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William A. Edmundson

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The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson Apr 2018

The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson

The “property question” is the constitutional question whether a society’s basic resources are to be publicly or privately owned; that is, whether these basic resources are to be available to private owners, perhaps subject to tax and regulation, or whether instead they are to be retained in joint public ownership, and managed by democratic processes.  James Madison’s approach represents a case in which prior holdings are taken for granted, and the property question itself is kept off of the political agenda.  By contrast, John Rawls approach abstracts from any actual pattern of holdings, while putting the property question on the …

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The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson Dec 2017

The Property Question.Pdf, William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson

for presentation at the Property and Political Economy Conference at the Smith Institute,
Chapman University, April 20-21, 2018
The “property question” is the constitutional question whether a society’s basic resources are
to be publicly or privately owned; that is, whether these basic resources are to be available to
private owners, perhaps subject to tax and regulation, or whether instead they are to be
retained in joint public ownership, and managed by democratic processes. James Madison’s
approach represents a case in which prior holdings are taken for granted, and the property
question itself is kept off of the political agenda. By …

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Distributive Justice And Distributed Obligations, William A. Edmundson Dec 2014

Distributive Justice And Distributed Obligations, William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson

Collectivities, that is, groups constituted by some procedure for making group decisions, can be agents. Collectivities can be moral agents if they can appreciate and act upon moral reasons. Collectivities thus can have obligations that are not simply the aggregate of preexisting obligations of their members. Certain kinds of collective obligation distribute over their membership, i.e., become members’ obligations to do a fair share to fulfill the collectivity’s obligation. In incremental good cases, i.e., those in which a member’s fair share would go part way toward fulfilling the collectivity’s obligation, each member has an unconditional obligation to contribute that share. …

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