Friedemann Bieber

Could private markets in shares in people's future earnings be morally permissible, or even desirable? While markets for personal debt are widespread, markets for shares in the future earnings of individuals are not. In this article, we argue that from a normative point of view, these markets are worth taking seriously. We begin by surveying their potential upsides and set out a baseline model of such a market that is moderately regulated, but has a plausible claim to being economically viable. We then critically examine its moral permissibility by identifying what (i) moral limits to markets and what (ii) distributive and (iii) relational egalitarian concerns it could give rise to. We advance two claims. First, that in sufficiently idealised circumstances, markets in shares in people's future earnings are not only morally permissible but are desirable and in several ways superior to markets in personal debt. Second, that in non-ideal circumstances, these markets can give rise to serious distributive and relational concerns that make them morally objectionable, but this does not imply that they should always be prohibited. We conclude that markets in shares in people's future earnings have potential as a complement to existing markets and modes of public provisioning.

This article offers a novel account of collegial relationships and shows how it is of value to the normative assessment of work arrangements. We first argue that the literature on collegial relationships has overlooked an important form that such relationships take: next to professional relationships (Betzler and Löschke 2021) and collegial friendships (Mlonyeni 2023), there are collaborative relationships, which can produce the distinct goods of shared achievement and shared experience. We then argue that attending to collegial relationships can refine the normative assessment of work arrangements. This argument proceeds in three steps. Drawing on the example of click work, we first illustrate the possibility of collegiality gaps: work can be arranged in ways that severely restrict the opportunity to form collegial relationships (of each type). We argue that collegiality gaps are normatively relevant and that their possibility extends far beyond click work. Finally, we show how attending to collegiality gaps can help refine accounts of the non-monetary goods of work and improve ongoing debates about the desirability and permissibility of specific employment arrangements, like gig work. The article closes by briefly assessing the political upshots of collegiality gaps, distinguishing an individual and a societal perspective on the value of collegiality.

In our article “The Potential and Limitations of Artificial Colleagues”, we argue that policy makers and industry leaders ought to prioritise human collegial relationships over relationships with artificial colleagues. We call this the Principle of Strict Priority of Human Collegial Relationships (PSP). Nicholas Carroll offers an intriguing critique of PSP, claiming that it is not a plausible candidate for a governance principle because it is insufficiently action-guiding. Carroll further proposes an amended version of PSP, the Principle of Proportional Priority for Human Collegial Relationships (PPP). Here, we outline two concerns with this proposal. First, we are not convinced that PSP stands in need of an amendment. Second, we are not convinced that PPP is a compelling candidate for an amendment.

This article assesses the potential of artificial colleagues to help us realise the goods of collegial relationships and discusses its practical implications. In speaking of artificial colleagues, it refers to AI-based agential systems in the workplace. The article proceeds in three steps. First, it develops a comprehensive account of the goods of collegial relationships. It argues that, in addition to goods at the individual level, collegial relationships can provide valuable goods at the social level. Second, it argues that artificial colleagues are limited in their capacity to realise the goods of collegial relationships: at the individual level, they can at best realise some such goods, and at the social level, they can at best support their realisation. This contradicts Nyholm and Smids’ (2020) claim that robots can be good colleagues. The article traces these limitations to particular features of artificial colleagues and discusses to what extent they would hold for radically advanced systems. Third, the article examines the policy implications of these findings. It highlights how the introduction of artificial colleagues, in addition to potentially crowding out human colleagues, will likely impact relations among human colleagues. And it proposes a governance principle that gives strict priority to human collegial relationships.

