Version Of Egalitarianism Research Articles

Comparative assessment of life cycle impacts of various plastic waste management scenarios in Johannesburg, South Africa

PurposeLandfilling can result in a loss in revenue that would otherwise have been accrued from recycling plastic waste, loss in potential jobs, and groundwater contamination. Plastics in landfills may also eventually find their way into marine environments, where they can be damaging to animals. This work aims to establish the environmental sustainability of current plastic waste management practices in South Africa using the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) as a case study.MethodologyFive scenarios encompassing combinations of landfilling, mechanical recycling, incineration with energy recovery, gasification, and use of plastic waste in a cement kiln were assessed through an environmental Life Cycle Assessment (e-LCA). Scenarios were developed based on an extensive literature review, current practices in South Africa and Europe, and the country’s National Waste Management strategy, which aims to achieve “zero waste to landfill”. SimaPro 9.1.1 software and the Ecoinvent Database were used to assess the life cycle impacts of each scenario over seven impact categories. The ReCiPe endpoint method, Egalitarian version, was employed in determining the impact potentials. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out to evaluate the model’s robustness.Results and discussionOverall, the impact assessment results, including damage assessments and single score results, revealed that moving away from landfilling and combining mechanical recycling, incineration, gasification, and use of plastic waste (PW) as solid refuse fuel in a cement kiln is the least environmentally impactful scenario when managing plastic waste. Landfilling alone was the worst-performing scenario, resulting in adverse effects on human health, ecosystems, and resource depletion. This agrees with the waste hierarchy. On sensitivity analysis, the increase in transportation distances and reduction in market substitution factor in mechanical recycling did not change the ranking of scenarios despite reducing the net benefits to the environment. Including open dumping as an end-of-life scenario significantly increased the negative impact of the current plastic waste management scenario being practised in South Africa, while assuming a 100% mechanical recycling rate had the least environmental impact when compared to the other modelled scenarios.ConclusionsThe current plastic waste management practices in South Africa were found to be environmentally unsustainable based on the modelled scenarios, and a move away from landfilling is encouraged. The outcomes of this study will assist policymakers and other stakeholders in making informed decisions based on scientific evidence when formulating sustainability-related waste management policies.

Preferences Single-Peaked on a Tree: Multiwinner Elections and Structural Results


 
 
 A preference profile is single-peaked on a tree if the candidate set can be equipped with a tree structure so that the preferences of each voter are decreasing from their top candidate along all paths in the tree. This notion was introduced by Demange (1982), and subsequently Trick (1989b) described an efficient algorithm for deciding if a given profile is single-peaked on a tree. We study the complexity of multiwinner elections under several variants of the Chamberlin–Courant rule for preferences single-peaked on trees. We show that in this setting the egalitarian version of this rule admits a polynomial-time winner determination algorithm. For the utilitarian version, we prove that winner determination remains NP-hard for the Borda scoring function; indeed, this hardness results extends to a large family of scoring functions. However, a winning committee can be found in polynomial time if either the number of leaves or the number of internal vertices of the underlying tree is bounded by a constant. To benefit from these positive results, we need a procedure that can determine whether a given profile is single-peaked on a tree that has additional desirable properties (such as, e.g., a small number of leaves). To address this challenge, we develop a structural approach that enables us to compactly represent all trees with respect to which a given profile is single-peaked. We show how to use this representation to efficiently find the best tree for a given profile for use with our winner determination algorithms: Given a profile, we can efficiently find a tree with the minimum number of leaves, or a tree with the minimum number of internal vertices among trees on which the profile is single-peaked. We then explore the power and limitations of this framework: we develop polynomial-time algorithms to find trees with the smallest maximum degree, diameter, or pathwidth, but show that it is NP-hard to check whether a given profile is single-peaked on a tree that is isomorphic to a given tree, or on a regular tree.
 
 

Imitating the Traditional Gods

Abstract This paper examines moral virtues and cult practice in Plato’s Laws. It explores the symposium and the chorus and their potential to provide a recognisable cultural setting, in which the Magnesian citizens can test their responses to pleasurable and painful experiences and thus train their moral virtues. The challenge to this reading is to explain what additional input to moral habituation is provided by the religious aspect of these institutions. This paper draws attention to the relationship between the people and the patron gods of the respective institutions. It argues that the cult practices are designed to reflect the virtuous character of the traditional gods, who serve as the ethical role models for the worshipers. In this way, the worship of the traditional gods not only facilitates moral progress by exemplifying the objective of virtuous life, but also gives an egalitarian version of the ideal of godlikeness to its citizens.

