It is often assumed that politics is just about the state and what it does. Here I argue for a much broader view, in which politics can include activity that has nothing to do with getting the state to behave differently, by suggesting several ways in which the seemingly apolitical activity of entrepreneurship can fall into three broad categories of political action. The first is in establishing institutions or practices that help guarantee some demand of justice. The second is mitigating (...) and circumventing state injustice. The third is in building a foundation for future action. After that, I discuss two benefits to entrepreneurial politics over state-mediated alternatives, both of which relate to dealing with the constraints of prevailing ideology. The first is that entrepreneurship allows those who are alert to alternative political possibilities to act on that alertness without first overcoming ideological barriers. This argument draws on Israel Kirzner’s account of entrepreneurship’s equilibrating function. The second point builds upon Joseph Schumpeter’s account of its disequilibrating function: successful entrepreneurial action can destroy existing ideological assumptions about what is possible. (shrink)

The present war in Ukraine has seen millions of women flee as refugees, while martial law forbids adult men under 60 from leaving the country. According to various reports, many and perhaps most women Ukrainian refugees are breaking romantic ties with the men they leave behind, building new lives with men in their countries of refuge, and/or planning never to return. I avoid any comment about the morality of these events and instead take up the general question of whether women (...) war refugees have any obligations of “connubial loyalty” to their menfolk in circumstances where those men are discharging a moral obligation to fight in the war that precipitated their womenfolk's flight in the first place. I answer that they do. (shrink)

Many people believe that individual actors should and can respond to social and environmental problems by making ethical or conscientious decisions in the marketplace. They encourage consumers to purchase fair trade coffee, buy locally grown produce, avoid shopping in stores with union-busting tactics, boycott exploitative soda manufacturers, and so on. In this paper, I argue against the idea that demand-side decisions on the part of individual consumers can adequately capture the complicated moral dimensions of any given product. I argue this (...) position by pointing to two intermingled features of consumer choice: value incommensurability and market indeterminacy. (shrink)

Economic liberties, such as the freedom to engage in independent economic activity, to own productive property, to enter into market competition, and to profit from transactions, are often associated with the advantageous positions of tycoon, business visionaries, and successful entrepreneurs. This one-sided picture ignores the value of such liberties for the least advantaged, particularly in non-ideal contexts where job markets offer them less than adequate job opportunities. This paper inspects the significance of economic liberties for three disadvantaged groups, namely, poor (...) and low-skilled workers, immigrant workers, and disabled workers. After doing that, the paper discusses how fostering entrepreneurship can meet the requirements of Rawlsian justice concerning the least advantaged. (shrink)

An individual can be free—a condition connected to the principles of action someone adopts and the reasons for adopting those principles—only if they live in a condition where certain external factors obtain. This paper argues that one of those factors is the possibility of engaging in entrepreneurial activity.

Concerned about the harmful effects of pervasive political ignorance, epistocrats argue that we should amplify the political power of politically knowledgeable citizens. But their proposals have been widely criticized on the grounds that they are susceptible to manipulation and abuse. Instead of empowering the knowledgeable, incumbents who control epistocratic institutions are likely to selectively empower their supporters, thereby increasing their share of power. Call this the problem of political capture. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, I claim (...) that the problem of political capture for epistocracy has been overstated. Incumbents who want to increase their share of power will encounter certain obstacles that complicate the task of capturing the system. Second, however, I claim that if the problem is nevertheless sufficiently serious, it militates against not just epistocracy, but also many other institutions. The problem of political capture is thus far wider than typically recognized. (shrink)

Is it wrong to bring new children into existence when there are so many existing children in need of parental care? Several philosophers have defended the view that prospective parents have a pro tanto​ duty to adopt rather than procreate as a means of fulfilling their interest in parenting. The most prominent argument for this view in the existing literature is the rescue-based argument, which derives an individual duty to adopt rather than procreate from a more general duty to rescue (...) or assist those in need. In this paper, I critically examine the rescue-based argument and explain why it fails. First, I argue that we do not necessarily have a duty to rescue in cases that resemble the global orphan crisis, where one’s intervention is merely sufficient to prevent serious harm to a potential victim. Second, I argue that even if we had such a duty, it would not necessarily generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate given the significant financial, emotional, and agency-related costs of adoption, particularly in current, non-ideal conditions. The upshot of these arguments is that the rescue-based argument can only generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate with respect to a relatively small constituency of orphaned children, many of whom are likely to be adopted anyway by willing volunteers. In the vast majority of cases, then, the rescue-based argument does not entail that it is wrong to create new children when there are already existing children in need of parental care. (shrink)

Political philosophers old and new have defended the twin claims that (i) traditions embody wisdom, and (ii) transforming tradition based on aprioristic theory threatens to disregard that wisdom. This article argues that while a priori theorizing about justice is indeed epistemically valuable, a priori theories of justice usually tend to merit moderate to low credences. The article develops an account of what I call the “A Priori Theorizing Thesis,” which holds that such theses are likely to be false and dangerous (...) when implemented, and the “Non-substitution Thesis,” which holds that theorists should generally be disinclined to substitute their judgment for the wisdom of social traditions and norms. Along the way, Burke's positive contributions are emphasized and his hyperbole ignored. (shrink)

Some publishers are commissioning sensitivity readers to edit works without the author's permission. While a set of high-profile cases have received public criticism, the publisher's ownership of the relevant material in each case has been thought to rule out any serious legal objection to the practice. This paper proposes that Immanuel Kant's distinctive legal framework supports the view that a publisher who commissions sensitivity readers without the author's permission thereby wrongs either the living author or the reading public.