Law Commons^™

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

Sewer Syndicalism: Worker Self-Management In Public Services, Eric M. Fink

Eric M Fink

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, municipal governments in various US cities assumed responsibility for utilities and other services that previously had been privately operated. In the late twentieth century, prompted by fiscal crisis and encouraged by neo-liberal ideology, governments embraced the concept of “privatization,” shifting management and control over public services to private entities.

Despite disagreements over the merits of privatization, both proponents and opponents accept the premise of a fundamental distinction between the “public” and “private” sectors, and between “state” and “market” institutions. A more skeptical view questions the analytical soundness and practical significance of these …