Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

China’S Global Monopoly On Rare-Earth Elements, Gustavo Ferreira, Jamie Critelli

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article delivers a novel economic analysis of US dependence on China for rare-earth elements and sheds light on how Western nations may exploit the limitations of limit pricing to break China’s global monopoly in rare-earth element production and refinement. This analytical framework, supported by a comprehensive literature review, the application of microeconomic and industrial organization concepts, and two case-study scenarios, provides several policy recommendations to address the most important foreign policy challenge the United States has faced since the end of the Cold War.

Emission Permits As A Monetary Policy Tool: Is It Feasible? Is It Ethical?, Tracey Mccowen

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The price of emission permits is deemed too low to mitigate climate change. In three studies, policy approaches to pricing carbon in a market setting are examined. First, the emission permit market is analyzed comparatively to how the ethanol mandate impacted prices in the corn market. This leads to the realization that the marketization of carbon is more like a currency than a physical commodity. The next study examines emission permits as a monetary policy tool. Emissions correlate GDP output, thus central banks can use emission permits as forward guidance, as a means to optimize the price for climate change …

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers frol1'l immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages fel1'wle participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary …

Liberal Ideals And Political Feasibility: Guest-Worker Programs As Second-Best Policies, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Trends. Spinning Buddhas, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the March 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

A Liberal Theory Of Social Welfare: Fairness, Utility, And The Pareto Principle, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …