•  683
    Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation
    Business Ethics Quarterly 17 (4): 689-727. 2007.
    This paper argues that a sweatshop worker's choice to accept the conditions of his or her employment is morally significant, both as an exercise of autonomy and as an expression of preference. This fact establishes a moral claim against interference in the conditions of sweatshop labor by third parties such as governments or consumer boycott groups. It should also lead us to doubt those who call for MNEs to voluntarily improve working conditions, at least when their arguments are based on the cl…Read more
  •  412
    The Ethics of Price Gouging
    Business Ethics Quarterly 18 (3): 347-378. 2008.
    Price gouging occurs when, in the wake of an emergency, sellers of a certain necessary goods sharply raise their prices beyond the level needed to cover increased costs. Most people think that price gouging is immoral, and most states have laws rendering the practice a civil or criminal offense. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the philosophic issues surrounding price gouging, and to argue that the common moral condemnation of it is largely mistaken. I make this argument in three …Read more
  •  329
    Classical Liberalism and the Basic Income
    Basic Income Studies 6 (2): 1-14. 2011.
    This paper provides a brief overview of the relationship between libertarian political theory and the Universal Basic Income (UBI). It distinguishes between different forms of libertarianism and argues that a one form, classical liberalism, is compatible with and provides some grounds of support for UBI. A classical liberal UBI, however, is likely to be much smaller than the sort of UBI defended by those on the political left. And there are both contingent empirical reasons and principled moral …Read more
  •  323
    Structural exploitation
    Social Philosophy and Policy 29 (1): 154-179. 2012.
    Research Articles Matt Zwolinski, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article
  •  308
    The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment (review)
    with Benjamin Powell
    Journal of Business Ethics 107 (4): 449-472. 2012.
    During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop b…Read more
  •  213
    Exploitation
    Mind. 1996.
    What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine…Read more
  •  182
    Recent Work in Ethical Theory and its Implications for Business Ethics
    with Denis G. Arnold and Robert Audi
    Business Ethics Quarterly 20 (4): 559-581. 2010.
    We review recent developments in ethical pluralism, ethical particularism, Kantian intuitionism, rights theory, and climate change ethics, and show the relevance of these developments in ethical theory to contemporary business ethics. This paper explains why pluralists think that ethical decisions should be guided by multiple standards and why particularists emphasize the crucial role of context in determining sound moral judgments. We explain why Kantian intuitionism emphasizes the discerning p…Read more
  •  158
    The separateness of persons and liberal theory
    Journal of Value Inquiry 42 (2): 147-165. 2008.
    The fact that persons are separate in some descriptive sense is relatively uncontroversial. But one of the distinctive ideas of contemporary liberal political philosophy is that the descriptive fact of our separateness is normatively momentous. John Rawls and Robert Nozick both take the separateness of persons to provide a foundation for their rejection of utilitarianism and for their own positive political theories. So why do their respective versions of liberalism look so different? This paper…Read more
  •  144
    Price gouging, non-worseness, and distributive justice
    Business Ethics Quarterly 19 (2): 295-306. 2009.
    This paper develops my position on the ethics of price gouging in response to Jeremy Snyder's article, "What's the Matter with Price Gouging." First, it explains how the "nonworseness claim" supports the moral permissibility of price gouging, even if it does not show that price gougers are morally virtuous agents. Second, it argues that questions about price gouging and distributive justice must be answered in light of the relevant possible institutional alternatives, and that Snyder's proposed …Read more
  •  143
    Libertarianism
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    This paper is an encyclopedia entry on the political philosophy of libertarianism, written for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It discusses the major contemporary strands of libertarianism and their historical roots, and presents some of the main criticisms of these strands. Its focus is on libertarianism as a doctrine about distributive justice and political authority, and specifically on the consequentialist and natural rights formulations of these views.
  •  141
    States of Nature
    Journal of Value Inquiry 45 (1): 27-36. 2011.
    Whatever else might be said about the Lockean and Hobbesian states of nature, it is widely believe that they are mutually incompatible. One or the other (or neither) is a correct way of thinking about the state of nature, but not both. This paper argues that this intuitively plausible claim is incorrect - if not as a matter of textual interpretation, then as a matter of analysis of the concepts that we have inherited from those texts. Not only does it make sense to talk about a Hobbesian and Loc…Read more
  •  108
    Are Usurious? Another New Argument for the Prohibition of High Interest Loans?
    Business Ethics Journal Review 1 (4): 22-27. 2013.
    Robert Mayer argues that certain kinds of high-interest payday loans should be legally prohibited. His reasoning is that such lending practices compel more solvent borrowers to cross-subsidize less solvent ones, and thus involve a kind of negative externality. But even if such cross-subsidization exists, I argue, this does not necessarily provide a ground for legal prohibition. Such behavior might be a necessary component of a competitive market that provides opportunities for mutually beneficia…Read more
  •  105
    Virtue ethics and repugnant conclusions
    In R. Sandler & P. Cafaro (eds.), Environmental Virtue Ethics, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 107--17. 2005.
