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14Market failureCritical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 7 (4): 525-537. 1993.The Theory of Market Failure explores how markets respond, both in theory and in practice, to public‐goods and externality problems. Most of the articles in this anthology find that markets often meet the demand for public goods in a variety of cases where existing theory would lead one to expect market failure. Moreover, upon reflection, existing theory reveals itself to be in need of supplementation by a more realistic picture of how flexible markets (and evolving systems of property rights) r…Read more
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14The Institution of PropertySocial Philosophy and Policy 11 (2): 42-62. 1994.The typical method of acquiring a property right involves transfer from a previous owner. But sooner or later, that chain of transfers traces back to the beginning. That is why we have a philosophical problem. How does a thing legitimately become a piece of property for the first time ? In this essay, I follow the custom of distinguishing between mere liberties and full-blooded rights. If I have the liberty of doing X , then it is permissible for me to do X . But the mere fact that I am at liber…Read more
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1Our days are a vast, intricate, evolving dance of mutual understandings. We stop at a traffic light, offer a plastic card as payment for a meal, leave our weapons at home, or enter a voting booth. We live and work in close proximity, at high speed, with few collisions: on our roads and in our neighborhoods, places of worship, and places of business. Somehow, having all those people around is more liberating than stifling. The secret is that we know roughly what to expect from each other. Knowing…Read more
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7Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods ProblemInternational Philosophical Quarterly 30 (3): 369-370. 1990.
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10Debra Satz: Why some things should not be for sale: The moral limits of marketsJournal of Philosophy 108 (4): 219-223. 2011.
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28Because It's RightCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (sup1): 63-95. 2007.Morality teaches us that, if we look on her only as good for something else, we never in that case have seen her at all. She says that she is an end to be desired for her own sake, and not as a means to something beyond. Degrade her, and she disappears.— F. H. Bradley
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6Reasons for AltruismSocial Philosophy and Policy 10 (1): 52-68. 1993.This essay considers whether acts of altruism can be rational. Rational choice, according to the standard instrumentalist model, consists of maximizing one's utility, or more precisely, maximizing one's utility subject to a budget constraint. We seek the point of highest utility lying within our limited means. The term ‘utility’ could mean a number of different things, but in recent times utility has usually been interpreted as preference satisfaction . To have a preference is to care , to want …Read more
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9Review of Dale Jamieson, ed. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (review)Environmental Ethics 25 (1): 99-104. 2003.
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4Islands in a sea of obligation: Limits of the duty to rescue (review)Law and Philosophy 19 (6): 683-705. 2000.No Abstract
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30Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility (M. van Roojen)Philosophical Books 41 (1): 62-63. 2000.The issue of social welfare and individual responsibility has become a topic of international public debate in recent years as politicians around the world now question the legitimacy of state-funded welfare systems. David Schmidtz and Robert Goodin debate the ethical merits of individual versus collective responsibility for welfare. David Schmidtz argues that social welfare policy should prepare people for responsible adulthood rather than try to make that unnecessary. Robert Goodin argues agai…Read more
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28A Survey of Ecological Economics, Rajaram Krishnan, Jonathan M. Harris and Neva R. Goodwin . Island Press, 1995, 384 + xxxix Pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 15 (1): 152. 1999.
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18Equal respect and equal sharesSocial Philosophy and Policy 19 (1): 244-274. 2002.We are all equal, sort of. We are not equal in terms of our physical or mental capacities. Morally speaking, we are not all equally good. Evidently, if we are equal, it is not in virtue of our actual characteristics, but despite them. Our equality is of a political rather than metaphysical nature. We do not expect people to be the same, but we expect differences to have no bearing on how people ought to be treated as citizens. Or when differences do matter, we expect that they will not matter in…Read more
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2Pettit's 'free riding and foul dealing'Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (2). 1988.This Article does not have an abstract
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8Diminishing Marginal Utility and Egalitarian RedistributionJournal of Value Inquiry 34 (2/3): 263-272. 2000.
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23GuaranteesSocial Philosophy and Policy 14 (2): 1. 1997.People have accidents. They get old. They eat too much. They have bad luck. And sooner or later, something will be fatal. It would be a better world if such things did not happen, but they do. There is no use arguing about it. What is worth arguing about is whether it makes for a better world when people have to pay for other people's misfortunes and mistakes rather than their own
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37Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.
Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |