Category: Philosophy

Michael Lind has an interesting piece in Salon advocating for an “Anti-Rentier movement.” A rentier is someone that derives their income from economic rents. The precise definition of an economic rent is politically contentious, but the easiest — albeit somewhat over-simplified — way to think about is this: rents are income derived from owning, not… Continue reading Down with rentiers

In my last post, I said liberals do themselves a disservice by talking about equal opportunity all of the time, instead of raising other grievances they have with our economic institutions. If you listened to the people who talk on television, you’d believe the only thing concerning liberals is that the positions in our economy… Continue reading Fun with equal opportunity

Steve Pearlstein has a long piece titled “Is capitalism moral?” in the Washington Post. The piece is a total mess. It seems to misconstrue different moral traditions and hops between them without seemingly realizing it. Nonetheless, it does provide a jumping off point for a point that needs to be emphasized: equal opportunity is totally… Continue reading Equal opportunty is inadequate

Freddie’s going after the identitarians again. At the root of his complaint here is the slipperiness of identitarian deference. Roughly, identitarian deference is the idea that privileged individuals should defer to the opinions and views of oppressed individuals, especially on topics relevant to those individuals’ oppression. It sounds straightforward, but can become exceedingly complicated in… Continue reading What does identitarian deference require?

This flowchart is basically how I think about putting part two of John Rawls’ difference principle into practice as part of a political project.