Hobbes, Smith, and modern economoics.

 



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Who can the ghetto poor steal from?

  In this blog post, I want to consider the legitimacy of criminal actions perpetrated by residents of the dark ghettos in which the victims of the crimes are other residents of the dark ghettos.  Shelby argues that when society doesn't include adequate opportunities for individuals to avoid demeaning forms of labor, crime becomes reasonable (216). This is because, when individuals are not afforded that opportunity, they can reasonably claim they are not being treated as equal members in a cooperative society and that the requirement for reciprocity is not being met (217). When members of the ghetto poor are not treated in accordance with reciprocity, they are not bound by civic obligations (213). However, all people are bound by natural duties, including the obligation not to cause unnecessary suffering and the obligation to respect the personhood of others. In Shelby’s view, a category of crimes emerge as reasonable under this framework–crimes that would violate civic obliga...
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The Chinese Dream

As the founder of the Kuomintang, Sun-Yat Sen put forth many of his visions in the party's enacted policies. One of the core elements of his ideology was the theory of the "Three Phases of the Fundamentals of National Reconstruction". This was the dominant theory at the time on how the KMT was to secure power and enact a modern state in China. The first phase was military rule/revolution, the second phase was political tutelage (党国）, and the third phase was constitutional government. The first and third phases are relatively easy to interpret. Military rule was necessary to ensure that the KMT was actually able to unite the country and defeat the disparate warlords, along with the imperial government. The third phase is also intuitive - Sun-Yat Sen envisioned a multi-party democratic state to be implemented in China. Indeed, it is the second phase that is the most controversial. Political tutelage is characterized by a period of one-party rule, by which economic and polit...
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The concept of sharing

  Sen in chapter 2 engages in a brief discussion on the impact of war on morality reduction (49). He states that “each war situation produced much greater sharing of means of survival, including sharing of healthcare and the limited food supply” (49). This is because a war causes expansion of what we mean by “sharing” and public policies, which the NHS is a prime example of.  All of these actions do have an impact on the economic situation with cases of undernourishment  and mortality rates declining sharply. Furthermore, the most speedy expansion happened during “war decades” and therefore, there is a clear link between life expectancy and the social changes that happen in light of a war.  This brings me to today and the war that is happening in Ukraine. Will the same thing happen or are we past expanding our life expectancy? Moreover, will our concept of sharing shift?  At the beginning of the conflict, in particular in Poland, but I also feel that around the ...
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