Libertarian philosophy asserts that only the initiation of physical force against persons or property, or the threat thereof, is inherently illegitimate. A corollary to this assertion is that all forms of speech, including fraudulent advertising, are not invasive and therefore should be considered legitimate. On the other hand, fraudulent advertising can be viewed as implicit theft under the theory of contract: if a seller accepts money knowing that his product does not have some of its advertised characteristics, he acquires the (...) property title to the customer’s money without voluntary consent, which is theft. The balance between these two logical extensions of property rights—the right of free speech and the right of contract—lies somewhere in the area of communication philosophy, and can be explained through understanding the role of communication in human interactions. Advertising is a form of communication that may convey important information about the conditions of the proposed contract. These conditions are expressed in particular words that may have different meanings in different circumstances. Therefore to determine whether a particular example or “misinterpretation” is mere sophistry or a type of fraud, the judicial system has to approach each issue on a case-by-case basis. The border between legal and illegal should be determined by precedents and by expectations based on commonly accepted definitions of terms—what people commonly understand by the words and other forms of communication they use. (shrink)

Ian Maitland defends sweatshop labor on the grounds that “A wage or labor practice is ethically acceptable if it is freely chosen by informed workers” (he calls his view “the Classical Liberal Standard,” CLS). I present several examples of economic exchanges that are mutually beneficial and satisfy the requirements of the CLS, but, nonetheless, are morally wrong. Maitland’s arguments in defense of sweatshops are unsuccessful because they depend on the flawed “CLS.” My paper criticizes Maitland’s arguments in defense of sweatshops, (...) but I do not claim that his conclusions are false—I do not claim to have shown that the labor practices Maitland defends are morally wrong. I argue that some of the disagreements about sweatshops between Maitland and his critics depend on disagreements about the answers controversial questions in ethical theory. In the absence of definitive answers to those questions , there are no decisive arguments for or against Maitland’s view about sweatshops. (shrink)

Production in sweatshops entails an elevated risk of occupational injury and sickness due to accidents and exposure to dangerous working conditions. As most sweatshop locations lack basic social security systems, health problems have severe consequences for affected workers. Against this background, this article considers what obligations employers of sweatshop labor have to their workers, and how they should meet them. Based on core libertarian concepts, it shows that they are morally responsible for health problems caused by their management decisions, that (...) they should compensate affected workers, and that they must prevent potentially irreversible health problems. In line with Nozick’s contractarian method, the article further argues that these obligations should be implemented through a compulsory employment injury insurance system. Such a system would impose industry-wide health and safety standards, in contrast to the view that libertarianism excludes any labor regulation for the protection of workers, as an illegitimate interference in voluntary labor contracts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Debates about the ethics of executive compensation are dominated by familiar themes. Many writers consider whether the amount of pay CEOs receive is too large—relative to firm performance, foreign CEO pay, or employee pay. Many others consider whether the process by which CEOs are paid is compromised by weak or self-serving boards of directors. This paper examines the issue from a new perspective. I focus on the dutiesexecutives themselveshave with respect totheir owncompensation. I argue that CEOs’ fiduciary duties place a (...) moral limit on how much compensation they can accept, and hence seek in negotiation, from their firms. Accepting excessive compensation leaves the beneficiaries of their duties (e.g., shareholders) worse off, and thus is inconsistent with observing those duties. (shrink)

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 for libertarian political theory. It identifies (...) two problems with existing libertarian appeals to the NAP. First, insofar as libertarians employ a moralized understanding of aggression, their principle is really about the protection of property rights rather than the prohibition of aggression. Second, the absolutist prohibition on aggression, which libertarians typically endorse and which is necessary to generate strongly libertarian conclusions, is grossly implausible. The paper concludes by setting forth a version of the NAP that does not suffer from these problems. It argues that this more moderate and defensible version of the NAP still has important libertarian implications, but that a full defense of libertarianism cannot rely upon appeals to non-aggression alone. (shrink)

