Category: Philosophy

So we could have a set of distributive institutions where I owned all of the social product. That’s conceivable. As it turns out, we do not have that set of distributive institutions. We have this other cocktail of things which is kind of pieced together haphazardly: some market wages, some transfers, some in-kind public benefits,… Continue reading I am getting fed up personally paying the incomes of everyone else

According to the anti-oppression framework, you determine what anti-oppression requires by looking at what oppressed people say. To apply this framework you have to first know who the oppressed people are. The framework provides no real guidance on that. You cannot just listen to what oppressed people say about who oppressed people are: once again,… Continue reading The anti-oppression paradox

In reading some of the back and forth on the Rolling Jubilee, I have noticed some folks talking past one another, and I think I know why. There is some legitimate disagreement about who should be regarded as the economically oppressed. While often it is not important really to specifically sketch out that category, the… Continue reading The Rolling Jubilee and the “economically oppressed”

One of the interesting consequences of the identitarian revolution is a migration — among a substantial number of people — away from all-encompassing frameworks of political justice and towards ever-expanding lists of discrete, identity-based claims of justice (and even topic-based claims of justice). So for instance, it is not uncommon to see someone articulate their… Continue reading One of these things is not like the others

I was reading the National Review’s endorsement of Romney hoping for a laugh. It wasn’t very funny, but one line triggered in my mind a thought I had been meaning to write down for a while. The author at one point references “the traditional American preference for free markets and limited government.” Whatever one thinks… Continue reading What is limited government?