Hypothetical Society Research Articles

Estimating the income-related inequality aversion to energy limiting behavior in the United States

Distributive energy justice is measured by the degree to which, and whether, different members of society have equal share in the benefits and burdens of the energy system. One way to achieve distributional energy justice is to ensure all households, regardless of income, can use as much energy as they need to heat and cool their home to desired temperature. We define a household's cooling balance point (CBP) as the ideal set temperature at which the household desires to keep its living space in summer; the heating balance point (HBP) is defined as the ideal set temperature in winter. To quantify the extent to which balance points were disproportionately concentrated among certain income groups, we used the extended concentration index. This index has an inequality aversion parameter that reflects the value judgment of a society. If this parameter <1, the society is pro-rich; if this parameter >1, as it increases, the society becomes more pro-poor. We estimated the empirical value of the income-related inequality aversion in eight U.S. states and examined several effects of demographic characteristics on inequality aversion.In an online survey, 1066 (from four southern states) and 906 (from four Midwest states) participants made choices between energy policies leading to different distributions of CBP (southern) or HBP (Midwest) across five income groups in a hypothetical society. Participants showed a pro-poor propensity: the median inequality aversions were 1.37, 95% CI of [1.35, 1.39] (CBP) and 1.56, 95% CI of [1.56, 1.60] (HBP). For both CBP and HBP: younger participants were less averse to inequality. For CBP, blacks (vs. whites) and conservatives (vs. centrist) were less averse to inequality; for HBP, Hispanics (vs. whites), low (vs. high) education participants, and those whose homes were well insulated (vs. adequately and vs. poorly insulated) were less averse to inequality. Our findings provide insights into how the broader public values energy justice, which further provides important policymaking implications.

An Attempt for a New Growth Model Based on Inter-class Mobility Probability

After Kuznets' pioneering study in 1955, the relationship between growth and income distribution attracted the attention of researchers. Approaches used to explain the relationship between growth and income distribution can be summarized as wealth and redistribution, international trade, technological development, macroeconomic volatility and political economy. In this study, firstly, the theoretical background and literature regarding these approaches are mentioned. Later, based on Akerlof and Yellen's theories on the fair wage-productivity relationship, a new model was tried to be developed that links economic growth with inter class mobility probability. The model is based on the hypothesis that in a hypothetical society of two-class without government, there will be an increase in the productivity of individuals belonging to the lower class as the probability of moving up the class increases. As the probability of individuals belonging to the lower class moving up increases, the probability of individuals belonging to the upper class falling down the class also increases. For this reason, the increase in the transition between classes will lead to an increase in the efforts of individuals belonging to the upper class. An increase in the effort of both classes will result in higher output and therefore higher growth. For this reason, as the income distribution becomes more fair, the growth rate will also increase, but if the income is distributed completely equally, the performance of individuals will decrease because there is no possibility of moving to upper class. Therefore, income inequality up to a certain level motivates individuals, while income inequality above the optimal level demotivates individuals. In other words, the relationship between income inequality and growth is non-linear. Finally, the game theory version of the model is introduced in the study.

NUMERICAL APPROACHES TO SOCIAL MOBILITY: MODELLING THE IMPACT OF EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC FACTORS

This research employs a numerical approach, specifically Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), to investigate the dynamics of social mobility within a hypothetical society. Utilizing simulated scenarios, the study explores the influence of education and economic factors on individual trajectories and societal outcomes. The findings reveal a positive correlation between education levels and social mobility, emphasizing the crucial role of educational opportunities. Additionally, economic indicators exhibit a significant impact on upward mobility. The study contributes to sociological understanding by bridging theoretical frameworks with empirical observations through numerical simulations, providing insights for evidence-based social policies.