Various writers point out that accepting the terms of a contract does not imply consent to the background conditions of this contract. This is an important critical insight allowing for a critical perspective on the principle of free contract, according to which the state should not interfere with what adult agents contractually agree upon. In this paper I argue that the practical relevance of this critical insight depends on the availability of answers to three questions: (1) Which are the core (...) features of baseline background conditions supporting a well-ordered labor market enhancing economic welfare? (2) In which cases and for which reasons are non-market institutions needed in order to support these features? (3) Under which conditions and at which levels can collective mechanisms be expected to support adequate non-market institutions ‘curing market failure’? Some of the core properties of labor markets and labor contracts are discussed which need to be taken into account in attempts to answer these questions, most notably problems of contract enforcement, market failure and collective action. (shrink)

This paper argues that the rules that constitute a market protect autonomy and increase welfare in healthcare. Markets do the former through protecting rights to self-ownership and a cluster of rights that protect its exercise. Markets protect welfare by organizing and protecting trades. In contrast, prohibition destroys legitimate markets, giving rise to so-called black markets that harm both the autonomy and well-being of agents. For example, a fee-for-service medical system is a highly developed and specialized market. It is individuals working (...) together, through the division of labor, to provide mutual insurance. This coordination, and the benefits it makes possible, is not possible without injunctions against harm. Prohibitions on harm are not mere ethical niceties, they are practice rules for both healthcare and markets. Placing the doctor within a healthcare market actually reinforces the doctor’s moral obligation, and the legal enforcement of that obligation, not to harm. Similarly, markets reinforce patient rights to self-determination through legal and institutional enforcement of the harm principle in the form of the protection of certain basic welfare rights to life, bodily integrity, property, trade, and contract. Since the establishment of markets protects agent autonomy and welfare, and prohibition directly harms the same, there are strong reasons for establishing markets to protect trade in precisely those areas where autonomy and well-being are most vulnerable to exploitation, for example, the trade in human kidneys. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that the current methods of providing health care in the West need to be reformed. Such reforms must operate within the practical limitations to which any future system of health care will be subject. These limitations include an increase in the demand for costly end-of-life health care coupled with a reduction in the proportion of the population who are working taxpayers (and hence a reduction in the proportionate amount of health care funding that can be secured (...) through taxation) and the fact that the imposition of bureaucratic regulations on health care systems is costly. Recognizing these limitations should naturally lead one to consider market-based reforms. Yet despite the practical impetus for such reforms, there is still widespread concern that market-based health care is unethical. The purpose of this paper is to address this concern and, in so doing, to pave the way for the market-based reform of health care to proceed. (shrink)

In the present paper we argue that the theory of contracts embraced by many libertarian scholars and relied upon by them in sundry important debates (e.g. over morality of the fractional reserve banking or loan maturity mismatching etc.), that is, the title transfer theory of contracts (TTT) should be rejected as not being able to account for the binding force of future-oriented contracts, including contracts deemed enforceable by those scholars themselves. The TTT claims that the only contracts that should be (...) legally binding are these where the debtor’s failure to abide by them constitutes a violation of the creditor’s private property rights. However, as we argue, no default of the debtor in a future-oriented contract can in itself amount to such a violation. (shrink)

:In this paper I argue that libertarianism neither prohibits exchanges in which consent is gained through deceit, nor does it entail that such exchanges are morally invalid. However, contra James Child’s similar claim, that it is incapable of delivering these verdicts, I argue that libertarianscanclaim that exchanges involving deceitfully obtained consent are morally invalid by appealing to an external theory of moral permissibility.

