Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defence of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of private property (...) presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimise: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language, and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique. (shrink)

Food security brings a number of benefits to humanity from which nobody can be excluded and which can be simultaneously enjoyed by all. An economic understanding of the concept sees food security qualify as a global public good. However, there are four other ways of understanding a public good which are worthy of attention. A normative public good is a good from which nobody ought to be excluded. Alternatively, one might acknowledge the benevolent character of a public good. Others have (...) argued that public goods demand being public in the sense of being visible to all. Finally, it has also been argued that public goods are those goods which need joint action to be produced and maintained. This chapter discusses these five understandings of the public good in relation to food security and highlights the advantage of assessing policies from each of these perspectives. (shrink)

Intellectual property regimes necessarily create artificial scarcity leading to wastage, both by blocking follow-up research and hindering access to those who are only able to pay less then the actual retail price. After revising the traditional arguments to hinder access to people’s intellectual labour we will examine why we should be more open to allow free-riding of inventive efforts, especially in cases where innovators have not secured the widest access to the fruits of their research and failed to cooperate with (...) follow-up innovators. We will do so by questioning the voluntariness involved in consumption of objects of innovation, restating the positive social externalities that arise when wider access to the fruits of innovation is assured, and examining the eventual harms innovators face. (shrink)

Taking people’s longevity as a measure of good life, humankind can proudly say that the average person is living a much longer life than ever before. The AIDS epidemic has however for the first time in decades stalled and in some cases even reverted this trend in a number of countries. Climate change is increasingly becoming a major challenge for food security and we can anticipate that hunger caused by crop damages will become much more common. -/- Since many of (...) the challenges humanity faced in the past were overcome by inventive solutions coming from the life sciences, we are compelled to reconsider how we incentivize science and technology development so that those in need can benefit more broadly from scientific research. There is a huge portion of the world population that is in urgent need for medicines to combat diseases that are currently neglected by the scientific community and could immensely benefit from agricultural research that specifically targets their environmental conditions. At the same time efforts have to be made to make the fruits of current and future research more widely accessible. These changes would have to be backed by a range of moral arguments to attract people with diverging notions of global justice. This article explores the main ethical theories used to demand a greater share in the benefits from scientific progress for the poor. Since life sciences bring about a number of special concerns, a short list of conflictive issues is also offered. (shrink)

Murray N. Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe build their libertarian theory of justice on two axioms concerning self-ownership and homesteading, which are bolstered by two key arguments: reductio ad absurdum and performative contradiction. Each of these arguments is designed to demonstrate that libertarianism is the only theory of justice that can be justified. If either of these arguments were valid, it would prove the libertarian claim that the state is an unjust political arrangement. Giving due weight to the importance of the (...) libertarian anarchist claim, this article exposes and criticizes the arguments that substantiate it. (shrink)

Este trabajo estudia críticamente seis posibles límites a la apropiación privada, individual, unilateral y desigual en el estado de naturaleza descripto por John Locke. I) la restricción expresada bajo la forma de dejar suficiente y tan bueno en común para otros; II) la prohibición del desperdicio de los frutos perecederos; III) asociada a esta segunda condición pero aplicada a la tierra, la prohibición de cercar tierra cuyos frutos se desperdicie; IV) la limitación propuesta por Macpherson, según la cual es una (...) condición de la apropiación mezclar el propio trabajo de modo personal con el objeto; V) el principio de caridad como derecho del necesitado a los medios de subsistencia; VI) la limitación que advierte Simmons, según la cual es posible derivar del principio de caridad un derecho al auto-gobierno, esto es, a no ser esclavizado a cambio de brindar, como es el deber del propietario al necesitado, los medios de subsistencia. (shrink)

Left and right libertarians alike are attracted to the thesis of self-ownership because, as Eric Mack says, they ‘believe that it best captures our common perception of the moral inviolability of persons’. Further, most libertarians, left and right, accept that some version of the Lockean Proviso restricts agents’ ability to acquire worldly resources. The inviolability of SO purports to make libertarianism more appealing than its egalitarian counterparts, since traditional egalitarian theories cannot straightforwardly explain why, e.g. forced organ donation and forced (...) labor are serious wrongs even when they generate more equitable outcomes or benefit the greater good. I argue that, when SO is coupled with LP, this appeal is unfounded. SO, as usually construed, allows for the possibility of justified incursions of non-culpable agents up to and including forced organ donation. I conclude by considering a few possible responses on behalf of the libertarian, assessing each one’s plausibility. (shrink)