Search

Proposals for the democratization of technology imply a necessary condition of universal emancipatory technological literacy. However, in the literature on the topic, people's willingness to assume the cost in time and effort involved in acquiring that knowledge is often taken for granted. In this paper, we apply Anthony Downs's economic theory of political action in democracy to analyze the cost-benefit ratio of this literacy from the perspective of the individual subject who should acquire it. Our conclusion is that the cost does not rationally justify in an instrumental sense a benefit that, being mainly of an indivisible nature, motivates individuals to avoid their share of the cost to produce it., Author(s): Manuel Carabantes [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.4795.f, 0000 0001 2157 7667, Facultad de Filosofía (Faculty of Philosophy), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Complutense University of Madrid), , c/ Profesor Aranguren, [...]

INTRODUCTION 1233 I. THE CENTRAL BANK BALANCE SHEET IN "FRANCHISE" FINANCE: AN OVERVIEW 1239 A. Franchise Finance: The Logic of the System 1239 B. The Fed's Balance Sheet as the [...], The COVID-19 crisis underscored the urgency of digitizing sovereign money and ensuring universal access to banking services. It pushed two related ideas--the issuance of central bank digital currency and the provision of retail deposit accounts by central banks--to the forefront of the public policy debate. To date, however, the debate has not produced a coherent vision of how democratizing access to central bank money would--and should--transform and democratize the entire financial system. This lack of a systemic perspective obscures the enormity of the challenge and dilutes our ability to tackle it. This Article takes up that challenge. It offers a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance. Focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve System ("the Fed"), the Article outlines a series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy--the People's Ledger. On the liability side of the ledger, the Article envisions the complete migration of demand deposit accounts to the Fed's balance sheet and explores the full range of new, more direct and more flexible, monetary policy tools enabled by this shift. On the asset side, it advocates a comprehensive qualitative restructuring of the Fed's investment portfolio, which would maximize its capacity to channel credit to productive uses in the nation's economy. This compositional overhaul of the Fed's balance sheet would fundamentally alter the operations and systemic footprints of private banks, funds, derivatives dealers, and other financial institutions and markets. Analyzing these structural implications, the Article shows how the proposed reforms would make the financial system less complex, more stable, and more efficient in serving the long-term needs of the American people.

I present a business case for democracy, focusing on the impact of democracy on economic growth. This relationship is widely studied, and results have been less robust for growth than many other development outcomes such as literacy or infant mortality. I discuss four factors pertaining to data quality and modelling choices, suggesting that several previous studies have underestimated the growth-benefits of democracy. I further discuss the relationships between democracy and economic crises and variation in economic performance. By mitigating abysmal economic outcomes and ensuring more stable performance, democracy is generally of benefit to risk-averse entrepreneurs, investors, workers, and consumers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a reorientation of the radical democracy research programs toward a greater attentiveness to the institutional realization of its principles. It does so by bringing the radical democratic tradition into conversation with socialist republicanism. I argue that the struggle against domination requires engaging with political and economic institutions to extend democratic principles from the governmental sphere to broader sectors of society. By combining insights from both traditions, the article suggests shifting attention from an emphasis on disruption and insurgent uprisings to the goals of equalizing power between citizens and instituting democratic ownership and control over the economy. This framework enables radical democracy to respond to long-standing criticisms concerning the need for a more robust articulation of the injustices caused by capitalist relations of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like most egalitarian political philosophers, John Rawls believes that a just society will rely on markets and business firms for much of its economic activity--despite acknowledging that market systems will tend to create very unequal distributions of goods, opportunities, power, and status. Rawls himself remains one of the few contemporary political philosophers to explore at any length the way an egalitarian theory of justice might deal with fundamental options in political economy. This article examines his arguments and conclusions on these topics. It argues that contemporary Rawlsians will reach different conclusions if they take more seriously than Rawls himself did: (1) the implications, for the political culture and the democratic regulatory state, of large firms competing in adversarial markets characterized by the inevitable "fact of market failure," and (2) the relevance of ownership and governance relationships involving different kinds of business firms. And with respect to the second point, Rawlsians and other egalitarians have much to learn from contemporary economic, legal, and sociological theories of the firm, and the role of these theories in the structure of and rationale for corporate law. This is the kind of social theory that Rawls believes is relevant to the justification and application of theories of justice, but he himself did not appeal to it in his writings on political economy. Contemporary egalitarians can and should appeal to it now, and in doing so correct errors and omissions in Rawls's analysis. But taking seriously the two points mentioned above will also force egalitarians who support efficient markets to face difficult dilemmas or compromises of their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the import of Rawls’s theory of justice for private sector institutions in the face of the decline of the welfare state. The argument is based on a Rawlsian conception of justice as the establishment of a basic structure of society that guarantees a fair distribution of primary goods. We propose that the decline of the welfare state witnessed in Western countries over the past forty years prompts a reassessment of the boundaries of the basic structure in order to include additional corporate institutions. A discussion centered on the primary good of self-respect, but extensible to power and prerogatives as well as income and wealth, examines how the legislator should intervene in private sector institutions to counterbalance any unfairness that results from the decline of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]