, and immigration status (things that are all tied closely to an individual’s job) employees...

Tyler Cowen presents a critique of Anderson’s argument of the workplace as it functions as a private government. Anderson argues that workplace dynamics need reform, which most importantly includes letting employees have a voice. Her support for workers’ rights can also be read as a support for unions. This lets employees have a say in the way that they are being treated in their current job positions, arguing for better working conditions, wages, and more.  One part of Cowen’s criticism specifically focuses on this form of unionization. He says: “When workers have a say in governance, employment tends to be more stable and wages tend to be more volatile. In other words, the real problem with bosses is that they are too willing to give up “control” over their workers” (116). He argues that when employees have more administrative sway over the way a workplace functions, it can have negative effects. He sees this as an issue as employers are then giving up their authority in order to...

Anderson lays out a compelling case in Chapter 1 that the Industrial Revolution is responsible for the paradigm shift vis-à-vis the market. Before the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was promoted as a force for a more egalitarian society. Self-employment was encouraged rather than slaving away for a master, being a serf to a lord, or an artisan, citizen, priest, or wife subject to the arbitrary and absolute authority of the guild, king, bishop, and husband, respectively. In Smith’s ideal world, everyone would be a master of himself (TMS) but nobody else (WN). Employer-employee dynamics were thought of as occurring in a small context—Anderson points out that Smith’s pin factory is a factory of only 10 employees. Rather than being justified using the rationalizations that Anderson (and Shaira in her blog post) summarized, Smith likely imagined that hierarchies (or a system of ranks) would arise as the result of ambition, merit, and trades bounded by justice. Nevertheless, “The Industri...

       Anderson’s writing in Private Government is similar to Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Consider Rawls’ two principles of justice. The foremost intention of these tools for crafting a well-ordered society is to secure a fair and just distribution of the primary social goods to ensure that regardless of identity, social circumstances, or any other factor, individuals can adequately develop their talents and pursue their plans of leading fulfilled lives. These ideals influence Anderson. I want to point to her emphasis on British workers’ struggle to secure workday limitations. Anderson argues that this was a natural reaction to the authoritarian nature of the industrialized workplace. Barriers to entry and exit were low for workers, so employers had no obligation to employ or grant basic privileges. The only actual course of action for the workers was a strike, which involved severe sacrifices on their part that the rich did not similarly suffer due to accumulations of...

 Other blog posts have highlighted Anderson's explanation for how the Industrial Revolution and economies of scale produced hierarchies and disappointed egalitarian hopes for the potential of free markets. I thought Anderson did an amazing job of explaining this and workplace freedom and justice is something that I have hardly ever thought about in school. I was struck by here description of the workplace and the lack of republican freedom that employees have due to the structure of the firm. She points out the problems with the lack of regulation and protection for workers in a large firm. These problems essentially boil down to the fact that bosses can do basically whatever they want to workers as long as there are fair entry and exit opportunities. However, workers are largely unprotected when they are actually in the company, which Anderson argues is at least equally as important as entry and exit criteria. Besides ending the division of labor and stopping capitalist markets, t...

  I generally agree with most of Anderson’s argument about the pervasiveness of excessive control in the modern workplace. As Anderson argues, government is not limited to the state, and private companies can and do impose massive constraints on individual liberties. However, Anderson also argues that certain requirements imposed by state or private governments can enhance our freedoms. According to Anderson, the state can counteract private government by enforcing constraints on negative liberties, which in turn can generate further negative, positive, and republican freedoms. Anderson raises the example of the state imposing requirement on employers to refrain from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and writes that this constraint “enhances the republican and negative freedom of workers to express their sexual identities and choose their sexual and life partners. It also enhances their positive liberties, by enabling more people to move out of the closet, and ther...

 I'll keep this short because it's not strictly related to philosophy but I wanted to share some stuff that you all might be interested to learn about regarding Anderson's proposed solutions. They happen to be policies that I've been interested in for a while, and are starting to get some traction in Democratic policy circles, so if the book spoke to you you might find this interesting -The Federal Trade Commission is in the process of banning non-compete agreements. This is one of the "contractual barriers to exit" from authoritarian workplaces that workers face (66).       https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/ftc-proposes-rule-ban-noncompete-clauses-which-hurt-workers-harm-competition -California passed a law last year creating a statewide fast food labor council, composed of employers and union representatives, with broad authority over wages and working conditions. This would essentially move organized labor from the "firm-level...

 Anderson makes a compelling case for the balance of power being skewed too far in favor of employers in modern workplaces. However, I think there is something to be said in defense of the employer-employee hierarchies. My main contention is with Anderson's objection to the overly-intensive and incompletely specified nature of managers' authority over their workers. She uses the example of the state imposing traffic laws "that leaves people free to choose their own destination, routes and purposes," while corporations like Walmart dictate "what they have to pick up, when and where they have to deliver it, and what route they have to take." (121) This analogy is heavily flawed on multiple levels. Traffic laws exist largely to ensure general road safety. Their purpose is to regulate behavior to maintain order on the roads, and therefore are relatively minimal. By comparison, Walmart's objectives are profit and efficiency. With that in mind, of course  they...

One thing that stuck out to me about the first two chapters of Private Government  and that I noticed in Anderson's piece on property rights was something confusing about her definition of negative vs. positive freedom. One of her big claims is that property rights can't be justified in terms of negative liberty, and so "the libertarian case for private property depends on accepting that positive liberty often rightly overrides negative liberty," (47). This is because the "correlative duty, coercively enforceable by individuals or the state, that others refrain from meddling with another's property without the owner's permission" amounts to a "massive" loss of negative liberty. When someone owns land, she is decreasing the negative liberty of everyone else in the world who no longer has access to it, but increasing her own positive liberty to dispose of the land without interference. While this is an illuminating argument, I think it reveal...

  I want to dip into Anderson's Private Government and think through the proposal that my group created last class regarding spirituality, the division of labor, and hierarchies of authority. We argued that spirituality justifies (and is weaponized by) the division of labor, which creates hierarchies of authority (which spirituality maintains).  Anderson introduces the "great chain of being" as a mechanism that justified the massive hierarchies of authority within pre-industrial revolution England. All people linked through their superior authority figure in a chain until God. Hierarchies of authority were intensely pervasive at the time; as Anderson notes, all people except for the king were ruled by an authority who had almost limitless control over their lives. Each person in the great chain "​​Had some creature above and some below their place; even the king and pope were accountable to God; even the lowliest humans had dominion over animals" (Anderson 10). ...

In “Private Government,” Anderson writes that “to be an egalitarian is to command and promote a society in which its members interact as equals” and that forms of social hierarchies are the object of their critique (2). Anderson begins by presenting Smith’s and Marx’s contrasting views of an egalitarian market society. Smith’s image of the market society paints everyone to exchange on the terms of equal authority, esteem, and standing. Marx directly challenges this, stating that Smith’s conception of an egalitarian market exchange creates hierarchies of authority, esteem, and standing. Marx states that in Smith’s market society, employers enjoy an air of superiority over their employees and that employees are obligated to follow their employers and disregard their own interests in regard to capitalist profit.  Anderson writes that the reason behind the shift in the egalitarian assessment of the market society was the industrial revolution. She explains that while Smith wrote his co...