    Both utilitarian and deontological moral theories locate the source of our moral beliefs in the wrong sorts of considerations. One way this failure manifests itself, we argue, is in the ways these theories analyze the proper human relationship toward the non-human environment. Another, more notorious, manifestation of this failure is found in Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion. Our goal is to explore the connection between these two failures, and to suggest that they are failures of act-centere…Read more
  •  100
    Price Gouging and Market Failure
    In Gerald Gaus, Julian Lamont & Christi Favor (eds.), ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS & ECONOMIC: INTEGRATION AND COMMON RESEARCH PROJECTS, Stanford University Press. 2010.
    Price gouging occurs when, in the wake of an emergency, sellers of a certain necessary goods sharply raise their prices beyond the level needed to cover increased costs. Most people think that price gouging is immoral, and most states have laws rendering the practice a civil or criminal offense. But the alleged wrongness of price gouging has been seriously under-theorized. This paper examines the argument that price gouging is morally objectionable and/or the proper subject of legal regulation b…Read more
  •  100
  •  91
    Liberty
    In John Shand (ed.), Central Issues in Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 275--286. 2009.
    This essay is intended to provide an introductory overview of the philosophical problems involved in understanding the nature and value of liberty, and the range and categories of philosophic solutions that have been offered to those problems. This essay covers the distinction between negative and positive liberty, MacCallum's tripartite analysis of liberty, debates over the subject of liberty and the significance of various constraints on liberty, and the significance of philosophical analyses …Read more
  •  83
    Dialogue on Price Gouging: Price Gouging, Non-Worseness, and Distributive Justice
    Business Ethics Quarterly 19 (2): 295-306. 2009.
    ABSTRACT:This commentary develops my position on the ethics of price gouging in response to Jeremy Snyder's article, “What's the Matter with Price Gouging.” First, it explains how the “nonworseness claim” supports the moral permissibility of price gouging, even if it does not show that price gougers are morally virtuous agents. Second, it argues that questions about price gouging and distributive justice must be answered in light of the relevant possible institutional alternatives, and that Snyd…Read more
  •  77
    Why Not Regulate Private Discrimination?
    San Diego Law Review 43 (Fall): 1043. 2006.
    In the United States, discrimination based on race, religion, and other suspect categories is strictly regulated when it takes place in hiring, promotion, and other areas of the world of commerce. Discrimination in one's private affairs, however, is not subject to legal regulation at all. Assuming that both sorts of discrimination can be equally morally wrong, why then should this disparity in legal treatment exist? This paper attempts to find a theory that can simultaneously explain these diver…Read more
  •  77
    Review of Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundations of Liberalism (review)
    Journal of Value Inquiry 43 (2): 255-262. 2009.
    This is a review of Horacio Spector's book on the occassion of its publiaction in paperback form in 2007. The version of the review posted here includes a number of footnotes and references that had to be deleted in the final published version.
  •  59
  •  57
    Arguing About Political Philosophy (edited book)
    Routledge. 2009.
    This second edition of _Arguing About Political Philosophy _is the most complete, up-to-date, and interdisciplinary anthology of its kind. Its selections cover both classic philosophical sources such as Hobbes and Rousseau, and contemporary figures such as Robert Nozick and G.A. Cohen. But additional excerpts from economists, psychologists, novelists, and legal theorists help students from diverse intellectual backgrounds to connect with and appreciate the problems and distinctive methodology of…Read more
  •  51
    Exploitation
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.
  •  38
    The libertarian nonaggression principle
    Social Philosophy and Policy 32 (2): 62-90. 2016.
    Libertarianism is a controversial political theory. But it is often presented as a resting upon a simple, indeed commonsense, moral principle. The libertarian “Non-Aggression Principle” (NAP) prohibits aggression against the persons or property of others, and it is on this basis that the libertarian opposition to redistributive taxation, legal paternalism, and perhaps even the state itself is thought to rest. This paper critically examines the NAP and the extent to which it can provide support f…Read more
  •  37
    Review of The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (6). 2010.
  •  26
    This book brings together recent work on the topic of exploitation from philosophy, political science, and economics in one volume, organised around three main questions: what is exploitation?, why is exploitation wrong?, and what should we do about it? These questions are increasingly relevant in public policy discussions. The past decade has witnessed the rise of populism and an increasing sense that politics is a game rigged to benefit certain classes of persons at the expense of others. Inte…Read more
  •  25
    Rights, Reasonableness, and Environmental Harms
    American Journal of Bioethics 18 (3): 46-48. 2018.