Equality or priority about competing claims?

AbstractAccording to the Competing Claims View (CCV) we decide between alternatives by looking at the competing claims held by affected individuals. The strength of these claims is a function of two features: how much they stand to benefit (or lose) by each alternative, and how badly off they would be in its absence. The view can be, and is, endorsed by both egalitarians and prioritarians. For the former the second condition will concern looking at how badly off the person is relative to others, whereas for the latter it will be how badly off she is in absolute terms. In this paper I want to argue that neither should be endorsed. The egalitarian version of CCV breaks down when attempting to assess the competing claims of possible persons who may never exist. Also, the view, on at least one plausible interpretation, leads to intransitive judgements. The prioritarian version of CCV, in turn, is vulnerable to its own unique objection, namely delivering an anti-prioritarian and rather implausible verdict in certain Single Person Cases.

Uruguay and Contemporary Theories of Wage Coordination: Origins and Stabilization of Segmented Neocorporatism, 2005–2019

ABSTRACTThis study seeks to explain the rise and performance of “segmented neocorporatism” in Uruguay in light of contemporary theories of wage coordination, largely framed by the Varieties of Capitalism school and its recent critics. First it argues that the legacy of a centralized labor law framework, and a unified union movement, combined with Frente Amplio’s decisive labor empowerment from above to launch neocorporatist wage coordination in the period 2005–10. Second, it analyzes the stabilization of the coordinated model in 2013–19, in times of sluggish growth and labor tensions, evinced in the control of inflation pressures and social conflict. The article concludes that the macroeconomic combination of supply-side and Keynesian policies and the inclusion of precarious workers shaped an egalitarian version of corporatism with important challenges ahead.

Property-owning democracy, market socialism and workplace democracy

The paper discusses why on the one hand William Edmundson thinks that market socialism is superior to property-owning democracy, while on the other hand Alan Thomas thinks that an egalitarian version of property-owning democracy is superior to market socialism. For the purpose of this discussion, the concepts of property-owning democracy and market socialism are systematized and it is argued that those concepts, as understood by Rawls, do not exhaust the list of possible alternatives to capitalism and state socialism. Economic democracy, understood as mandatory workplace democracy, will be introduced as a middle ground, somewhat closer to market socialism than property-owning democracy. Against this background, it is argued that questions of transition and stability are important for deciding between these regimes and the importance of two realistic constraints in making this choice, namely egoism of powerful agents and path-dependency in institutional design, is highlighted.

Ambiguity aversion behind the veil of ignorance

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi’s and Rawls’ that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent’s behind the veil are sensitive to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity—which is both the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity—however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity.

The Luck Egalitarianism of G.A. Cohen - A Reply to David Miller

AbstractThe late G.A. Cohen is routinely considered a founding father of luck egalitarianism, a prominent responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice. David Miller argues that Cohen’s considered beliefs on distributive justice are not best understood as luck egalitarian. While the relationship between distributive justice and personal responsibility plays an important part in Cohen’s work, Miller maintains that it should be considered an isolated theme confined to Cohen’s exchange with Dworkin. We should not understand the view Cohen defends in this exchange as Cohen’s considered view. Accepting this thesis would change both our understanding of Cohen’s political philosophy and many recent luck egalitarian contributions. Miller’s argument offers an opportunity to reassess Cohen’s writings as a whole. Ultimately, however, the textual evidence against Miller’s argument is overwhelming. Cohen clearly considers the exchange with Dworkin to be about egalitarianism as such rather than about the best responsibility-sensitive version of egalitarianism. Furthermore, Cohen often offers luck egalitarian formulations of his own view outside of the exchange with Dworkin and uses luck egalitarianism as an independent yardstick for evaluating principles and distributions.

Karl Marx and Wilt Chamberlain, or: Luck Egalitarianism, Exploitation, and the Clean Path to Capitalism Argument

This paper focuses on the claim that luck egalitarianism is incompatible with Marxian theory because it allows for the possibility of a ‘clean path’ to capitalism. It explores the nature and structure of the clean path argument generally and critically discusses luck egalitarian versions of the argument. It contends that the Marxian theory of exploitation can meet the challenge of the clean path to capitalism argument, that luck egalitarianism and the Marxian theory of exploitation are not incompatible, and that luck egalitarianism can explain why Marxian exploitation is unjust.

