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78In Our Best Interest: A Defense of PaternalismPhilosophical Quarterly 69 (276): 636-638. 2019.In Our Best Interest: A Defense of Paternalism. Edited by Hanna Jason.
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31When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State InjusticePrinceton University Press. 2018.Why you have the right to resist unjust government The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their governments: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is a fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow the government a…Read more
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59Are Adjunct Faculty Exploited: Some Grounds for SkepticismJournal of Business Ethics 152 (1): 53-71. 2018.
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56Come On, Come On, Love Me for the MoneyBusiness Ethics Journal Review 6 (6): 30-35. 2018.Jacob Sparks critiques our recent work on commodification by arguing that purchasing love indicates one has defective preferences. We argue A) it is possible to purchase these things without having defective preferences, B) Sparks has not shown that acting such defective preferences is morally wrong, C) that Sparks’ misunderstands the Brennan–Jaworski Thesis, and so has not produced a counterexample to it, and finally D) that when we examine the processes by which love is gifted, it is unclear w…Read more
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220Correction to: Does the Demographic Objection to Epistocracy Succeed?Res Publica 24 (1): 157-157. 2018.The above-mentioned article was published online with an incorrect title. The correct title reads “Does the Demographic Objection to Epistocracy Succeed?”
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170Propaganda about PropagandaCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 29 (1): 34-48. 2017.ABSTRACTJason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works intends to offer a novel account of what propaganda is, how it works, and what damage it does inside a democratic culture. The book succeeds in showing that, contrary to the stereotype, propaganda need not be false or misleading. However, Stanley offers contradictory definitions of propaganda, and his theory, which is both over- and under-inclusive, is applied in a dismissive, highly ideological way. In the end, it remains unclear how much damage prop…Read more
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52If You Can Reply for Money, You Can Reply for FreeJournal of Value Inquiry 51 (4): 655-661. 2017.
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17I’ll Pay You Ten Bucks Not to Murder MeBusiness Ethics Journal Review 4 (9): 53-58. 2016.James Stacey Taylor offers three interpretations of our thesis, and argues that only one of them goes through. His point is to clarify our view rather than critique our position. In this brief response, we argue that, upon further clarification, we could endorse at least one of the other interpretations, though as Taylor notes, we don’t need to for our book’s thesis to go through.
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492Markets without Symbolic LimitsEthics 125 (4): 1053-1077. 2015.Semiotic objections to commodification hold that buying and selling certain goods and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships. We argue that such objections fail. The meaning of markets and of money is a contingent, socially constructed fact. Cultures often impute meaning to markets in harmful, socially destructive, or costly ways. Rather than semiotic objections giving us reason to judge cert…Read more
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53Markets Without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial InterestsRoutledge. 2015.May you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified , then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes…Read more
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166How Smart is Democracy? You Can't Answer that Question a PrioriCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 26 (1-2): 33-58. 2014.ABSTRACTHélène Landemore claims that under certain conditions, democracies with universal suffrage will tend to make smarter and better decisions than epistocracies, even though most citizens in modern democracies are extremely ignorant about politics. However, there is ample empirical evidence that citizens make systematic errors. If so, it is fatal to Landemore's defense of democracy, which, if it works at all, applies only to highly idealized situations that are unlikely to occur in the real …Read more
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124Is Market Society Intrinsically Repugnant?Journal of Business Ethics 112 (2): 271-281. 2013.In Why Not Socialism ?, G. A. Cohen argues that market society and capitalism are intrinsically repugnant. He asks us to imagine an ideal camping trip, which becomes increasing repugnant as it shifts from living by socialist to capitalist principles. In this paper, I expose the limits of this style of argument by making a parallel argument, which shows how an ideal anarchist camping trip becomes increasingly repugnant as the campsite turns from anarchism to democracy. When we see why this style …Read more
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672The right to a competent electoratePhilosophical Quarterly 61 (245): 700-724. 2011.The practice of unrestricted universal suffrage is unjust. Citizens have a right that any political power held over them should be exercised by competent people in a competent way. Universal suffrage violates this right. To satisfy this right, universal suffrage in most cases must be replaced by a moderate epistocracy, in which suffrage is restricted to citizens of sufficient political competence. Epistocracy itself seems to fall foul of the qualified acceptability requirement, that political po…Read more
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275Classical LiberalismIn David Estlund (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 115. 2012.
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413Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not VoteAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4): 535-549. 2009.Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because t…Read more
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247The Ethics of VotingPrinceton Univ Pr. 2011.In this provocative book, Jason Brennan challenges our fundamental assumptions about voting, revealing why it is not a duty for most citizens--in fact, he ...
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66Brief History of Liberty (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2010.Stimulating and thought-provoking," A Brief History of Liberty" offers readers a philosophically-informed portrait of the elusive nature of one of our most ...
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115Choice and Excellence: A Defense of Millian IndividualismSocial Theory and Practice 31 (4): 483-498. 2005.Communitarians have argued against Millian individualism (ethical liberalism) by claiming that it leads to the compartmentalization of life, and thus inhibits virtue, that it causes alienation, and leads to what I call the problem of choice. Ethical liberals celebrate the free choice of a conception of the good life, but communitarians respond by posing a dilemma. Either the choice is made in reference to some given standard (a social or natural telos), in which case it is not free, or it is mad…Read more
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32I’ll Pay You Ten Bucks Not to Murder MeBusiness Ethics Journal Review 4 (9): 53-58. 2016.James Stacey Taylor offers three interpretations of our thesis, and argues that only one of them goes through. His point is to clarify our view rather than critique our position. In this brief response, we argue that, upon further clarification, we could endorse at least one of the other interpretations, though as Taylor notes, we don’t need to for our book’s thesis to go through.
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80In Defense of CommodificationMoral Philosophy and Politics 2 (2): 357-377. 2015.We aim to show anti-commodification theorists that their complaints about the scope of the market are exaggerated. There are we agree things that should not be bought and sold but that’s only because they are things people shouldn’t have or do or exchange in the first place. Beyond that we argue there are legitimate moral worries about how we buy trade and sell but no legitimate worries about what we buy trade and sell. In almost every interesting case where they have argued markets are morally …Read more
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205Free will in the Block universePhilosophia 35 (2): 207-217. 2007.Carl Hoefer has argued that determinism in block universes does not privilege any particular time slice as the fundamental determiner of other time slices. He concludes from this that our actions are free, insofar as they are pieces of time slices we may legitimately regard as fundamental determiners. However, I argue that Hoefer does not adequately deal with certain remaining problems. For one, there remain pervasive asymmetries in causation and the macroscopic efficacy of our actions. I sugges…Read more