Center for the Study of Ethics, Utah Valley University
Ethics Across the Curriculum Faculty Summer Seminar:
The Ethics and Public Policy Implications of Free-Market Economics
May 4-8, 2009
VISITING SCHOLARS
Korkut Erturk
Professor of Economics,
University of Utah
Mark Sagoff
Senior Research Scholar,
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy,
University of Maryland
What lessons can be gleaned from the recent economic turmoil? Should post-WWII Anglo-American Capitalism continue to serve as the template for global economic growth? Does free-market economic theory need to be reassessed within the context of globalization? Are free-market principles inviolable (that is, do markets work best free of external controls) or do markets need regulation? Do markets function independently of normative structures (law, ethics) or do markets depend upon pre-existing normative structures in order to function? Ought colossal corporations be allowed to fold, despite the shock waves their collapse will spread throughout the economy? Are large-scale governmental interventions justified? What are the practical public policy implications of free-markets?
These and other questions will frame this year’s Ethics Across the Curriculum Faculty Summer Seminar. Days One and Two will cover the Philosophical and Economic Foundations of Free-Market Economics. Days Three, Four, and Five will cover the Ethics and Public Policy Implications of Free-Market Economics.
Monday, May 4
Korkut Erturk: The History of Free Market Economics and the Rise of Orthodoxy
1:00-4:00 p.m., SC 213C (Trustees Suite)
Reading assignments:
Bowles, S., and H. Gintis. “The Revenge of Homo Economicus: Contested Exchange and the Revival of Political Economy.” Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 7 No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 83-102.
Ostrom, E. “Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms.” Journal of Economic Perspectives Vol. 14 No. 3 (2000), pp. 137-58.
Axelrod, R., and W. Hamilton. “The Evolution of Cooperation.” Science
Vol. 211 (1981), pp. 1390-16.
Tuesday, May 5
Korkut Erturk: The History of Free Market Economics and the Positive Critique by Heterodox Economists
1:00-4:00 p.m., SC 213C (Trustees Suite)
Reading assignments:
Hymer, Stephen. “Robinson Crusoe and the Secret of Primitive Accumulation.” In E. J. Nell (ed.), Growth, Profits, and Property. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Veblen, Thorstein. “The Instinct of Workmanship.” The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 4 No. 2 (1898).
Polanyi, Karl. “Our Obsolete Market Mentality: Civilization Must Find a New Thought Pattern.” Commentary Vol. 3 (1947).
Wednesday, May 6
Mark Sagoff: Cost/Benefit Analysis and Regulatory Review (with an emphasis on social regulations, EPA, etc.)
1:00-4:00 p.m., SC 213C (Trustees Suite)
Assignment:
(1) Noodle around the OMB web site: <http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/>
(2) Click on Information & Regulatory Affairs (to the right of the main heading) and then peruse Recommendations for a New E.O. on Regulatory Review:
(a) Memorandum on Regulatory Review (January 30, 2009)
(b) Request for Comment (February 26, 2009)
(c) Public Comments
This web page will give the state of play at the moment—and perhaps even a new Executive Order by May.
Reading assignments:
Stokey, Edith, and Richard Zeckhauser. A Primer for Policy Analysis. New York: Norton, 1978, pp. 258-277; skim 277-286. “The purpose of public decisions is to promote the welfare of society.” “In the United States, we usually take the position that it is the individual’s own preferences that count, the he is the best judge of his own welfare.”
Sen, Amartya. “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory.” Philosophy and Public Affairs Vol. 6 No. 4 (Summer 1977), pp. 317-344. “Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool decked in the glory of his one all-purpose preference ordering. To make room for the different concepts related to his behavior we need a more elaborate structure.”
Sunstein, Cass R., “Preferences and Politics.” Philosophy & Public Affairs Vol. 20 No. 1 (1991): 3-34. (Sunstein is now Director of OIRA.) “A constitutional democracy should not be self-consciously concerned, in a general and comprehensive way, with the souls of its citizens. Under modern conditions, liberal constraints on the operation of the public sphere and a general respect for divergent conceptions of the good are indispensable. At the same time, it would be a grave mistake to characterize liberal democracy as a system that requires existing preferences to be taken as the basis for governmental decisions and that forbids citizens, operating through democratic channels, from enacting their considered judgments into law, or from counteracting, through the provision of opportunities and information, preferences and beliefs that have adjusted to an unjust status quo.”
Thursday, May 7
Mark Sagoff: Global Environmental Problems, Energy Use, Responsibilities to Future Generations vs. Poor People in Developing Countries Today
1:00-4:00 p.m., SC 213B
Reading assignments:
Posner, Eric A., and Cass R. Sunstein. “Global Warming and Social Justice.” Regulation (Spring 2008), pp. 14-20. <http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv31n1/v31n1-3.pdf> “It is far from clear that greenhouse gas restrictions on the part of the United States are the best way to help the disadvantaged of the world.”
For a somewhat more technical but also more convincing and thorough argument for the same point, see Thomas Schelling, “Intergenerational Discounting.” Energy Policy 23/4-5 (1995), 395-401. For more see his “What Makes Greenhouse Sense?” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2002). “Time may serve as a kind of measure of distance; we may prefer beneficiaries who are closer in time, in geographical distance, in culture, surely in kinship. Perhaps to keep our thinking straight we should use a term like ‘depreciation,’ rather than ‘discounting.’”
Parfit, Derek. “Energy Policy and the Further Future: The Identity Problem,” in Douglas MacLean & Peter G. Brown (eds.) Energy and the Future, Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983, pp. 166-179. “If we choose Depletion rather than Conservation, this will lower the quality of life more then two centuries from now. But the particular people who will then be living would never have existed if we had chosen Conservation. So our choice of Depletion is not worse for any of these people... When we see that our choice will be worse for no one, we may decide there is no objection to this choice.” (The point of this reading is just to frame the paradox: whatever we do populates the future and is thus the best choice we could have made for future generations that actually exist—and there are no others. Skim the rest.)
Lohmann, Larry, et al. Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation, and Power. Dag Hammarskjold Centre, Uppsala, Sweden, 2006. Chapter 2, pp. 31-63; available on line at <http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/carbonDDlow.pdf>. “’Mommy. Where do carbon offsets come from?’ ‘Well, you see, honey, when a polluter and a consultant love money very, very much, they come together in a very special way to produce and extremely long piece of paper.’”
Friday, May 8
Mark Sagoff: Nature and the Natural; Preservation, Endangered species, Biodiversity, Nature as Social Construct
1:00-4:00 p.m., SC 213C (Trustees Suite)
Reading assignments:
Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness or , Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Cronon (ed.), Uncommon Ground. New York: Norton, 1995, pp. 69-90. “The time has come to rethink wilderness.”
Rolston, Holmes. “Values Gone Wild," Inquiry 26 (1983) pp. 181-184; skim the rest. <http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hrolston/values-gone-wild.pdf>. “These things are to be valued not merely for me and my kind (as resources), not even as goods of my kind...but as goods of their kind, as good kinds.”
Sagoff, Mark. “Genetic Engineering and the Concept of the Natural” Philosophy and Public Affairs Quarterly Vol. 21 No. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2001), pp. 2-10; available on line at <http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/reports/Spring-Summer%20Vol21%202001/221056.pdf>