John O'Neill

In Economic Democratic Planning Robin Hahnel rearticulates and defends the model of participatory planning he developed with Michael Albert. This paper develops three lines of criticism of the model. It argues that the model’s principle of distribution of income among workers according to a metric of effort would involve pervasive surveillance of persons and potential humiliation. The use of a price metric of opportunity costs and cost-benefit analysis in the allocation of resources fails to address the implications of value-pluralism and incommensurability for their allocation. In response to Hahnel’s criticism of those who argue that environmental constraints entail limits to economic growth, it argues that we need to take those constraints more seriously than he does. The paper focuses on the second and third area of disagreement by placing those differences within the wider history of the socialist calculation debates and ecological economics.

ABSTRACT It is widely supposed by both its proponents and critics that communitarianism is committed to the defence of lies of nationhood: the nation forms a surviving communal attachment in a world in which the individual is otherwise denuded of ties of community. I argue in this paper that this assumption is mistaken. It depends on a romantic image of the nation which was constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That image hides the recent historical origins of the nation and its foundation in the suppression of older allegiances or their later privatisation; it continues to disguise the illusory nature of the national community. The nation is not a surviving pre‐modern community to which individuals are attached as a bulwark against the impersonality of public life in modern society. Rather the nation is one of the main vehicles for the construction of the modern unencumbered self. Communitarians need not be committed to the defence of the specifically modem forms of public irrationality and immorality that nationalism embodies.

ABSTRACT Is a scientific attitude to the natural world an obstacle to an appreciation of its value? This paper argues that it is not. Following Aristotle and Marx, it maintains that, properly pursued, science has value because it enables us to contemplate that which is wonderful and beautiful. However, the paper concedes that, as actually practised, science can foster a vice described by Augustine as ‘the lust of the eyes’: knowledge is sought not to open us to the world, but merely to satisfy the itch of curiosity. If scientific knowledge is thus pursued, no limits to the means to it nor to its objects are recognised. Those who thus seek knowledge fail to understand its value.

An important but neglected difference between modern utilitarian and Kantian ethics on one side and virtues ethics on the other concerns the relation of good and evil. By taking virtues to be ethical primitives, standard versions of virtues ethics entail that some goods are logically evil‐dependent. That is, at least some central virtues cannot be characterised without reference to the possible existence of an evil, and cannot be exercised without the actual existence of that evil. Given this account on the logical relation of good and evil, can a virtues ethic be defended? In particular, does a virtues ethic sanction an inference from a virtue to the evil that is the occasion for its exercise? The paper examines some prima facie examples of such inferences and considers how they might be blocked from within a virtues ethic.

Parte de mi propósito en este trabajo es analítico: delinear una serie de características lógicas del concepto de necesidad, así como el modo en que estas contrastan con las del concepto de preferencia. Pero mi propósito central es más sustantivo: develar lo que está en juego en el cambio desde el lenguaje de las necesidades hacia el lenguaje de las preferencias en la caracterización de la sostenibilidad. Argumentaré que la formulación Brundtland original del concepto de sostenibilidad en términos de necesidades tiene virtudes tanto teóricas como prácticas que se pierden con el cambio hacia el lenguaje de las preferencias. Un enfoque basado en las necesidades es más consciente de la pluralidad de constituyentes diferentes del bienestar, y de los límites a la sustituibilidad entre las diferentes clases de bienes que la generación actual debe legar a las generaciones futuras, si pretendemos mantener el bienestar humano. Captura mejor la naturaleza y seriedad de las obligaciones éticas que tenemos tanto hacia los pobres de las generaciones actuales como hacia las futuras generaciones. Por último, provee un punto de partida más adecuado para el reconocimiento de las formas de dependencia y vulnerabilidad humanas que informan las preocupaciones básicas en relación a la sostenibilidad. (Publicado originalmente como O'Neill, John (2010). The overshadowing of needs. En F. Rauschmayer, I. Omann & J. Frühman (Eds.), Sustainable development. Capabilities, needs and wellbeing (pp.25-42). Londres: Routledge. Traducción castellana de Julieta Elgarte. Reproducido con autorización de Taylor & Francis Group.)

