Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Chapter 4 (Draft): John Locke And The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Very Similar Colonial Prejudice Found Its Way Into The Natural Rights Justification Of Private Property, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This chapter is a preliminary draft of Chapter 4 of the book, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The role of this chapter is to show that what we call "the Hobbesian Hypothesis" is an essential premise in John Locke's justification of private property. The Hobbesian hypothesis, in this context, is the claim that everyone is better off in a society with private land and resource ownership (even if they own no land or resources) than they could reasonably except to be in a society in which these resources remained unowned and people lived as hunter-gatherers. This chapter does not …

Chapter 3 (Draft) The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Colonial Prejudice Became An Essential Premise In The Most Popular Justification Of Government, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This chapter is a draft of Chapter Three of the book that Grant McCall and I are writing. The book is called, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This chapter shows now Hobbes introduce an empirical claim into his most influential justification of the state. We call this claim the Hobbesian hypothesis: everyone is better off under the authority of a sovereign government than everyone would be outside of that authority. The chapter argue that this hypothesis is a strong, counterfactual, empirical claim about people in small-scale stateless societies that has not been well-established by empirical evidence.

Myths About The State Of Nature And The Reality Of Stateless Societies, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

The Big Casino, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

This paper uses an analogy to illustrate two things: (1) the economy is and will always be a casino, and (2) in existing societies and most libertarian, liberal, and socialist visions of society individuals are effectively forced to participate in the casino economy. It argues justice requires that individuals must be free from forced participation in such an economy and that the best way to free people from forced participation is the provision of a Basic Income Guarantee.

Why We Demand An Unconditional Basic Income: The Ecso Freedom Case, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

Philippe Van Parijs’s (1995) Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism makes a very thorough and challenging philosophical argument for basic income. But I believe that it has two important limitations that inhibit it from giving a compelling explanation why basic income supporters believe that support for the disadvantage must be not only universal but also unconditional and enough to meet an individual’s basic needs. This essay briefly discusses those limitations and then proposes an alternative argument for basic income that I believe relies on a more compelling concept of freedom, defined below as “Freedom as Effective …

How The Sufficiency Minimum Becomes A Social Maximum, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

This article argues that, under likely empirical conditions, sufficientarianism leads not to an easily achievable duty to maintain a social minimum but to the onerous duty of maintaining a social maximum at the sufficiency level. This happens because sufficientarians ask us to give no weight at all to small benefits for people above the sufficiency level if the alternative is to relieve the suffering of people below it. If we apply this judgment in a world where there are rare diseases and hard-to-prevent accidents that cause people to fall below the sufficiency threshold, all of our discretionary spending will have …

A Dilemma For Libertarianism, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

The Physical Basis Of Voluntary Trade, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

The article discusses the conditions under which can we say that people enter the economic system voluntarily. “The Need for an Exit Option” briefly explains the philosophical argument that voluntary interaction requires an exit option—a reasonable alternative to participation in the projects of others. “The Treatment of Effective Forced Labor in Economic and Political Theory” considers the treatment of effectively forced interaction in economic and political theory. “Human Need” discusses theories of human need to determine the capabilities a person requires to have an acceptable exit option. “Capability in Cash, Kind, or Raw Resources” considers what form access to that …

Libertarianism, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

This is an encyclopedia entry on libertarianism covering right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism, and libertarian socialism.

The Economic Possibilities Of Our Grandparents, A Retrospective On John Maynard Keynes's Economic Possibilities Of Our Grandchildren, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

Does She Exploit Or Doesn't She?, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

Gijs Van Donselaar uses a Guathier-based definition of exploitation (A exploits B if A is better off and B worse off than either of them would have been had the other not existed) and a related concept the abuse of rights in a series of two-person examples to demonstrate that an unconditional basic income can be parasitic and to make the case that everyone has both a right and responsibility to work. This paper argues that the same conclusions cannot be made in a world of more than two people. Exploitation may be indefinable, and information problems may make both …