Unlike exploitative exchanges, exchanges featuring externalities have never seemed to pose particular problems to liberal theories of justice. State interference with exchanges featuring externalities seems permissible, like it is for coercive or deceptive exchanges. This is because exchanges featuring negative externalities seem to be clear cases of the two exchanging parties harming a third one via the exchange—and thus of conduct violating the harm principle. This essay aims to put this idea into question. I will argue that exchanges featuring negative (...) externalities are not unjust in this straightforward way, i.e. because they would constitute an instance of wrongfully causing or risking a bodily or material harm. In fact, unless we are subscribing to particularly demanding variants of liberalism—e.g. perfectionist liberalism—or unless we are exclusively focusing on borderline cases of externalities—i.e. of effects of exchanges hardly to be called externalities—there is no liberal theory of how exchanges featuring externalities are unjust. (shrink)

In this thesis I present a rights-based theory of exploitation. I argue that successful conceptions of exploitation should begin with the ordinary language claim that exploitation involves `taking unfair advantage'. Consequently, they must combine an account of what it means to take advantage of another with an account of when transactions are unfair. Existing conceptions of exploitation fail to provide adequate accounts of both aspects of exploitation. -/- Hillel Steiner and John Roemer provide convincing accounts of the unfairness involved in (...) exploitation, but because they fail to provide restrictive `advantage taking' conditions, their theories of exploitation include cases that we would not ordinarily describe as exploitations. Ruth Sample and Robert Goodin provide accounts that place a stronger emphasis on the attitudes involved in exploitation and the processes that bring it about. Unfortunately, these theories do not properly incorporate the unfairness aspect of exploitation. Consequently, they are either self-frustrating or incomplete. -/- I provide a conception of exploitation that combines both aspects. I claim that a bilateral, strictly Pareto improving, and voluntary transaction t between A and B is exploitative just in case (1) there exists an unrectified property rights violation at some point in the history of exchanges leading to t that (2) reduces B's bargaining power by altering her status quo point, and (3) the degree to which B's preferences are satisfied in t is less than it would be had B's bargaining power not been reduced (by the alteration of her status quo point). Further, (4a) A's egoistic preferences are better satisfied in t because B's bargaining power is limited, and (4b) if the previous conditions also hold for A, then the reduction in A's bargaining power is less than the reduction in B's bargaining power. Finally, (5) A truly believes the previous conditions hold. (shrink)

Profit is a concept that both causes and manifests deep conflict and division. It is not merely that people disagree over whether it is good or bad. The very meaning of the concept and its role in competing theories necessitates the deepest possible disagreement; people cannot agree on what profit is. Still, simply learning the starkly different sentiments expressed about profit gives us some feel for the depth of the conflict. Friends of capitalism have praised profit as central to the (...) achievement of prosperity and to civilized modern life. Calvin Coolidge, that silent sentinel of American business, said, “Profit and civilization go hand in hand.” F. A. Hayek tells us that in the evolution of the structure of human activities, profitability works as a signal that guides selection towards what makes man more fruitful; only what is more profitable will, as a rule, nourish more people, for it sacrifices less than it adds. (shrink)

As information technologies have become synonymous with progress in modern society, several ethical concerns have surfaced about their societal implications. In the past few decades, information technologies have had a value-laden impact on social evolution. However, there is limited agreement on the responsibility of businesses and innovators concerning the ethical aspects of information technologies. There is a need to understand the role of business incentives and attitudes in driving technological progress and to understand how they steer the ethics discourse on (...) technology. In the information technology industry, there is an observed trivialization of ethics supported by a business driven and technology-centric approach to ethics. This trivialization rests on hardened beliefs, ideologies, and arguments which hint at reduced accountability for business and tend to individualize social responsibility. The phenomenon of ethics trivialization needs to be duly addressed to resolve the tensions between business needs and ethical concerns. This paper has identified from literature and conceptually analyzed the beliefs and ideologies underlying ethics trivialization which undermine ethics in business contexts. The paper has attempted to address the business concerns indicated by this phenomenon as well as highlight the weaknesses of its assumptions, rhetoric, and justifications. The aim of this paper is to systematically present the justifications in favor of and against the practice of ethics trivialization in the information technology domain, thereby highlighting the need to develop frameworks for assessment of ethical responsibility, accountability, and democratization of the value trade-offs involved in the design of technologies. (shrink)