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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Loan Sharks, Interest-Rate Caps, And Deregulation, Robert Mayer
Loan Sharks, Interest-Rate Caps, And Deregulation, Robert Mayer
Political Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works
The specter of the loan shark is often conjured by advocates of price deregulation in the market for payday loans. If binding price caps are imposed, the argument goes, loan sharks will be spawned. This is the loan-shark thesis. This Article tests that thesis against the historical record of payday lending in the United States since the origins of the quick-cash business around the Civil War. Two different types of creditors have been derided as “loan sharks” since the epithet was first coined. One used threats of violence to collect its debts but the other did not. The former has …
The Structural Injustice Of Forced Migration And The Failings Of Normative Theory, David Ingram
The Structural Injustice Of Forced Migration And The Failings Of Normative Theory, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
I propose to criticize two strands of argument - contractarian and utilitarian – that liberals have put forth in defense of economic coercion, based on the notion of justifiable paternalism. To illustrate my argument, I appeal to the example of forced labor migration, driven by the exigencies of market forces. In particular, I argue that the forced migration of a special subset of unemployed workers lacking other means of subsistence (economic refugees) cannot be redeemed paternalistically as freedom or welfare enhancing in the long run. I further argue that contractarian and utilitarian approaches are normatively incapable of appreciating this fact …
The Road To Virtue And The Road To Fortune: The Scottish Enlightenment And The Problem Of Individualism In Commercial Society, Sarah Ramirez
The Road To Virtue And The Road To Fortune: The Scottish Enlightenment And The Problem Of Individualism In Commercial Society, Sarah Ramirez
Dissertations
As commercial society began to emerge in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, it was widely thought to be inherently individualistic--whether such individualism was viewed as a strength, in the Mandevillean view, or as a weakness, by the civic humanists. Five thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment--Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and John Millar--confronted this problem. First, they questioned whether some aspects of individualism constitute genuine problems at all. For instance, their analysis of conspicuous consumption or luxury indicated that it could inspire an individual's virtue by sensitizing him to the beautiful and the fitting. Second, they pointed out that …