A New Argument for the Irrelevance of Equality for Intrinsic Value

This paper introduces a novel approach to evaluating theories of the good. It proposes evaluating these theories on the basis of their compatibility with the most plausible ways of calculating overall intrinsic value of a world. The paper evaluates the plausibility of egalitarianism using this approach, arguing that egalitarianism runs afoul of the more plausible ways of calculating the overall intrinsic value of a world. Egalitarianism conflicts with the general motivation for totalism and critical-level totalism, which is that independent contributions of each individual’s life should be counted separately. It conflicts with the most plausible version of averagism (momentary stage averagism) because only the highly implausible simultaneous life-segment version of egalitarianism can make sense of inequality being disvaluable at a time. Egalitarianism combined with a diminishing marginal value theory also fails because it holds that, other things equal, the world is a better place when we reduce inequality by adding many people whose lives go very badly but whose sheer numbers lessen inequality. The discussion moves the debate about egalitarianism forward by circumventing the oft-discussed, but intractable, debate concerning the leveling down objection. It also reveals a promising new approach to critiquing theories of the good.

Liberalismo justificador e libertarismo: uma crítica a The order of public reason, de Gerald Gaus

The paper criticizes two conclusions about justificatory liberalism reached by Gerald Gaus in ‘The order of public reason’, viz. that socialism is incapable of being publicly justified and that the diversity of evaluative standards of the Members of the Public limits considerably the possibilities of redistributive policies. Against Gaus, I claim that justificatory liberalism remains agnostic about the property of production means (whether it should be public or private) and is compatible with more egalitarian versions of capitalism such as those that draw on Rawls’ and Dworkin’s theories of justice.Keywords: Gaus, socialism, redistribution.

Social Class, Merit and Equality of Opportunity in Education

The paper offers to substantiate a claim about the so-called Meritocratic Conception of how educational opportunities ought to be distributed. Such a conception holds an individual’s prospects for educational achievement may be a function of that individual’s talent or effort levels but should not be influenced by their social class background. The paper highlights the internal tension in the Meritocratic Conception between on the one hand a prohibition on the influence of social class on educational opportunities and on the other a permission to allow unequal educational opportunities on the basis of talent and effort. This tension obtains because individuals’ talent and effort are themselves subject to influence by social class. The paper makes a positive case for an interpretation of the Meritocratic Conception that resolves this tension in favour of an egalitarian version, such that social class represents an objectionable determinant of unequal educational prospects even when its influence is mediated through the cultivation of talent and effort. This argument is further supported through an explanation that the character of social class as a systemic social source of the structure of individuals’ opportunities makes it an objectionable influence on educational opportunities.

Equality as Comparative Fairness

AbstractThe goal of this article is modest. It is simply to help illuminate the nature of egalitarianism. More particularly, I aim to show what certain egalitarians are committed to, and to suggest that equality, as these egalitarians understand it, is an important normative ideal that cannot simply be ignored in moral deliberations. In doing this, I distinguish between equality as universality, equality as impartiality, and equality as comparability, and also between instrumental and non‐instrumental egalitarianism. I then characterise the version of egalitarianism with which I am concerned, which I call equality as comparative fairness. I discuss the relations between equality, fairness, luck, and responsibility, and defend egalitarianism against rival views that focus on subsistence, sufficiency, or compassion. I also defend egalitarianism against the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections, and present several key examples to illustrate egalitarianism's distinct appeal, in contrast to prioritarianism's. I conclude by considering two common questions about my view: first, whether my ultimate concern is really with comparative fairness, rather than equality, so that my view is not, in fact, a substantive, non‐instrumental version of egalitarianism, and second, whether my view ultimately reduces to a theory about desert.

Egalitarianism and Executive Compensation: A Relational Argument

What, if anything, is wrong with high executive compensation? Is the common “lay reaction” of indignation and moral outrage justified? In this paper, my main goal is to articulate in a more systematic and philosophical manner the egalitarian responses to these questions. In order to do so, I suggest that we take some insights from recent debates on two versions of egalitarianism: a distributive one, according to which no one should be worse off than others because of unfair distributions of goods and resources, especially ones based on matters of luck or arbitrary factors, and a relational one, which maintains that egalitarian justice requires members of a society to relate to one another as equals. Drawing on recent attempts to highlight the tricky nature of managerial authority, I argue that high inequalities in pay are not simply a distributional matter but should also be analyzed through a relational lens. I also attempt to show that relational egalitarians are well-equipped to question the now dominant “incentives” view of CEO compensation.

