High Stakes Instrumentalism

Halstead, John

doi:10.1007/s10677-016-9759-9

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(13 reference statements)

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“…8. See (Bailey, 1997;Barrett, 2022;Goodin, 1995;Halstead, 2017;Hardin, 1990;Lum, 1977;Pettit, 2012;Schmidt, 2023a;Viehoff, 2017;Woodard, 2019) on consequentialism and instrumentalism in political philosophy.…”

Section: Orcid Idmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic inequality and the long-term future

Schmidt,

Juijn

2023

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

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Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal consequences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality's intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity's (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations and so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality's short-term consequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality.

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Section: Orcid Idmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic inequality and the long-term future

Schmidt,

Juijn

2023

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

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“…A fourth consideration is this: political legitimacy is fungible with other values. It is widely accepted 5 that we may sometimes use undemocratic procedures to avoid costly errors (Halstead 2017). For example, most constitutions rightly protect people's fundamental rights from overrule by the majority.…”

Section: Why the Common Case For Youth Empowerment Fails On Current E...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?

John¹

2023

Ageing Without Ageism?

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This chapter starts from the claim that the state is plagued with problems of political short-termism: excessive priority given to near-term benefits at the expense of benefits further in the future. One possible mechanism to reduce short-termism involves apportioning greater relative political influence to the young since younger citizens generally have greater additional life expectancy than older citizens and thus it looks reasonable to expect that they have preferences that are extended further into the future. But the chapter shows that this is unlikely to make states significantly less short-termist: no empirical relationship has been found between age and willingness to support long-termist policies. Instead, the chapter proposes a more promising age-based mechanism. States should develop youth citizens’ assemblies that ensure accountability to future generations through a scheme of retrospective accountability.

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The asymmetry between domestic and global legitimacy

Brinkmann

2023

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosoph

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High Stakes Instrumentalism

Cited by 22 publications

References 30 publications

Economic inequality and the long-term future

Economic inequality and the long-term future

Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?

The asymmetry between domestic and global legitimacy

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