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Macrojustice in Normative Economics and Social Ethics

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On Kolm's Theory of Macrojustice

Abstract

These concluding comments and considerations briefly summarise the achievement of this volume’s set of complementary contributions, answer the main questions posed and pending, and provide the necessary basic analysis and evaluation of the other distributive principles which are alternatives or complements to the one obtained here. The basis is the synthesis between the three polar possible ethical principles for macrojustice: income justice, self-ownership and the proper welfarism. Its central piece is a distributive coefficient k which can provide solutions from the pure self-ownership of classical liberalism for k = 0 to freedom-respecting income-egalitarian ideals. This choice results from the impartial moral judgment of the distributive society in question, representable in particular by comparisons between the “pure welfare” of members and which can be revealed by a number of methods. Non-human resources can be allocated according to various principles, but their equal sharing results from various types of association with the solidaristic equal-freedom allocation of the value of the human resources, and it permits more self-ownership for the same degree of distribution. The relevant introduction of the obtained distributive policy makes everybody better-off. Distributive principles alternative to the one obtained include those based on ordinal welfarism (equity-no-envy and the equivalence principle) and reductions to mesojustice or microjustice. Finally, the moral public goods of justice or caring about others’ needs elicit various types of motives which make the nature of the corresponding transfers be quite more subtle and rich than simple coercion or voluntariness.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EHESS, Paris and CREM, Paris, France

    Serge-Christophe Kolm

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  1. Serge-Christophe Kolm
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Correspondence to Serge-Christophe Kolm .

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  1. , Centre Forbin, GREQAM, allée Claude Forbin 15,19, Aix-en-Provence, 13627, France

    Claude Gamel

  2. , Centre de la Vieille Charité, GREQAM, rue de la Charité 2, Marseille, 13236, France

    Michel Lubrano

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Kolm, SC. (2011). Macrojustice in Normative Economics and Social Ethics. In: Gamel, C., Lubrano, M. (eds) On Kolm's Theory of Macrojustice. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78377-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78377-0_12

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