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This article is a mix of original material and of sections taken from the later chapters of my book, Full-Spectrum Economics (Routledge, 2010). Using Ken Wilber's four quadrants and multiple lines of evolution, I demonstrate how considerable light can be shed on the options open to economists who wish to overcome today's crippling reductionism. By going beyond the Right-Hand reductionism of both the neoclassical and the post-neoclassical paradigms, I hope to pave the way for a brand of economics that is inherently plural in its methodologies, and that also forces the economist to ask himself some unusual questions. Economic agents, in any case, are portrayed here as human beings who seek deeper existential meaning, and value consciousness and culture alongside efficiency and adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the approach for taking a stand against the current naturalistic tendencies within the current form of globalized capitalism which is seen as the logical expression of triumphant market forces working upon productive assets. It argues that the current form of globalised capitalism have no specific ontological necessity. It discusses the links between cosmo-systemism and cosmo-politism. It cites the benefits of treating globalization as a pollution-like externality.

In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insufficient as a justification of fairness in competition, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfaireven ifthe usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness, where ‘U’ stands for the ‘usual’ fairness notion, and S-fairness, where ‘S’ stands for the ‘sequential’ aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom: first of all, there is an ‘eclipse’ of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors’ choicesalwaysoperate in the sense ofincreasedcompetitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of anincreasedeffort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfair even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect a deeper aspect of unfairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conditions that might make it possible for poverty to someday be viewed as a violation of human rights. The existing human-rights framework, as exemplified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, embodies a contradiction between“progressive” and“conservative” principles, among which, principally, is the right to property. Quasi-capitalist pseudo-democracy is not, formally speaking, incompatible with the human-rights framework, but in practice it can be, due to its historical genesis and its existential underpinnings. In the real world, it is perhaps necessarily so. The article proposes distinct human-rights-oriented approaches to poverty compatible with two generic arguments: that there is a necessary incompatibility between quasi-capitalist pseudo-democracy human rights and that, on the other hand, such a compatibility is at least possible. For each of these options, some concrete propositions for institutional reform at the world level are scrutinised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can economics, which is based on the notion of individual optimization, really model individuals who have a sense of exteriority? This question, derived both from Marcel Mauss's sociological analysis of the social norm of gift-giving and from Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenological analysis of the idea of 'otherness,' leads to the problem of whether it is possible to model altruism with the tool of optimization. By investigating the ways in which economic theory can address this challenge, and by introducing a postulate of methodological altruism following Levinas's theory of the constitution of subjectivity through otherness, this paper uncovers an alternative foundation for the very notion of optimizing calculation - no longer as a self-centered initiative, but rather as an other-centered response. This makes it possible to clarify the implicit content of usual economic individualism, and to see on the basis of which ethical arguments the economic method of optimization may be upheld. The paper studies the consequences of this renewed foundation of optimization for the organization of a fair and efficient interaction between altruists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The criterion of envy-freeness, according to which no agent should prefer any of his neighbours' allocation to his own, has become a central part of the economic theory of distributive justice. It essentially corresponds to the need to express an ideal of equality in societies where preferences and endowments are heterogeneous. This paper surveys various formulations of the idea of envy-freeness, starting with the simple distribution model, then adding the possibility for agents to have different native talent endowments, and finally moving to models with production. Many classical results are displayed, but emphasis is also put on recent developments, mainly the ideas of 'minimizing envy' and of 'absence of domination'. Five major difficulties facing envy-freeness are identified and listed as directions of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]