School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableOn the Ethics of Vaccine Nationalism: The Case for the Fair Priority for Residents Framework(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2021)COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents (FPR) framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: (1) having developed a vaccine, (2) raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, (3) wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and (4) being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions.
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ItemPay Transparency and Labor Market Justice(La Trobe University, 2021)I argue that a general initial case for pay transparency can be made given the role played by transparency of information about prices in bringing markets closer to the ideal of competition or equilibrium price. This initial case might then be limited or enhanced depending on more specific considerations about the status of information about pay in particular. Privacy considerations seem to count against pay transparency, but I argue here that the context of pay information lacks some features present in other contexts in which appeals to privacy have force. Building on work by Estlund, Moriarty, Caulfield, and others, I argue that pay transparency may be favoured by considerations relating to personal autonomy in labour markets. Finally, I argue that pay transparency may contribute towards the realization of conditions of publicity, particularly relating to the value of citizens’ assurance about each other’s tax compliance.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWhat are the obligations of pharmaceutical companies in a global health emergency?(ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC, 2021-09-11)
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ItemOn the Problem of Inherited Wealth in Political Philosophy: Replies to Macleod, Barry, Braun, Wolff and Fleischer(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2021)This is a response to five critical commentaries on my 2018 book The Inheritance of Wealth , these being the papers in this symposium from Miranda Perry Fleischer, Jonathan Wolff, Stewart Braun, Nicholas Barry, and Colin Macleod. After a brief review of some recent empirical data on inherited wealth, these replies concentrate on some central themes discussed by these authors. These include the question of how to connect inheritance with the longstanding theoretical efforts to properly interpret and contrast luck-egalitarian and relational-egalitarian theories of justice; the role of the concept of solidarity in evaluating tax policy; questions about how an inheritance tax would impact differently on the middle class versus the very wealthy; and the case for furthering the defense of a ‘Rignano Scheme’ on which second- or third-generation inheritance is taxed at a higher rate than the transfer of newly created wealth.
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ItemOn the (mis)classification of paid labor: When should gig workers have employee status?(SAGE Publications, 2021)The emergence of so-called ‘gig work’, particularly that sold through digital platforms accessed through smartphone apps, has led to disputes about the proper classification of workers: Should platform workers be classified as independent contractors (as platforms typically insist), or as employees of the platforms through which they sell labor (as workers often claim)? Such disputes have urgency due to the way in which employee status is necessary to access certain benefits such as a minimum wage, sick pay, and so on. In addition, classification disputes have philosophical significance because their resolution requires some foundational account of why the law should make a distinction between employed and freelance workers in the first place. This paper aims to fill this foundational gap. Central to it is the idea that employment involves a worker ceding certain freedoms in return for a degree of security, at least with respect to income. Insofar as the misclassification objection has force against digital platforms, it is when a platform is attempting to have it both ways: Workers are giving up freedom but not being granted a proportionate increase in security. As I shall explain, this approach offers some flexibility as to how actual disputes might be resolved – justice may be indifferent between whether platforms offer greater security or permit workers greater freedom, provided they do at least one of these things.
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ItemKEEPING JUSTICE (LARGELY) OUT OF CHARITY: PLURALISM AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR BETWEEN CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS AND THE STATE(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2021)Justice can be pursued by the state, or through voluntary charity. This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the appropriate division of labor between government and charitable agencies by developing a positive account of the charity sector's moral foundations. The account given here is grounded in a legal conception of charity, as a set of subsidies and privileges designed to cultivate a wide variety of activities aimed at enhancing civic virtue and autonomy. Among other things, this implies that a charity sector oriented largely around the pursuit of justice will come at a moral cost to a liberal society, at least when the state is in a position to take the greater share of the responsibility. So, a positive account of charity provides at least a pro tanto reason for preferring a division of labor in which the state takes a greater share of the responsibility for pursuing justice. As well as developing and defending this conception in its own right, we apply it in offering some criticisms and enhancements of existing views about the division of labor.
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ItemBook Review: The Form of the Firm: A Normative Political Theory of the Corporation(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2020-11-01)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAn ethical framework for global vaccine allocation.(American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2020-09-11)Once effective coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines are developed, they will be scarce. This presents the question of how to distribute them fairly across countries. Vaccine allocation among countries raises complex and controversial issues involving public opinion, diplomacy, economics, public health, and other considerations. Nevertheless, many national leaders, international organizations, and vaccine producers recognize that one central factor in this decision-making is ethics (1, 2). Yet little progress has been made toward delineating what constitutes fair international distribution of vaccine. Many have endorsed “equitable distribution of COVID-19…vaccine” without describing a framework or recommendations (3, 4). Two substantive proposals for the international allocation of a COVID-19 vaccine have been advanced, but are seriously flawed. We offer a more ethically defensible and practical proposal for the fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccine: the Fair Priority Model. The Fair Priority Model is primarily addressed to three groups. One is the COVAX facility—led by Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)—which intends to purchase vaccines for fair distribution across countries (5). A second group is vaccine producers. Thankfully, many producers have publicly committed to a “broad and equitable” international distribution of vaccine (2). The last group is national governments, some of whom have also publicly committed to a fair distribution (1). These groups need a clear framework for reconciling competing values, one that they and others will rightly accept as ethical and not just as an assertion of power. The Fair Priority Model specifies what a fair distribution of vaccines entails, giving content to their commitments. Moreover, acceptance of this common ethical framework will reduce duplication and waste, easing efforts at a fair distribution. That, in turn, will enhance producers' confidence that vaccines will be fairly allocated to benefit people, thereby motivating an increase in vaccine supply for international distribution.