Ethical Dimensions of the Economy: Making Use of Hegel and the Concepts of Public and Merit Goods

Capa
Springer Science & Business Media, 19/03/2008 - 304 páginas
Overview This book is a philosophical reflection (using mainly Hegel, in addition to 1 Adam Smith, Kant, Marx and Catholic Social Thought) about the soc- political dimension of economics. In it I both agree and disagree with the slogan that “the least government is the best government. ” I agree with the slogan, in particular as it applies to the economic domain. Adam Smith taught us that rational and self-interested individuals, left by themselves, create a more efficient and reliable economic system than one in which the government has a heavy role as was the case in his time with the merc- tile system (Smith, 14, 651). Ludwig von Mises demonstrated the same idea for the communist command economy (Hayek 1935, 87–130). I d- agree with the above mentioned slogan if it is interpreted as suggesting that we can best forget about the role of the government for a good functioning economy. Instead, I will argue that the government has an important fu- tion in creating the proper regulations and the wise institutional arran- ments which will allow the economy to flourish in a more efficient, fair and humane way. This book is interdisciplinary in nature. It is a philosophical and ethical reflection on economics. Hence, I make use of philosophical ideas, often but not exclusively those of Hegel. I reflect philosophically on economic concepts.

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Índice

Unjust Redistribution in the American System 181 I An Opportunity for Collective Gains 181 A An Argument Based on Expected Dollar Gains 181 ...
8
Introduction 1 Overview 1 Part I Normative Reflections on the Economy 13 Section I Multiple Discourses on the Economy 15 1 The Interconnectio...
24
A Human Not a Natural Institution 71 I Adam Smiths Ontology of the Economy 71 II The Function of Property 72 III The NeoLiberal Economic Ph...
88
Conclusion
106
Objecting to a Libertarian Attack on Governmental Functions
113
Ideal Concept as Are the Concepts of Private and Merit Good 119 III In Search of a Definition 126 A An Enumeration of the Characteristics Used to ...
174
Utility Interdependence 184 II The Opportunity for Collective Gain is a Public Good 186 III The Moral Argument 190 IV The Current Method of S...
191
I A Hidden Challenge in the Transition to the Free Market 199 II Arguments in Favor of the Free Market 201 A Primary Argument 201 B Secondary...
219
Catholic Social Thought and Recent Nobel
241
and Moral Goals 243 Conclusion 245 Conclusion 247 References 257 Indices 273 Proper Names 273
277
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Página 136 - ... the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain ; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.
Página 202 - According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to ; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings : first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies...
Página 120 - Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to -pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which, no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient ; the duty of superintending the industry...
Página 202 - ... the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it...
Página 50 - By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security ; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Página 120 - All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfecdy free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.
Página 101 - Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none .at alL...
Página 110 - Xn + n) which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that good...
Página 101 - Even though the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society...
Página 18 - This unemployment returning again to plague us after so many repetitions during the century past is a sign of deep failure in our country. Unemployment is the great peacetime physical tragedy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and both in its cause and in the imprint it leaves upon those who inflict it, those who permit it, and those who are its victims, it is one of the great moral tragedies of our time.

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