Perceived inequality in society may not motivate increased food intake in the absence of personal socioeconomic disadvantage

BackgroundGreater levels of socioeconomic inequality across societies have been associated with higher rates of obesity and cardiometabolic disease. While these relationships could be attributed to poorer quality of health services and lower access to healthier lifestyles among disadvantaged groups in societies with greater economic inequality, this explanation does not account for those who experience relative economic security in such unequal societies (e.g., the middle and upper classes). Here, we tested whether perceptions of greater disparities between social classes in one’s society (i.e., perceived societal inequality) may promote eating behaviors that risk excess energy intake.MethodsIn two studies, participants completed an experimental manipulation that situated them as middle class within a hypothetical society that was presented to have either large disparities in socioeconomic resources between classes (high inequality condition) or low disparities (low inequality condition), while keeping the participants’ objective socioeconomic standing constant across conditions. In Study 1 (pre-registered), participants (n = 167) completed the perceived societal inequality manipulation before a computerized food portion selection task to measure desired portion sizes for a variety of foods. Study 2 (n = 154) involved a similar design as Study 1, but with inclusion of a neutral control condition (no awareness of class disparities) followed by ad libitum consumption of potato chips.ResultsWhile the high inequality condition successfully elicited perceptions of one’s society as having greater socioeconomic inequalities between classes, it did not generate consistent feelings of personal socioeconomic disadvantage. Across both studies, we observed no differences between conditions in average selected portion sizes or actual energy intake.ConclusionsTaken together with prior research on the effects of subjective socioeconomic disadvantage on increased energy intake, these findings suggest that perceptions of inequality in one’s society may be insufficient to stimulate heightened energy intake in the absence of personal socioeconomic disadvantage or inadequacy.

From the history of Anglo-Indian political satire of the XIX century: "India in 1983" by T. Hart-Davis

The subject of this article is the Anglo-Indian community - a stratum of the population of British India consisting of Englishmen born in India or permanently residing in it. In the early 1880s, the community faced a new factor in political life - the rapid development of Indian nationalism, and the community's reaction to new trends was reflected in the political satire of the period under study - in particular, in Thomas Hart-Davis's pamphlet "India in 1983" The pamphlet describes a hypothetical society of India of the future, which was freed from British rule, but proved incapable of independent existence. As a result of the conducted research, it was concluded that in the early 1880s the Anglo-Indian community was a closed, isolated stratum of the population, which negatively reacted to the demands of the Indian intelligentsia to expand the rights of the indigenous population in the governance of the country. Criticism of the demands of the nascent national movement found expression in political satire, one example of which was T. Hart-Davis's pamphlet "India in 1893", which reflected the ideas of the Anglo-Indian community about the immaturity and groundlessness of the political demands of the figures of the Indian National Congress and the national movement as a whole.

Physiological stress responses to inequality across income groups in a virtual society

AbstractA growing body of research suggests that inequality can be stressful for all within a society. We consider this assertion by exploring whether there is evidence of physiological stress responses to different income and inequality conditions in a hypothetical society. The combined effect of inequality for different income groups on cardiovascular reactivity was assessed while participants engaged in purchasing decisions. The study included 102 participants, 84 of which had full data for analyses (42 male, 41 female, 1 unspecified). The average age was 23 years. A 3 × 2 design manipulated both inequality (stable, increasing, and decreasing) and income (high and low). Cardiovascular reactivity was operationalized as change in heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP; diastolic and systolic) responses at the end of the purchasing task compared with baseline. Although there was no direct association between income, inequality, and BP, results indicated that low‐income participants had the higher HR reactivity to stable inequality compared with increasing inequality. These findings indicate that inequality has the hallmarks of a stressor; this is contingent on the type of inequality. This suggests that inequality itself may be detrimental to future health via the stress pathway. These findings highlight that the nature of inequality, increasing, decreasing, or stable is relevant to its impact and that these impacts of inequality may extend to the biological.

Can There Really Be Law in a Society of Angels?

Authorized coercive enforcement mechanisms is a feature of every existing institutional normative system we would characterize as a legal system. Indeed, it is so prominent in existing legal practice that it seems also to be a paradigmatic feature of law. Despite this, most contemporary theorists deny that authorized coercive enforcement mechanisms are a conceptually necessary feature of law. These doubts have been grounded in concerns about the conceptual status of international law, as well about whether law exists in a hypothetical society of angels who are motivated always to obey law without any need for authorized coercive enforcement mechanisms.In this essay, I consider whether this second concern – the “society of angels” example – succeeds in showing that such mechanisms are not a conceptual feature of law. I will argue, in essence, that the society-of-angels argument depends on assumptions about the psychological features of the “angels” that are simply too far removed from what is possible for us (i.e. human beings) in the conditions in which we live to tell us anything of theoretical significance about our legal concepts. Insofar as it our legal practices, which result from the problems to which our circumstances give rise, that, on Raz’s methodological view, construct the content of our legal concepts, the society-of-angels argument is simply not equipped to do the work it is contrived to do. Otherwise put, I argue that our concept of law explicates a normative institutional system that is distinctively human; as such, society-of-angels thought experiments tell us nothing about the proper content of a conceptual theory of law.

Comparative Analysis of the Consumer Price Index between Kosovo and Other Countries of the Region and Europe

Prices of basic products consumption and the rate of correct change, these products is essential to almost every economic issues, ranging from the aspect of monetary policy - credit for measuring economic development (growth), and over time this indicator macroeconomic it is applied more and more countries around the world to measure the cost and structure of indexed government spending and state taxes. Most of us are familiar with the prices of many consumer products that we buy and consume. We know what value have recently paid for a kilogram of meat or a liter of milk. Tenants know what value to pay their rent at the end of the month. For this reason, the measurement of prices may seem simple and straightforward, but really this price measure is not simple, especially when dealing with the comparative analysis between different countries and between different periods of time. The aim of the consumer price index is to summarize information on the prices of many goods and services. Consumer expenditures account for about two-thirds of the world's gross product (GDP). Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) are designed to summarize information on the prices of goods purchased by consumers in different periods of time. In a hypothetical primitive society with only one product (a type of food), it is not necessary to measure the consumer price index, because we have only one product. When there are many goods and services, however, we need a proper method which on average accounts all price changes or aggregating information different consumer prices.In this scientific paper will be presented a comparative analysis of the consumer price index between Kosovo and other countries in the region and Europe. The main aim of this empirical research is to identify the cost of basic consumer products in Kosovo, by comparing the value of this cost to other countries. Overall harmonized index of consumer prices in the country is higher by 0.1% in March 2016 compared with February 2016. The inflation rate in the month of March 2016 was 0.1% in March 2015. This scientific paper aims to identify this research question: What is the value of the cost of basic products consumption in Kosovo compared to other countries of the region and Europe? In order to answer this question, we will rely on secondary data, taken from the Eurostat statistical reports and statistical agencies in the countries included in this study and evaluation of trading basket will be based on the level of the average wages for 2016. The methodology used in this scientific paper consists the use of empirical data, which are processed in STATA program, and applying simple standard regression analysis, we managed raised to test the hypotheses in this study.

Relative Deprivation and Relative Wealth Enhances Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The V-Curve Re-Examined.

Previous research has shown that negative attitudes towards immigrants and support for anti-immigrant parties are observed both among those experiencing relative deprivation and those experiencing relative gratification (so called v-curve). Whereas the effect of relative deprivation is intuitive, the effect of relative gratification is more difficult to explain. Why would economic prosperity provoke negative attitudes towards immigrants? We first present correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) support for the v-curve. In Study 1, in a national Swiss referendum, a higher percentage anti-immigrant voting was found in cantons with relatively lower and relatively higher relative disposable income. In Study 2, in a hypothetical society, more opposition to ‘newcomers’ joining society was found among poor or above average wealth group members than among those in a moderate wealth group condition. In Study 3, we replicate this finding and also show that opposition to immigration is higher for all wealth groups when societal inequality is growing rather than declining. In a final study, we examine different forms of relative gratification and mediators of the relationship between relative gratification and opposition to immigration (i.e., identification, collective self-definition as competent and cold, and fear about future wealth). Only fear about future wealth mediates this relationship. We conclude that, paradoxically, relative gratification effects are partly due to the fear of future deprivation.

Blind idealism in Ibsen's Brand

It has been 112 years since the last play was written by Henrik Ibsen, and he still lives on through his works as a modern dramatist. His plays cannot be set aside; even in our time, they demand to be studied more than ever before. Ibsen has been studied and performed all around the world, especially in Asia, where he speaks to the political and social needs of that part of the world. The combination of current political circumstances, social inequalities, and human rights has given his plays a special urgency in Asia. However, even though Ibsen has seen a particular resurgence in Asia and the Middle East, the terrible events of 22 July 2011 in Oslo and Utøya bear certain traces of Ibsen in his country of birth as well. A false hero, trumpeting himself as a true philosopher in a land in need of rescue, brings only chaos and destruction. Ibsen is considered, from one side, as an idealist whose heroes are divine for rescuing the society from their life-lie. On the other side, he is as a deflator of heroism and a derider of blind idealism. To the former, in his hypothetical society, there is a triangular form at the apex of which a leader stands to lead the masses up from the base. The question is raised here: how do Ibsen’s plays enlighten the debate on the contemporary socio-political issues? By applying historical approach along with contextual methodology, this study answers the above question. The significance of conducting this study on Ibsen’s plays is to know the response of his plays to the current political matters.

Questioning Cloning with Genealogy

I evaluate a hypothetical society of human clones. Cloning implies the production of exact copies of an organism from a replication of one of the organism’s cells without any recourse to the genealogical protocol of male and female reproduction. I thus pose the question: Can we regard a cloned copy of Mr. James as a son of Mr. James or Mr. James once again? I consider certain implications of human cloning to the concepts of individual uniqueness, and thus of genealogical family tree and the future of the naming and identification of humanity?

Macro-Structural Factors for Democratization in South Africa: Racial and Ethnic Cleavages in Apartheid Period

Several cleavages, amongst which, race was (and still is) a dominant cleavage, can be identified in the South African society. The most important sources of cleavages prior to, and at the time of the transition to democracy, were race and ethnicity, class, and ideology. These cleavages often coincided with each other. The overlap of race, ethnicity, class and ideology were so intertwined, that to some scholars it seemed total. Lijphart, using Rae and Taylor's index of fragmentation, calculated the division by “ethnic” groups (14 in total - including Afrikaners and English) of South Africa as 0.89. On a scale of 0 to 1, the value is 0 for a completely homogeneous society (the possibility of belonging to different segments is nil). The value 1 occurs in the hypothetical society where each individual belongs to a different segment. South Africa's score is close to that of a completely fragmented society. This aspect of South Africa's transition is of particular importance in this thesis - that is democratisation in a divided society, particularly, in the presence of.

Experimental Political Philosophy: Justice Judgments in the Hypothetical Society Paradigm

In this draft of a chapter forthcoming in a book on political psychology, we advocate blending thought experiments with laboratory experiments via a technique we call hypothetical society paradigm, which is designed to bring out the inferential advantages of both approaches while minimizing their disadvantages. We discuss the primary benefits of this technique and survey the principal empirical findings thus far obtained using this technique. We also discuss two categories of fruitful future applications of this and related techniques: (a) isolating sources of support and resistance to particular policy proposals with potentially profound societal implications; (b) helping to clarify boundary conditions for the applicability of competing and complementary psychological theories of justice.

Constitutional Fidelity, the Rule of Recognition, and the Communitarian Turn in Contemporary Positivism

Contemporary positivism has taken a communitarian turn. Hart, in the Postscript to Concept of Law, clarifies that the rule of recognition is a special sort of social practice: a convention. It is not clear whether Hart, here, means convention in the strict sense elaborated by David Lewis, or in some weaker sense. A number of contemporary positivists, including Jules Coleman (at one point), Andrei Marmor, and Gerald Postema, have argued that the rule of recognition is something like a Lewis-convention. Others have suggested that the rule of recognition is conventional in a weaker sense - specifically, by figuring in a shared cooperative activity (SCA) among officials. Chris Kutz, Scott Shapiro, and Jules Coleman (more recently) have adopted this model. This Article criticizes the Lewis-convention and SCA models of the rule of recognition, drawing on U.S. constitutional theory. Imagine a society of U.S. officials who are committed to the text of the 1787 Constitution in a strong way: each official would continue to accept the text as supreme law even if every other official defected to an alternative text, and no official is prepared to bargain or negotiate with the others about the supremacy of the text. The social practice among these officials is neither a Lewis-convention (since there is no alternative text to which every official would shift if every other official did), nor an SCA (since the officials have no general intention to mesh their conceptions of legal validity, and in particular have no intention to compromise with officials who deny the supremacy of the 1787 text). Therefore, under the Lewis-convention and SCA models, a hypothetical society of U.S. officials who are committed, first and foremost, to the 1787 text rather than to the community of officials, is not a full-fledged legal system. But this is deeply counterintuitive. The hypothetical society simply embodies, in a particularly pure form, an attitude of fidelity to the 1787 text that many officials and citizens currently profess. The tension between the Lewis-convention and SCA models of the rule of recognition, and constitutional fidelity, points the way to a different model of the rule of recognition: namely, that the rule of recognition is a social norm.

Learning Disabilities, Schooling, and Society

The current system for identifying and dealing with learning disabilities reflects, to a large extent, political rather than educational or scientific considerations, the authors point out. It is time to let educators rather than politicians determine what is best for children. THE FEDERAL definition of learning disabilities defines specific learning disabilities in a way that makes three key points.1 First, learning disabilities are intrinsic disorders in basic psychological processing - they are the individual. Second, learning disabilities are diagnosed in terms of a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability. Third, the discrepancy should be with respect to one or more of seven particular areas of psychological functioning: basic reading skill, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral expression, written expression, mathematics calculation, or mathematics reasoning. Given this definition, it is little wonder that our society's identification and handling of learning disabilities is so confused. All three aspects of the definition are wrong and represent politically expedient decisions rather than fundamental knowledge about psychology and education. In this article, we consider these three aspects of the federal definition of learning disabilities and point out why each is erroneous. Then we suggest what needs to be changed. The Nature of Learning Disabilities Some psychological and educational theorists believe that learning disabilities are intrinsic - that is, wholly inside the individual; others believe they are extrinsic - that is, a result of our educational system of labeling.2 Neither of these views holds up to even cursory examination. Imagine a child born in a preliterate society. The child is one who, at another time or in another place, would have difficulties with phonological processing. But the child lives and dies and never has any difficulty whatsoever relating to reading because there is no reading in the society. The concept of reading is, quite simply, meaningless. This same principle can hold at any time and any place. Is difficulty in mathematical calculation a disability? Perhaps in the 1990s it was, and perhaps even at the turn of the 21st century it still is. But how about in the year 2020? Or 2050? Will children in the developed world even be doing calculations? And, given that almost all calculations will probably be done by machine, if children do not do them well, will anyone care? One can vary not only time but also place. Let's stay with the turn of the 21st century without considering the future or the past. Suppose Joseph is born in an English-speaking country and has severe difficulties with phonological irregularities. He may end up being labeled as having a reading disability, because the English language has so many phonological irregularities. Such words as are tough to sound out because the letters can represent so many combinations of sounds. But suppose instead that he is Jose in a Spanish-speaking country. Spanish has an extremely regular pattern of correspondences between the written and spoken forms of the language, so Jose might possibly not be labeled as having a reading at all if he grew up speaking Spanish. So the first aspect of the federal definition, the idea of learning disabilities as wholly intrinsic, is not correct. But there's more. The choice of the seven categories specified in the federal definition is itself quite arbitrary. For example, the list does not include hunting. But a boy born into a society of hunters and gatherers who could do most of what he is required to do except hunt effectively might be labeled as having a hunting disability because the inability to hunt could have disastrous consequences for his future. And a hypothetical society that emphasized the great importance of music might label children who could not carry a tune or learn to play an instrument as having a musical disability. …

Judgments of social justice: Compromises between equality and efficiency.

Political economists agree that a trade-offexists between equality and efficiency. Using a hypothetical society paradigm, we manipulated the mean income (representing efficiency) and income variability (representing equality) of distributions of wealth and the correlation between wealth and effort within a society. Subjects made all pairwise comparisons of distributions within societies of differing meritocracy. A maximin principle best described trade-off resolution strategies when effort and outcome were weakly linked: People maximized the minimum standard of living within a society. A compromise principle best described preferences when income was tightly linked to effort: People rejected distributions in which some citizens fell below the poverty line but maximized efficiency above this constraint. Ideological polarization was pronounced under moderate meritocracy; here liberals could focus on the role of chance and conservatives on the role of effort and ability.

The System is the Solution: Marx's Analysis of Capitalism

The following note describes a skit designed primarily as a pedagogic device to illustrate in a meaningful (and, hopefully, provocative and humorous) way Marx's analysis of capitalism. Numerous concepts and phenomena are “brought to life” in the skit: exploitation, immiseration and alienation of workers, maintenance wage, labor theory of value, mechanization and the division of labor, systemic tendencies toward economic crises, relationship of various superstructural components (welfare, religion, etc.) to the economic base, and the radical theory of the state. More specifically, the economic base of a hypothetical capitalist society consists of a stylized production process involving “resources” (Oreo cookies), “labor” (students selected from the class) and eventually “capital” (table knives). The ability of the monopoly capitalist to accumulate surplus by exploiting workers becomes manifest. Other elements of the social superstructure (unions, government, religion, etc.)

Towards an Ecologically-based Economic Philosophy

The present global economic order is one which fails to recognize the finiteness of global resources and the finiteness of the global ecosystem to absorb wastes. Indeed, there may be a great deal of lip-service paid to these truths; but nevertheless the global economic system, as it is functioning today, exhibits little or no awareness that they are at all important to a stable world economy. Superimposed upon this condition is the ‘Autophage Effect’, which points to a continuing acceleration in depletion of raw resources even though the net resource-demands of the world's populations may stabilize.This is a human predicament which cannot and will not continue indefinitely. The key question is, ‘Will Earth's societies acknowledge the situation early enough to choose alternatives?’ There appear to be only two fundamental alternatives: either the present level of population and material abundance (imperfect as it may be) will crash, or it will be replaced by a world economic order which attends to the finiteness of this planet. Should we be fortunate enough or quick enough to realize the second alternative, I suggest that the basic structure of the new economic order may rather closely resemble the ecologists' ‘trophic’ divisions in natural ecosystems (e.g. Lindeman, 1942). If this comes to pass, conservation of energy and order (negentropy) will very likely emerge as the prime forcing functions in the resulting world socio-economic order.This exploration has progressed from logical derivation into imagination, but still leaves a plethora of unanswered questions. If one does admit that industrial civilizations must eventually face resource limitations and thereby be driven towards the patterns exposed by the hypothetical society that has been sketched here, how do we get there from our present predicament? Can such a society be capitalistic, with grossly or moderately unequal distribution of resources among its citizens? Or must it be a form of socialistic idealism; and, if so, should it be democratic or autocratic? Can the present momentum of the highconsumption Keynesian theology be redirected? And if so, how—and will there be time? If the seeds offered here have any credibility, they should be nurtured further.