13 found
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  1.  87
    How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum.Karl Widerquist - 2010 - Utilitas 22 (4):474-480.
    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 (...)
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  2. Material conditions and human freedom.Enzo Rossi, Annelien de Dijn, Grant McCall, David Wengrow & Karl Widerquist - 2024 - Contemporary Political Theory 23 (1).
    This debate or “Critical Exchange” section from Contemporary Political Theory includes the following four articles discussing the book, the Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow: “We make our own history, but in circumstances of other people’s choosing: intercultural materialism in The Dawn of Everything” by Enzo Rossi, “Questions about The Dawn of Everything” by Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall, “Freedom and the bureaucratic state” by Annelien de Dijn, and “On historical materialism and The Dawn of Everything” by (...)
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  3. Myths about the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies.Karl Widerquist & Grant McCall - 2015 - Analyse & Kritik 37 (1-2):233-257.
    This article argues the following points. The Hobbesian hypothesis, which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it, is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. It is an essential premise in most contractarian justifications of government sovereignty. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from them provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject it entirely. Therefore, contractarian theory has not (...)
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  4.  92
    Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research.Karl Widerquist, JosÉ Noguera, A., Yannick Vanderborght & Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) - 2013 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    This book is an anthology of some of the most influential research on basic income in the period of roughly 1960-2010.
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  5. Lockean theories of property: Justifications for unilateral appropriation.Karl Widerquist - 2010 - Public Reason 2 (1):3-26.
    Although John Locke’s theory of appropriation is undoubtedly influential, no one seems to agree about exactly what he was trying to say. It is unlikely that someone will write the interpretation that effectively ends the controversy. Instead of trying to find the one definitive interpretation of Locke’s property theory, this article attempts to identify the range of reasonable interpretations and extensions of Lockean property theory that exist in the contemporary literature with an emphasis on his argument for unilateral appropriation. It (...)
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  6. A dilemma for libertarianism.Karl Widerquist - 2009 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 8 (1):43-72.
    Many libertarians make a moral argument that liberty requires the freedom to exercise strong property rights. From this, they argue that no more than a minimal state with sharply limited powers of taxation can be justified. A larger state would supposedly interfere with private property rights and thereby reduce liberty. In response, this article shows how natural rights to property do not entail any particular vision of the state. It demonstrates that the principles of natural property rights support monarchy just (...)
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  7. Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research.Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght & Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) - 2013 - Wiley-Blackwell.
    Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research presents a compilation of six decades of Basic Income literature. It includes the most influential empirical research and theoretical arguments on all aspects of the Basic Income proposal. -/- Includes six decades of the most influential literature on Basic Income Includes unpublished and hard-to-find articles The first major compendium on one of the most innovative political reform proposals of our age Explores multidisciplinary views of Basic Income, with philosophical, economic, political, and sociological views (...)
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  8.  65
    Functional Finance and the Sustainability of Universal Basic Income.Karl Widerquist - 2024 - Basic Income Studies 19 (1):15-29.
    “Functional finance” is an economic theory within the Post Keynesian school of thought. Especially in the form of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), it has begun to have two big but opposite effects on the debate over Universal Basic Income (UBI). Some people state MMT in an exaggerated way that implies the government can spend all it wants on UBI or anything else without ever raising taxes or borrowing money as if government spending had no limits of any kind. Other people (...)
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  9.  19
    Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income.Karl Widerquist - 1999 - Politics and Society 27 (3):387-402.
    This paper argues that a guaranteed income is not only consistent with the principle of reciprocity but is required for reciprocity. This conclusion follows from a three-part argument. First, if a guaranteed income is in place, all individuals have the same opportunity to live without working. Therefore, those who choose not to work do not take advantage of a privilege that is unavailable to everyone else. Second, in the absence of an unconditional income, society is, in effect, applying the principle, (...)
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  10.  74
    The state of nature, prehistory, and mythmaking.Karl Widerquist & Grant S. McCall - 2022 - In Mark Somos & Anne Peters (eds.), The state of nature: histories of an idea. Boston: Brill Nijhoff. pp. 399-421.
    Abstract: The State of Nature, Prehistory, and Mythmaking Karl Widerquist This chapter provide an overview of two books, in which Grant S. McCall and I name, define, and debunk the following false claims that still play important roles in contemporary political theories although they are not always defined and defended explicitly: 1. The Hobbesian hypothesis: sovereign states and/or the liberal private property rights system benefits everyone (or at least harms no one) relative to how well they could reasonably expect to (...)
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  11. The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade.Karl Widerquist - 2010 - Human Rights Review 11 (1):83-103.
    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 (...)
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  12.  73
    Ken Binmore, natural justice (oxford: Oxford university press, 2005), pp. XII + 207.Karl Widerquist - 2009 - Utilitas 21 (4):529-532.
    This book attempts to create an evolutionary theory of fairness. Sharing food is commonplace in the animal kingdom because it ensures animals that share against hunger. Anthropologists report that hunter-gatherer societies which survived into the 20th century shared on a very egalitarian basis. What can such information tell us about the sense of fairness with which modern man is born? Using game theory as a basic tool, the book argues that fairness norms should be seen as a device for selecting (...)
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  13.  24
    Why Do Philosophers Talk so Much and Read so Little About the Stone Age?Karl Widerquist - manuscript
    This paper is a very early and very preliminary report of some of the findings from the research project, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The project eventually lead to two books: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy" and "the Prehistory of Private Property" (both coauthored by Grant S. McCall). The basic argument of the project is that influential, modern political theories often rely on dubious claims about prehistory. It examines the political philosophy literature to show how these claims are (...)
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