Environmental problems have an ethical dimension. They are not just about the efficient use of resources. Justice in the distribution of environmental goods and burdens, fairness in the processes of environmental decision-making, the moral claims of future generations and non-humans, these and other ethical values inform the responses of citizens to environmental problems. How can these concerns enter into good policy-making processes?Two expert-based approaches are commonly advocated for incorporating ethical values into environmental decision-making. One is an 'economic capture' approach, according to which existing economic methods can be successfully extended to include ethical concerns. For example, stated preference methods, especially contingent valuation, have been developed to try and capture ethical responses as 'non-use values' of the environment, in particular 'existence values'. The other is a 'moral expert' approach which confines economic methods to the analysis of welfare gains, and assumes committees of ethical experts will complement economic expertise.Both approaches face problems in terms of addressing many widely held ethical values about the environment. Furthermore, both face problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of their procedures. How can policy-making be made responsive to different ethical values? What role is there for new deliberative and participatory methods? How far do existing decision-making institutions have the capacities to incorporate different modes of articulating environmental values?This policy brief examines the limitations of current attempts to capture ethical values within existing economic instruments and considers how these limitations might be overcome. Section 1 examines the assumptions that standard economic theory makes about individuals when they express values and make choices about the environment. The current models of agents that inform policy-making are seen to be ill-suited to incorporating the ethical responses of agents and this reveals some of the policy failures that may result. Section 2 shows how the physical and social properties of many environmental goods prevent their being treated as commodities. Section 3 considers the problems surrounding conceptions of fairness and legitimacy in processes for environmental valuation. Section 4 raises questions concerning the capacities of policy-making institutions to take cognisance of the results of different methods for articulating environmental values

This paper responds to Hahnel’s reply to my paper ‘Pluralism, ecology and planning’ in this special issue. It focuses on disagreements concerning value commensurability and growth. It defends the possibility of rational choices in the use of resources in the absence of value commensurability. It defends the claim that the systematic drive for growth in capitalism is a central source of environmental problems and of environmental injustice. It questions Hahnel’s assertion that substitution in production and consumption alone is the only strategy to achieve environmental sustainability. Substitution is necessary but not sufficient. Environmental limits require consumption and production corridors above sufficiency for all but below excess. Those corridors are a condition for meeting the needs of the poor within environmental limits. Both the examination of environmental problems in capitalism and democratic planning require forms of in-kind analysis defended by Neurath and Kapp to address the problem of meeting human needs within environmental limits.

In Economic Democratic Planning Robin Hahnel rearticulates and defends the model of participatory planning he developed with Michael Albert. This paper develops three lines of criticism of the model. It argues that the model’s principle of distribution of income among workers according to a metric of effort would involve pervasive surveillance of persons and potential humiliation. The use of a price metric of opportunity costs and cost-benefit analysis in the allocation of resources fails to address the implications of value-pluralism and incommensurability for their allocation. In response to Hahnel’s criticism of those who argue that environmental constraints entail limits to economic growth, it argues that we need to take those constraints more seriously than he does. The paper focuses on the second and third area of disagreement by placing those differences within the wider history of the socialist calculation debates and ecological economics.

Daily rhythms in the rate and specificity of protein synthesis occur in most mammalian cells through an interaction between cell‐autonomous circadian regulation and daily cycles of systemic cues. However, the overall protein content of a typical cell changes little over 24 h. For most proteins, translation appears to be coordinated with protein degradation, producing phases of proteomic renewal that maximize energy efficiency while broadly maintaining proteostasis across the solar cycle. We propose that a major function of this temporal compartmentalization—and of circadian rhythmicity in general—is to optimize the energy efficiency of protein synthesis and associated processes such as complex assembly. We further propose that much of this temporal compartmentalization is achieved at the level of translational initiation, such that the translational machinery alternates between distinct translational mechanisms, each using a distinct toolkit of phosphoproteins to preferentially recognize and translate different classes of mRNA.