Justice & Global Issues Final Flashcards
What are the main problems associated with what Pogge calls “severe poverty”? (x8)
Starvation
Malnutrition
Illness
Poor health
Low life expectancy
Dependency
Social exclusion
Slavery
What does Pogge estimate as the anual death toll from poverty-related causes?
18 million
What kind of sacrifice for the wealthy would be required, according to Pogge, to eliminate this poverty?
Wealthy people would have to let poverty stricken people consume 1% more global production.
What is Singer’s argument that we should take action to help the poor, and how is it different from O’Neill’s?
Singer (utilitarian): We have a moral responsibility to help the world’s poor if we are in a position to do so. It is not a charity nor generous but a moral duty.
O’Niell (Kantian): What matters most in the theory and practice of addressing global poverty are obligations. There are obligations to assist the poor. Obligations are more important than rights.
How is Pogge’s argument different from Singer’s and O’Niell’s?
The duties to the poor derive from the fact that the rich cause and therefore are responsible for poverty. These are negative duties not to harm and thus duties it is harder to deny.
What is the free market theory of capitalism?
Supply meets demand (pencil example)
Efficiency incentivized (capitalists compete)
Egoists become altruists
Freedom and welfare for all
According to which free markets are guaranteed to turn egoists into altruists, and promote freedom and welfare for alll?
Egoists turn into altruists because they want to find out what people need, produce it, and make money from it
What is the Marxist view of the reality of capitalism, and why is it going to increase rather than decrease poverty
More extreme poverty than before capitalism, yet amidst plenty
Market serves the needs of those with money, elite run governemnt as well as economy, WTO, etc.
Regular crisis (business cycle, crashes)
Excessive power of labor forces were disciplined by offshoring –> wage repression –> nobody buys anything –> what happened to demand? –> credit cards –> debt –> geographical movement of financial problems.
$ –> buy labor, power, & means of production –> put them to work –> create commodity –> sell for original $ + profit –> take part of profit & put it towards expansion of original business –> excessive (greedy) power of financers –> “screwed industry” –> continuation –> capitalism sucks –> change?
What is the liberal fix, and why do Marxists reject it?
Monetary and fiscal policies to deal with business cycle, crises
Regulation on banking and monopoly
Safety net programs
Now, really, freedom and welfare for all
Marxists rejection:
Schewikart - capitalism needs a reserve army of the unemployed, desperate potential workers, and guarantees it: if wages rise, profits go down, layoffs
Harvey - Capitalism has systemic risks, battles between labor and capital, booms and busts (not human frailty, institutional failures, false theories, cultrual origins, failures of policy).
What is the socialist theory?
After industrialization, no need to work long days, share the wealth, enjoy leisure, if only $ spread around
From each according to ability, to each according to need
Equality, leisure, and welfare for all
Reality of socialism
Inefficient planning
Unfree, controlled societies
Poverty of body and spirit
Elite of socialist rulers
Socialism: the fix
Economic democracy: workers vote in the board of directors
No unfair global competition
Aid to deal with global poverty
What are some problems with humanitarian and development aid? (x7)
Ignores long-term issues
Damages social and economic structures
Applies to top-down standards
Uses inapproprate metrics
Encourages corruption and abuses of power
Comes with harmful conditions
Creates a culture of dependency
Strategies for dealing with poverty (x7)
Traditional humanitarian aid
Development aid
Influence policy in governments
Microfinance
Fairtrade
Capability approach
Offshoring and globalization
Development aid (strategy for dealing with poverty)
Long-term projects to buid capacity and infrastructure
Microfinance (strategy for dealing with poverty)
Small loans (~$100) to a person in a poor area with low interest rates –> he/she opens a small business –> encourages entreprenuership
Fairtrade (strategy for dealing with poverty)
Encourages the creation of long-term resources
Products produced in a way that benefits the producers (workers)
Capability approach (strategy for dealing with poverty)
Provide aid according to peoples capabiltiy
Stewardship Model (environmental ethics)
Humans are the stewards or trustees of nature. The ways in which humans can act towards nature is limited. They cannot do whatever they wish and do not have domination over nature. They have a duty to prevent animal suffer and harm to nature. Must protect animals, species, habitats, biological and ecological systems, biodiversity and prevent extinction.
Deep ecology (environmental ethics)
Intrinsic value of ecosystems. Ecosystems and nature are instrumentally valuable to humans. Humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of the natural world except to support its vital needs. Humans are not the center of concern.
Instrumentalism (environmental ethics)
Protect the aspects of the environment that are useful to humans.
What is Steffan’s solution to the problem of climate change?
Bright green cities via leapfrogging, new technology (lifestraws, green roofs, LEDs, water solutions, landmine flowers).
What are the six conditions that must be met for it to be justified to go to war according to traditional just war theory?
Legitimate authority
Just cause (self-defense)
Right intention
Probability of success
Last resort
Proportionality (weighing the odds)
Which US wars in the last 100 years clearly meet the conditions, and which arguably do not?
WWI
WWII
Vietnam War
1990 Gulf-War
2001 Afghanistan
2003 Iraq War
What are the three conditions that must be met for the conduct of war to be just, according to traditional just war theory?
Discrimination: to be just combatants must distinguish between enemy combatants and non-combatants
Proportionality: to be just the harms of any action must be proportional to the gains
Military Necessity: to be just, an action must be militarily necessary to achieve the end with minimum harm
What is the doctrine of double effect and how is it important to the conditions of traditional just war theory?