Anarchism! What Geography Still Ought To Be

Abstract: This article is a manifesto for anarchist geographies, which are understood as kaleidoscopic spatialities that allow for multiple, non‐hierarchical, and protean connections between autonomous entities, wherein solidarities, bonds, and affinities are voluntarily assembled in opposition to and free from the presence of sovereign violence, predetermined norms, and assigned categories of belonging. In its rejection of such multivariate apparatuses of domination, this article is a proverbial call to non‐violent arms for those geographers and non‐geographers alike who seek to put an end to the seemingly endless series of tragedies, misfortunes, and catastrophes that characterize the miasma and malevolence of the current neoliberal moment. But this is not simply a demand for the end of neoliberalism and its replacement with a more moderate and humane version of capitalism, nor does it merely insist upon a more egalitarian version of the state. It is instead the resurrection of a prosecution within geography that dates back to the discipline's earliest days: anarchism!

Distributive Justice in the State of Nature: An Egalitarian View

This paper proposes a novel egalitarian answer to the question: what initial distribution of the world’s resources could possibly count as just? Like many writers in the natural rights tradition, I take for granted that distributive justice consists in conformity to pre-political principles that apply to property regimes. Against the background of that assumption, the paper distinguishes between broadly Lockean and broadly Grotian conceptions of distributive justice in the state of nature. After an extended critique of various versions of the Lockean approach, it argues for a particular, egalitarian version of the Grotian view. My position is based on what I call the common ownership formula, which says: each human being, as an equal co-owner of the world’s resources, may use those resources provided that the terms of their use are in conformity with principles that no co-owner could reasonably reject as the basis of an informed, unforced general agreement between all of the world’s co-owners who sought to find equitable principles of resource division. Using this principle, I suggest how an unequivocally egalitarian view of pre-political entitlement can be justified without recourse to any alleged duty to ameliorate the effects of brute bad luck on people’s lives.

Health, Luck, and Justice

Health, Luck, and Justice

Each outcome is another opportunity: Problems with the Moment of Equal Opportunity

This article introduces the concept of a Moment of Equal Opportunity (MEO): a point in an individual’s life at which equal opportunity must be applied and after which it need not. The concept of equal opportunity takes many forms, and not all employ an MEO. However, the more egalitarian a theory of equal opportunity is, the more likely it is to use an MEO. The article discusses various theories of equal opportunity and argues that those that employ an MEO are problematic. Unjust inequalities, those that motivate the use of equal opportunity, occur throughout people’s lives and thus go unrectified after an MEO. However, it is not possible to abandon the MEO approach and apply more egalitarian versions of equal opportunity throughout a person’s life, since doing so entails problems of epistemology, efficiency, incentives, and counter-intuitive results. The article thus argues that liberal egalitarian theories of equality of opportunity are inconsistent if they support an MEO and unrealizable if they do not.

Pakistani model of diversity management: rediscovering Jinnah's vision

Purpose – The paper endeavours to propose a Pakistani model of diversity management that is consistent with Pakistan's unique culture and socio‐political context.Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers an analysis of the speeches and ideology of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, in an attempt to outline his vision of diversity and equality of opportunities in Pakistani society.Findings – The analysis identifies four key dimensions of Jinnah's vision: first, democratisation ensuring the participation of all groups of people in socio‐economic and political spheres of life. Second, an egalitarian version of Islam, considered consistent with the principles of social justice and equal opportunity. Third, the implementation of a strict rule of law with no room for favouritism and discrimination. And fourth, special protective measures for minorities, women and other disadvantaged groups. The four dimensions are on the whole inclined towards a social case of diversity management.Practical impl...

On the Possibility of Continuous, Paretian and Egalitarian Evaluation of Infinite Utility Streams

There exists a utilitarian tradition a la Sidgwick of treating equal generations equally in the form of anonymity. Diamond showed that no social evaluation ordering over infinite utility streams satisfying the Pareto principle, Sidgwick's equity principle, and the axiom of continuity exists. We introduce two versions of egalitarianism in the spirit of the Pigou-Dalton transfer principle and the Lorenz domination principle, and examine their compatibility with the weak Pareto principle in the presence of a semi-continuity axiom. The social evaluation relation is not assumed to be either complete or transitive, yet Diamond's impossibility strenuously resurfaces.