Jason Brennan

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 415-436, November 2022. Recent debates over ideal theory have reinvigorated interest in the question of anarchy. Would a perfectly just society need—or even permit—a state? Ideal anarchists such as Jason Brennan, G.A. Cohen, Christopher Freiman, and Jacob Levy argue that strict compliance with justice obviates the need for a state. Ideal statists such as David Estlund, Gregory Kavka, and John Rawls think that coercive political institutions serve indispensable functions even in ideal conditions. This paper defends ideal anarchism. Our argument begins by describing a camping trip inspired by Cohen that illustrates why an anarchist form of cooperation is more intrinsically desirable than the statist alternative. After detailing Rawls's ideal theory and Estlund's “nonconcessive” moral theory, we argue—contrary to Rawls, Estlund, and Kavka—that large-scale societies without moral imperfection do not need a state.

Finger-wagging moralizers say the love of money is the root of all evil. They assume that making a lot of money requires exploiting others, and that the best way to wash off the resulting stain is to give a lot of it away. In Why It's OK to Want to Be Rich, Jason Brennan shows that the moralizers have it backwards. He argues that, in general, the more money you make, the more you already do for others, and that even an average wage earner is productively "giving back" to society just by doing her job. In addition, wealth liberates us to have the best chance of leading a life that's authentically our own. Brennan also demonstrates how money-based societies create nicer, more trustworthy, and more cooperative citizens. And in another chapter that takes on the new historians of capitalism, Brennan argues that wealthy nations became wealthy because of their healthy institutions, not from their horrific histories of slavery or colonialism. While writing that the more money one has, the more one should help others, Brennan also notes that we weren't born into a perpetual debt to society. It's OK to get rich and it's OK to enjoy being rich, too. Key Features Shows how the desire to become wealthy in an open and fair market helps maximize cooperation and lessens the chance of violence and war Argues that it is much easier for the average for-profit business to add value to the world than it is for the average non-profit Demonstrates that the kinds of virtues that lead to desirable personal and civic states also make people richer Argues that living in small clans for most of their history has given humans a negative attitude towards anyone acquiring more than her "fair share," an attitude that's ill-suited for our market-driven, globally connected world In a final, provocative chapter, maintains that ideal economic growth is infinite.

"American criminal justice is a dysfunctional mess. The so-called Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Understanding why means focusing on color -- not only on black or white, but also on green. The problem is that nearly everyone involved in criminal justice faces bad incentives. "Injustice for All" systematically diagnoses why and where American criminal justice goes wrong, and offers functional proposals for reform. By changing who pays for what, how people are appointed, how people are punished, and which things are criminalized, we can make the US a country which guarantees justice for all." --

Recent findings from psychology and behavioral economics suggest that we are “predictably irrational” in the pursuit of our interests. Paternalists from both the social sciences and philosophy use these findings to defend interfering with people's consumption choices for their own good. We should tax soda, ban cigarettes, and mandate retirement savings to make people healthier and wealthier than they’d be on their own. Our thesis is that the standard arguments offered in support of restricting people’s consumption choices for their own good also imply support for “epistocratic” restrictions on people’s voting choices for their own good. Indeed, the philosophical case for paternalistic restrictions on voting choices may be stronger than the case for restricting personal consumption choices. So, paternalists face a dilemma: either endorse less interference with consumption choices or more interference with voting choices.

ABSTRACT Thanks to Inquiry for hosting this symposium, and thanks to Ilya Somin, Robert Talisse, Gordon Allen, and Enzo Rossi for participating it. It’s an honor. I’m especially grateful for their contributions because the five of us come from similar enough starting points that our debates can be productive. None of us have any patience for romantic, pie-in-the-sky depictions of democracy or for the knee-jerk dogma that all the problems of democracy can be fixed with more democracy. All are concerned about real-world practical problems. We recognize you can’t counter a complaint of the form ‘These institutions have these problems’ by responding, ‘Oh, but if everyone behaved the way my theory requires them to behave, those institutions would be fine.’

This paper argues that mandatory, government-enforced vaccination can be justified even within a libertarian political framework. If so, this implies that the case for mandatory vaccination is very strong indeed as it can be justified even within a framework that, at first glance, loads the philosophical dice against that conclusion. I argue that people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of harm. In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others.

Sovereign is he who provides the exception.…The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.In spring 2020, in response to the COVID-19 crisis, world leaders imposed severe restrictions on citizens’ civil, political, and economic liberties. These restrictions went beyond less controversial and less demanding social distancing measures seen in past epidemics. Many states and countries imposed universal lockdowns. Lockdowns, as we define them here, require people to stay home; in some countries and places, citizens must have ad hoc licenses to...

G.A. Cohen famously claims that egalitarians shouldn’t be so rich. If you possess excess income and there is little chance that the state will redistribute it to the poor, you are obligated to donate it yourself. We argue that this conclusion is correct, but that the case against the rich egalitarian is significantly stronger than the one Cohen offers. In particular, the standard arguments against donating one’s excess income face two critical, unrecognized problems. First, we show that these arguments imply that citizens have no duty to further egalitarian political institutions—a conclusion that Cohen’s Rawlsian opponents cannot abide. Second, these arguments yield unacceptable implications for other questions of justice. We conclude that even moderately rich egalitarians are obligated to donate their excess income.

Commonsense moral thinking holds that people have doxastic, contemplative, and expressive duties, that is, duties to or not to believe, seriously consider, and express certain ideas. This paper argues that moral and political philosophers face a high risk of violating any such duties, both because of the sensitivity and difficult of the subject matter, and because of various pernicious biases and influences philosophers face. We argue this leads to a dilemma, which we will not try to solve. Either philosophers should reduce their risk by avoiding sensitive issues where they are likely to violate such duties or, for one reason or another, philosophers are to some degree exempt from such duties when doing their work. Either horn of the dilemma, we argue, has unpalatable implications.

This paper describes the “Ethics Project”, a semester-long entrepreneurial activity in which students must make real-life decisions and then reflect upon their decisions. The Ethics Project asks students to think of something good to do, something that adds value to the world, and then do it. Along the way, they must navigate problems of opportunity cost or feasibility versus desirability, must anticipate and overcome strategic and ethical obstacles, and must ensure they add value, taking into account their costs. Rather than role-playing through case studies, students live through real-life case studies which result from their own choices. When properly administered, the Ethics Project trains student to be principled leaders who integrate ethical principles into strategic decision-making, and who can discover and overcome their own moral limitations.

In Rawlsian political philosophy, “basic liberties” are rights subject to a high degree of protection, such that they cannot easily be overridden for concerns of stability, efficiency, or social justice. For Rawls, something qualifies as a basic liberty if and only if bears the right relationship to our “two moral powers”: a capacity to form a sense of the good life and a capacity for a sense of justice. However, which rights are basic liberties is subject to frequent ideological debate, which Rawlsian libertarians and Rawlsian socialists arguing that Rawls's own view is mistaken or incomplete. I argue that problem is that Moral Powers Test does not quite work. Only a small amount of liberty—not enough to qualify a society as liberal—can clearly be shown to pass the Moral Powers Test. One might attempt to rescue the Moral Powers Test by relaxing or modifying its requirements, but, I will argue, there appears to be no unproblematic and nonquestion‐begging way to do so. The Moral Powers Test must be abandoned or, at least, requires some unknown but radical revision or require supplements from outside Rawls's own theory.

Jason 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 propaganda does. Voters in modern democracies would be ignorant and irrational even without propaganda.