Employed in Just War Theory to argue that an action that is genuinely, militarily necessary is permitted even if there are significant civilian casualties; however, it must meet the give conditions of the doctrine:
The five conditions of the Double Effect Doctrine:
- ) The action must be either morally good or indifferent in itself.
- ) The bad effect must not be the means by which one achieves the good effect.
- ) The intention must be to achieve the good effect. The bad effect must be unintended side effect, although it may be forseen.
- ) The good effect must make up for or outweight the bad effect.
- ) The action must be the ony way of achieving the justified end.
What is the difference between pre-emptive and preventative war, and which is justified according to just war theory?
Preventative war aims to forstall a military threat that is distant rather than imminent.
Pre-emptive war is an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent.
Pre-emptive war is justified.
What is American exceptionalism?
American exceptionalism is used to describe the belief that the US occupies a special position in history and on the global stage by virtue of certain characteristics held to be unique to the US.Luban suggests that those who allow this double standard must prove that this new world order is morally acceptable but that they fail at doing so.
What are some of the global aspects of the issues of abortion?
Pro life vs. pro choice (killing a fetus is murder vs. fetuses don’t have human rights until they are at a certain gestational age and/or born).
Women’s rights, reproductive rights (contraception and birth control)
Quality of life for both mother and child
Other issues: designer babies (any child selected for certain traits and parts), genetic therapy, stem-cell therapy.
What are some of the global aspects of the issues of euthanasia?
Sanctity of life (euthanasia should never be permitted vs. right of the individual to choose when to end their own life and that it is the quality of life that is important rather than simply prolonging it).
Quality of life
Choices individual should be permitted to make about their own lives
Threats of legalizing euthanasia:
- Pressure on those who don’t really wish to end their lives
- Mentally diseased, handicapped, and/or unwanted…
What are the two kinds of medical tourism that are widespread, and what are the three challenges to relying on an informed consent framework to rebut ethical challenges to those varieties of medical tourism?
Two types of medical tourism: reproductive tourism and global organ trade.
Three challenges of relying on informed consent:
- Desparate choices = involuntary consent in actuality
- Even voluntary choice might not make it okay (might be unsafe)
- Inauthentic choice = might:
- not have understood the deal,
- have been pressured
- have been illiterate and signed a contract they couldn’t read
Why do Walzer and Luban reject preventative war?
The question is whether a general doctrine of preventive war to forestall relatively distant threats is morally defensible. My answer is no: following Walzer, I fear that giving a green light to preventive war would make wars too frequent and too routine. The permission to launch preventive war should also be restricted to situations in which the target poses physical threats to a state’s people and homeland, not simply threats to economic interests in an elevated standard of living. Otherwise, I suggest, the doctrine of preventive war justifies too many wars.
What is the sheriff theory?
The sheriff theory is the idea that the United States is a self-appointed international sheriff that other countries, especially Europe, seem to welcome. Because the US is both self-appointed sheriff, the arrangement is considered only semi-consensual. The United States’ job as international sheriff is to try “to enforce some peace and justice in what Americans see as a lawless world where outlaws need to be deterred or destroyed, often through the muzzle of a gun.” Someone has to play the sheriff in a Hobbesian world while Europe is the saloonkeeper. Saloonkeepers don’t mind the US being a self-appointed sheriff because they view the US as protecting them in self-defense against outlaws. That is the world’s justification for this set up. Luban rejects the sheriff theory because Europe has the military power to defend themselves and because the US has proven itself to not be a good guard against genocide.
Consequences framework applied to climate change
Hardin (lifeboat theory, tradgedy of the commons)
- If the environmental crisis is to be resolved, then we have duties explicitly to protect the planet so that human beings survive.
- The argument that because we all share the planet, we should share resources is misguided, sucidal, and unfair to the rights of future generations (tradgedy of the commons)
- Do not reduce the lifeboat safety factor by letting people climb aboard.
- Stop the population from rising because more resources will be used
- THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL!
Rights framework applied to climate change
Simon Caney: Climate change needs addressing with the utmost haste. All individuals possess human rights irrespective of their social or cultural circumstances, and these rights take priority over other values. Rights are “moral thresholds”; they deliniate an acceptable standard beneath which no one should be allowed to fall. Climate change threatens three rights: rights to life, health, and subsistence. Because climate change is brought about by human action, he is able to base his argument on a negative-rights claim that there is a right not to be harmed by the actions of others.
What are the various strategies described by Widdows for dealing with climate change, regarding who takes on the main burden?
- Equality of burdens
- Equality of quotas
- Polluter pays
- Beneficiary pays
- Ability to pay
What is Lombort’s “triage” approach to global problems, and what would it imply about climate change?
When looking at a list of solutions to a problem, need to prioritize solutions to problems based on practicality.
What are the main problems highlighted by feminists about global gender justice?
- Gender discrimination
- Controlling women’s bodies
- Controlling reproduction
- Rape as a crime against humanity
- Male frameworks and theories
What is care ethics, and how does it shed a different light on problems of global gender justice?
Characteristics:
- Emphasizes responsibility and relationships, not rights and rules
- Is contextual and narratice, not formal and abstract
- Focuses on personal processes and activity, not one-off acts or choices.