Conceptual engineering is thought to face an ‘implementation challenge’: the challenge of securing uptake of engineered concepts. But is the fact that implementation is challenging really a defect to be overcome? What kind of picture of political life would be implied by making engineering easy to implement? We contend that the ambition to obviate the implementation challenge goes against the very idea of liberal democratic politics. On the picture we draw, the implementation challenge can be overcome by institutionalizing control over conceptual uptake, and there are contexts—such as professions that depend on coordinated conceptual innovation—in which there are good reasons to institutionalize control in this fashion. But the liberal fear of this power to control conceptual uptake ending up in the wrong hands, combined with the democratic demand for freedom of thought as a precondition of genuine consent, yields a liberal democratic rationale for keeping implementation challenging.

The lack of engagement of philosophy with decisions made under conditions of risk and uncertainty has lately received increasing attention. But philosophers have devoted little thought to the development of a conceptual framework for distinguishing different types of risks. This article begins by illustrating the need for a more nuanced conceptual framework. As the normative considerations risks give rise to are highly varied, ethicists need to distinguish between different types of risks. It then offers two ideas. First, it proposes that we understand ‘risk’ as a multi-dimensional concept, i.e. a concept that can always be evaluated in different dimensions, e.g. a qualitative, a quantitative and an epistemic dimension. While this understanding of risk underlies the current practice of risk analysis, making it explicit is of value, in particular for the philosophical debate. It draws attention to the diversity of risks, helps to group them sensibly and sharpens existing arguments. Second, the article introduces a novel account of the notion ‘systemic risk’. Criticising existing accounts, it proposes we understand ‘systemic risk’ as referring to a risk that endangers the functioning of a system and originates in the system or its background noise, where a system is conceived of as a set of interdependent, interacting components that form a complex, functionally defined whole. The article identifies a number of structural features shared by systemic risks and evaluates the distinctive normative considerations they give rise to. It then argues that the notion ‘systemic risk’ is particularly suited to characterise some of the most pressing risks faced in an increasingly interconnected world. While the notion ‘systemic risk’ rests on the understanding of ‘risk’ as a multi-dimensional concept, it also complements it. Its necessity shows that in addressing risks, it is sometimes helpful to move beyond a characterisation based solely on their dimensions.

When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of digital platforms that allow economic agents to arrange ever more fine-grained contracts. This article zooms in on labour-based platforms that permit the hire of labour in a just-in-time fashion (and are part of the broader trend towards on-demand work). Its principal contribution comes in three parts. First, exposing the frequently overlooked diversity of labour-based platforms, the article proposes to distinguish platform companies, which directly sell services and then purchase the labour needed to provide them, and broker platforms, which act merely as intermediaries. Second, it examines how platforms of each type pose distinct threats to labour justice, thereby extending Daniel Halliday's (2021) analysis. Drawing on empirical studies of the experiences of platform workers, it identifies a power imbalance as the root cause of these threats across all platforms. Finally, the article assesses three strategies to counter these threats: introducing stricter regulation, turning platforms into worker-run co-ops, and improving outside job opportunities. In exploring how each strategy could be implemented for specific platforms, it makes the case for always discussing labour-based platforms with one eye to their specific structural features and the other eye to the broader labour market.

This article offers a functionalist account of trust. It argues that a particular form of trust—Communicated Interpersonal Trust—is paradigmatic and lays out how trust as a social practice in this form helps to satisfy fundamental practical, deliberative, and relational human needs in mutually reinforcing ways. We then argue that derivative (non-paradigmatic) forms of trust connect to the paradigm by generating a positive dynamic between trustor and trustee that is geared towards the realization of these functions. We call this trust’s proleptic potential. Our functionalist approach does not only provide important insights into the practice of trust and its place in the broader web of social life, but also illuminates existing philosophical debates. First, pointing out how opposing theoretical accounts of trust each capitalise on only one of its functions, our paradigm-based approach reveals why they each contain a kernel of truth but are also deficient: the optimal realization of each function is tied to the existence of the other functions as well. Second, we show how a functionalist re-orientation can illuminate two recent disputes regarding (i) the question whether trust is explanatorily two- or three-place and (ii) whether (and to what extent) we can decide to trust others.